Chapter 144 Hundred and forty four
The ten minutes happened near the eastern hatch, out of comfortable earshot of Elias Vorn and his guardian units, in the grey wind that swept across the roof of the Iron Citadel with the indifference of weather that had long since stopped taking human opinion into account.
Dax spoke first, because that was how it worked. Not because he needed to establish authority over the group, he had never operated that way, but because the group had a practised rhythm and the rhythm said that Dax opened the question and then shut his mouth and listened until everyone had finished.
"Votes," he said.
Reyes spoke without hesitation. "I don't trust him."
"Noted," Dax said. "Reason?"
"A man who has imprisoned six people and calls them guests does not get the benefit of my doubt simply because he delivers the information in a pleasant tone." Reyes stood with her arms folded, her ballistic rifle slung across her back, her weight distributed evenly in the stance of a soldier who was never fully off duty. "He has resources, which means he has leverage, which means every offer he is making us comes with dependencies we cannot fully see yet."
"She's not wrong," Jax said. "But here is the thing about the devil you know." He paused, and his scarred face carried an expression of genuine, unperformed thought, the real Jax rather than the performing one. "If any part of what he is saying about the Origin-Code is true, then triggering those charges is exactly the wrong play. We walk back into a world where the Code is running free and everyone we love is slowly being hollowed out and refilled with something that looks exactly like them but isn't."
"If," Reyes said.
"If," Jax agreed. "That's the word. It does a lot of work in that sentence."
Tank had been sitting on the iron housing near the hatch, pressing a fresh strip of cloth against his thigh wound. He looked up when the conversation reached him, in the way that Tank always waited for the conversation to reach him, with the patient calm of a man who understood that his contribution would be heard when it arrived and saw no reason to rush it.
"My mother used to say," Tank offered, "that a man who gives you a reason not to shoot him is either telling the truth or telling the most important lie of his life." He considered this. "Either way, you should probably keep your finger near the trigger."
"Your mother was a wise woman," Jax said.
"She was terrifying," Tank said. "But yes."
Mia had been quiet. Not because she had nothing to say but because she was doing what she always did with large, structural decisions, turning them slowly in her hands, feeling for the weight distribution, checking where the balance point was.
Her father had not simply been a mechanic.
She turned that sentence over. Set it down. Picked it up again. The anger that should have been there, at the years of not knowing, at the death that had been a transaction in someone else's war, was present but it was not the loudest thing. The loudest thing was a question she had been carrying for three years without knowing it had a shape.
Why did the Iron Wolves target a mechanic? Dutch Steele, who had run one of the most powerful clubs in the region, had ordered the destruction of a small garage in Coldwater. For territory? For club survival? She had accepted those answers because they were the answers that fitted the world she understood. But they had never entirely sat right. A man like Dutch did not personally manage the ruination of a one-man operation unless the one man was more significant than his operation suggested.
"He's telling the truth," she said.
Everyone looked at her.
"Not all of it," she continued. "He's telling the version of the truth that serves the outcome he wants, which is what everyone does. But the foundation of it is real." She looked at Dax. "You know it too. About Marcus."
Dax's jaw was tight. "I know that Marcus's accident was arranged. I've known that for two years. I didn't know the reason until twenty minutes ago."
"Does the reason change what you decide?"
"It changes what I understand," he said. "I'm not sure it changes what I decide. Those are different things."
This was one of the qualities Mia had come to respect most in him, the ability to hold grief and clarity in the same hand without letting one contaminate the other. Most people collapsed those two things. Dax kept them separate with a discipline that looked effortless from the outside and she suspected cost him enormously in private.
"If we agree," Reyes said, "we are agreeing to operate inside his facility, under his rules, with his resources, toward a goal that he has defined. We become dependent on a man who has already demonstrated a willingness to imprison people for their own protection." She paused. "I am not saying no. I am saying we define terms before we shake hands."
"Non-negotiable terms," Dax said.
"The prisoners are released immediately. Tonight. Not moved to better cells. Released." Reyes began counting on her fingers. "Full access to all research data, no filtered version, the complete archive. Our people operate with freedom of movement inside the Citadel at all times. And the detonator stays with Mia."
The detonator stays with Mia.
They all understood what that meant. Not as a symbol. As a practical arrangement of power. As long as Mia held the trigger to the charges inside the array, Elias Vorn's suppression field continued at her sufferance, not his.
"He'll never agree to the detonator," Jax said.
"If he doesn't agree to the detonator," Dax said, "then we have our answer about how much of what he said we should believe."
The wind crossed the roof.
Mia tucked the detonator deeper into her vest pocket and pressed her hand flat over it.
They walked back toward the man in the white coat.