Derek was still in the hospital, but he was doing well. The doctors expected a full recovery in a relatively short time. They’d mourned their dead. Recovery teams had gone back out the next day in an attempt to bring back the bodies and armor. Simon had gone with them, part of the final duty he figured he owed to the Templar. In the end, they’d brought most of them back, but none of them had been whole.
Only an hour ago, Simon had sent a message up through channels that he was leaving the Underground. He had expected some resistance because Booth didn’t like having his orders disobeyed, but he hadn’t expected the High Seat to come himself. But there was the matter of the long-standing feud between them.
“I’m going to get as many of them as I can out of London,” Simon said.
“Do you plan on carrying them out of here on your back?”
“If I have to.”
“You’re not going to save many of them that way.”
“If I save even one of them, it’ll be worth it. And I plan on saving more than one.”
“You haven’t changed,” Booth declared. “You’ve got the same bleeding heart you’ve always had. Just as full of yourself.”
Simon tried to step around Booth. The High Seat stepped in front of him. Simon took a breath. “Get out of my way.”
“No,” Booth said. “You’re under my command.”
“Not anymore.”
“I’ll have you locked up for disobeying my orders.” Booth had come accompanied by eight members of his personal guard. “I am the High Seat. I outrank you.”
“You only outrank me if I choose to stay here,” Simon promised. “I don’t. And I guarantee that locking me up isn’t going to be easy.”
“It’ll be done.”
Taking a breath, Simon focused totally on Booth. “If you want to give orders, then give ones I can respect. Give me orders to defend those poor people starving and freezing to death out there in the rotting corpse that this city has become. Give me orders to get those people out of here. Give me orders to feed them and clothe them and protect them until I can get them out of here.” He let out his breath. “Those are the orders you and the other High Seats should be giving. Not telling us to hide in shadows and bring back whatever you send us out there for while they die scared and alone, hungry and in pain every day.”
For a moment the barracks were silent. Simon grew self-conscious. Naked and out in the open like that, his words sounded hollow. That was why he hadn’t talked to anyone about what he was going to do.
“The missions we assign are important,” Booth argued. “Recovering the artifacts we send you out for is crucial to our chances of beating the demons. The things we’ve known about but have never been able to act on, the secrets we’ve learned and kept over the years, all of those things can tilt the balance against the demons. We know what we’re doing.”
“Fine, but if you manage to save the world and there’s no one to live in it, what have you accomplished?”
“We’re here,” Booth said. “The Templar will live in it.”
“We’re not the only people here.”
“We—”
“Shut up!” Simon exploded, taking a step toward Booth. The man closed his mouth at once and stepped back. “For all my life, I trained to be a Templar, as did my father before me and his father before him. I trained to fight the demons, and to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. And the ones who denied the existence of demons.”
Booth scowled.
“My father raised me up to be a Templar knight,” Simon stated. “Not an armored errand boy. He taught me to be chivalrous and generous, to be modest and intelligent. And to always know that I was supposed to protect those that couldn’t protect themselves.” He took a breath. “That’s what I learned to believe in, and that’s what I wanted to grow up to be like.”
The silence in the room was deafening.
“I walked away from this life—”
“Just like you’re trying to walk away again,” Booth sneered.
“No!” Simon shouted. “This time it’s different. The last time, I left because I didn’t see the need for me to give up my life, for me to turn away from the things I wanted to see and do, just to sit around and do nothing with the training I’d been given. I lost faith. But now—now the demons are here. They’ve come to our world and they mean to make it over as they see fit. They killed people—thousands of innocent men, women, and children—with impunity. I intend to use the training my father invested in me and save as many of those people out there that I can. Because—to me—that’s what a Templar does.”
Someone in the barracks started clapping, slowly at first, then gaining momentum. Other Templar quickly joined in.
Simon felt embarrassed. He couldn’t see Booth’s face behind the helm, but he felt certain the man was livid with anger. He tried to step around the High Seat again.
Booth drew the Surgecaster from the holster at his side. The pistol was solid and heavy, capable of shooting out balls of electrical energy.
“You’re going to be taken into custody,” Booth said. “And you won’t—”
Simon grabbed Booth’s wrist and twisted. The bolt from the Surgecaster whizzed across the room and struck the wall. Simon’s HUD had shown him that no one was there, and the rooms were built to be self-contained and resistant to bombing.
The secondary detonation went off as Simon twisted the pistol from Booth’s grip. A swirling ball of fire ignited and climbed the wall. Klaxons shrilled, sounding the alarm.
Simon drove his fist into Booth’s helm, striking sparks from it as metal grated against metal. Booth tried to get away, but Simon grabbed him by the shoulder
