Cloak and Daggers

by Katerina Martinez

  It was time to get to work.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Knowing Margo was out of play and that I was the only person on this floor with access to the archive, as well as a legitimate reason for having it, I decided to take my time in there, reviewing as many files as I thought would be relevant to my mission. Some were portable hardcopies stored in dossiers, others on data slates readable by specially designed computers. Most, however, were only readable on the archive computer.

  It was there, sitting in the archives, trawling through an old computer’s databanks for anything even remotely relevant, that finally something stood out.

  “Angel Dome,” I said, under my breath.

  This was it. There were pictures, illustrations of New Seattle shrouded by mist with an iridescent bubble arching over it. Another picture had more of a blueprint feel; it showed a flat, horizontal view of the city sitting beneath this Angel Dome, drawn to scale. It was easy to forget just how massive this thing was until you saw how even the city’s tallest building didn’t come close to the top of the dome.

  “Holy shit…” I said, checking over my shoulder, searching for an imagined sound.

  My heart started to thump even harder than it had been a second ago, and I took that as my cue. I pulled myself away from the computer and trawled the archives for whatever I could find under the Angel Dome entry before making a swift exit, taking whatever I could carry.

  When I got back to Margo’s office, I shut the door and sat down with my haul of stolen files. None of this information, I thought, would be particularly incriminating or even very helpful. Yes, the archives were kept under lock and key, but many Faction employees had the same key. It wasn’t a waste of time, however.

  I had, after all, found the word Angel Dome, and that was a step in the right direction.

  I picked one of the dossiers up and opened it on the desk. In it there were pages of information, including sketches and images of what looked like a military base concept. There were trucks, buildings, and towers, all arranged around some kind of gate-like construction. After reading a little, I realized this was the concept for the checkpoint at the edge of the Angel Dome—the only known way into or out of New Seattle.

  According to the concept, it was large enough to house a garrison of fifty soldiers, not including command staff, medics, chefs, janitors, and vehicle operators. The towers on either side of the gate were broadcast antennae the Faction could use to communicate with other cities across great distances; there were two of them just in case one broke down. The gate itself looked like a huge arch looming over a truck as it slipped outside into pitch-black darkness.

  They weren’t blueprints. I didn’t even know if the information here was fully accurate—this was a concept, after all. But even as a concept, the idea was a scary one. Fifty soldiers? The base also had automated defensive systems, state of the art surveillance and monitoring systems… it was better protected than the Osgrove Super-Max prison that sat just outside of the city’s limits; not out of the shield itself, just far enough away from people. But then, it had to be, considering what it was guarding.

  I was about to pull the second dossier up when the phone on Margo’s desk began to ring.

  I stared at it in confusion. Why was it ringing? Part of me didn’t want to answer, but I was filling in for the boss, wasn’t I? I had to answer, otherwise the potential to arouse suspicion was there. Never mind that I was sitting in Margo’s office with a desk covered in files taken from the archives. Maybe that wasn’t entirely strange in and of itself, but if someone saw them, I would have some explaining to do, and I wasn’t a very good liar.

  I picked up the phone and put on my best, friendliest voice. “Hello, Margo Robin’s office?”

  “Margo, it’s Nesbeth,” the man on the other end of the line said. Nesbeth? As in, Vito Nesbeth?

  “Sorry, this isn’t Margo. She’s just gone home. Wasn’t feeling well. My name is Isabella; I’m filling in.”

  “Oh, right… so that’s why she isn’t up here.”

  “Isn’t up… where?”

  “At the HOD meeting. Never mind. You’re sure she won’t make it?”

  Head of department meeting?

  “I’m pretty sure, she looked worn down.”

  Vito sighed. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Isabella.”

  “Right. So, how about you be a doll and bring us the drinks we’re still waiting on?”

  I started biting the inside of my cheek. “Isn’t catering supposed to do that?” I asked, trying not to clench my jaw too tightly.

  “Margo was supposed to do that and also take the minutes.”

  My lips pressed into a thin line. “Alright,” I said, “I’ll be right up. Do you want anything in particular?”

  What followed was a complicated list of who wanted what kind of coffee or tea, and how they wanted it done. Each person had a different order, and a special way to brew it. One man wanted me to microwave a mug full of milk before adding coffee grounds to it, eliminating water from the equation altogether. Another wanted to have his coffee stirred exactly forty times in a clockwise direction, then ten in the other. Listening to him speak made my skull hurt.

  Vito hung up when he was done with the order, and I slammed the phone down. That son of a bitch. I had really hoped I would never have to see him again, or even hear from him. He was a magical investigator, maybe even the magical investigator now that Abel was gone. If Abel had been cold and calculating, then Vito was loud and impulsive. He was good at his job, but he had earned a reputation for being a bully, and a macho man, as evidenced by the way he had just called me doll.

  I’ll show him how much of a doll I can be.

  Figuring it was fine to leave the archive documents in Margo’s office—once I locked it, no one would be able to get in—I headed into the kitchen and proceeded to fulfill the orders I had been given as best I could; anything to keep suspicion from coming my way. When I was done, I headed up to the only room where confidential meetings were ever held. I knew the way well enough.

  I was intimately aware as I made my way up, waiting in the elevator with a trolley covered in mugs and pots of coffee and tea, as well as milk, that I was probably about to walk into a den of vipers. These were people I knew, or at least knew of. One slip in my mannerisms, one slight drop of character, one hint of Maxine Cartwright, and I was done.

  When the elevator door opened and I felt a slight tickle, like an itch, behind my ear… I couldn’t say panic didn’t find a way to worm its way into my stomach.

  Across from the elevator, at the other end of a tidy, round, marble chamber with many windows and skylights, was the boardroom door. I approached, pushing the trolley in front of me as I went, awkwardly opening the door and pushing it inside. As soon I was through, heads turned. I felt naked, exposed. I wanted to run. These people weren’t just mages; they were some of the most influential and powerful mages in the Faction, and around them my disguise felt paper thin.

  Which made it start to itch even more.

  “Perfect,” Vito said, standing. He was tall with slicked-back black hair and the face of someone more used to taking photo ops after stealing the credit for catching a bad guy than that of someone who actually did the investigative work himself. “Come and set that down right here, sweetheart.”

  How about I shove this pot down your throat, asshole?

  I smiled, nodded, and began to walk around the long table to where Vito was standing, pulling the trolley along and parking it next to the serving table. Of course, these men wanted me to deliver their mugs to them, as evidenced by the fact that they didn’t move to grab their drinks. So, I began serving the hot drinks, noticing immediately how their eyes were on me, scanning me, leering. There wasn’t a single woman in here. I was the only one, and they made sure I knew.

  Then as I looked across from me, I saw the man I had throat-punched earlier. His eyes were still wide with alarm and surprise, and he had a r
ed welt on his neck. Despite the leering eyes, despite the sheer amount of testosterone in the room, I let the grin bloom across my face.

  I turned to Vito. “Anything else you want?” I asked.

  “I can think of a couple of things I would like,” Vito said, his voice low and suggestive.

  I was about to tell him to watch it or I’d rearrange his teeth when the boardroom door burst open, and my heart stopped. The Chief—the man who had set me up, the man who had flung magic at me as I tried to escape HQ—was standing there. My blood began to boil, my heart pulsed faster and harder, and my mouth tightened. But it got worse. Roman was behind him, his huge form seeming to dwarf the already pretty large Chief.

  “She here yet?” the Chief bellowed.

  “No,” Vito said. “Off sick. This is Isabella, she’s filling in.”

  “Filling in?” I asked. “No, I’m—”

  “You do know how to take minutes, don’t you?”

  I nodded, reluctantly.

  “Perfect.” The Chief began to walk around the room, followed not only by Roman, but also by Sebastian Nostro, the wiry, mousy looking bastard who actually cast the spells that brought down Pinnacle tower. I almost felt like I couldn’t breathe. I did not want to be in here. I was like Icarus, flying too close to the sun—so close I could feel it searing my skin right off my bones.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” I said to Vito. “I’ve never done this before.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder, and I stared at the hand like I was going to bash it to pieces with one of the coffee pots. “Don’t worry, alright? Just sit down and take notes; you’ll be fine. You can sit on my lap if you want.”

  I turned my eyes up at him now and narrowed them, and while my heart was bursting with rage, my inner voice screaming at him, I couldn’t say a word. I had to keep it in, keep it all in, and do as I had been told because that was the role I had to play here. If I were to get caught, it was all over. Chip or no chip, there were too many mages in here for me to hold any guarantees about my chances at getting out with my freedom, or even alive.

  “Fine,” I said, and I slipped away from his touch and went to sit down on any chair far enough away from other people that I wouldn’t easily be noticed. Though, being the only woman in the room, I thought being noticed was unavoidable at this point.

  The Chief sat down at the head of the table, Roman next to him, Sebastian on the next seat down. He scanned the room, his mustache twitching. “We need to talk about security,” the Chief said. “There are too many gaps in the system, and we need to plug them. Now.”

  My heart skipped inside of my chest, and all of my blood drained to my feet. I tried to sink lower into my seat, but couldn’t go any further without looking especially out of place. I almost couldn’t believe I was in here, sitting at a meeting with most of the Faction’s top brass.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “But, the Fallen are finished, aren’t they?” a man who I had never seen before asked.

  “Finished?” The Chief said. “We hit them hard, we hit them fast, and their headquarters burned down, but if you think those cockroaches are finished, then you’re dumber than you look, Higgins.”

  “I apologize, I only meant—”

  “We didn’t bloody their noses; we kicked them in the balls. They’re winded, but they’re going to retaliate, and they’re going to do it soon. We need to be ready for when they do, because when they come for us, they’ll come twice as hard as we did. I need ideas, now. Ways on making sure our security isn’t breached.”

  “If you’re worried about our HQ, we can start scanning employees at the door. Make sure they’re chipped?” Vito asked.

  “Finally, someone who’s switched on. Yes, that sounds like a good idea. We can’t risk them infiltrating with their magic.”

  Heh, too late, I thought, but all of this was striking too close to home—way too close. My disguise felt like it was moments away from wearing off, maybe even seconds. I didn’t know. The first time I wore a disguise had been a quick job, and it had felt like it could fall apart at any moment right from the get go. This one had lasted, but the warning signs were there. I needed to get out of this room.

  At the same time, things were being discussed here that people like me probably weren’t supposed to hear. On the other hand, if I let my disguise drop and went postal on the people in this room, odds were I could probably take down a bunch of them before they even knew what was going on; that’d bloody the Faction’s nose.

  I shook my head lightly to dispel the fantasy, took a deep breath, and pretended to take notes.

  “How did they even come up with the magic to make those disguises?” another man asked.

  Practice, asshole.

  “According to the report, they were pretty convincing.”

  “Never mind that,” the Chief said. “That’s gutter magic, rat magic. The Fallen have way more powerful magic at their disposal than that, and if they want to bring it to bear on us, they can do a whole lot of damage. That is why we need to shore up our defenses and make sure our asses are firmly covered. The last thing we want is to get bent over a table right now, not when we have the Fallen on the run.”

  “Speaking of which,” Sebastian said, making a sweeping gesture with his long, thin arm, “we have an idea as to where they may have gone. There are several secluded places scattered around New Seattle, many of which are unmonitored by our regular patrols. I would like the MI wing to send investigators out to these locations and just… poke around.”

  “Alone?” Vito asked.

  “The Faction will give you whatever resources we have, but we are depleted after what happened yesterday. Many people died.”

  “You’re insane if you think I’m sending my agents out there without backup. It’s just not happening.”

  “You’ll send them,” the Chief said, “or I’ll find myself someone who will. This isn’t up for debate. We need to root them out while they’re licking their wounds, show them they can’t hide from us.”

  “Why don’t you send hunters instead?”

  “Because hunters are being put to use elsewhere.”

  “Yeah? Where?”

  Sebastian paused, tilted his head to the side. “At 10:00 a.m. tomorrow, a team of hunters, supported by a detachment of marines, are being deployed to seal a worm hole I have discovered in one of the abandoned lots in district three. I’ll be accompanying them myself, just to make sure there are no setbacks. We can’t have the public knowing about this; they’re distrustful enough as it is.”

  Worm holes…fae portals?

  “During yesterday’s raid our team encountered one of the fae,” the Chief said. “We think it’s a Dragon-fae.”

  A whispering silence filled the room, heads turning, lips moving almost soundlessly, eyes searching for answers. I felt my chest begin to tighten. They were talking about Aisha. Shit. They remembered her. I swallowed the fear and buried my face in my notepad so as not to look suspicious.

  “Dragon-fae?” Vito asked. “Since when are there Dragon-fae in New Seattle, and why are they aligned with the Fallen?”

  “We think this one’s Seelie. Smuggled itself over somehow, we don’t know when.”

  “Seelie? How?” someone asked. “Wasn’t Pinnacle their last portal?”

  What?

  “Get the hell out!” the Chief yelled so loudly his veins popped out of his neck. The room fell silent again after that, and I now felt like I couldn’t breathe. Pinnacle? What about Pinnacle? What portal? Relax, Max, try to relax. You’re just going to make them notice you and then everything’s going to go to hell. I tried to write on the notepad, but my hand was shaking, and the words on the page in front of me were starting to dance in weird ways.

  Still, I glanced up as the guy who had asked that question got up and shuffled out of the room. Silence followed, thick with dread and tension.

  “You, writing the minutes,” the Chief said, and my heart could have stopped entirely.

&
nbsp; I turned my eyes on him, hoping he couldn’t see through the disguise. Hoping the disguise was still there at all. “Y-yes?” I asked.

  “Did you write that down?”

  “Did I… what?”

  “What Robertson just said; did you write it down?”

  “I… no, I didn’t.”

  “Let me see that book.”

  Shakily, I slid the notepad across the table. The Chief picked the notepad up and, before looking at it, turned his eyes on me again. “Clean up around here, will you?”

  Fear collided into anger like two hot balls of fire drawn to each other, creating an explosion of emotion within my chest I almost couldn’t control. Eleven years as the Faction’s best hunter had given me enough discipline to keep myself in check, but even my patience would wear out soon, and then we’d have a big problem to deal with.

  I stood slowly and made my way around the table, collecting coffee cups from each man present. By the time I had made a full circle, the Chief was done with my notepad. He tossed it on the table, then narrowed his eyes at me. I wasn’t trying to meet his eyes, but I almost couldn’t help myself. They were magnetic, and not in a good way. The kind of eyes you know belong to someone severely unhinged, the kind that trigger an almost morbid fascination.

  He had never given this vibe off before.

  “Isabella, is it?” the Chief asked.

  “Yes,” I said, doing my best to keep my poker face up.

  “You know, repeating what you’ve heard here is a criminal offence, right?”

  “I’m aware. I’m only here to act as an intermediary for Margo, so I’ll only tell her about what I’ve heard.”

  The Chief shook his head. “No,” he said. “You’re going to tell Margo only what we want you to tell her. Do you understand?”