The League

Chapter 20 - New Partners

In the forsaken hour of three in the morning, the burner phone beeped. Phoenix bolted upright, the plot of his dream already fading, and reached for it. There was a text with coordinates and a single word.

Sunrise.

Phoenix stared at it, bleary-eyed, and blinked himself awake. Dawn wasn't for some time, but there was no use in trying to get some more sleep. He was already too anxious. He should be relieved that Sharmistha finally contacted him, but he found himself scared. It was really happening.

He was actually in the Nameless.

....................................

The sky brightened as Phoenix drove to his destination: the old, defunct section of the Jethro rail yard. He parked on the closest street, slipped through a hole in the fence, and walked until he stood in the exact spot of the coordinates. Rusty tracks littered with train cars stretched in both straight and conjoined paths, and the noise of the active section of the yard didn't reach all the way here. He turned in a circle, taking in a view unobstructed by the skyscrapers of the inner city.

"I'm glad you came," said a voice behind him.

Sharmistha was approaching with two people at her sides. The woman couldn't be more than a few years older than Phoenix, and the man couldn't be more than a few years older than her. They observed him with reserved curiosity.

"This is Evan and Liling," Sharmistha said. "If all goes well and you don't turn out to be useless, they're who you'll be working with."

She turned her back to him so she could face them. Phoenix had to restrain himself from leaning sideways to try and see if she was whispering something. She had to be, but Evan was looking down at the bug on his shoe, and Liling's expression never changed. Whatever Sharmistha was saying, they were either uninterested, or they had very good poker faces.

"I'll leave you to it," she said aloud, finally, and then she left the three of them alone.

Phoenix held his breath, waiting to be told what they planned to do now. Walker had given him plenty of examples of the unsavory things the Nameless got up to, and he knew he had to sabotage his task without them finding out, or, if that failed, he would use mind control to get out of it.

Evan and Liling walked around and then past him. He turned to follow, ending up in between them, as they likely intended. They were walking further into the defunct yard, loosely following a set of tracks.

"So, Nick," Liling said. "Why'd you join the Nameless?"

"Some friends of mine went missing," Phoenix replied. "I want to find out what happened to them."

"From where?" Evan asked. "I always hear about people disappearing in South Side. Never go past eleventh street—learned that the hard way."

Phoenix shook his head. "They didn't go missing in Jethro."

"Are they from Jethro?"

"No."

There was a pause. "Are you from Jethro?"

"No."

Liling raised an eyebrow. "Then why are you looking here?"

"I heard the people here know things."

"They know things if it's relevant to the city or generally important," she pointed out. "If these friends of yours are regular people from elsewhere, no one here is going to know anything."

"I don't know if they're regular people," Phoenix admitted. "I only know who they were, not who they turned out to be. Their disappearance was part of a big, complicated mess that was anything but regular." He looked at the sky, stretching grandly and blue in all directions. "If I can find even the slightest hint of what happened, I'll be grateful."