Shadow Walker

Lazar Moto

"Declan Hancock. Slippery as a fish as I always like to say. Good to know you're not quite as slippery without the glitch of those pesky infrared glasses."

The voice rolled along the sandstone alley like shell grit through teeth, instantly recognisable. Montague. The last time he'd been in the presence of the police officer was in the lift, when he'd somehow managed to lower his body temperature far enough to become 'invisible'. From the sounds of it, Montague had put the incident down to a glitch in his Solar Optics.

Dec turned slowly, bracing himself for the A-symmetrical silhouette of the crabman only to come face-to-face with a tripod of men, their bodies blocking most of the street light. Montague was at the front, his runted arm resting on his weapons belt. To his right and one step behind, Lazar Moto stood in the same suit as he'd been in on the night of the casino party, cravat bolstering his rigid posture, infrared glasses shielding the expression in his eyes. Behind them both was a squat, muscular figure, whose face was concealed by the shadow of a hood.

All three men were wearing bullet proof vests in the signature orange colour of the rebels.

"I found them," Mark snivelled from behind. "I've been keeping them distracted until you got here."

Lazar held up a hand to silence him, attention focused on Dec. "Nice to see you're still alive." There was a slight lag to his tongue that said he was anything but pleased. He turned to Montague as if asking for permission to continue. Montague shook his head. For once, it seemed, Lazar wasn't the one calling the shots.

Dec's mind raced to make sense of the two men. Last he checked, Montague had his arm elbow deep up the Northerners' asses, meaning he should've been at odds with the cause of the NYR. But by the way the two men were standing, it was as though in solidarity. And an alliance between two powerful players in a game where sides were yet to be defined, seemed like a less than ideal position to be trapped.

Dec grounded his feet and tried to quell the rolling wrench of his stomach. Questions jostled in his mind. How much did they know about his relationship with Rain? The whole city believed he was a traitor—or at the least, a Northern sympathiser. And in a way, they were right. He had become a Northern sympathiser. A month ago, he would've relished the forceful rounding up of Northerners into warehouses. Now, he could think of nothing less destructive, less futile given the fact that a whole shipment of Desert Dust was sitting in their city post office awaiting release, the result of which could have catastrophic implications for everyone exposed to it, not just Southerners. And if Rain was right, the spores were getting stronger, more deadly with each new shipment. Maybe soon, the spore would be so strong, even fire wouldn't destroy it, or sunlight cause it to regress. He could only hope that hadn't happened yet.

His gaze flicked over Lazar's shoulder, assessing his chances of escape before he could get tied down with talking. It stopped on the stocky silhouette of the third man, diminishing his hopes. The man was all robust muscle and forward strung power. He hadn't been hired to talk.

Montague said, "Care to tell us where you've been the past two nights, Hancock? Last I saw, the tail end of you was disappearing into the protest while your little Northern friend killed two of my senior constables."

Dec felt his heartbeat jump to his throat. Killed? He knew Rain had fought their pursuers, but he never thought she would've killed them. He pushed down his rising disgust with a swallow and said, "Northern friend? That's generous coming from you. Last I checked you were on my case for smashing those cameras and contesting the Northern hold over our city. You would've done anything to keep in good with them, and now you're claiming loyalty to the NYR?"

Montague lowered his voice. "I arrested you after your stunt with the cameras to keep you out of the hands of the men in the police force who would've had you killed for such a poorly planned and executed, pre-emptive rebel stunt. When you successfully stole that trackpad, Lazar had me on first call, so I could arrest you without any... complications and deliver the trackpad back to him before Northern-aligned police tampered with the hospital evidence again."

Dec scowled. In a convoluted way, Montague's story checked out. But somehow he doubted the police officer had his best interests in mind.

Lazar stepped forward. For once, his voice was matter-of-fact, not slippery with insinuation and evasiveness. "Montague has been working for the Southern cause since 'The Solution'. He's had to carry out hardline policies to continue to feed us information on the corruption within the police departments. He was the one who said I should recruit you. He believed that, with some training, you would make a fine addition to the rebels."

"So what's the problem?" Dec snapped, almost too defensively. "I stole that track pad for you. To get evidence against the North and to aid your cause. And what do I get in return? Branding as some sort of traitor?"

Lazar's lips thinned. "Where's the trackpad now?"

"Destroyed," Dec said, sliding the lie from the truth with a few adjustments to intonation. "By that Northern spy I was 'collaborating' with. "

Lazar's lips disappeared completely, and his eyes sought Montague's permission to continue again. "So, you're suggesting the Northerner coerced you into handing over the trackpad? That she threatened your life?"

Dec swallowed, the extension of the lie sticking to his throat. He could hardly tell them how Rain had been helping him. They wouldn't believe it for a second. And he certainly couldn't explain everything he knew about the packages of Desert Dust, their connection to the dust storm and the rapid spread of the Desert Sickness without making it look like his information had been compromised by his 'relationship' with the Northerner. Worse still, they might take and use his information to provide the rebels with all the proof they needed to justify the slaughter of Northerners rounded up in their warehouses.

So he said nothing.

Fuelled by Dec's silence, Montague stepped forward, the flat line of his brow carrying the weight of his suspicion. "Tell me, Declan, how did you negotiate your life in return for a shard of glass? That Northern spy didn't strike me as the type to leave behind collateral."

Dec swallowed, floundering for words, "She was in a hurry. Didn't have time to ... dispose of me properly. She let me go."

"And you didn't think to contact us upon your release?" Montague said.

Dec thought quickly. "You'd already branded me as a traitor. What else was I supposed to do?"

"That footage of you and that Northerner on the street, just before you went missing. The way you two acted. It didn't seem like the first time you'd seen each other. In fact, the way she held you upright when you tripped, well, you can probably understand why we jumped to the conclusion we did."

Dec pursed his lips, still not trusting himself to speak.

Lazar continued, "You do realise in the absence of any defence in your favour, we are going to have to apprehend you until further notice. You will be treated as a traitor until we can locate the spy."

Still, Dec said nothing.

"And in the instance we should find you were conspiring against the South, we will make an example of what happens to traitors."

"I'm going to have to propose a more water-tight solution," Montague cut in. "Whatever Dec's reasoning may be for collaborating with the Northerner, we can't let our troops believe there is to be no sufficient punishment for such actions."

The two men looked at each other, a battle in their gazes before Lazar relented and looked away. Dec's mouth went dry, and fear spread its icy tentacles through his body. A silent decision had been made. And any decision that could make Lazar, of all people, look away, could mean nothing good.

Montague's hand went to his weapons belt. "He was intercepted on the border trying to escape. He was shot before he could cause the country more damage."

Lazar's eyes flicked to Teegan and Mark. "What about the extras?"

Montague barely spared them a glance. "They were caught in the crossfire. Wrong place, wrong time."

Lazar, shifted from one foot to the other. "Shouldn't we, I don't know, do this somewhere else?"

Montague withdrew his gun. "Do you want to succeed in your revolution or not?"