“It has been too quiet,” Oliver hisses.
“The bird turd is plotting something, wallowing in her stinky nest,” Lori agrees with him. I get from context that the bird turd is Nine.
“Fuck!” Raguel curses, squeezing Oliver’s hand.
“She was part of the Blood Assassin project, which means that she showed psychotic traits when she was a little girl,” Michael states.
“Sure, but how does that help us, babe?” Raphael asks.
“I’m just trying to profile her. Like Meg would do.” He shrugs, eyes down.
Silence suddenly descends over them. Even Uriel seems to be affected by what happened to the doctor. I see anger on his face, a thirst for retaliation. I understand that. When the people who took me in after I escaped the long imprisonment were killed by a drunk driver, I hunted him down and had my sweet revenge. Because he took away what was mine.
Nine hurt all of them in one way or another, and now they want to get back at her.
“Go on. Give us the psychological profile,” I break the silence. Trying new angles could help find her.
He gives me a little smile, his light blue eyes blink with gratitude. I see the same look on Lori’s and Ramiel’s faces. People are so fucking easy. Uriel won’t be themiddlemanfor much longer because I’m getting to them, little by little.
“From what we have discovered and the small interaction she had with Uriel, Nine is not the average evil. She is a mastermind, incredibly smart, ruthless, meticulous, and power-hungry. She commits murder guilt-free, which means people are irrelevant and interchangeable, a clear sign of psychopathy. She hates us. Her desire for revenge seems to be her sole goal.”
“That night when she tried to kill Uri, how did you know Phoenix was Nine?” Hunter asks me as soon as Michael finishes her profile. “You said you never saw her when you were in the facility. She didn’t tell Uri who she was, and her face was covered by a firefighter’s mask.”
I open my mouth, but Uriel talks before I can say anything. “The truth, Ezra.” He knows the truth, I told him already. But I’m quite satisfied by the fact that he didn’t say it to any of them.
“I’m always for the truth, brother. Even though it makes you choke while trying to swallow it,” I declare. And omitting is not equivalent to lying; it just serves to postpone the choking for a little while.
“When a little more than a year ago, a hit was put on my head by someone named Phoenix, I started looking for the fucker. It was like searching for a ghost. For a month, I stopped several attempts on my life, until Phoenix decided to take things to another level and put a bomb inside my place. I was barely able to get out of there before the explosion, but I read the note left behind for me on the refrigerator. It just said:
Goodbye Subject Eight,
Nine.
“Fucking hell!” Raguel cusses.
“A blurry memory from the fire at the facility where I had been imprisoned came back to me. A girl standing among the flames, covered in blood, before running away.” I hear a gasp and some muttering, but I keep going, “I didn’t know who she was, nor did I care. At that time, I just wanted out of there. The man who helped me escape was a male nurse working there. A couple of years later, he confessed to me that there had been another subject who he thought had died in the fire. He told me that unfortunately, the scientists were successful at turningherinto a killer with no emotions.”
“Nine,” Raphael whispers her subject number.
“I realized that she didn’t die during the fire and was out to get me. So I faked my own death, and followed Nine’s crumbs here to Chicago, and to all of you.”
“The name she chose Phoenix, the mythical bird that burns to resurrect from its ashes…after the fire at the facility. That can’t be a coincidence,” Michael muses.
“She hates us all, for some reason,” Gabriel says.
I nod.
“She said to Uri that her life was ruined because of us,” Ramiel adds.
I nod again.
“Fuck.” Seems to be Raguel’s favorite word lately. At least he stopped looking warily at me.
“It’s like putting together a puzzle with infinite pieces.” Lori trembles, pulling his jacket closer to his body.
“We’ll find all the pieces, till the last one, and get the bitch,” Uriel growls.
That’s for fucking sure. She should have left me out of this. She’ll curse the day she crossed me.
