11 - DECLAN
I’m having the strangest experience. Painful, but overall, not entirely bad. I’m standing up, but looking down at my own body at the same time. Like I’m having one of those out-of-body experiences.
Near death. That’s the state I’m in. I’ve been here before, so it’s kinda familiar. And it makes sense because I was attacked by a monster. But it also doesn’t make sense because… I was attacked by a monster.
Where the fuck am I?
I turn in place, looking around, but it’s actually not that easy to describe this room.
It’s… a bar? No. A bedroom? Not quite. A strip club? Getting closer.
It’s a weird mash-up of all three of those things. Of course, the three strippers are holograms. They’re dancing inside cages that flicker and glitch, like the program running them is old and out of date. They’re all naked so I watch them slowly gyrate against the bars of their cages to a bluesy song for a moment, as Aric, Quaid, and Star look down at my seemingly lifeless body on the ground with worried eyes.
What a strange room. I’m still trying to make sense of it when this statement comes right out of Quaid’s mouth. “What a weird room. I can’t tell if this is a brothel or a night club. What the hell is this place?”
Star snickers. “Yeah, it’s like we were dropped into the fantasy of a fourteen-year-old boy.”
Aric stiffens, straightening up. “I was sixteen, OK. This was my only safe place in the entire maze so I made my own. Excuse me if my décor is not up to your standards.”
Quaid laughs. “What?” He looks at Star. “What did he just say?”
Star just glares at Quaid, not answering.
So Aric continues. “This.” He points to the ground. “Is my home base.”
“Your what?” Quaid chuckles.
“My base, you fuckwit. In the Labyrinth. These hallways and passages were my training grounds. It was how Ares turned me into a warrior. It was how he turned me into a man.”
Star is frowning. She straightens up too and now no one is even paying attention to my nearly lifeless body on the ground. She says, “I don’t understand.”
“You wouldn’t, would you?” Surprisingly, this doesn’t come from Aric, but Quaid. And he’s sneering at her. Like she repulses him. “Why would you understand any of this? You’re some hidden-away Pleiades princess living out your cushy life in the mortal realm under the protection of Hera.” His disgust is so obvious now, it’s getting weird. “You don’t know anything.”
Aric steps in front of Star, cutting off Quaid’s view of her. “What’s your problem?”
Quaid runs fingers through his hair, looking away. “Nothing.”
“I’ll tell you what his problem is,” Star peeks out from behind Aric. “His problem is, he can’t control me. Not even with the collar around my neck.”
Aric, like me, must take a moment to put all the pieces together, because he goes silent. Quaid, Mr. Nobody who works for Apollo, put acollaron Star. Why? I mean, collars imply possession and control, so I guess that’s not hard to figure out. But why would he need that control?
Hmm. Mr. Nobody, who seems to be in possession of some very magical sunglasses, came here with a directive.
Which isn’t a surprise, didn’t we all come here to get Star and take her back to someone?
We did.
But neither Aric nor myself are invested in the task.
It’s a job to us. I would not say kidnapping a hidden princess from the mortal realm is a regularly occurring request as a bounty hunter, but it’s on the list of services. At least at my office. I don’t know what kind of bounty hunter business Aric runs. For all I know, he only works for his father. Which kinda makes sense, now that I think about it. Ares is giving off greedy, controlling, selfish vibes and he’s not even here in the room with us.
Quaid is different. He’s not a demigod and he doesn’t live in Olympus. He’s a… well, employee is probably the nicest word to describe him, but slave is the most likely answer.
Unless he’s got some breeding on his pedigree that I don’t know about, he shouldn’t be in possession of glasses that have hidden powers. Gods, especially very powerful, high-ranking ones like Apollo, don’t just hand over magic sunglasses to mortals.
Again, Aric and I are on the same page, because just as I think this, he points to Quaid and says, “She’s your ticket, isn’t she?”
Quaid doesn’t say anything. Just shoves his hands in his pockets.
