The man who called himself Dorian Thorne stood in the dim light of the hospital room, his silhouette sharp against the glow of the streetlamps outside the window. He was younger than Jasper, Elara saw now, perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six, with the same dark hair and pale blue eyes but a harder set to his jaw, a coldness in his gaze that his brother did not possess. He wore a dark suit that was expensive but severe, and his hands were gloved in black leather, the same way Jasper's had been.
"Your brother," Elara said, her voice careful. "Jasper never mentioned he had a brother."
"Jasper never mentions a great many things," Dorian said. "It is one of his more irritating qualities." He pulled a chair from the corner of the room and sat down beside her bed, crossing one leg over the other with a fluid, practiced motion. "I imagine you have questions. I will answer them, but first I need you to understand something. My brother is in danger."
Elara felt her heart stutter. "What kind of danger?"
"The kind that comes from knowing too much and trusting the wrong people." Dorian leaned forward, his pale eyes intent. "Jasper has been investigating the Order for five years. Not as a legal advisor, not as an auditor, but as a covert operative for a private investigative organization called the Veritas Group. They are based in the capital, and they have been working to expose the Order's network since before you ever heard the name Aethelgard."
"Veritas Group," Elara repeated. "I have never heard of them."
"No one has. That is the point. They operate in the shadows, gathering intelligence on the powerful and the corrupt. Jasper joined them after he discovered what happened to our mother. He has been feeding them information about the Order for years, but he was never able to get inside the Paradise Wing. Not until you."
Elara's mind was racing. Jasper had not been an auditor. He had been an undercover agent, working for some shadowy organization that had been investigating the Order for years. It made a strange kind of sense. It explained why he had known so much, why he had been so prepared, why he had risked everything to help her escape. But it also raised a thousand new questions.
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked. "If Veritas is so secret, why reveal it now?"
"Because Jasper has gone silent," Dorian said. "The Investigative Commission took him into custody when the Resolute docked. He was supposed to check in with Veritas within six hours. That was twelve hours ago. No one has heard from him since."
"You think something has happened to him."
"I think the Commission is not what it appears to be." Dorian stood up and walked to the window, his back to Elara, his reflection ghostly in the dark glass. "The Investigative Commission was established ten years ago to investigate organized crime and political corruption. On paper, it is an independent body, answerable only to the judiciary. In practice, it is controlled by Governor Silas Crowe. He appoints its leadership. He approves its budget. And he has used it, more than once, to silence people who threatened his interests."
Elara felt a chill that had nothing to do with the hospital's climate control. "You are saying the Commission is working for Crowe."
"I am saying the Commission is Crowe. He built it. He owns it. And if he knows what is on that data relay, if he knows that Jasper has evidence linking him to the Order, then Jasper is not being debriefed. He is being eliminated."
The word hung in the air between them, cold and final. Eliminated. Elara thought about Jasper's face as she had last seen him, standing at the railing of the Resolute, staring at the island. She thought about his voice, telling her that the powerful protect their own. She thought about the photograph that Lena Petrova had shown her, Governor Silas Crowe with his cold patrician face and his pale, expressionless eyes.
"We have to do something," she said. "We have to get him out."
Dorian turned from the window, and his smile was thin and humorless. "That is why I am here. Veritas has a safe house in the Fourteenth Ward. It is not far from here. If we can get there, we can access their network, find out where Jasper is being held, and mount a recovery operation. But we need to move quickly. The longer he is in the Commission's custody, the less likely it is that we will find him alive."
Elara swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Her body was still weak, still exhausted from everything she had been through, but the urgency in Dorian's voice was like a current running through her veins, jolting her into action. "What about Maeve?" she asked. "And the other survivors? If Crowe controls the Commission, they are not safe here either."
"There is nothing we can do for them right now," Dorian said. "The hospital is secured by the military, and the Commission has its own agents on every floor. If we try to warn them, we will only draw attention to ourselves. The best thing we can do for the other survivors is to find Jasper and get the evidence into the right hands. Once the truth is out, once Crowe is exposed, they will be safe."
Elara wanted to argue, but she knew he was right. She could not protect everyone. She could only do what she could do, take one step at a time, move forward as best she could. And right now, the most important thing was finding Jasper.
"All right," she said. "How do we get out of here?"
Dorian reached into his jacket and pulled out a bundle of dark fabric. "Put this on. It is a nurse's uniform. There is a service exit at the end of this corridor that leads to the loading dock. I have a vehicle waiting outside."
Elara took the uniform and changed quickly, her movements efficient, her mind focused on the task ahead. The uniform was a little too large, the fabric stiff and unfamiliar, but it would pass a casual inspection. She tucked the data relay into the pocket of the uniform's apron, the small device still warm from being held against her skin. She had not let it out of her sight since she boarded the Resolute. She was not about to start now.
"Follow me," Dorian said, and he opened the door and slipped into the corridor.
The hospital was quiet at this hour, the corridors dimly lit and empty except for the occasional nurse or orderly moving between rooms. Elara walked with her head down, her hands folded in front of her, trying to look like she belonged there. Dorian walked ahead of her, his pace steady and unhurried, his posture confident. No one stopped them. No one even seemed to notice them.
They reached the service exit at the end of the corridor, and Dorian pushed through the door and into a concrete stairwell that smelled of bleach and damp. They descended three flights of stairs and emerged onto a loading dock at the rear of the hospital. A black sedan was waiting, its engine idling, its headlights dark.
"Get in," Dorian said, opening the passenger door.
Elara hesitated for just a moment. She was putting her trust in a man she had known for less than an hour, a man whose story could be entirely fabricated, whose motives could be anything. But what choice did she have? If what Dorian said was true, Jasper was in danger. And if Jasper was in danger, she could not abandon him. He had risked everything to help her escape Aethelgard. She owed him at least the same.
She got into the car.
Dorian slid into the driver's seat and pulled the sedan away from the loading dock, his gloved hands steady on the wheel. The streets of Corvus City were dark and empty, the streetlamps casting pools of orange light on the wet pavement. It had rained while Elara was inside, and the city smelled of damp asphalt and exhaust fumes and the faint, distant tang of the sea.
"You said Veritas has been investigating the Order for five years," Elara said, as the sedan wound through the narrow streets of the industrial district. "Why have they not exposed it before now? Why wait until someone else did the work for them?"
Dorian's jaw tightened. "Because knowing something and proving something are two different things. Veritas had intelligence on the Order's operations for years. They knew about the surrogacy program. They knew about the Paradise Wing. But they could not prove it in a way that would stand up in court. The Order's network is vast and well-protected. Every time Veritas got close to a witness, the witness disappeared. Every time they found a document, the document was discredited. Crowe's machine is very good at protecting itself."
"But now we have the data relay," Elara said. "Now we have proof."
"Yes," Dorian said. "Which is why Jasper is in danger. The data relay is the key to everything. Without it, Veritas has nothing but allegations and hearsay. With it, they have names, dates, financial records, surgical logs. They have everything they need to bring down the entire network, from Mother Vale to Governor Crowe himself."
The sedan turned down a narrow alley and came to a stop in front of a nondescript building with a rusted metal door and boarded-up windows. To anyone passing by, it would have looked like another abandoned warehouse in a district full of them. But when Dorian pressed his hand against a scanner hidden beside the door, the lock clicked open, and the door swung inward to reveal a brightly lit staircase descending into the ground.
"Welcome to Veritas," Dorian said.
The safe house was larger than it looked from the outside, a sprawling underground complex filled with computer terminals and surveillance equipment and maps covered in pins and strings. A handful of operatives were working at the terminals, their faces illuminated by the glow of their screens, their fingers flying across keyboards. They did not look up when Elara and Dorian entered.
Dorian led Elara to a small room at the back of the complex, a cramped office with a desk and a chair and a wall covered in photographs. Elara recognized some of the faces. Mother Vale. Doctor Voss. Governor Crowe. And others she did not recognize, men and women in expensive clothes, smiling for cameras at galas and fundraisers and private dinners.
"This is our target list," Dorian said, gesturing at the wall. "Every major client, every financier, every political ally of the Order. We have been building this list for five years. Your data relay will give us the evidence we need to bring every single one of them down."
"Then why are we wasting time?" Elara demanded. "Why are we not releasing the data right now?"
Dorian turned to face her, and his expression was grim. "Because Jasper is not the only one who is missing. Three hours ago, someone broke into the Commission's evidence vault and attempted to destroy the data relay. The attempt failed, but it triggered a security lockdown. The Commission has frozen all access to the evidence. No one can release it until the lockdown is lifted."
"Who tried to destroy it?"
"We do not know. But we can guess. Crowe has agents everywhere. If he cannot control the evidence, he will destroy it. And if he cannot destroy it, he will discredit it. And if he cannot discredit it..." Dorian paused. "He will eliminate everyone who knows about it."
Elara thought about Lena Petrova, the journalist who had visited her in the hospital, who had promised to publish the story of Aethelgard in the Corvus City Chronicle. Had Crowe's agents gotten to her too? And what about Maeve, still in the hospital, still recovering from her injuries? Were any of them safe?
"We need to find Jasper," she said. "Now. Before it is too late."
Dorian nodded. He sat down at the desk and began typing on a keyboard, his gloved fingers moving with practiced speed. Lines of code scrolled across the monitor, too fast for Elara to read. "The Commission maintains a network of detention facilities throughout the city," he said. "Most of them are officially listed. A few are not. Jasper could be in any of them."
"Can you find him?"
"I am searching the Commission's internal network now. It is encrypted, but we have been building a decryption key for months. If I can break in, I can locate Jasper's detention record and find out where they are holding him."
The minutes crawled by, each one heavier than the last. Elara stood by the wall of photographs, staring at the faces of the Order's clients, the men and women who had paid for custom-designed children and black-market organs and illegal genetic therapies. Some of them looked kind. Some of them looked distinguished. None of them looked like monsters. But monsters rarely did.
"Got it," Dorian said suddenly. "He is being held at a black site in the Seventh Ward. It is an old warehouse, officially decommissioned, but the Commission has been using it for off-the-books interrogations for years."
"Is he alive?"
"The record does not say. But if they wanted him dead, they would have killed him already. They are holding him because they want something from him. Information. Access codes. Something he knows that they need."
Elara felt a surge of hope, sharp and painful. Jasper was alive. At least for now. "How do we get him out?"
Dorian stood up and walked to a cabinet in the corner of the room. He opened it to reveal a collection of weapons, dark and gleaming in the dim light. "We have a tactical team standing by. They are good, some of the best. But a direct assault on a Commission black site is a last resort. If we go in with force, Crowe will use it as justification to crack down on Veritas and everyone associated with us. We need to be smarter than that."
"What do you suggest?"
Dorian smiled, and it was a cold, dangerous expression. "The Commission is holding an evidence review hearing tomorrow morning. Governor Crowe will be there, along with the Commission's leadership and a panel of judges. It is a public hearing, meant to demonstrate transparency and accountability. If we can get the data relay unlocked and release the evidence during the hearing, in front of the press and the public and the judiciary, Crowe will not be able to bury it. And once the evidence is public, Jasper will no longer be useful to them as a hostage. They will have to release him."
"Or kill him," Elara said.
"Yes," Dorian said. "Or kill him. Which is why we need to find him before the hearing starts. If we can locate him and extract him before the evidence goes public, he will be safe. If we cannot..." He let the sentence hang, unfinished.
Elara looked at the wall of photographs, at the faces of the powerful and the corrupt, at the web of connections that stretched from Aethelgard to the highest offices in Valoria. And she thought about what Sorcha had said, in the darkness of the dormitory, what felt like a lifetime ago. Trust no one. Not even Maeve. Not even me.
But Sorcha was dead, and Jasper was in danger, and the only person who could help her now was a stranger in black gloves with a cold smile and eyes that held secrets she could not begin to guess.
"All right," she said. "What do you need me to do?"
Dorian reached into the cabinet and pulled out a device that looked like the data relay, small and black and featureless. "I need you to get this into the evidence vault at the Commission's headquarters. It is a bypass device. It will unlock the security lockdown and release the data relay's contents to the Veritas network. Once we have the data, we can transmit it to every news outlet in Valoria. Crowe will not be able to stop it."
"You want me to break into the Commission's evidence vault."
"I want you to walk into it. The hearing is public. Anyone can attend. The evidence vault is in the basement of the Commission's building. Security will be focused on the hearing itself, not the vault. If you can get inside and place the bypass device on the relay's storage unit, our team can do the rest."
Elara took the device. It was small and cold in her palm, no different in weight or texture from the one she had carried out of Aethelgard. "Why me?" she asked. "You have operatives. Professionals. Why send me?"
"Because you are not on their radar," Dorian said. "You are a victim. A survivor. A vessel. They do not see you as a threat. And because..." He paused, and for a moment, something flickered in his pale blue eyes. Something that might have been admiration, or might have been something else entirely. "Because you have already proven that you can do what needs to be done. You escaped Aethelgard. You recovered the data relay. You survived the Paradise Wing. I am asking you to do one more impossible thing. Can you do it?"
Elara closed her hand around the bypass device and tucked it into the pocket of her nurse's uniform, alongside the original data relay. Two small devices, each one a key to a different kind of justice.
"Yes," she said. "I can do it."
But as she spoke, she caught a glimpse of something on one of the monitors across the room. A news feed, running silently, its headline scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Her blood ran cold.
"BREAKING: AETHELGARD SURVIVOR FOUND DEAD IN HOSPITAL ROOM. AUTHORITIES SUSPECT FOUL PLAY."
And beneath the headline, a photograph. A photograph of a young woman with honey-colored hair and pale blue eyes and a face that still held the soft roundness of childhood.
Maeve.
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