Puppet {ManxMan}

CHAPTER 28

Ian looked like utter shit. His blond hair had grown paler from what I remembered it, and I wasn't sure if it was because I hadn't seen him in so long or because of those few days he was with the Con Rồng. Considering what happened to my hair, I'm willing to bet the change was due to the torture.

His skin was like paper, eggshell white, the only color was around his eyes, which were red like an acidic burn. His eyes themselves looked like broken up color, the blue iris were now faded and discolored with green flakes and a milky white film covering both pupils. His lips were chapped and he looked generally exhausted, which didn't surprise me. Evidently the most he'd been doing lately was sleep, and he looked like he should be sleeping now, but he was still a member of the rebellion, so Kailas figured he needed to be involved with the current meeting.

A group of us were in his hospital room, since he couldn't exactly leave. He was sitting up with his back propped against a dozen or so pillows, blankets and sheets pulled up to his hips and arms folded in a vain attempt to look strong, but the vacant stare was unnerving enough without the knowledge I had of what actually happened to him there.

Arthur was sitting on one side of the bed with Malachi standing behind him, and Cass had taken the seat on the other side of the bed while Kailas sat in a chair just beside him. I was standing against the wall behind Kailas, Dakota was standing next to me, finally up and about after getting shot, and across the room stood Arthur's assistant, Gale, and the military trainer, Jayden.

That was a good enough group for me, but unfortunately standing just at the foot of the bed, leaning against the silver bar there, was Roman, and leaning against the wall in a bored stance was his ever useless nephew Rhett.

I couldn't have been the only one who wanted to throw Roman out the window for shaking Ian's bed the way he was, right? One look to my left told me no, I wasn't the only one. Dakota also looked pretty irritated. Well at least I wasn't alone.

"Sorry kiddos, never heard of anything called Asper," Ian said after a moment of thought.

Cass had just finished explaining what happened during our mission to talk with Carina, ending it by asking if anyone recognized either Fer-de-Lance or Asper. No one had, which meant we were dead in the water. Not a good place to be. At least with Con Rồng we had some form of a foot hold. With this new enemy we knew nothing.

"We'll have to double security around the settlement and focus on reconnaissance until we know more," Jayden said, staring down and holding his chin, and Kailas nodded his agreement.

"Send people out to the city, contact our informants," Kailas decided, and my thoughts went to Tobias Florian before I realized mentioning him would be pointless.

He was in Austria right now, why would he know anything about this?

"If we know about this new gang it's likely Con Rồng is also aware of them," I voiced, "Maybe we can use them as a smoke screen, make them appear as be more of a threat to the government than the rebellion is. It would give us time to gather more information."

Kailas seemed to ponder the idea, and I could see the agreement in his eyes, but before he could reply to me Roman was spouting his nonsense, shaking Ian's bed enough for the oldest Ellis child to tense up, hands flying out to the sides so he could brace himself on Cass' shoulder and the mattress, eyes wide.

"Don't tell me you're thinking of listening to the traitor, Patel!" Roman snapped out at Kailas, and I straightened up, tensing as Kailas turned his head to look in Roman's direction, "Smoke screen nothing, this isn't a Broadway play! If we're keeping him here he should be useful!" the crazed man turned to me and punched the bar along the foot of the bed, "You! You're used to these things, going off on missions to kill people. Why don't we just send you to gather information for us!"