“He’s the best bioalchemist I’ve ever seen,” Sam finally continues.
Diamond considers Sam’s words carefully. Her attention shifts to the graying man, who has been listening to the conversation with an air of what Sam can only describe as delight. He’s gaunt, his cheekbones so sharp that they leave hollows, but it’s the kind of lined face that might once have been handsome. His fine hair is combed severely to one side. Now he licks his lips and sits straighter. His suit is ill-fitting, as if he used to have a fuller figure.
Diamond notices Sam’s curiosity over him. “This is Sebastian Van Den Berg,” she introduces. “Hades.”
Will leans back against the couch. “Sebastian is a serial killer,” he says casually, as if to clarify the man’s attribution.
Every hair on the back of Sam’s neck stands on end.
“He’s one of our best polemists,” Diamond says with a wave of her hand. “He has been employed with me for decades. Sebastian, this is Sam Lang.”
“Yes, Mozart. A pleasure.” The man smiles, and Sam gives him an uncomfortable smile back. She has crossed paths with plenty of Grand Central’s polemists before, but most of them treat the job as a duty, are committed to fighting for the syndicate. This man, though, has an eagerness about him that makes her uneasy.
He doesn’t just kill out of duty. Helovesit.
Will nods at her. “On Sebastian’s first job with us, he was sent to wait at Gotham’s Grand Central Terminal for a man named Stephen Pitt, who owed us a large debt. The next morning, Stephen’s body was found dismembered and embedded into the terminal’s central clock, his face partially transmuted into the metal, his blood staining the interior of the clock’s surface red. The city removed the clock altogether.” He shrugs. “The papers called it a grotesque stunt by a psychopath, while the syndicates realized who he worked for, and gave us our name.”
So, Grand Central had been christened because of this man. Sam recalls the mention of Hades on the night she’d been at the Odyssey Theatre. And now that Will has said his profession, she can see it—even here, seated at the end of the couch, he seems restless, bored, hunting for entertainment. His gaze is curiously empty, as if he is lacking a soul. This is impossible, of course, given how powerful of an alchemist he must be. But she tries to imagine the kind of soul that might inhabit someone like this, wonders if it had been shredded even before he began sacrificing it.
“They want a war,” Diamond continues, “so they’re going to get one. I want the Lumines crew that attempted the hit dead. Save the one who fired the shot at Will. Find him, Sebastian, and bring him back here.”
Sebastian smiles a lazy smile. “Yes, ma’am,” he replies.
Diamond looks at Hanover. “Tomorrow, I need you to pay a visit to Koreatown. I want two of our suppliers alerted. There’s a chance Lumines may target them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Hanover says.
Sam nods along with Hanover. She usually accompanies Hanover on these errands, keeping her eyes open during supplier meetings, going over ledgers to check for mismatches against what they’ve been promised. “I’ll go with him,” she says.
“Not you,” Diamond says. “You’ll be going with Sebastian this time.”
Sam stiffens. She looks at Sebastian, who gives her an emotionless nod.
There is no room for argument in her statement.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sam says.
“And the next time you see your old friend Shakespeare, invite him over.”
Sam knows what that really means. Diamond wants Ari captured, alive and unharmed. She can only nod. “Yes, ma’am.”
“A bioalchemist like him should have been recruited by us.” Diamond looks at Will. “Can you walk on your own?”
Sam recalls what the old woman had said to her in the Arts District. “The alchiatrist warned that Will is to move as little as possible for the next week.”
“Amerson errs too much on the side of caution,” Will says.
“Amerson always has a reason for her caution. We can’t afford to lose you right now.” Diamond gives him a warning glance that reminds Sam the woman is a mother. “Go rest.”
Sam is the last to leave the room. As she passes Diamond on her way out, the woman stops her.
Diamond coughs, a soft and rasping sound. Then she nods at Sam. “You saved my son’s life tonight,” she says.
Her voice is quiet, different, and Sam doesn’t know what to do. She thinks the woman is trying to tell her that she’s grateful, and it’s a strange feeling, being given gratitude by Diamond Taylor. The emotion tethers them together in an unspoken bond. Sam isn’t used to it, and she doesn’t know how to respond.
“Yes, ma’am,” she decides to say.
Diamond looks at her, a silent beat. And Sam realizes that being at this meeting means she’s part of the inner circle now, that she has just been privy to a conversation at the heart of Grand Central that no one else has heard.
“You can go,” Diamond says at last.
Finally, Sam feels the tether loosen, her freedom returned to her. The darkness outside is starting to weaken, and she finds a curious little memory surfacing in the back of her mind, a childhood letter from long ago.
When does the night end and the morning begin?
At the far end of the hill, the first hint of morning blue is starting to touch the grass. She turns toward it and follows the path leading away from the house.
[…] that the economic and technological boom of the 1990s aligned with a new Renaissance of sorts, where society, already on the cusp of a revolution, seemed toacceleratewith a burst of new brilliance and thought, catapulting us headfirst into a new millennium of change.
“The Perfect Storm: Revolution of the 1990s” by Dr. Josephine Hardy,Time,March 16, 2002
