“Never you mind,” the guard said, pushing me along in front of him. “You think we can have you meeting in public with anyone?”
Being shoved along like a common criminal, I couldn’t help but feel despair. I still felt like one of the good guys, and to have another good guy-a guard-acting like this toward me, blew. Instead of saying anything, I walked on until he put a hand on my shoulder.
“Right here,” he said, turning me toward one of the metal doors nearby. He keyed into it, unlocked it, and it swung open with a long, low creak. The inside of the room was about fifty feet across and open like some kind of exercise room.
“You sure this is the right place?” I asked.
“Inside,” the guard said, and pushed me in. I stumbled forward into the room. “Wait here.” He swung the door shut behind me.
“Do I get a choice?” I whispered to myself. “Fine…” I called out, louder. “I’ll just wait here. then.”
Even though I hadn’t been at the Thaniel Graydon Center all that long, I already felt tiny and alone in such a large space compared to my cell. My footsteps echoed as I paced around the room, and when I finally heard the door opening again, I felt my spirits rise just for having some company.
“Inspectre?” I said.
The doorway filled with the silhouettes of several figures. The first of them spoke. “Not quite,” the voice said. The figure stepped forward out of the shadows, and my heart sank. It was the one man I had been trying to avoid since checking in here.
“Hello, Faisal,” I said.
Faisal Bane, ex-head of the Sectarian Defense League and all around cultist, chuckled with that thick European accent of his. Beneath his dark, unkempt swirl of hair, his eyes lit up. “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out about you being held here?”
“I had hoped,” I said, shrugging in my leather arm restraints. “I’m an optimist, after all.”
Faisal looking at the long leather sleeves that ran up both my arms. “Nice mittens,” he said.
He moved forward to let the other figures into the room. They were giant men, their eyes full of menace. They moved next to Faisal two to a side.
“I see you’ve brought some of the extras from HBO’s Oz with you,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’re all here to talk to the Inspectre, too?”
“About that,” Faisal said with an evil smile. “I’m afraid that was a little bit of a fabrication.”
My nerves went on end. “That’s what I was afraid of,” I said. “Well, good to see you, Faisal.”
Faisal nodded cordially. “When last we chatted, I seem to recall you promising me something,” Faisal said, stepping closer.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Oh, I think so,” he said, stepping even closer. “Remember the night you came out here to visit me the first time…? You came here desperate for information when Cyrus Mandalay went into hiding on you, before the whole zombies-at-Fashion-Week debacle.”
“I remember,” I said. The hunt for Cyrus was hard to forget, especially considering he had been the one who had caused the vampire Perry to become Patient Zero thanks to prolonged captivity.
Faisal’s eyes were even colder than I was used to. He narrowed them at me. “I gave you what you what you came for,” he said, slow and deliberate. “I gave you answers. I practically gave you Cyrus Mandalay wrapped in a big red bow, and all I asked was one thing…”
It all came back to me as he said it. “To be relocated to the mainland facility at Rikers,” I said. “You look pretty good right now, for a guy who gets as seasick as you do. The Thaniel Graydon Center, if I recall, had you a little green around the gills.”
“Exactly,” he said, his voice full of smugness. “And if you had followed through on that, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation right now because I wouldn’t be here.”
“So that’s what this is all about?” I said. “I couldn’t get you into a first-class room?”
“I wanted off this ship,” he hissed, “and you’re the one who promised me that.”
I did my best to look hurt. “I put in the request,” I said, “and don’t think that wasn’t painful for me. It took me days to fill out the proper forms for it, but in the end, the Enchancellors denied the transfer.”
Faisal was inches from my face now. “A promise is a promise,” he said, shaking with rage.
The guy had me nervous. You never knew what an incarcerated cultist was capable of. “So you’re going to kick my ass for that?” I asked. “Or is it because I humiliated you more than once by defeating your precious Sectarians and then besting Cyrus? I think this is more about you suffering defeat after defeat than anything, so go ahead. Kick my ass.” My nerves were on end. I held up my sleeved arms, showing them to him as I tried to pull them apart from each other to no avail. “Hardly seems like a fair fight, though.”
“Who said anything about fair?” Faisal said, then turned and walked back toward his companions. With each step he took away from me, I felt a little more at ease.
“So you’re not going to beat me up?” I said, wary.
“Oh, I don’t beat people,” Faisal said. He stopped and spun back around to face me. “I have people that do that for me.” He looked at the four men on either side of him. “Gentlemen…?”
“Shit,” I said.
As Faisal’s brutes came toward me, I backed away as fast as I could across the empty space, but soon found myself pressed up against the icy coldness of one of the metal walls. With nowhere farther back to go, I dashed toward the door they all had come through. Four against one might have been survivable with my trusty bat at my side, but in these prison-issue restraints and not a weapon in sight, I was screwed. I got about five running steps toward the door before one of the goons had me by the arm strap and used my own momentum to spin me around into the rest of his friends. The leather restraint tore, but didn’t come apart, giving me little in the way of dispensing any form of twofisted justice.
Not that I was going down without a fight. I balled my fists together inside the sleeve and threw them into the one who had snagged me. I hit the side of his head hard, staggering him back and leaving an opening for me to run. And I would have, if two of the others didn’t start swinging, hitting me in the gut and doubling me over. The fourth pushed me over and the one I had staggered came back over and kicked me hard in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me and driving me to the ground. Then everyone started kicking at me, explosive spots of pain lighting up all over my body.
“Enough!” Faisal said. His men stopped their assault on me, leaving me to writhe in pain against the cool metal of the floor. “On second thought,” he continued, “I’ve changed my mind. Why should my thugs get all the fun? Stand him up.”
Faisal’s men grabbed at me and dragged me to my feet, holding me up because they weren’t sure if I could stand on my own. I wasn’t sure, either. Faisal came in hard with his fist to my stomach and I felt like throwing up at the impact. His next blow smashed hard against my cheek, knocking me out of the arms of the other prisoners. I hit the floor hard again.
“I’m just going to stay down here for a bit,” I said, coughing and tasting a little blood in my mouth.
Thankfully, the sound of the door clanging open rang out. Like it or not, Faisal and his goons were being walked in on, hopefully not by reinforcements but by guards. I turned my head to face the doorway and opened my eyes, feeling pain in my cheeks from the simple gestures. It wasn’t more goons, but it also wasn’t guards. In the doorway stood several figures, but at the front was a familiar one in a hoodie covered in skulls.
“Aidan…?” I croaked out.
Connor’s brother stood there, nodding. Beatriz stood directly behind him, along with a few other faces I had seen around the castle grounds.
“Aidan?” Faisal repeated, looking over his shoulder at them. He reached down and grabbed me by my hair and pulled me to my feet, spinning around until we were both facing the door. “Who the hell are you?”