Innocence Lost

by O. J. Lowe

  “One can talk, and one can fight,” Takamishi said. He sounded like he rather wouldn’t comment but the situation had been forced upon him and he couldn’t ignore it out of fear of looking churlish. “We’ve moved people into specialist positions with less to go on, Nandahar. Might not be stupid ideas on either part.”

  “Is there someone we can talk to about this?” Jacobs asked. Theo fought the urge to roll his eyes. Typical. He was being handed a great chance, an opportunity that neither of them had thought they would get minutes earlier and he was already trying to pick holes in the offer. He’d already thought it through. Combat specialist. A man of action. It sounded good, like it’d suit him. Granted, he could already tell that it was going to be damn hard. He’d long suspected Nicholas Roper had graduated this academy with skills leaning towards that, he’d seen Roper in action first-hand at the Quin-C final, as well as several other individuals with Unisco training. It had been scary watching them, the way they moved, attacked, and the way they killed. There was something otherworldly about them.

  Plus, Jacobs was right. He did have an array of powerful spirits and that’d count in his favour. Could never have too many weapons at your disposal.

  “Of course, we’ll summon someone in to talk to you. If you want to know more about being an inquisitor, Cadet Jacobs, come see me at some point. I’ll give you the rundown. I’ve been one for too many years now. I thought doing my part in running this academy would be a nice change of pace.” He grinned as he said it. “How wrong was I, it turned out.”

  His attention turned to Theo. “Cadet Jameson, should you wish to talk to a combat specialist, I can arrange for one to make an appearance at some point.”

  He considered it. Might not be the dumbest thing ever, providing it wasn’t Roper. He still had some unresolved irritation towards the man, didn’t want to spend more time with his company than he had to.

  “I’d like that,” he said. “I’m sure it’ll be enlightening.”

  “He’ll not be showing you how to set fire to things,” Konda smiled. “Be sure of that. Now, anyway. About your punishment…”

  It was probably fair, he had to admit. Fair and didn’t lack for any sort of irony. Konda had been swift with his judgement and set them straight to it. As much as he wanted to promote them, he had tossed them back into the mess hall with a warning about what would happen if they stepped out of line again.

  “You won’t like the consequences,” had been his choice of words. “Now clean this shit up!”

  Shit summed it up right. It looked worse than when they’d been here last, the normally spotless room gave the impression it had been party to a vicious explosion in a food factory. It was everywhere, up the walls, on the floor, he could even see some pudding on the ceiling, a brown stain several hands wide dripping to the floor. At least, he hoped it was pudding and not something else.

  “Seriously?!” Jacobs said. “What did they do, just tell everyone to throw it everywhere to give us more of a job?”

  “Probably.” It was all he felt like saying on the matter. Still didn’t want to talk to him, not after he’d wound them up into this situation. Jacobs could go and work in silence in his own damn corner, he’d start over here and they’d meet somewhere in the middle. He’d like that very much.

  “It’d have just been easier for you not to start a fight,” he offered. “Rather than us having to do this.”

  “It’d have been easier for them to kick us out rather than making us do this,” Theo said, having to fight the urge to keep the snarl out of his voice. Hearing Jacobs whine about it was already starting to grate and they’d been here all of a minute.

  “It’s not my fault you’ve got breath-taking anger issues,” he offered. “I mean, who the hells hits someone with a bowl for offering a helpful suggestion?”

  “Why offer a helpful suggestion when someone doesn’t damn need it?” Theo shot back. There were mops and buckets towards the back next to the kitchen door, he genuinely hoped they didn’t have to clean in there as well. There was punishment and then there was sadism. He’d lived with John Cyris for sixteen years, he knew how to tell one from the other. Some found it hard. He didn’t. In his experience, punishment came with an emotional detachment. Sadism had something in it that resembled love, although not the sort of love that any normal person would recognise.

  Sometimes he saw the way two people were in the street, he’d wonder why he never felt that way about anyone. It just looked something so alien to him, he’d never understand it. He’d tried comparing it to the way he felt about Anne, but those waters were so unchartered, he didn’t want to consider them. Anne was an incredible woman, she’d taken the time out to help him when she’d thought that he needed it, despite his protests. It took a lot to do that, not just to offer him something, but to stick at it when he made his automatic refusal. She’d put in the time, she’d brushed off the attempts to get rid of her and she’d gotten in under his defences.

  Friendship? He’d never really had one before, friends were weakness, his father had always told him. As much as he hated what the old man had imparted to him, some of the lessons had stuck hard to him.

  Fling enough shit at any given situation and some of it will stick, he thought, trying not to look too unhappy. If Jacobs thought he was suffering here, he’d have won and hitting him would have been for nothing. He wanted him to be as miserable as he was.

  Divines, what was wrong with him?! He shook his head, went to fill the bucket. Trying to psychologically outdo Jacobs in a bout he likely didn’t even know he was competing in? That had to be the definition of insanity, surely.

  “Hey!”

  He’d surprised himself by speaking up, hadn’t thought that he’d have it in him right now. He wanted silence, it appeared that his mouth had different ideas. Maybe the situation had gotten to him.

  Jacobs looked at him, his expression unmistakeable sour. He couldn’t blame him. He had given him a beauty of a mark on his head. Might even leave a scar. “What?!” That level of irascibility sounded familiar to him. It was how he imagined his own voice sounded whenever some idiot tried talking to him when he didn’t want them to.

  “For what it’s worth, sorry about hitting you. Probably shouldn’t have done that. It was uncalled for.”

  It sounded even dumber as he said it out loud, he could already feel the regret flooding through him for opening his mouth. Should have just stayed silent.

  “You don’t apologise much, do you?” Jacobs eventually said.

  “Try not to,” Theo said. “Never feel like I’ve got much to apologise for. That’s like admitting that you’re wrong.”

  “Well, sometimes you have to do that in life unfortunately,” Jacobs said. “The kingdoms’d be a messed-up place if everyone was right every single time. It can’t happen. Too many opinions. Too many assholes.” He gave him a pointed look. Theo smirked back.

  “You know, I apologised for hitting you before. Doesn’t mean I won’t do it again.”

  “Yeah, like you’d get the chance,” Jacobs said. “You took me by surprise before.”

  “I think you’ll find that’s the point in a fight,” Theo retorted. “Wouldn’t be very fair if I stood up and declared I was going to punch you ten seconds before I actually do.”

  “Oh ha-ha,” Jacobs said. He didn’t sound amused. “So why apologise now?”

  A good question and he wasn’t entirely sure that he had the answer to it. “Not sure.” He regretted it the moment he said it, quickly moved to follow it up. “I mean, I think we’ve probably got a good few days of this, maybe weeks. Just figure it might be the best thing to bury the hatchet before it all boils over.”

  “Hey, I’m supposed to be the diplomatic one,” Jacobs said. Theo fought to narrow his eyes at the stupid grin he wore. “You’re supposed to be the one who does stuff without thinking about it.”

  “I think we all have the potential to grow as people.”

  Just a week later, their puni
shment duty over and everything apparently forgotten, Theo had found himself on his way to his meeting with the combat specialist when he’d found himself thinking about his past even more. He’d turned the corner, come face-to-face with a woman he hadn’t thought about for years, more than that he hadn’t expected to see her here given the circumstances of their last meeting.

  It had been a long time ago now, maybe a few days before he’d finally walked out of Cyris’ life and his three lieutenants in Cyria had come to the house, a dangerous play at the best of times given the way that everyone wanted to get their hands on the four of them at the time. Remove them, and Cyria would have fallen. He’d toyed idle plenty of times with the idea of finding something incriminating that would have gotten rid of them and posting it anonymously to the authorities.

  That’d show his father. Shatter his organisation. Silas had been there, Theo had never liked him. There’d been something tremendously off-putting about him, a man just as cruel as his father and who Cyris had liked to proclaim as ‘his true son’. That was okay, Theo had always wanted to reciprocate that feeling and never consider Cyris ‘his true father’.

  Jenghis, the tall woman who’d never even bothered to acknowledge him was there as well, he’d never heard her, or Mara be referred to as Cyris’ children and that came in some small part, a relief. He was grateful that he’d never had a sibling, Divines knew what sort of mess they’d be in given his father’s attitude to parenting.

  At least Mara had always tried to be the nice one out of the three, she’d always stopped to engage him in chat he’d found uncomfortable even back then. If she thought that being nice to his only blood son was going to win her points with his father, then she had been sorely mistaken. Even back then, he’d never got the impression that she was the favoured of the three.

  “Mara?” he said. That shock of red hair was immediately recognisable, she’d grown it out in the years since he’d seen her last, years that hadn’t been as kind to her. She looked tired, dark circles around her eyes, a mad contrast to the tan of her skin. Weight had dropped off her, she’d never been fat all those years ago, but there’d been a fullness to her. Her uniform hung off her almost, made her look emaciated.

  For a moment, he thought she didn’t remember him. He didn’t care if she did or not, he was more interested to find out what she was doing here, and why one of his father’s former top lieutenants was wandering around a Unisco academy like she owned the place.

  “Little Theobald Cyris,” she said, not even bothering to hide her amusement. “Or, is it Jameson now? You grew up.”

  “You grew inwards,” Theo said, the irritation sparking at the back of his consciousness. He wasn’t going to be talked down to her, not by someone who should be in a jail cell by any reasonable definition of the idea. “What the hells are you doing here?”

  “About to talk to someone,” she said. The amusement had faded, replaced with aggravation on her head. He’d touched a nerve there.

  “Shouldn’t they be arresting you at a more conventional facility? Not an academy?” It sounded petulant and dumb the moment the words left his lips. Of course, she wasn’t under arrest. If she was, she’d be in cuffs and she’d have escorts and she wouldn’t be wearing a Unisco jumpsuit. There’d be a lot of things that would be different about this scene. He gulped. “Crap! You were working for Unisco, weren’t you? All that time with my dad, you were reporting back on him.”

  She smiled at him. “No, actually, I wasn’t. But the past is in the past and it is what it is. I was nobody’s first choice to come work for Unisco. But they offered me a deal, it was a better shot than I was going to get anywhere else. Not that it’s any of your business.” She gave him a hard look.” And if you go running to your father to tell him…”

  “If I do any running involving my dad, it’ll be in the opposite direction,” Theo said. “Don’t worry on that. I’ll not tell him that you’re working for his enemies. He can find out on his own, preferably in as crippling a manner as possible.” Maybe she’d be the one to slap the cuffs on him. Wouldn’t that just be the cherry atop a very succulent cake?

  “Sorry to break it to you, your dad is yesterday’s news. Nobody wants to catch him anymore. He had his record wiped for services to the kingdoms. If he keeps his nose clean, Unisco aren’t going to chase him. There’s bigger fish in the ocean to worry about.”

  “Coppinger?”

  “Bang on,” she said. “Cyris was an amateur compared to some of the shit she’s been involved in, I probably don’t have to tell you. Nobody else ever gave Unisco this much trouble, not like she’s been doing for the last few months.”

  A lot of people had been saying that, he’d overheard some of the instructors come out with the same thing when they’d thought they’d been alone with each other. For a super-secret spy academy, it could be amazingly difficult to find a moment of privacy.

  He didn’t know how he felt about Unisco not hunting for his dad anymore. He’d always dreamed of seeing Cyris languishing in a prison cell. Services to the kingdoms? What the hells did that even mean anyway? He’d always thought of Cyris on the taking side of the deal rather than the giving.

  She reached out, patted him in the shoulder, gave his arm a squeeze. It might have been meant to be reassuring, it just felt condescending like she was throwing him a treat for getting something wrong anyway. “Cheer up, Theo. You know what your dad’s like. He’ll screw up again eventually. He’s a greedy bastard. Someone like him can’t stay innocent forever, they’ll have a moment where they throw it all away.”

  That was moderately reassuring. Not a lot but some. He wondered how much she actually knew Cyris. He was smarter than she was giving him credit for here, a lot smarter. His idea of passion was to be a little less cold, a lot more emotionless. No wonder he was like he was. He’d had no chance.

  “I’ll see you around, anyway,” Mara said. She offered him a hand. “Nice to see you again, Cadet Jameson. I’ve got an appointment. Talking to someone about being an undercover asset.”

  Yep. Traitorous bitch probably sums up your skillset, he thought.

  “If you ever want to talk though,” she dug into her pocket, produced a card. “Give me a call. It’s good to talk to others who survived… Well, your dad.”

  “You seem to have done okay out of it,” he said. Regardless, he took it, glanced at the name embossed on it. Maria Estrella. Unisco. “Take it you don’t go by Mara anymore then?”

  “I never was her,” she said. “Not wholly. That was only who your father tried to make me into.” She lowered her voice, leaned in close to him. “I don’t regret getting out the way I did. Jenghis died. Last I heard, he’d beaten Silas into a coma, they didn’t expect him to live. Your dad is a monster and if you ever want to get revenge on him, just wait. When Unisco do try to hunt him down, I’ll be the first in the queue to go on that mission. You might be qualified as… They spoke to you about your speciality yet?”

  “Combat, they reckon.”

  “Well, it’s a noble thing. Always going to need those guys. These days more than ever. Someone who can shoot, and fight is always going to have work. The kingdoms aren’t getting any safer unfortunately. We’d all be out of work if they were.”

  Finally, he took her offered hand, squeezed it and pumped. Her skin was warm, her fingers bearing calluses. Years of pulling triggers for one cause or another?

  “Nice to meet you, Agent Estrella,” he said. “Stay healthy.”

  If she took offence at the comment, she didn’t show it, just gave him a wry smile. “You too, Theobald. You too.”

  The past had too many ways of catching up with you when you least expected it, he was starting to think. Even when you thought that it was away from you, little things crept in that you hadn’t even considered to be a possibility.

  “As you all know,” Bruno Hans said, casting his gaze across the room. “Or you might not, it is possible that you may not have picked up on it, before we set you onto the n
ext level and break you all up, we like to administer one final class test to see how ready you all are. Consider it your final examination for the Iaku academy. You guys have been here for six months. We’ve rushed it all in, your basic training, everything that you need to graduate as a field agent. Normally it takes two years, but circumstances are what they are. You’ve taken it all in well, but it is time for you to put those skills to a practical use.”

  They’d all been summoned to the main hall of the academy, been told to pack their things together. Most of them hadn’t brought much and they’d accumulated even less, it hadn’t taken long to pack. Their cadet uniforms had been returned to the academy for a thorough cleaning, the clothes they’d spent the last six months living in until they’d become like second skins had been stripped from them. Now they were back in civilian gear and Theo didn’t know if it felt strange or not. It was unusual. Felt alien putting his old clothes back on. They didn’t feel the same.

  Maybe he wasn’t the same. He felt like his body hadn’t changed. Hadn’t been thin before, hadn’t been fat. Just probably what they’d call average. Now they felt tight about the arms and the legs, he’d been surprised at first until he realised how dumb that shock was. He’d been training physically at least once a day, sometimes twice for the last six months. Muscular development was about the least that he could have expected out of this situation. He was probably in better shape now than he had been at any time in his life. They all were. Jacobs actually looked dangerous now, he’d been big before but now the muscles looked like they’d been forged through use, rather than to look pretty. Tamale, quite curvy before but now looking lean and renewed stood at the end of the line, the muscles in her legs pronounced under her shorts.

  “Your final test is the same as it always has been in the finest traditions of the academy. Everything you have learned is something that you will be forced to use in order to pass the field test. Even should your future not lay in the field…” Hans’ eyes moved towards Dom Hill as he said it, Theo noticed. Rumour had been flying around that Hill was being groomed for a technician position. A bit of a waste, in his opinion, but he was starting to concede that the instructors probably knew their job better than he did. Maybe he was growing as a person after all.