1.
“Well, Maloup, Officer Jefferson over there caught you in a bar.” Officer Walter Morgan said as he pointed to the other officer sitting next to the door. Morgan tilted back in the only comfortable chair in the interrogation room. “That’s a crime in your home-sector. A sin, too, if I’m not mistaken.”
“I’m not a very good Muslim, Morgan. I don’t kneel when I pray.” The criminal removed the dark glasses framing his face. His eyelids were sunk too deep inside the socket, shriveling to fill the place where his eyes were missing.
Morgan glanced away from the disturbing view of the criminal’s vacant eye sockets. The other officer had a more visceral reaction. “What the hell happened to your eyes!”
Maloup’s face turned sharply to the sound of the voice but he spoke with absolute casualness. “Oh, they were gouged out. By my government. I was caught witnessing a naked woman. Good thing they caught me then. Hate to think of what I would be missing if her husband had stumbled in ten minutes later.”
“Oh, they would have just killed you.” Morgan glanced over to his fellow officer who was suddenly having difficulties sitting still. “You can leave, Jefferson.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever get to Mecca either.” The criminal replaced his visual aids. There was an electronic beep when they found their ports again. “They won’t let me near the sector.”
The other officer left and Morgan sighed. “You need to find a new way to get my attention, Alik.”
“When I let you arrest me, Walter, I’ve got a reason. I expect to be brought to see you. I don’t come here to play cops and robbers with your paper-boys.” Alik reached into his jacket and threw a small disc at Morgan. “I don’t want this case.”
Morgan caught the disc and pressed a button to unfold the dense object into a file he could read in his hand. “Must you begin every report this way, Alik? It’s rather dull.”
“I’m serious.” Alik replied. “I don’t feel right about this case.”
Morgan read the notes in the file and ignored the man who’d delivered them. “Did you get DNA from that Ice character yet?”
“No.” Alik said. “The man is neurotically clean.”
“Or he knows people might be looking.” Morgan snorted. “He’s probably a harmless lackey.”
“You never saw him do business.” Alik replied.
Morgan startled at something new in the file. “He’s attracted to other men?”
Alik nodded and said. “Ice is a very careful man. He avoids that section of La Masque like the plague. But every so often, he thinks I lose track of him and that’s where he goes.”
“What a perfect opportunity. No doubt the only reason he has any shyness about it.” Morgan straightened in his chair. “Use that against him, Alik. I don’t suppose you’re a bad looking chap so long as you keep those glasses on your face where they belong.”
“No.” Alik shook his head. “I’m not comfortable with that sort of thing.”
“Doesn’t Allah preach tolerance?” Morgan scoffed.
“You’re an asshole, Morgan.” Alik sneered. “I don’t like that kind of policing.”
Morgan asked aggressively. “How many people has this man ordered you to kill? Eleven?”
“Twelve.” Alik sighed. “This month there was that scientist. Harriet Eastman?”
“The one who thinks she’s discovered Atlantis?” Morgan nodded. “She was terror getting into witness protection. She actually thought we were part of a conspiracy to hide some new sector she discovered. Absolutely insane.”
Alik said nothing to conflict with his opinion. “Actually the number was thirteen. There was a girl whose step-mother wanted her dead. Ice doesn’t usually do petty things like that, but the girl delivered communion to Mrs. Eastman, so it was convenient. Ice is playing a little game with her.”
Morgan lowered the file. “A game, Alik?”
“He told me to sink the boat with her on it and then if she got to the land I was to bring her to him. I brought her to La Masque with me. I should have brought her to you.” Alik sighed again. “The step-mother wants her dead because they used to be lovers, if that explains Ice’s motives at all.”
“It doesn’t.” Morgan looked at the file again and then back at Alik. “I know you are a man of strong moral faith, Alik. That’s why I trust you as an undercover, but this man has ordered the deaths of the twelve people. And views the life of a thirteenth as a game.”
Alik sighed. “I know.”
Morgan set the file in front of him and left the room. He paused in the doorway a moment to say. “Perhaps now is a time, when we should bend our principles for the greater good, Alik.”
Alik sighed again and picked up the file.
2.
“Tonight is his last night here.” Ice took another sip of his champagne and gestured to the man playing the omni-piano. “Phillip is going to work for the Cunninghams.”
Alik looked across the Preferential Lounge at the musician sweating before his instrument. It was hard to fit the musician into any other role. “What a mistake.”
Ice hummed, disagreeing. “I think it will be worth our loss, just to watch the drama.”
“I mean he was making a mistake.” Alik replied.
“Oh, of course.” Ice chuckled. “The man’s a fool.”
“Are they all like toys to you?” Alik phrased the question disinterestly. “Or just the ones leaving to work for Cunningham?”
“Toys?” Ice smiled at the idea. “One breaks toys. They are a collection. But I own nothing. Everything here is Sorcier’s collection. I’m just the piece he’s had the longest. You ought to know that. He hired you to make sure I stay here.”
“I’ve never even spoke to Sorcier. You hired me to be your bodyguard.” Alik protested.
“Have I ever had a need for a bodyguard?” Ice pointed out snidely. “Sorcier knows if he pays someone to shadow me, he will always know when I go missing.”
“Do you go missing that often?” Alik answered.
Ice narrowed his eyes at the man. “You know I don’t. Now stop taking advantage of the fact that I am drinking or I’ll have to find you an alcohol substitute and take advantage of you.”
Alik was certain there was a threat somewhere in that statement, but he said nothing to bring Ice’s attention to it. Alik glanced to the stage and the dark woman draped in green and blue silks. He was used to seeing the tall woman out of costume when she would wear nothing but red. Alik didn’t understand her wordless vocalizations, but she was Ice’s favorite. “Sounds like you’re the same as Panya and that Victorian girl? Part of a collection.”
“You’ve been talking to that Jack-girl again. It’s sad how that turned out. Between Panya and Sarah I mean.” Ice remarked, not answering the question, leaning on his arm and staring at the performer. “I really thought Panya would help Sarah open up. She’s a great singer though.”
“What about Iris Morgan?” Alike asked.
Ice dropped his hand and rolled his eyes over to Alik. “What are you getting at, Maloup?”
The name reminded Alik of his assumed persona and he grumbled. “Nothing, I guess. I just remember the trouble you went through to lure her here.”
“Going to a few of Andrew Cunningham’s balls is hardly trouble.” Ice took another sip of his champagne. “And I didn’t lure anyone. I gave her what she wanted.”
Alik saw Ice’s slight grin. “It’s not my fault what she wants leads to certain demise.”
“Like with Phillip.” Alik suggested.
Ice glared this time. “Phillip came to me.”
Alik wished for his own drink, then lifted his eyes and wished he had never tasted alcohol. He asked. “Do you give all people what they ask for?”
“Only the ones it would pain me to lose. So you’re safe.” Ice laughed sweetly. He added just as insultingly. “Why? Is there a girl you want nearby?”
“I don’t…” Alik paused only a moment. “I don’t really like girls.”
Alik didn’t miss Ice’s darting glance of surprise. He saw the pale eyes drift down his body, but said nothing. Ice returned to his champagne, seeming indifferent. “Interesting.”
3.
Alik did not enjoy hanging in the air sixty stories above the hard grey streets of the Low Parisian Sector, but he liked the idea of falling much less, so he continued climbing. Ice’s window was less than three feet away now, not much of a climb considering the nine feet he’d already managed. This building had been designed to make it difficult to climb from window to window.
Panya was still standing on the balcony below, red as a bloodstain against the white stucco of the building, her arms crossed. Alik wondered if she would care if he fell. He muttered. “This is nothing a man passionately in love couldn’t do.”
It was nothing Alik couldn’t do, but still he turned to the east for a moment of silent prayer when he felt the thick metal of a balcony beneath his feet again. He pushed open the sliding glass to Ice’s apartment and found it opened easily. He’d expected a lock.
The apartment was enormous, occupying the entire sixtieth floor. A sense of vast emptiness lingered across the polished suite, though the space was filled with expensive luxuries. The only source of light came from outside the windows at the far end of the apartment. Alik couldn’t tell if it was light from another building or the moon, but it lent a pale sheen to everything in the room. The bed could have been a giant’s footstool, raised on a platform in the corners farthest from Alik. Inside the bed, the tiny blonde man was asleep, lost inside the grandeur of the room.
The crimson of the bed swallowed Alik’s view as he walked towards him, but Ice never seemed to get any closer, only more detailed. Ice didn’t possess his cold edge when he was asleep. The man’s pale skin was marred only by the deep shadow cutting from his collarbone into the curl of his bare shoulder. The room seemed very hot to Alik suddenly.
When Alik settled at the edge of the bed, he was surprised that Ice awoke. Ice, as still and calm as he was during his waking hours, filled with a deference and a melancholy that Alik had never imagined, and as he spoke, he coiled deeper, each muscle tensing as his arched body tried to become a full circle. “Claude, I was not expecting you tonight.”
Alik sat a moment in stillness, overwhelmed by the uncertainty in Ice’s voice. “Is that Sorcier’s first name? Claude?”
The circle snapped into two straight lines as Ice startled and sat up. His features were wide and naked, unmasked by the pastels he usually wore. It made his eyes and mouth softer when they melted into the rest of his face. “How did you get up here? Maloup?”
“It’s me alright. My real name is Alik.” The moment Alik said his name he realized he might have kept it a secret. “And you have about twenty balconies out there. I only have to take the elevator to the fifty ninth and climb one.”
Ice recovered from his shock and tugged the blanket high on his waist, seeming merely uncomfortable. “I’ll have to install locks.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.” Alik dropped his hand on the bed to the other side of Ice’s waist.
Ice had no reply, glancing down at the dark hand, dazed to see something so foreign next to his thigh. Alik absorbed the closeness, noticing for the first time the small discolorations where the red of Ice’s blood pumped closer to the surface of his translucent skin. He was not wearing his scarf and his neck looked bare and vulnerable without the delicate silk. The man never seemed more human or more delicate as when Alik took the tilted chin in his hand and directed the man’s face towards him. Ice refused to turn the pristine blueness of his eyes away from the corner of his bed, as if he were reluctant to acknowledge the kiss about to happen.
Alik didn’t care, pressing their mouths together and counting it in his favor that Ice closed his eyes. Ice’s tense shiver spread contagiously though Alik. The tremble of an aroused body was exciting, and Alik slipped into the kiss with more naturalness than he would have liked.
Ice remained still, clenching his eyes shut, even when Alik pulled back. He said something shakily in a language Alik did not speak.
Alik kissed his cheek lightly, mocking him. “I don’t speak German, Ice.”
“You should go.” The whisper, neither translation nor protest, chilled the room.
“No, I shouldn’t.” Alik kissed him again, surprised by how easily it happened. He continued plying the other man’s mouth, until Ice’s hands slipped down his arms, shifting from rejection into welcome. Alik’s mouth traveled away from the warm, panting lips he had uncovered and found the curve of Ice’s neck. “Do I call you-“
“Gagé.” He interrupted with a voice too warm to belong to Ice and he shivered with honesty. “Sorcier named me Gagé when he took me out of the German territories. I know it’s not my birth name, but I don’t remember what I was called before.”
“You must have been very young.” Alik noticed the shadow he cast over the slender man’s waist. For the first time, Alik remembered the cruelty in his seduction and trembled. “When Sorcier took you here I mean.”
Gagé lifted his eyes, then his hands, his arms, and his body, until he had rolled Alik onto his back and half-covered him. His chill returned with a sardonic remark. “I doubt you came all this way just to talk to me, though.”
Alik reached up and caught the hand creeping beneath his shirt. Gagé looked into his face, his eyes cool and wary. Alik released his hand and gently touched the man’s arm. Gagé shook again as Alik spoke. “I came here because I wanted more of you.”
He would have said more, but Gagé commanded suddenly. “Take off your glasses.”
Alik caught himself telling the truth again. “They’re visual aids. My eyes were… I was blinded when I eighteen.”
“What did you do?” Gagé crossed his arms and leaned on Alik’s chest.
“I… I saw.” Alik hesitated stumbling as he lied. “I was caught staring at another man bathing. It was not my first offence.”
Gagé nodded with a distance that may have been disbelief. “Laws. What can you do with the stupid things but break them.”
Alik had his own smirking reply, but Gagé said quietly. “I was seven, I think, when I met Sorcier. I really ought to remember. You’d be surprised at what you forget when you are trying not to remember. My father was priest and the leader of a small mercenary village. I’m pretty sure he was fighting to keep the Germanic Territories from becoming an extension of the Parisian and the Berleen Sectors. It hardly matters. We were very simple people. One winter, our search for food led us into a garden where the winter turned into the summer and the food was so large and strange it had to be magic.”
“An environmental dome with a genetically engineered garden?” Alik suggested.
“Of course.” Gagé shrugged. “But we didn’t know that. It was in the section of the territories that spoke French so we called it Maison de’la Sorcier. All winter we stole from that garden. Then one day, Sorcier himself descended from the heavens.”
Gagé dropped his head into his hands, against Alik’s chest and laughed bitterly mostly to himself. Alik realized this was probably the first time Gagé had ever told this story. “He was in a dirty volex. But we had never seen one and we thought he had the power to kill us all. My father begged him to allow us to repay him. Sorcier was probably just amusing himself. He asked for my father’s first born. He didn’t change his price when he saw me.”
Alik shifted tensely, more intimidated by the man’s stillness and silence than he had been by their kissing. “I had no idea… Does he climb up here, too?”
“Oh, no.” Gagé replied, laying his cheek against his hands. “He takes the elevator.”
“That only opens with DNA. One person’s DNA.” Alik protested.
Gagé shut his eyes. “And why do you know this, Alik?”
“I…” Alik froze. He had expected a confession, a startled reply, but he’d forgotten who was whispering to him. “I had Jack find out. Before I found out you had a balcony I could climb.”
When Gagé hummed and lifted his head, Alik wondered if the other man could feel his heart rate quicken and detect the lie. Gagé said nothing either way, reaching behind his head to untie his hair, which was as ever bound in his casual ponytail. His hair fell around his face in seductive golden strands, hanging beyond his shoulders and there was something in his faint smile that caused every muscle in Alik’s lower body to clench itself tighter in shock and resistance.
His fingers did not feel the same resistance and Alik twisted his hand through the curling golden ends. “I never knew you hair was so long.”
He was ready to kiss Gagé again, when he felt the man’s hands on his belt sliding out the knife Alik kept there. It felt like his insides pulled towards the knife, trying to take it back, and then dropped heavily back down into a perfect stillness. He thought he had removed all his weapons. He wondered how Gagé had found out about his deception, but he did not feel he was in a position to ask. He braced himself for a stabbing.
But instead of killing him, Gage stretched part of his hair down in one hand and cut through the strand with the knife. He tied a knot in one end and handed the curls to Alik. “Sorcier makes glove-tips with my hair. The DNA opens the elevator and keeps him secret. It will keep you a secret, too, but you can’t use the elevator tonight. It would not be an equal number of trips and he would know…”
“I’ll leave the way I came.” Alik took the knife and the hair from Gagé and pushed them both into his belt. He reached his hands around the man’s slim shoulders again, but Gagé swiveled away suddenly, sitting up and turning his back on Alik.
“Good.” Gagé tied his hair back again. “I’ll see you in the morning then.”
“What?” The word stumbled out in Alik’s surprise. It felt just as genuine to him, when he grazed his hands down the other man’s slender back and held him at his hips. “Why?”
Gagé had trembled fiercely at the contact, but his voice was cool. “Because I asked you to. Now go away.”
Alik thought of several clever and seductive phrases he could have used against the small man sitting at the edge of the impossibly large bed. But the distance in those pale eyes was so foreign to everything Alik knew about the man that Alik left him untouched. He forgot later if he said anything before he left or if he just sank into the darkness the way he came.
4.
Three days and a warrant arrest later, Alik sat across the interrogation table from Walter Morgan, who was pacing with a report under his arm. “I haven’t seen you in a long time, Alik. I’ve been worried.”
“At least you can get proof of my depravity any time that’s convenient for you.” Alik muttered. “I never realized it was this easy to get arrested. Did the DNA come back yet?”
“He’s twenty-two. A solid Aryan, so it’s perfectly logical that he came directly out of the German Territories.” Morgan rattled of details. “He has a remarkable tolerance for Amp 16. Interesting drug choice, isn’t it? A desire to be paralyzed and hallucinate? I’ve only met a few offenders who abuse something like that.”
“You sure he’s abusing it?” Alik remarked. “Sorcier may have drugged him in the past.”
“Amp 16 is the drug of choice for child molesters.” Morgan seemed disinterested and continued reading the report. “He is not on file in any intersectoral base, which means he is not a citizen of any sector, and if he is arrested shall receive immediate deportation to a refugee sector or to his home territory. Oh, and he has an iron deficiency. Tell him to eat more meat the next time you see him.”
“I’ll do that.” Alik scowled.
Morgan sighed. “He’s too young to be Sorcier. You have any idea how much that irritates me.”
“He knows about Sorcier. He just hasn’t let on yet.” Alik replied. “I think he might know about me. But I have no proof and he hasn’t said anything outright.”
“He doesn’t seem like the type that would.” Morgan hummed. “Can you ever get him to talk about Sorcier, do you think?”
Alik nodded. “It’s possible.”
“The slippery bastard.” Morgan dropped into the chair across the table, and leaned his head on his knees. Alik looked at the man, his body a large fleshy pyramid, compact and certain. Gagé would have looked different. His slender chest would have coiled away as if reluctant to touch the rest of his body, a ball with part of it chewed out. Alik had been thinking about Gagé and his body more than he wanted to admit.
“He could have killed Sorcier and adopted his name.” Morgan suggested.
“He’s not Sorcier.” Alik protested. “He’s Sorcier’s prisoner.”
Morgan raised his eyes. “Are you so sure?”
Alik hesitated and sighed. “This case is killing me. I’m not sure of anything anymore.”
“Be sure of this.” Morgan pointed to the report on the table. “The man’s a skilled manipulator, possibly a murderer with extroverted and sociopathic tendencies, and he lacks the ability to acknowledge the value of human life. You said that yourself.”
“Yeah well, that was my first reports. I’m not so certain anymore.” Alik sighed heavily. “If I can get him to identify Sorcier, to work with us, will you give him citizenship to the Parisian Sector?”
Morgan shook his head ‘no’, then changed his mind and said. “If you need that leverage to negotiate with him, fine. As a personal favor, no.”
5.
The elevator to the sixtieth floor did not play music and Alik always felt impatient waiting for the doors to open. The journey upwards could not have taken more than a few minutes, but the elevator did not have the usual hum of operating machinery and its movement was nearly imperceptible. It was an eternity before the doors slid open.
The elevator opened to the kitchen area in the apartment and tonight Gagé was perched in front of the counter facing the elevator. Alik laughed when Gagé startled, surprised enough by his unexpected visit that he dropped his fork and turning as white as the penne he was eating. Gagé recovered instantly, smiling with close-lipped embarrassment and tapping a napkin against his mouth.
Alik invited himself in. “Sorcier gets that reaction every time he come up here?”
“Only when he is unexpected.” Gagé cleaned off his fallen fork. “You didn’t tell me you were coming to visit today. I have already eaten most of my dinner.”
“I already ate. La Masque has great pork chops.” Alik swayed over to the counter and leaned on the polished green surface. “You should try it sometime. Get some iron in your blood.”
“Iron?” Gagé smiled vaguely.
Alik stiffened when Gagé hummed as if a suspicion had been confirmed, then awkwardly climbed onto the stool on his side of the counter.
Gage didn’t seem to notice Alik’s awkwardness. He twirled the pasta on his fork and glanced up sweetly. “So you are visiting, but not for dinner. I wonder how you expect to be entertained, since you will not drink with me. I have nothing else.”
“You have yourself.” Alik replied.
“Oh, so bold today.” Gagé responded with a mocking smile. Alik realized there was not a barrier between them beneath the counter when he felt slender fingers on his leg and Gagé lowered his pasta-woven fork. “I don’t think I want my dinner any more.”
Alik coiled with nervousness but his expression didn’t change. “You’re letting me be bold. Something must have changed between you and Sorcier.”
“You like to talk about Sorcier. I wonder why?” Gagé melted away from the stool, and walked across the broad plane of the apartment. Alik swallowed hard when he realized Gagé was heading towards the bed.
Gagé stretched his arms over his head so that the narrow strings of his muscles tensed beneath his shirt. “I think you’re jealous of Sorcier and you’re trying to demean him by seducing his lover.”
“I think you hate Sorcier and you’re trying to demean him by seducing me.” Alik followed him and roped his arms around Gagé from behind, capturing his slender body as much to respond to the alluring gesture as to keep Gagé away from his bed.
Gagé hummed again and leaned into Alik, closing his eyes and dropped his head back against Alik’s shoulder. The intimacy stunned Alik and he didn’t move when Gagé tucked one hand around Alik’s arm and lifted his other hand to the back of Alik’s neck. Alik was crippled with the desire to either put some distance between himself and the other man or close the spaces between them.
Alik was caught off guard when Gage murmured against his neck. “So strange. That we’ve both been so very intent to seduce the other just to spite Sorcier, but the actual seduction has not yet occurred.”
The moment slipped into a tense silence. The banter taught Alik what he wanted and it kept Gagé at a safe distance. Alik drew his arms tighter around Gagé feeling the muscles in his chest that strung his ribs together. He noticed Gagé writhe and tightened his arms to make the slight man more uncomfortable. “Maybe it’s because you keep avoiding me.”
“Don’t I have good reason too?” Gagé spoke with an even serious tone.
Alik rarely heard that tone from Gagé; it was his way of concealing anger. Alik wondered if that some tone might hide fear too. He squeezed tighter, until Gagé lowered both his hands to Alik’s arms to try and dislodge his hands. Alik whispered harshly. “You hate him, don’t you?”
“No. I love him passionately.” Gagé purred with sarcasm, but didn’t forget about escaping.
Alik released him suddenly, expecting him to play coy again, but Gagé turned to face him, pressing closer and casually stringing his arms over Alik’s shoulder. The movement was abrupt and more intimate than before and his tone was inescapable. “But I tire of talking about Sorcier. I’m tired of talking in general.”
There would be no early exit tonight. Gage had made the decision. It was a small burden lifted from Alik and when he kissed Gagé, he was only worried that Gagé would suspect his sudden eagerness. This close, things felt fabricated, too forced. Alik wished it was as easy as their first kiss.
Alik knew Gagé felt his prickling discomfort. Gagé was not the kind of man who missed things like that, but he was the kind of man to neglect to mention them if it suited him. Or to remedy the problem if he chose. When Gagé pulled their lips apart, it was to rebuild the kiss on Alik’s neck. His fingers skied across Alik’s chest pressing over the muscles beneath his shirt, testing his body’s resistance to touch. Alik shivered at the delicacy of the touch, the body, the man. When Gagé led him to the bed, he did not protest.
With Gagé pressed beneath him, moving his pale hands over his bare chest, Alik allowed the barriers of a lifetime slip away. He kissed the pale abdomen nestled between the waves of a white blouse and the pale silk scarf that was always tied around Gagés neck, encouraged the swift gushes of arousal to suppress the squirming nervousness in his stomach cause by another male body. He focused instead on the floral perfume, the slender bones, the quiet voice. The gentleness of the kiss drowned under waves of a deepening violence. His teeth gnawed at the pale flesh. His fingers gripped tighter, scratching between thin ribs as if to tear the delicate body before him open and feast on whatever may have been inside.
“I had not thought Maloup would come back.” Gagé spoke softly, but still Alik startled. Not because of the name, but because of the voice. The floral perfume suddenly masked a male scent and the slender bones were too close to the flesh when the calm tenor was speaking.
Alik looked up at Gagé, looking down at him with pale watery eyes. He was more vulnerable than he was used to and he wasn’t bothering to hide it.
“I’m sorry.” Alik slipped his hands, gentle again, to the front of the other man’s trousers.
“You can stop.” Gagé said, laying his hand across Alik’s and pushing away.
Alik jolted his face upward again, and Gagé sighed. He lifted a hand to twist through Alik’s dark hair and he said, quietly. “I wanted to see how far you would take this. How far you would go for this mission. But I changed my mind. It’s very irritating, Alik. I think you’ve given me a conscience.”
“What are you talking about?” Alik shifted back onto his knees. “What mission?”
Gagé turned to look out the window, and then squeezed his eyes shut and replied. “I know you work for Walter Morgan. I knew it when you first came to work here. Maloup’s record was perfect; he was an overly careful killer. But you… you brought that girl from the Vatican to La Masque when I gave you the option of killing her. Maloup would not do that.”
Alik dropped his head between his braced arms, but before he could put words to his thoughts, Gagé continued. “I knew you were not attracted to men from the start.”
“Then why didn’t you stop me?” Alik demanded harshly.
“I did.” Gagé answered.
Gagé carefully shifted so that he was farther away from Alik sitting up. Alik never replied, jumping from the bed to find his removed shirt and escape quickly. Gagé didn’t make a move to prevent him, but spoke after a moment. “I was going to get some sort of revenge by making you go through with it, but you’re too good at acting. Do they train you for this? Were you specifically sent here because Morgan knew I-”
“No.” Alik interrupted him venomously. “Morgan would have sent someone with his face intact if that was his plan. The bastard.”
“You know, I’m not going to tell Sorcier about you.” Gagé read Alik’s hurry perfectly. “I’d like to stay neutral in all this. I have more to gain from his arrest than anyone.”
Alik hesitated, looking at the man casually reclining in the large bed watching him. “Then you’ll help me?”
“No.” Gagé laughed. “Not a chance.”
“Why not?” Alik lost his temper, when Gagé shrugged his shoulders listlessly. “How can you be so casual about this? Don’t you realize that you’re almost his prisoner?”
“There’s no almost about it.” Gagé replied.
“If you don’t like it, escape. I can help you.” Alik stepped closer in his appeal. “Morgan can keep you safe until Sorcier is destroyed. You can start a new life outside of La Masque.”
Alik stepped back when Gagé replied coldly. “Why? What have they got out there that’s so good for someone like me? Are you going to steal me away to a castle with a tall tower and take care of my every need, Alik?”
“No.” Alik grumbled deep in his throat. “No, I won’t.”
“No. You won’t. ” Gagé repeated simply. His voice darkened with bitterness. “I won’t talk to Sorcier about you. And I won’t talk to you about Sorcier. And you will work here until it is convenient for you to leave. But most importantly…” Gagé turned away. “You won’t come up here again.”
Alik began to protest, but he found that nothing he tried to say made it to his mouth. Eventually, he stepped towards the elevator. “This wasn’t my idea. I didn’t mean to hurt-”
“Don’t be stupid, Alik.” Gagé scoffed. “Just go away.”
Alik reached into his pocket and pulled out the strain of hair Gagé had given him. He pressed it against the elevator’s pad and the door opened. He intended on dropping it inside as he left, but the golden strands remained tangled in his fingers and followed him down the elevator in his pocket.
6.
Alik stood in the elevator leading to Gagé one last time. The note Gagé had sent still fidgeted in his hands as Alik read it again. The writing was clean, and neat, and childlike, but the message was vague, exactly what Alik expected to see from Gagé. He had wasted no time getting into the elevator this time and as the silent still machine brought him higher, he wondered if it was wishful thinking that made him believe Gagé would talk to him honestly about Sorcier. He tugged at the collar on his shirt, wondering why the elevator took so long.
A dull thumping sounded from somewhere over his head. He twisted the blonde hair between his fingers, looking at the golden sheen and wondering why the locks were so smooth and cool. They looked like they should be warmer. The thumping grew louder, banging into a more desperate and repeated sound. Alik stepped into the corner of the elevator, far from the slit where the door began to open. He pushed the hair into his pocket.
The pounding sounded at his side, and it hovered there next to him for a moment. The elevator doors opened and Alik jolted into the wall behind him when Gagé suddenly hurled himself into the elevator. Gagé did not notice him at first, his eyes focused in a wide expression of dread that Alik had never seen inside his room. Alik snapped his attention to the apartment, but saw no one there. The pounding had stopped. “Gagé, what the hell is going on?”
The wildness of Gagé’s eyes settled on Alik, heavy and mute. His expression shifted from desperation into an intense despair. Gagé opened his mouth to speak but before Alik heard a word something black swung into his face and broke the right side of his visual aid. Half of his vision blurred into static. He lifted one hand to cover the broken side of his visual aid.
He saw his attacker for a brief instant. Sorcier was taller than he expected. His hair was a dark red and he wore a neat trimmed beard. Alik grabbed the cane as it swung towards his other eye.
Sorcier wrenched the cane back and when Alik would not release it, pulled him out of the elevator. Alik stared hard at the face he was seeing through a blur of static black and white and real color. His eyes were green. His face square. About fifty, but in extremely strong shape.
Neither was able to win the cane. Alik struggled to think of how to break the stalemate and get away from this room and the trap laid for him. Sorcier did not give him time, abruptly releasing the cane and darting forward to grab the glasses on Alik’s face. Alik’s world plummeted into darkness. He gripped the cane in both hands and swung at the space before him, but he could no longer find Sorcier.
Alik felt a hard tug as Sorcier grabbed the cane, but he could not tell where the other man was until a booted foot rammed into his thigh. Alik’s hold on the weapon broke and before he could draw another breath, the cane was shattering around his head and shoulders, hitting too hard from too many angles. His attacker seemed infinite, and Alik could only back away from the blows, stepping forward only to stumble for the weapon, or to grab at Sorcier and find only air.
He heard nothing from Gagé and he did not know the room well enough to know how close he was to the window. When it was Sorcier’s hands pushing him back and not the cane, Alik realized the window would not catch him. He fell without a sound.
