Catabolism - Part Two: Diplopia

Chapter Six

The past forty-eight hours had been a whirlwind. And not in a good way.

Leon had a minor slice of a hell to pay when he called in an update to the DSO. But he gritted his teeth and took the deserved scolding, knowing all the while that the next step would be directly onto a live mine if he did not tread carefully.

It took pulling out almost every shred of seniority and accrued karma to convince the DSO to take a backseat on the case. The BSAA was perfectly equipped to handle it, and not to mention were already involved, and nothing worse that required their attention more had cropped up in the last two days. More to the point, the DSO was not currently in the greatest position, and saving face would not magically replenish their numbers. There was no point in changing anything now.

And yes, he insisted on remaining. If the DSO was not willing to completely hand over the case, Leon was happy to remind them that it was his in the first place. He did not care what they thought about it.

In the end, they relented. The BSAA accepted joint cooperation on the case, with Leon remaining as the DSO's eyes and ears.

But with that nightmare over, it left too many quiet moments to dread the next. In private, he had confided in Chris about what happened at the mall-turned-mouse trap. Not everything, of course, but certainly more than he had reported to his own agency. Enough to get him on the same page, and to his credit, the man seemed to understand that they were dealing with a lot of grey area, and a lot of unanswered questions.

Despite everything, Leon had also insisted on keeping a step back from the situation. He would advise, oversee, answer phone calls, whatever, but when he received a text from Chris saying that Taliah was waking up, he read it, pocketed his phone, and stayed put.

Of course, he wanted to see her, to make sure she was recovering, to find out what had happened to her. And yet he still declined the director's offer to go with to break the news to her, reminding him through the ache in his chest that it was for the best.

They were going forward with the interrogation, there was nothing to be done about that. Everything beyond that would depend on what happened during. It would depend on Taliah.

Who had explicitly told him that she would rather die than be in this situation. Who elected to stay him a man who tortured her because she knew this was the alternative. She knew something about her situation that would not be taken well by the government, and a fear developed from there.

And that was precisely why Leon did not go with, why he stayed back as preparations were made, why he had to continually remind himself to ignore his emotions. Because he knew in his gut that as much as he wanted to see her, she would not want to see him. No, adding himself to an already volatile situation could make everything worse. He could not even try to justify it as all for her own good. Elliott was dead, his research confiscated, his employees thoroughly questioned. Taliah was the final puzzle piece. They just wanted to know what she knew.

They wanted to know what side she was on.

And Leon was going to sit on the sidelines and let it happen. Because that was his job. He had been wrong about intentions before. He had been wrong about Taliah before. But he was no longer a young, naive rookie cop. He could be objective. He could—

A portion of his resolve crumbled the moment he saw her, which was already a bad sign. He froze, still leaning against the wall, watching the group appear at the other end of the corridor. They were ahead of schedule, which meant Taliah had been cooperative, which...

Leon mentally shook his head. She wanted to get it over with, that was why. She was smart enough to know that causing a stir would not help her, so she must have readily complied.