The interrogation room was a sterile cube of gray concrete and fluorescent light. It smelled of antiseptic and stale coffee, a sharp departure from the damp rot of the cellar where Elise had worked them over three days ago.
Ruben and Corbin sat on opposite sides of a bolted-down metal table. Their hands were cuffed to the table legs, and the heavy parchment seals on their chests were still in place, itching against their skin and leaving them feeling hollowed out.
The door buzzed and swung open.
Bruno Fernando stepped in. He carried two paper cups of water and a pack of cigarettes he clearly wanted to smoke but didn't light. He placed the water in front of the boys, then pulled out the metal chair opposite them. It groaned under his immense weight.
He didn't scream. He didn't kick the table. He just looked at them with eyes that seemed tired, set deep in a face hewn from granite.
"Let's try this again," Bruno rumbled, his voice a low baritone that filled the small room. "I'm not here to break bones. I just want to know what you know about Paul Strahm."
Ruben took a sip of the water. His throat was still raw. "We told you," Ruben said, his voice raspy. "We intercepted him in the sewers. We found the kid, Oscar, and we took him. Paul... he lost it. He went crazy."
"Crazy how?" Bruno asked, leaning back, the chair creaking again.
"Like a fanatic," Corbin interjected, glaring at the mirror on the wall. "We already told all this to that asshole, Elise. But she wasn't having it. She was too busy trying to kick my ribs through my lungs to listen."
Bruno sighed, rubbing the back of his neck where a tattoo of a ledger peeked out from his collar. "I apologize for Elise. She can... get like that. She operates on a very rigid frequency."
"Yeah, well, her frequency sucks," Corbin muttered.
Bruno let the comment slide. "Is there anything else? Any detail, no matter how small, that you might have held back from her?"
Ruben looked at the Paladin. He measured the man, the weary posture, the sadness that seemed to hang off him like a heavy coat.
"Did you find him?" Ruben asked quietly. "Oscar. Did you get him back?"
Bruno paused. He looked down at his hands, thick fingers interlaced on the table.
"No," Bruno admitted. "We combed the sector. We dragged the sewers. Strahm and the boy are gone. Vanished."
Ruben felt a cold stone settle in his stomach. He's really gone.
"If you have any clue," Bruno said, meeting Ruben's eyes, "any idea where he might have taken the boy, I am all ears. We need to contain this before he releases that gas again."
Ruben's mind flashed to the golden dragon. The tiny construct he had slipped into Oscar's pocket. Even with the seal on his chest suppressing his active power, he knew the connection existed. If the seal was removed, he could track that dragon to the ends of the earth.
He opened his mouth to speak. I can find him. Take this seal off and I can find him.
But he stopped.
He looked at Bruno. He looked at the mirror where others were surely watching. If he revealed he could track Paul, they wouldn't let him go. They would use him, then lock him away, or worse, Elise would take over the hunt and kill Paul, leaving Oscar to the mercy of the state labs.
Ruben closed his mouth. Not yet. I can't trust them yet.
"We've got nothing," Corbin said, filling the silence. "Other than the fact that Paul is some psycho with a manifesto. He kept ranting that Ostara belongs to 'his people.' Said it was destroyed by people like us. Like you."
Bruno's eyes lifted slowly. The heavy lids didn't widen, but the gaze sharpened. "Oh, really?"
"Yeah," Ruben added, deciding to feed him the other piece of intel. "He claims he's from the Nine Clans. He said the shipping container we found in the sewers, the one with the bodies your news choppers are circling over, was where they were kept. He said they were experimented on."
The room was deadly silent.
Ruben, even without his Ego, had spent a lifetime reading people to survive. He watched Bruno carefully.
Outwardly, the giant didn't flinch. His face remained a mask of stone. "That sounds nasty," Bruno said flatly.
But Ruben heard it.
Thump-thump... pause... thump-thump.
Bruno's heart had skipped a beat. The rhythm in his jugular vein, visible just above his collar, fluttered wildly for a fraction of a second.
"It sounds like a cover story for a terrorist," Bruno added, recovering quickly, but Ruben had seen the crack in the armour. The mention of the Nine Clans had rattled him.
"Also," Ruben continued, pressing the advantage, "Oscar said Paul was giving him injections. Some kind of drug to 'stabilize' his Ego. Paul said it stopped the gas from leaking out, but I think he was just keeping the kid weak."
Bruno shook his head immediately. "There is no such thing. You cannot medicate an Ego. It is metaphysical, not biological."
"That's what I thought," Corbin said. "But the kid was convinced. He was shaking for it."
"What do you make of it?" Bruno asked, shifting the topic to Oscar. "The boy's power."
"It's messy," Corbin shrugged. "Uncontrolled. But powerful."
Bruno nodded. "As the name 'Ego' infers, all powers are based on how the person views the world. A child who has only known fear... his view of the world is volatile. Toxic. His power reflects that reality. That is what my teacher told me, anyway."
Ruben tilted his head. "Isn't that what every Paladin says after Dario? 'Dario Kosta said this, Dario Kosta said that.' You guys quote him like he wrote the Bible."
Bruno looked at Ruben. A shadow passed over his face, grief, mixed with something darker.
"Yes," Bruno said softly. "They do quote him. But they quote a statue."
He leaned forward, the metal table cooling under his forearms.
"Dario Kosta was my teacher," Bruno corrected, his voice dropping to a rumble that vibrated in the floor. "I didn't read his words in a textbook, boy. I learned them while bleeding on his sparring mats. There is a difference."
The smoke from Bruno's cigarette curled into the stagnant air of the interrogation room, a gray ribbon twisting against the harsh fluorescent light. He finally lit it, taking a long, ragged drag that seemed to pull the very breath from his massive lungs.
He didn't look at the boys. He looked at the smoke, his eyes unfocused, drifting back twenty years.
"You speak of Dario Kosta as a grandfather," Bruno rumbled, the smoke escaping his lips with the words. "A kind, weird old man. It is... a strange image to hold against the Warlord I knew. But perhaps not an inaccurate one."
He leaned back, the metal chair groaning under his bulk. His face, usually a mask of granite stoicism, softened into something painfully human.
"We were a triad, you know. Before the Purge. Before the politics and the lies we had to familiarise ourselves with." Bruno's voice took on a cadence of reverence. "Lance, myself... and Carmen."
He said the name like a prayer he hadn't spoken in years.
"Carmen Ford," Bruno murmured, a faint, sad smile touching his lips. "She was the best of us. Striking. Terrifyingly beautiful, with hair like a raven's wing and eyes... emerald green. Green like the deep woods she commanded. She walked with this regal confidence, like she owned the ground she stepped on, but she never looked down on anyone."
Bruno stared at the ash on the end of his cigarette. "She had this iron will, fierce as a storm, but a heart that was so nurturing it made your teeth ache. She'd scream at us on the mats, drive us until we puked, and then sit with us for hours, cracking jokes, making us laugh until we forgot the pain. Her Ego... Heart of the Forest. She could bring a forest into existence. She could make wood harder than steel or soft as silk. She was about growth and second chances."
He paused, the silence heavy.
"Lance was the edge," Bruno continued. "Sharp, arrogant, brilliant. And I... I was the stone. The anchor. And Carmen was the life. Dario... he was the sun we all orbited."
Bruno looked up, locking eyes with Ruben.
"He made us a family. He taught us that power wasn't about the show. It wasn't about the cameras or the ranking. It was about the person standing next to you. He loved us. I know he did."
Bruno's hand trembled slightly. He crushed the thought, or perhaps the memory of the betrayal that followed, the Purge of Nine, the massacre that shattered the triad and sent Carmen spiralling into the unknown, leaving only a ghost behind.
"He broke us," Bruno whispered, the hurt raw in his voice. "When the order came down... when we found out what the mission really was... it broke everything. Carmen disappeared. Lance turned his heart to ice. And I... I..."
Bruno took one final drag of the cigarette and stubbed it out on the metal table, leaving a black smear of ash.
"But," Bruno said, his voice regaining its deep, authoritative timbre. "I heard what you said to Elise yesterday. About how he treated you. About how he let you be a child."
He looked at Ruben, and for the first time, there was no interrogation in his gaze. Just acknowledgment.
"I liked hearing that," Bruno admitted. "It reminds me that the man I loved... the teacher who raised me... wasn't entirely a lie. The heart was still there."
He stood up abruptly, the chair scraping loud against the concrete floor. The moment of vulnerability vanished, replaced by the imposing wall of the Gold Paladin.
"Tomorrow morning," Bruno announced, adjusting his coat, "transport will arrive. You two are being transferred to the Capital. The High Council wants to oversee the trial personally given the connection to the Gresham Incident and the Rage Gas."
He looked down at them one last time.
"The Capital is not forgiving. The prisons there are not designed to be escaped from. It is likely the end of the line."
Bruno turned his back to them. He walked to the heavy steel door, his footsteps heavy and deliberate. He paused for a fraction of a second at the threshold, his hand on the frame, but he didn't look back.
The door clicked shut. The heavy bolt slid home.
Ruben stared at the door, the scent of Bruno's tobacco lingering. The hopelessness of the situation began to settle in again. The Capital. A trial. It was over.
Then, he felt it.
A strange, fluid sensation on his chest.
Ruben looked down. The heavy parchment seal, the one Bruno had slapped onto him days ago to nullify his Ego, was sliding. It wasn't peeling, it was dissolving. The adhesive turned to a black, viscous liquid that dripped down his hoodie like oil.
The seal fell onto his lap, useless.
Click.
Ruben's head snapped up. His hands, cuffed to the table leg, suddenly fell free. The metal cuffs hadn't broken; the lock mechanism had simply... opened.
"What the..." Corbin whispered from across the table.
Ruben looked over. Corbin's seal was on the floor. His cuffs were open, dangling from his wrists. Corbin rubbed his wrists, looking from the shackles to the door, his eyes wide with disbelief.
"Too coincidental to be just luck," Corbin breathed, flexing his fingers as the familiar hum of Boost began to vibrate under his skin.
Ruben looked down at the floor near the table leg where Bruno had been standing.
There, in the shadow of the table, was a small, erratic puddle of black ink. It wasn't stationary. It was moving, retreating, flowing like a tiny, liquid stream back toward the door where it seeped into the crack and vanished.
Ruben stood up, the phantom weight of the seal gone. He felt Forge rush back into his veins, the connection to his dragons singing in his mind. He could feel the golden scout he had left with Oscar, miles away, pulsing like a beacon.
He looked at Corbin, his amber eyes sharp and fierce.
"It wasn't luck," Ruben said.
"Corbin," Ruben whispered. "We need to get out of here. Now."