Rebecca jumped off the desk and started pacing excitedly. Gaul sighed more deeply.
“But, how? It takes weeks of analysis to read probability threads that broad and vague, and that’s assuming you even know where to look, and there was no time to track every apport,” Rebecca said accusatorily. “Did you know about this in advance, Gaul?”
“I am a precognitive,” Gaul said, mildly offended, scratching away at the next document. “I had the analytical pool on this possibility two days after Alex got here, along with a dozen other likely ways things could go wrong. Over the last two weeks, I’ve arranged circumstances that have removed all of Anastasia’s transporters from Central, except for Svetlana Rostoff. We knew that she wouldn’t do anything herself, not directly, in order to have deniability. Edward is still too new, so that meant she would have her lieutenant, Renton Hall set it up. Svetlana and Renton only cross paths rarely, so it was easy enough to alert Alistair and have him monitor for when that happened.”
“Wow,” Rebecca said, sitting back down on the corner of the desk.
“While I’m being frank, I should mention that Mitsuru has been in San Francisco since this morning, arranging a new exit, should that become necessary,” Gaul said, frowning. “I would have preferred it to be Alice, but she and Xia are needed elsewhere right now, keeping the Witches off-balance and settling matters with the remnants of the Terrie cartel. Mitsuru was the best I could do without anyone noticing.”
“Okay, I feel stupid,” Rebecca acknowledged, pinching out her cigarette and tossing it into the trash can. “So, why didn’t you stop all this from happening?”
Gaul stopped again and for a moment, Rebecca could have sworn she saw the slightest indications of embarrassment.
“Putting aside the disturbing implications from his past, Alex Warner has been alone his entire life, and that degree of isolation worries me. I don’t need another dysfunctional Operator on my staff. Therefore, if he had found someone he felt socially comfortable with, it didn’t seem advisable for me to interfere. I will admit, however, that I wish it wasn’t Eerie.”
“Are you saying in the most obtuse possible manner,” Rebecca said, eyebrows raised, “that you thought it might be a good idea if Alex got laid?”
Rebecca continued to stare at Gaul for a moment, then started laughing, her face turning red, till she doubled over at the waist.
“I’m sorry, it’s just that,” she said, her body shaking uncontrollably as she laughed, “I keep underestimating you…”
“Please get out of my office,” he said, shaking his head sadly, and reaching for the next document in the stack.
Maybe there were signs, and Alex didn’t notice them. He was tired, after the party, still buzzing, but very much into a tired afterglow, a long gentle come down. Beyond that, Eerie leaned against Alex on the taxi ride home and then feel asleep, her head nestled in the hollow of his shoulder, her hand resting lightly next to his thigh, and he hadn’t been able to focus on much of anything else from then on. He was too busy building up his courage for when they got back to the room.
It could have been that there were scratches on the lock. Maybe his key didn’t swipe quite right the first time, perhaps the door was already ajar when they got there. He couldn’t say for certain.
Alex took two steps into the darkened room, still chattering nervously at the silent girl behind him, when he heard breathing. He paused briefly, listening, straining at a noise that he wasn’t entirely sure he had heard, and in that moment, something rushed at him from inside the room, grabbing him by the throat and propelling him backwards. The hand was huge and powerful, and when Alex tore at it to try and free himself, one of his hands was cut open by a talon fixed to the index finger. He almost had time to say it before his head and neck collided with the room’s far wall, hard enough to leave a noticeable indent.
Weir.
When Alex could breathe again enough to open his eyes, one of them must have turned the lights on, and another shut the door behind them. There were five in all, all wearing identical, badly tailored suits. Changing to human form had done nothing for the smell — they all emitted the scents of mud and decay like a perfume. Four of the Weir had identical red ties, but one of them had a silk blue tie, the one who had planted Alex’s head in the wall. He looked vaguely familiar to Alex, with his silver hair, and he had a pretty good idea as to why. He was fairly certain that he’d met Mr. Blue-Tie before.
But, all of these were things that he noticed after he realized that, somehow, Eerie was not in the room with them.
Then Mr. Blue-Tie leaned in close, all weathered skin, halitosis, and nose hair, his yellow teeth gritted and his hands balled into fists, and grabbed Alex by the shirt, hauling him partway to his feet.
“Where is the girl?”
He shook Alex like a rag-doll, as if he weighed nothing at all, his head whipping back and forth painfully.
“What?”
Alex gasped for air, trying futilely to free himself from the elongated, bestial hands.
“The girl,” Mr. Blue-Tie hissed, picking Alex up by his hair and throat, so that is his toes dangled on the ground. “The one you came in the building with. She didn’t get off the elevator with you. Where is she?”
Alex belatedly realized that Eerie had indeed been very quiet on the way to the room, and to think ‘Good for you, Eerie’. Then the Weir released his hold on Alex’s throat and hair, and grabbed him instead by the ears. Alex pounded futilely on his wrists and forearms, but it stung his hands like he was striking wood. Mr. Blue-Tie grinned, and then shook Alex head violently back and forth, until blood gushed from his nose, until he was thoroughly disoriented and crumpled, gasping on the floor. He curled into a ball and lay there, unable to stop the world from spinning or cope with the rushing sound in his head, while the Weir muttered incoherently somewhere above him. Improbably, he heard the sound of someone running a bath. Alex had little time to wonder what was going to happen to him.
At that point, he felt no fear whatsoever.
Mr. Blue-Tie came back from wherever he had gone, and kicked Alex savagely in the midsection, leaving Alex wheezing and cursing. The other Weir must have come up behind him while he was still blind with pain, because they managed to get a canvas bag over Alex’s head before he even realized what was going on. The burlap wrapped around his head stunk of fear and old vomit. He tried to struggle free, to pull the bag from his head, but this also turned out to be futile. Without much trouble, they wrench his arms behind his back, and then handcuffed his wrists together.
“I’m sure you remember me, right? You know what I’m capable of. I’m going to ask once more, nicely,” Mr. Blue-Tie said, delivering another devastating kick to Alex’s stomach. It was only through an act of tremendous self control that he avoided throwing up inside the bag his head was trapped in. Instead, he wretched involuntarily and tried to curl up tighter, half-crazy with claustrophobia and panic. “Then things are going to get ugly real fast. Where is the girl?”
Alex was glad, very glad that he didn’t know. Because he couldn’t be sure about himself in this situation. He was very afraid; on a fundamental level he was absolutely terrified about what he knew was going to happen to him. It made him physically ill he was so frightened. But at least he didn’t have to worry that he would betray Eerie under whatever torture they had planned for him, because he didn’t know. That made things a bit easier.
“I have no idea,” Alex said honestly, pressing his knees as tight to his chin as he could manage. Even thinking the word ‘torture’ had started him shivering uncontrollably.