“Where’s Brooks?”Gator asked, looking around.
Jin widened his eyes.“Who?”
That must be Flame’s real name.
“Never mind,” Gator dismissed, turning to his companions.“You wished to see those we captured.This is them.”
One of the individuals with him stepped forward, sweeping an assessing glance over the still unconscious Arly.He then studied Jin before moving on to Maggie.
“There was no one else?”the man asked.
“There are a couple kids hiding somewhere in there, but yeah, that’s pretty much it.”
The man and woman shared a glance.
Jin wondered if Ryan knew that Mars and Cleo had decided to throw in with the Tuann rebels.Or if this was another in a long line of the forty-three’s Machiavellian-style schemes.
“It’s not them,” Mars said with a glance at his companion.
Cleo’s bright yellow eyes contained nothing behind them.They looked dead.Something had been grafted onto the side of her face, leaving her visage permanently scarred.
“That’s a problem,” Cleo said.
Mars was black with the shadow of a beard gracing his hard jaw.His hair had a touch of white to its tips.As if something had started to leach the color out of his edges but then got distracted midway through.
“Who are you talking about?”Gator asked.
“The Phoenix and the Hermit,” Cleo answered in an emotionless voice.
Gator swallowed hard, his expression uneasy.“You don’t mean Kira Forrest.”
“She does,” Mars said, gliding back to Cleo’s side.
“You didn’t tell us it was the Phoenix we were going after.”
Cleo and Mars treated the human like air, acting like he wasn’t in the room.
“A confrontation with the Phoenix at this juncture would not serve our cause,” Cleo declared.“We should leave.This operation is blown.”
Gator blocked her path.“You brought her down on us.You should be the one to deal with her.”
The patch on Cleo’s cheek pulsed.
Gator choked and fell to his knees.
Before their eyes, he grew into an old man, collapsing face first onto the ground.Within seconds, he was dead.He continued to age, his body shriveling until his skin was shrink-wrapped to his bones and only a mummy remained.
Cleo stepped over the body.“Let’s go, brother.We don’t want to be here when the Phoenix arrives.”
“What about Augustensis?She’s seen our faces.She could tell Ryan.”
“She won’t.She’s too afraid of her own shadow to involve herself in these matters.She’ll go to ground.We can take care of her at our leisure later.”
Mars glanced back at Jin.“And him?”
“He’s no one.A child.”
“What if he talks?”
