“Black Orchid, do you copy?”
“Black Orchid copies,” Leah responded. “I’m worried I’m going to damage the device.”
“If you’re not certain of your abilities, I can get an extraction team there.”
The only drawback to that was the fact that the Templar could return for the devices at any time, or that the devices might be uncovered by demons. Some of the demons were quite ingenious.
“No,” Leah said. “If these are to be gotten, now is the time.” She drove the knife blade into the patch and worked carefully. As she unearthed the device, she set her ocular to capture images automatically and send them to the base.
After she finished the first one, she moved to the second. However, she noticed a still, silent form standing in the shadows near the tube platform doorway. Recognizing the blue and silver armor, she knew exactly who it was. Ashamed and angry at the same time, she turned to look at Simon Cross.
“Do you need help?” he asked in a quiet voice.
Leah stood, but she didn’t know what to say. “I thought you’d gone.”
He stood with his arms crossed. “I knew you were here. Somewhere. I figured if it looked like we left that you’d show up.”
“How did you know?”
“I was told you’d escaped the redoubt.”
“‘Escaped’ implies that I was a prisoner. You told me that I was free to come and go.”
“You were. That’s why no one there tried to stop you from leaving. You chose to ‘escape’ when you slipped away instead of merely informing anyone you were leaving.”
Leah felt foolish. “I was seen?”
“Yes.”
“Black Orchid, do you need help?” Lyra asked.
A movement of Leah’s chin muted the outside broadcast so she was heard only inside her armored mask. “No. By the time anyone could get here, this will have played out.” She didn’t want a confrontation between the Agency and the Templar. Things were bad enough. “Let me handle this.”
“We’re closer than you might think.”
That angered Leah. Not only had she been following Simon, but evidently Lyra Darius had assigned others to follow the Templar—or her—as well.
“Hold them back,” Leah directed. “Give me some time to work on this.”
“Are we going to have company?” Simon didn’t appear worried about the prospect. Of course, that was only through reading his body language. Leah couldn’t see a bloody thing through the helmet’s faceshield.
“No,” Leah answered. “But they aren’t far away.”
“So the offer to help me gain influence among the other Templar was…what? A subterfuge?”
“No. It’s real.”
“I see.” His cold, impersonal response hurt her.
Leah hated talking to him this way. The masks they wore disguised everything about them. They shielded every human emotion as well as their appearance, and the device-modulated voices they projected were as cold as ice.
“There’s just not a lot of trust on your part,” he continued.
It’s not me, Leah wanted to tell him. It’s the Agency. It’s just the way I work.
“That trust seems to have broken down both ways, Lord Cross.” Leah held the device out in her hand.
“Don’t,” Lyra admonished. “He could destroy that.”
Leah didn’t worry about that. If Simon hadn’t wanted her to have the device, he would have destroyed it before now. Or at least tried to. She wasn’t going to discount her own ability to get away.
“What are you talking about?” Simon asked.
“You didn’t tell me about this.”
“Until today, there wasn’t anything to tell.”
“You have a means of destroying the demons with relative ease.”
“We have a means of defending against them. This Node—this field—isn’t portable. Once it’s set into place, it has to remain there.”
“It’s an advantage that you kept from us.”
For a moment Simon didn’t speak. His faceplate remained blank and unyielding. “It didn’t become an advantage till it worked a few minutes ago. Until that time, it was just a hope.”
“This changes things. A lot.”
“In areas, perhaps. But this defense is only a last resort. If we use it—if we’re forced to use it—that means the demons have found us. We can wall ourselves away from them, but they can still lay siege to wherever we’ve holed up. You’ve seen for yourself how desperate we’ve already become. And that’s with our being able to hunt on a regular basis. Can you imagine what it would be like if we couldn’t take deer? Or scavenge for food in the city?”
Leah could. While she’d been in the redoubt, she had imagined that. Simon had taken on a Herculean task in providing for his community of survivors.
“And I didn’t keep this from you,” Simon went on. “I’m quite certain that the copy of the Goetia manuscript you gave me wasn’t the only copy that was made. Especially not after seeing you in action.”
The loathing in his voice came through in his words despite the mechanical quality of the suit’s speakers. His accusation—especially in light of the truth of it—cut deeply. The Agency wasn’t a trusting lot.
“You had access to as much information as I had,” Simon said.
“No,” Leah said coldly. “You have all the Templar knowledge that’s been gathered for hundreds of years.”
“We paid for that knowledge. The Order was attacked, turned on by its friends, saw its fortunes stripped from those to whom it belonged, and it was forced underground.”
“You could have come forward.”
“And told the world that demons really existed? I didn’t believe they existed, remember? I left the Order. I left my father. I left everything I knew here because I didn’t believe.” Simon paused. “No one wanted to hear about demons. Not until they were among us.”
“You have Macomber. He’s been helping you translate the Goetia manuscript.”
“Yes. But only because I’ve got someone else who supplements what Macomber doesn’t know. If your…organization had kept Macomber, which they decided not to do, they wouldn’t have been able to do what we’ve done.”
“I know that. The people I work with know that. But you can’t expect us not to try to fight back. Whatever advantage you’ve gained—”
“Is yours,” Simon interrupted. He flicked a hand and a small rectangular
