“So, let me get this straight. We’re saying that Cenorth recruited the five of us because he thought one of us had the potential to be… what, his asset? Like an undercover agent inside Cuckoo House? Someone who, sure, did the day job, saluted the flag, served the fucking organisation, but was also, in secret, working for him?”

  Lowe said nothing.

  Rook’s voice sharpened. “That’s what we’re saying, yeah? Because if that’s true, do you realise what that fucking means? That’s not some ordinary level of fucked up. That’s not ‘oh, the boss played favourites.’ That’s deep, systemic, treasonous manipulation. Oh, and it got us all - well not all, not you! - but the rest of us, fucking killed”

  Lowe still didn’t say anything.

  “I mean, it’s not like handlers don’t recruit people inside the Security Services all the time, but not from inside the fucking recruitment process! No one, who isn’t up to no fucking good, tries to build his own fucking agents inside Cuckoo House! That’s not how these things are supposed to work! You recruit an asset from the outside. Someone already compromised. Someone already in trouble. Someone with a reason to turn against the system. You don’t groom them from the fucking start! And why us five? What about us five made it seem like we’d be up for it!”

  Latham opened his mouth to speak, but Lowe but a hand on his arm. He was watching Rook. Trying to see what Cenorth might have seen in him. Back then. Trying to see if this . . . anger at the idea of him being crooked was real or manufactured.

  “I mean, do you know how long it takes to properly flip someone? How careful you have to be? How many fucking hours you have to spend understanding who they are before you can so much as hint that there might be a second job for them? And he just—what? Looked at a bunch of fresh recruits and picked five of us at random?” Rook gestured wildly at the file. “What, did he just assume one of us would turn? That we’d become his Black Knight? Or was it a game to him? Throw five people into the meat grinder and see who comes out loyal to him?”

  Lowe stared at the file, the old drawing marking them each as potential ‘goers.’ The little knights. Black Knights.

  “But fuck me, Jana. This wasn’t some quick off-the-books side hustle. If we’re right, this was years. Years of playing the long game. Years of him shaping one of us. Trying to see which one of us would be his.” Rook’s voice dropped lower, more dangerous. “And none of the rest of us even knew it was happening.”

  Latham looked between them. “Look, I get that this is shitty, but I’m not really sure how much it helps us right now.” Lowe and Rook both turned to him, but Latham wasn’t done. He waved a hand at the file, exasperated. “Cenorth is dead. The op to catch the Black Knight went up in flames. And all five names on that list?” He tapped the paper. “Dead. Sure, you’re a fucking cockroach and bounced back. And you—” he waved at Rook, “—have your own weird shit going on. But let’s be real here. You all died. You were all killed.”

  Mylaf frowned. “But two of them are still here.”

  “Yeah,” Latham said, “And assuming neither of you are involved in some ridiculously convoluted game of tinker, tailor, soldier, serial killer, then - sure - the chances are one of your dead mates was the Black Knight. Until, of course, Cenorth decided to kill them and set Lowe up for a Classtration. But that still doesn’t answer who sent the two of you the file. And who robbed the bank, stole Arkola’s fucking statue and wiped a bunch of Shimmerskins!”

  There was a beat. Then—

  “Three,” Rook said.

  Latham blinked. “What?”

  “Three,” Rook repeated, quieter this time. “There’s still three of us still kicking around.”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  ***

  "I'm not going to lie, this is playing a bit fast and loose with the words ‘kicking around,’" Lowe said, staring at the thing in the bed.

  The room smelled of mana potions and something rancid, something that clung to the air like old sweat and burnt hair. Expensive mana potions, at least—’Kalhorgan the Never Merciful General Hospital’ wasn’t the kind of facility you ended up in by accident. If you were brought here, it was because someone had paid a lot of money to make sure you didn’t die, whether you wanted to or not.

  And Coda?

  It turned out Coda had not died. But he wasn’t exactly living, either.

  Lowe stared at the ruin of a man in the bed, and found himself grasping for something—anything—else to think about. “I know his wife never liked him being in the Service,” he said quietly. He couldn’t remember her name, not for the life of him right now, but he could picture her. Short, dark hair, sharp eyes, always watching him when he came around. She hadn’t been rude, exactly. Just… wary. Like she thought he was some bad influence dragging her husband deeper into something he had no business being part of.

  And maybe she’d been right.

  “She was always on at him to get a transfer,” Lowe continued. “Some desk job. Something that didn’t put him in the firing line. I figured she must have arranged to have him buried somewhere else.”

  He’d thought it at the time, in passing, in the way you think about things that don’t really matter because there are bigger, bloodier concerns occupying your mind. But now? Now he felt like a fucking idiot. He’d stood at the graves of Arman and Faulks, watched as the dirt swallowed what was left of them, and never once questioned why Coda wasn’t there too.

  It had been a bad time. The worst of times. He’d been stitched up, beaten down, trying to claw his way out of the meat grinder that had followed the massacre at Goldleaf Park. And then had come his Classtration. There hadn’t been room for sentiment. So he’d just… accepted what he was told. Never asked. Never wondered what had become of him.

  And now, standing here, staring at what was left of his teammate, he felt the guilt wash over him again. Because whether or not he’d realised it—whether or not anyone had—Coda had never left the battlefield.

  And Lowe had never even fucking noticed.

  Your team is dead.

  The Black Knight killed them all.

  No one had lied to him. But no one had told him the whole truth, either. And now, standing at the foot of Coda’s bed, he understood why. Because there was a difference between surviving and surviving.

  “Hey, what can I say?” Rook said. “Not all of us can tank a devastating, fatal injury and come bouncing back.”

  Lowe barely heard him. He was still looking at what remained of Coda. The sheets were pristine, white, barely disturbed. A stark contrast to the thing lying in them. Coda had been melted.

  His body was a ruin of scar tissue and fused muscle where flesh had tried—and ultimately failed—to heal in anything resembling the right shape. His face, what was left of it, was a mess of smooth, waxy skin, stretched taut over half a skull, the other side hardened into something that barely looked . . . well, human. One eye was gone, the socket sealed over like cooling wax, while the remaining one twitched slightly under the closed lid, as though trapped in a dream it couldn’t escape.

  His arms were… wrong. The left one had been amputated below the elbow, but the right . . . the right had fused at the joints, the fingers curled into something that barely resembled a hand anymore. If it had ever worked, it certainly didn’t now.

  The only movement came from his chest, the slow rise and fall of the mana-operated ventilator. The quiet hiss of alchemical tubes feeding him something that wasn’t quite air. But for what? For this?

  “How the fuck is he still alive?”

  Rook tilted his head, eyes flicking over the room, the softly glowing sigils carved into the medical frame, the glow of enchanted fluids running through translucent tubing.

  “Best guess?” Rook said. “Someone paid a shitload of money to keep him that way.”

  “Why?”

  No answer. Just the unnatural hum of preservation wards stitched into the walls. Just the steady rhythm of a man who should have died, who had died, at least in every way that mattered.

  If he concentrated, Lowe could see the faint threads of residual mana binding Coda’s body together, cradling his ruined flesh in an intricate weave of suspended animation. Not healing. Not repairing. Just holding him. Like something that should have let go a long time ago but refused. A half-life, strung together with runes and refusal.

  “I should have known.” His voice came out rougher than he intended. “I should have asked.”

  Rook was quiet for a moment. “Well,” he said, “you’re asking now.”