D E L P H I N I U M

The sunlight hurt my eyes as we transitioned from inside the dark building to outside of it. I had to hold them closed for a few seconds before my eyes could even handle the brightness.

The car we'd kidnapped the Romanian President in wasn't in the parking lot; he'd already left. Between Arlo's erratic and unsettling behavior, Jake's chilly presence, and my threatening commands, I doubted he could have gotten out of there fast enough.

Because the car we'd rented was still at the airport, we had to walk all the way back. It wasn't too long of a trek, only about two miles. But it was time being wasted that we could be spending getting back to Hunt and the counsel.

Now it hardly mattered that they hadn't trusted me before. They'd have to believe that Imperium was back if it was on the word of the President of Romania. It had hurt that they hadn't taken me seriously, but at least they would now.

As we walked, Arlo came up beside me and matched my pace. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. None of us had been expecting the things he'd done in front of the President, especially not what he'd revealed about his past life.

I turned the idea over in my head: Arlo being a science experiment from an young infant. He'd never seen the light of day until he was eighteen. Did that mean that he'd only been let out of the laboratory he'd been imprisoned in after the ONNT found him there? I'd always known that several of the crew members had pasts equally as traumatic and dark as mine, but I'd never known that Arlo was one of them.

He always had exhibited erratic and strange behavior. It was mostly just harmless, but it made me wonder how dangerous he could be if he tried. Arlo hadn't even touched the Romanian President and the man had still been shaking with fear when we let him go. What would he do if he had actually wanted to hurt someone?

It had to do things to the mind, being trapped in a science lab your whole life and being tested on, day after day. I was afraid to wonder how much Arlo's mind had been damaged from it.

Whether he wanted to be or not, he was still a potential threat.

"Oh, Delphinium, here," Arlo said suddenly from next to me and tossed the knife I'd lent him in the air to me. I jumped slightly when he spoke, having just been going over his capacity for danger. "I warmed it up for your next use."

But I stopped it midair and let it hang, levitating above my open palm. "What?" Arlo asked, meeting my flat stare. "I didn't even get that much blood on it."

"You defiled the blade with your saliva."

He frowned. "Does it matter? It helped scare the shit out of the President. Isn't that's what's important in the long run?"

Maintaining eye contact with him the entire time, I slowly wiped the knife off on my sleeve. "You know," he continued on, trying to assuage me, "I didn't even stab the President with it. The only blood on there is my own."

I looked down at my beloved knife. "That doesn't exactly make matters better."

Jaxon clapped Arlo on the back. "That was crazy. You didn't even have to touch the man and he was scrambling to get away from you."

"Thank you," Arlo replied to Jaxon and gave me a dry look. "At least someone appreciates me."

"Yeah, but Arlo..." Riley trailed off for a moment. "Was what you said true?"

"I said many things in there, you're going to need to be more specific."

"All the things about being in a lab...and, you know, being tested on..."

"They were true enough," Arlo said in a strange, carefree tone that didn't match the subject manner. "True to me and to the scientists."

Riley's dark brows knitted together at Arlo's confusing statement. "But aren't you-"

"The needles were real," Arlo broke through her sentence. "The medications were real. The feeding tubes were real. The pills were real."

She looked like she felt bad for bringing it up. "Arlo, I'm sorry. I wasn't sure."

"It's fine." Arlo waves a hand dismissively in the air. "It was normal."

No one responded; they didn't know what to say. Arlo was being unnaturally blasé to the horrifying things he'd experienced and I knew the people who did care on the crew didn't know how to deal with it.

It wasn't that I didn't care, but we had bigger problems to deal with now. I went along with the others in silence as we walked down the sidewalk to the rental car.

▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂

All eight of us waited inside Hunt's office at the ONNT building. His secretary had just informed us that he'd be in shortly with one of the counsel members.

I was just glad that they had a reason to believe that Imperium was back. Now that they knew there was a problem, we could work with them to solve it. Though I had no idea how we were going to deal with Imperium, even with their help.

Heads turned as the door behind us swung open. Hunt marched inside and held the door open for the blonde woman we'd spoken to in our previous meeting.

Hunt sat down behind his desk. "A few hours ago, I got a call from the President of Romania." Good. That meant he did what Jake had instructed him to do.

"He told me all about how an Imperium operative had blackmailed him into keeping their takeover of the fortress quiet and hidden. He did what they said and didn't speak a word of it until today."

"Do you believe us now?" I asked the two of them hopefully. "If my word isn't good enough, surely the Romanian President's is."

But the counsel-woman's facial expression didn't look as promising as I'd hoped. Her thin eyebrows were drawn together in a frown and her arms were crossed over her chest as she leaned back slightly in the chair.

"He also informed us that the eight of you were in Romania yesterday. President Huard accused you of attacking his bodyguards, abducting him and then torturing him for the information. What do you have to say to that?"

"Torturing, my ass," Jaxon muttered while Arlo nodded and pointed a finger at him in agreement.

"His bodyguards shot Arlo when he attempted to speak with them. The rest of us then had to step in before anything worse happened," Riley reasoned, speaking with wide hand gestures.

Hunt leaned back in his chair, looking pained. "Did you even think this through? Do you realize how unlikely of a plan that was?"

"Yes," I said, trying to control my anger. "I did think it through. I did the best I could with the circumstances I was given. I realize that it was a wild, desperate way to get the information, but it was necessary. And now we have it."

"You don't..." He shut his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose. "You don't understand the consequences of the actions you took." He opened his eyes to peer around at all of us. "First of all, you could have been killed by the President's men or by Hundsen, who is still out there somewhere. Second, you could have been arrested for several different crimes, especially while in a foreign country. And third, the things you did make your story sound extremely unlikely."

"You first lied about where you were going, which was extremely suspicious. You then tortured the President of Romania and suddenly he calls us with this 'information'?" The blonde woman made air quotes with her hands. "How do we know that you didn't just force him to tell the story you want us to hear?"

It felt as if a bucket of cold water had been dropped over my head and was dripping down my body. "How will the counsel act on this new information?" I asked in a low voice, afraid to hear her answer.

"We will speak with the Romanian President about the allegations, but your story seems fake. Nothing will change until we have undeniable proof," the woman stated, very businesslike. "The hunt for Adiago Hundsen is still underway. He's our main priority."

"You still haven't found him?" Jake asked flatly. I knew that he was rubbing their failures in their faces. He'd found the man in days the last time, whereas it was taking the ONNT weeks to do it now.

"No," the blonde woman spat out, as if the word was hard for her to say. "But we will. He can't hide for long." All Jake did was scoff and look stoic again. He clearly didn't believe her; I didn't either. They were overestimating their own power, especially when matched against the might of the criminal underworld that Hundsen controlled part of.

"As for now, you will be more closely watched." Her dark eyes shifted to glance at me. "After you lied to us several times about Imperium, we don't know if we can trust you to-"

I stood up suddenly, making the woman stop her sentence. I couldn't do anything. I was powerless. My anger was making the trinkets on Hunt's desk shake. She watched me as I stormed out the door, unable to hear any more of the bullshit she was spewing.

The worst part was that the arguments she was making against us were logical. It made more sense, because Imperium couldn't be back. They shouldn't be. They'd seen it destroyed with their own eyes and had heard me tell the gruesome tale of its demise. So for me to come back a year later and try to convince them that my imprisoners were still alive... It sounded insane. It sounded like a lie.

I'd lied about many things in my life, but this wasn't one of them. But I didn't think there was any way for them to know that. Because of the horrible things I'd done and the crimes I'd committed, they'd never see me as any more than a murdering criminal. I didn't blame them.

The door opened and Gigi walked into the hallway with me. "Are you okay?" She asked softly, understanding the situation I was in.

"They still don't believe us, even after President Huard gave his word," I said, even though she already knew. "There's nothing more I can do to convince them."

She nodded, her long braids falling over her shoulders. "I know. Our story does sound like a lie, that's the worst part."

"We look crazy."

"Yeah." We were both quiet for a moment as we stared at the opposite wall, deep in our thoughts.

"Maybe we don't need them," she said suddenly.

I frowned. "What are you saying?"

Gigi turned to me, her face hopeful. "You singlehandedly took Imperium down the first time. What's to say you can't do it again, but this time, with the help from our team?"

"It took me three years to get the opportunity," I explained, tilting my head back until it hit the wall I was leaning on. "And even then, I didn't get rid of them. I only delayed the problem."

"I don't know, maybe you're right." She slumped back against the wall again. "But we need to at least try. If we don't, then we're part of the problem. I think we owe it to the people that have died at their hands to try our best."

She was acting as though my hands weren't dripping with the blood of the innocent. I wasn't sure whether it was because she chose to believe that I was still good or because she needed me to be a hero.

I didn't want to think about how some of the people that had died at their hands had actually been killed by me. I'd contributed to their success. I was part of the reason they'd gotten so far without anyone noticing. I was part of the problem.

Their greatest assassin.

Their secerător.