DIAMONDS IN THE TRENCHES

16 | an antidote to order



"HE'S IN THERE CRYING," Stella told me the moment I reached the fourth floor of the Pioneers Offices. After learning about what had taken place between Clairvoyant and Abel, I had gotten on the first plane from New York to Toronto. I had made it here on time. A little out of breath, but still on time.

I chose to ignore the fact that Abel must be thinking of me as the greatest traitor, and I chose to ignore my own guilt as well. I just walked toward Stella, who was waiting for me by the stairs. With her mother being Clairvoyant, she had always managed to avoid punishment. And that's why she had agreed to free Abel.

I stood outside the office he was locked in, peering inside. Despite the darkness, I caught a glimpse of him slumped back in his chair, his eyes riveted on the ceiling, as if he was picturing a way out. The idealist and the castle-builder. The man whose eyes cried out theories.

Everything had happened so fast. In the morning, he had assured me that he had been all right, safe and sound. When the sun had gone down, my phone had buzzed. I was added to yet another group chat. At first, I did not even bother taking a look at it, thinking it was just another spam message. Yet the notifications went on and on, begging for my attention. In the end, I gave in. It turned out that the group chat had not been another online place of fake profiles, which I would delete in a second like all the other times before. That time it was a chat full of the people I worked with. Names I knew, familiar faces in the profile pictures. I scrolled through the messages, searching for the initial one. And I found it—a picture of Abel tied to a chair, a feral look in his eyes as if he wished to rip apart the whole world.

I should have known better. I should have known better than to turn him in just like another traitor when he had done nothing wrong in the first place. I should not have agreed with the others. We should not have tested his trustworthiness. Austin and Christine did not know him—at least not well enough. But I did, and I should have known by now that he never jumped into other people's business like he had a say in it. He was tactful, sometimes almost distant. He would not betray us.

Yet at the same time, I could not have risked it. In the end, we became what we despised most.

"He didn't reveal anything," Stella went on. "He didn't say anything about your journal. He let Clairvoyant believe that telling you about destroying Pioneers was an idea he came up with to fish the truth out of you."

I was not sure how that made me feel, if it brought me relief or a bigger wave of regrets. "How do you know?"

"I was watching the whole thing through the cameras. He didn't say a thing."

"Okay," I murmured, rushing my hands through my hair. "Okay, that's good."

"What will you do now?"

"I'll tell him the truth. I'll tell him about my mother's death and our goal and everything. What else am I supposed to do?"

Stella took a step back. "What?"

"I'll tell him everything. I don't want to use him. Not again."

I could tell by the look on her face that she did not find this a good idea, and the truth was that I understood. No one in the right state of mind would trust him that fast.

I made to say something to defend him, but Stella lifted her hands in contemplation. "Maybe he saw it coming and that's why he didn't say a thing. Maybe it was all a show that Mom put up for us to trust him and start sharing our plans with him."

Her words may have encapsulated some drop of truth, but I could not take them into consideration. Not now.

First I heard the footsteps. And then I saw him.