Ari
Ari comes to with the taste of blood on his tongue.
Almost immediately, he feels anxiety boiling inside him, vicious and sharp, the side effect of sand. He keeps his eyes shut and tries to still the churning emotions by analyzing his situation.
He’s tied down to a chair. His hands are bound tight, covered in a thick polyester cloth. He could attempt to convert the cloth into air, but he notices that there is a tiny tracker installed on the leather binding the cloth around his wrists. The imbalance between the cloth’s mass and the mass of air will loosen the binding and set off the tracker, no doubt alerting Grand Central to the fact that he is attempting an escape.
The next thing he notices is the searing pain in his wrist. The skin around the area that Sebastian transmuted into a metal cuff burns like acid and fire. Ari tries to will away the agony, longing for his hands to be free so that he can attempt to fix the unbearable wound. But even if he could reach it, it is the kind of wound that needs an alchiatrist, and he isn’t one.
He opens his eyes, trying to ignore his haze of pain, and looks around the room. It’s mostly bare, an ornate box of marble floors and walls lined with elaborate molding. Two men stand guard on either side of the door. There are no windows. He gingerly taps the tiles with his boot and senses how solid they feel. It’s likely there are no floors beneath this one. He’s on a basement level.
If he’s to make an educated guess, he’d assume this prisoner’s suite is located somewhere in the Red City, and he is about to face an interrogation. Diamond is unlikely to kill someone of his stature—this is an act of politics between Lumines and Grand Central, and Ari is a dangling prize to be used in a negotiation or an exchange.
He isn’t afraid of pain. Alchemy has taught him that, if nothing else. But his anxiety continues to ebb and wane in his chest, and his eyes continuallystray to the door, waiting for his captors to show. His throat is dry, something he could remedy easily enough if he were free—in an emergency, he could transmute water to drink—but with his hands bound, he must wait for mercy.
He isn’t sure how much time passes before the door finally opens. Ari sits up straight, his hands still bound tightly, to see Will walk in with Sam at his side.
His gaze goes first to Sam, but she isn’t looking at him. Instead, she focuses on Will, then surveys the room as if unwilling to acknowledge him. Dark circles rim her eyes.
Will heads to Ari, leans down, and regards him. Then he touches the gag tied around Ari’s mouth and runs a finger smoothly across the cloth. The fabric loosens and falls away. Sam waits beside him.
“I hope you’ve been comfortable enough, Mr. Rathod,” Will says.
Ari manages a tight smile. “Good to see you again, Mr. Taylor.”
“Need anything? Water? A snack?”
“Maybe a little update on why I’m here,” Ari says.
“Well, you’re currently one of our guests, along with a few of your fellow crewmen. Perhaps their names will ring a bell for you. Sargon. Newton. Archimedes.” Will smiles at the spark of recognition in Ari’s eyes. “Ah, I figured. The girl seems to know you well. We’re working on getting her to talk.”
Ari smiles bitterly. “Good luck.”
“Save the luck for yourself, Shakespeare.”
“And what exactly do you want from me?”
“Perhaps some insight into why you’re fucking around with one of ours.”
He knows.He knows about the secret meetings with Sam.
“I’d say the fucking around was mutual,” Ari says coolly.
There’s a slight tightening of Will’s jaw, a stiffening of his shoulders. A glint of fury in his eyes. It is the first time Ari has seen any sort of weakness in Will’s demeanor.
Will looks at Sam. “Mozart, what do you think? Was it mutual?”
Sam bows her head at his comment. Ari feels a swell of anger—he absolutely hates seeing her act so obedient around Will, as if perpetually ready for his next command. When Sam looks at Ari, there is none of the grief in her eyes that she revealed to him at the beach. Whatever part of her bared her heart to him, he does not see it here. “I think you might want to take aclose look at what our boss is willing to offer you, Shakespeare,” she says, “and consider who you want to work for.”
“I made that decision a long time ago.”
“And how has that worked out for you?” Sam leans forward. “Have they given you the life you’ve wanted?”
Sam doesn’t know about his family, about the way he left them behind, about Reed’s refusal to let him contact them. But her words have always pierced him differently than others, and now he feels the stab in his heart, as if he were still staring out of the window of the airplane before he left India and never returned.
“Has Grand Central done the same for you?” he asks her quietly.
She regards him. He tries to read the emotion in her eyes, but before he can, she crosses her arms and looks away. As she does, he notices that she is favoring one of her legs over the other, careful not to put too much weight on her left side. An injury. And in spite of everything, he still finds himself worrying over how serious it might be, whether she got it during the fight, whether an alchiatrist has tended to her yet.
