When Rain Rises

Chapter 26

"So, Rain, just how good are you acting skills?" Aiden asked, raising a brow. They were an hour or so away from sending Rain out to meet the Justicars. The two were alone in Rain's room, sitting on chairs facing each other and going over Aiden's plan.

"I guess it really just depends what role I'm taking on," Rain replied honestly.

"What about the role of a foolish traitor?"

"You want me to pretend to be a turncoat?" A faint smirk appeared on Rain's face. "Sounds kinda fun, but why?"

"This Crimson spy is as arrogant and condescending as he is clever and cold. He's the type of man who revels in apparent wins or gains."

"And you've concluded this because..."

Aiden reached into his pocket and showed him one of the letters he had taken from the hideout.

"This is absolute gibberish disguised as an encoded message. I took the liberty of circling the first letter of every seventh word and compiling them to decipher what it actually reads."

Rain took the paper from his mentor's hands and looked it over.

"Hmm, it says "too slow maybe next time'" Rain rolled his eyes and sighed loudly. "What an ass. And lemme guess—it was every seven letters because 'Crimson' has seven letters, right?"

"And he used actual code the Vincent had once used to encrypt the word 'Crimson' at the end of the letter to further attempt humiliation."

"Hmm, so this spy is the type of guy to taunt his opponents and drop clues just for the pleasure of it? I mean, using your organization's name as a mock code is pretty damned conceited. People like that are so annoying." Aiden gave Rain a tilted look for a moment. "So who are the Crimson?"

"The Crimson was once a part of the Vincent. They were a cell who wanted to use our technological capabilities to bring all of Sidonia under our rule; arguing that this would stabilize the region and be for the ultimate good. That doesn't sound too diabolical by itself, but their method of doing this was using the more...destructive blueprints from before the Brink to intimidate all the city-states into submission, and kill anyone who stood in our way."

"I take it the Vincent told them no."

"And they didn't like that answer. So they attempted to steal these blueprints for themselves and leave. Fortunately, at the time, my partner and I had well predicted this move, and warned the council. Those blueprints were hidden away long before they made their attempt to steal them, and after their plan failed, they fell off our radar. I thought they had disbanded and dispersed until now."

"So they're probably going to want my suit, then," Rain motioned towards his glove. "It's your latest and greatest piece of gear, right? What if we..."

"Already part of the plan, apprentice," Aiden dismissed quickly. "Now, back to you pretending to be a traitor." Aiden sat forward, curled his fingers into a ball and rested his chin on them. "I need you to tell him what my plan is." Rain looked at him weirdly. "Not the 'actual' plan, but a fake yet clever one, all the same. You need to sound like you're selfish, and only interested in saving your own skin."

"That wouldn't really be hard for me to do."

"I know. From there, I need you to tell him that I instructed you to probe him for information. You need to tell him that I placed a tracker on your suit to follow you, even if he manages to cause us to lose visual sight of you."

"Wait," Rain said, frowning. "You want me to tell him that there's a tracker on me? Isn't the tracker by itself good enough? What if you just hid it really well?"