Chapter 37

Something was gnawing at me, a persistent itch at the back of my mind that I couldn’t quite scratch. Or rather, it was that subconscious part of me that specialised in making a lot of noise without providing any clear explanation as to why. It felt like a relentless drumbeat, warning of some unseen peril. The part of me was swinging a fucking enormous red flag, but I didn’t have the faintest idea what had it so rowdy.

Jeeves, the interface with my subconscious, was equally baffled. He knew something was bothering me, but he was having no more luck pinning down what it was than I was. It was as if we were both looking at a puzzle with too many missing pieces to see the full picture, and the box was missing. Each attempt to delve deeper was met with the same frustrating dead end. It wasn’t like Jeeves to be stumped; he was usually the one with the keen insights and the succinct analyses. This wasn’t making any sense.

We went through the usual protocols, scanning recent memories and current events, but everything seemed in order on the surface. My encounters, my tasks, my thoughts—they all seemed mundane, routine even. Well, as routine as things could get in my life. It was organised chaos at best, but there were no glaring holes in it. Yet, the uneasy feeling persisted, the issue lurking just out of sight, tauntingly close but perpetually out of reach. The dissonance was infuriating. If we didn’t figure it out soon, it was going to drive me out of my goddamned mind.

I was forgetting something.

It was hard to put into words. It was like catching a fleeting movement out of the corner of your eye, something just at the edge of your vision that disappeared the moment you focused on it. Or like walking into a room with a purpose only to have the reason slip through your fingers like smoke. It was akin to driving to work with a persistent nagging feeling that you had forgotten something crucial yet not being able to recall what it was. Or suspecting that someone was lying to you but having no concrete evidence to back up your instincts.

There was something there, something just out of reach, whispering at the edges of my consciousness. I knew something was amiss; I could feel the void where a piece of vital information should be. But because I didn’t know what it was, I had no idea what to look for, much less where to start searching. It was maddeningly elusive, a quiet gnaw at the back of my mind that refused to subside.

This lingering unease carried with it an irritating sense of urgency, a constant itch that I couldn’t scratch. Every attempt to focus on it only seemed to make it slip further away. Each moment, it grew more insistent, like a faint, incessant noise you can’t quite locate. The feeling that something was hidden from me, something important, gnawed at my sanity. Without context, without direction, it was like trying to navigate a maze blindfolded.

There was no way to undersell how disorienting and confusing this was. My entire sense of reality felt skewed, as if the ground beneath my feet had shifted imperceptibly yet irrevocably. The only other time I could remember feeling this profoundly lost was immediately after the crash, waking up with no memory of the accident or anything that had transpired during the eight weeks I had been unconscious. Those eight weeks were a black void in my memory, my new reality - my new life - had been born that night, everything I had become had started the night I got into that cab with Moe, and it was gone forever.

In fact, throughout my entire life, those eight weeks remained the only span of time that I could not recall: from the point of leaving the pub to the moment I regained consciousness in the hospital. It was as if that segment of my life had been surgically excised from my mind. The same unsettling clarity applied here. Whatever it was that I was missing now wasn’t something so trivial as forgetting to lock a door or to call someone—a simple oversight easily rectified. This was different. This was a significant piece of my reality that had simply vanished, leaving my mind to grapple with its absence, its whole existence acknowledged only by the haunting awareness of it not being there...

My thoughts spiraled as I tried to latch on to some thread of understanding, but it was like grasping at smoke or catching a glimpse of a shadow of something that wasn’t there to cast it. The loss felt like both a physical ache and an existential dread. It was as if my mind was continually trying to calibrate itself, continuously blinking errors flashing on an internal system I had no control over.

Would this missing piece ever return? Or was it gone forever, an irretrievable fragment of my past that would always leave a jagged scar on my psyche? The fear of lost potential, of forgotten dangers or missed opportunities, was almost paralyzing. Every neuron in my brain seemed to be on high alert, perpetually scanning itself for clues that might lead me back to whatever it was I had lost.

This was a different kind of horror, one that didn’t come from external threats but from within. It was the fear of the unknown, the terror of a blank slate where there should be memories, where there should be certainty. The more I tried to push against the boundaries of this void, the more resilient it seemed. The empty space where that crucial memory should have resided was both a puzzle and a taunt, daring me to uncover its secrets while simultaneously hiding in the shadows of my mind.

The problem was that I had an almost photographic memory. There was practically nothing I couldn’t remember. Details, faces, conversations—everything stayed imprinted in my mind with unfailing clarity. Forgetting to turn off the stove or losing track of why I had walked into a room were experiences foreign to me now. Such lapses simply didn’t happen anymore. My memory was a fortress, impenetrable and ever-reliable.

Nor did I find myself second-guessing whether I was being lied to. My power-enhanced intuition, coupled with my ability to literally read human minds, made deception nearly impossible to slip past me.

And yet, despite this formidable mental acuity, there was that nagging, gnawing voice in my head that wouldn’t shut the fuck up. It was relentless, persisting in the face of my otherwise impeccable recall and perception. No matter how much assurance my memory offered or how logically I dissected the situation, this disquieting sensation refused to leave me alone.

Something had slipped through the gaps of my memory that simply shouldn’t exist.

I was missing something.

I was missing something important. Something my subconscious mind was trying to tell me, and for reasons I couldn’t quite explain, it had something to do with Evie.

It wasn’t a suspicion; Charlotte and I had run our tests on her, and she had passed with flying colors. Hell, that had been done a few days after New Year’s in the cottage. Since then, I had trusted her implicitly, and she had given me no reason at all to change my mind. It wasn’t Evie herself, but...

Something she reminded me of?

Something she had done that sparked something?

Something she had said?

When had this feeling started? The truth was, I had been so consumed with my self-pity and my relentless hunt for revenge that I hadn’t even noticed its insidious onset until the last few weeks. My mind had been a battlefield, overrun with thoughts of retribution and wallowing in my own grievances, leaving little room for introspection.

The feeling wasn’t intensifying, yet it refused to dissipate, clinging stubbornly to the corners of my mind. It was like an unwelcome guest that overstayed its visit, lingering long after its presence should have been forgotten. This persistence only served to irritate me further. Every time I tried to focus or lose myself in my goals, there it was, an ever-present thorn in my thoughts, demanding acknowledgment.

Its refusal to fuck the fuck off was driving me to the brink of madness. It was a low, constant hum, an unending drone of unease that undermined my every recent action and thought. No matter how fiercely I pursued my objectives, seeking solace in the rush of vindication or the depths of my self-justified war, the feeling persisted, gnawing at the edges of my resolve.

I began to wonder if it had always been there, a shadow lurking just out of sight, only now making its presence known as a cruel reminder of some unseen flaw or forgotten failure. Its constant irritation was like an itch I couldn’t scratch, an unresolved tension that seemed determined to undermine my sanity.

Reflecting on it now, I realized that its stubborn permanence was becoming less about the feeling itself and more about what it represented—an unspoken question mark hanging over my every move, a riddle with no clear answer. As much as I yearned to shake it off and dismiss it as a mere annoyance, I couldn’t ignore its potential significance. And so, with growing irritation and a begrudging sense of curiosity, I knew I had to uncover the cause of this insistent unease before this little problem turned into something serious.

But what the hell was I missing? How had I even missed it? How was it even possible for me to miss something?

I was sat on one end of the sofa in my bunker, and Jeeves was sitting on the other, both of us staring into space and devoting as much pure processing power as we could to get this niggling little mystery solved before it drove me fucking nuts! But nothing was working, nothing was coming loose, and there were no giant pieces of this vague puzzle dropping into my lap from the generous heavens. I had nothing. Just that stupid, infuriating little voice telling me that in my fury, in my anger, in my suspicion and confusion and grief, I had missed something important.

Eventually, after what felt like hours of thinking about it, I did what most people would have done.

I gave up and went to sleep.

The bed in the bunker was neither as large nor luxurious as the one in the apartment’s bedroom, but it was mine, and I liked sleeping on it. So I did. The mystery would doubtlessly still be there the next day.

The morning unfurled itself in a wondrous symphony of bright light and melodious bird song, each tune harmonizing with the nascent glow of the dawn. For as long as I could remember, mornings and I had been bitter enemies; they seemed to be cleverly devised to assault my inherently sleep-weary senses with their intrusive brightness and the need to get up and do something. To call myself sleep-weary was, in truth, an optimistically bland assessment. I would struggle to remember a single morning prior to the advent of my powers when I could ever say I was well-rested, so they were more like sleep-deprived senses. Each and every dawn had been an adversary, with my body and mind begging for just a morsel more of the elusive slumber that had been so hard to attain the night before. Yet despite the craving, reality beckoned with more pressing calls – to get up for classes or just to take a leak – compelling those sleepy desires to be shelved in favor of necessity.

And it had sucked.

Since the acquisition of my powers, the nature of my rest had been revolutionized. Tucked within the confines of my bunker’s bed, I discovered the ability to sink into the depths of restorative slumber at will, surrendering to peaceful darkness within moments – a marvel that was nothing less than transformative. Each awakening became a rejuvenation; I emerged not as the lethargic creature of bleary-eyed misery but as one brimming with vigor and energy and prepared to seize the day.

Nevertheless, every morning that I had roused to since claiming my powers had been colored by the backdrop of winter. My transformation had taken place in the cool embrace of a wet late August, and it was now the cusp of May. The British winter, unyielding in its dreariness, had been succeeded by a spring equally laden with misery and wetness, fashioning each awakening into an experience heavy with dampness, darkness, and a certain desolation that permeated the air. I mean, it was Britain, the home of the stiff upper lip and enough rain to solve the world’s water shortages in an afternoon if you put enough buckets around.

Yet today was different. There was a different note to the air — one of warmth and luminosity. A sunbeam, like a painter’s brush, had touched every one of my senses with a golden hue, injecting life where shadow once held sway. A gentle and rejuvenating breeze meandered through an open window, originating from somewhere within the breadth of the apartment, almost like a whisper from the world, beseeching me to join and enjoy it. Outside, the canvas of the sky was awash with the pastel shades of dawn, promising the birth of a splendid day. It felt like an invitation from the universe itself, one that filled the very air with an electric anticipation for my awaited emergence. The contrast was stark; a soft stretch and a roll of my neck, the blankets of the luxuriously, ridiculously comfortable bed falling down to my midriff, a soft yawn, and I was ready for whatever the day could throw at me.

And all because of a little bit of sun.

God, I needed to emigrate somewhere warmer ... permanently.

The three of us had retired to bed fairly early the night before, and - in something of a surprise, given the activities that had preceded our retirement - I ended up in bed alone. Not that I minded, I was perfectly used to sleeping on my own and had very much enjoyed the ability to stretch out on the enormous kingsized bed I would be using for this trip. The Evo need for sleep had taken a while to get used to. With time flowing approximately forty-five-times faster in my mind than in the real world, I rarely needed more than about twenty minutes of real-world downtime to be able to consider myself fully recharged, and usually - after doing that - I would spend some time in my city, but it was possible to stay asleep for as long as I wanted to whether I needed it or not and a brief glance at my phone told me that it was just approaching 6 am. Having gone to bed a little after midnight, that was an obscene amount of sleep, and I was positively buzzing with energy. From the quiet conversation and soft laughter coming from the living area, it would seem that I wasn’t the only one.

I pulled myself out of bed, dragging a fresh pair of light cotton pants up my legs and, in the spirit of the warmer weather, went shirtless as I stepped out of the bedroom and into the living room.

Coffee is one of those things that are a contradiction in my life, namely because I rather like the smell of the stuff when it’s being freshly brewed, but despite the enormous variety of different coffees available, I couldn’t stand the taste of any of them. Even coffee-flavored chocolates or those frappuccino milkshake things. All of them were revolting. Some people like it, some people love it, and some people need it to get their hearts started in the mornings. I was none of those people. It was one of those things I could have made myself like; I could have edited myself to enjoy the taste as much as the next person, but I didn’t see the point. Coffee only seemed to be good for a morning caffeine shot, and with the limitless amounts of power at my fingertips, that didn’t apply. After that, it was just about habit.

The same went for tea. I didn’t like tea either.

But stepping out of my room to find Charlotte, wearing just a vest top and a pair of panties, curled up on one of the single-seater armchairs. Fiona, wearing a pair of flannel shorts and a button-down shirt—which seemed an odd combination for bed—sitting cross-legged on the sofa, both of them smiling and talking quietly while they sipped their coffee, was not the worst way to start a day.

“Morning, sleepy head,” Charlotte smiled as she saw me.

Fiona had been facing away from me but turned to look at me with her radiant smile. “Coffee is in the machine if you want one.”

“He doesn’t like coffee,” Charlotte smirked.

“Oh,” she paused, looking down at her own mug before turning back to me. “There’s stuff for making tea, too.”

Charlotte giggled. “He doesn’t like tea either.”

Fiona scrunched up her face as if that was the strangest thing she had ever heard about another person. “That’s just weird.”

Charlotte grinned and nodded. “There’s some OJ there, though.”

“That’ll do nicely,” I chuckled and headed over to the small kitchenette area. It wasn’t a kitchenette; as I had noted the night before, the apartment didn’t have one, this was just a small corner of the room that had a mini-fridge, a microwave, and a coffee machine piled onto a countertop. I pulled open the fridge to find the usual juices, milk, and creamers, grabbed some OJ, and filled one of the glasses that were resting beside it. I took a deep swallow of it, feeling the refreshing sweetness sliding down my throat, before heading over to join the ladies in the living area. “Any news on what’s happening for breakfast? I’m not gonna lie, I could eat.”

“It’s still pretty early,” Charlotte shrugged. “I imagine they’ll come and get us or call us or something when we’re supposed to go down.”

I nodded and took another sip. “You two been up long?”

“Only about forty minutes for me,” Fiona said, cradling her hot mug. “But she was up before me.”

“I didn’t need much sleep,” Charlotte shrugged. “I’ve been up since about four.”

I frowned at that. Charlotte was like me, an Evo, she never needed much sleep, so that was something of a deflection. “Everything okay?” I asked.

She opened her mouth to answer but paused, then sighed. “It’s a lot to take in, you know?” she finally said. “I mean, look where we are. I know it’s different for you, and I don’t know how Fi feels about it all, but in the Sect, the whole ethos is to avoid trouble, to keep our heads down. It’s how I was brought up. But look at where we are. We’re in the belly of the beast. I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would be spending the night as the honored guest of one of the heads of the Inquisition. Assuming they would lop off my head on sight has been drummed into me for my entire life.”

“But...”

“I know,” she held her hands up. “It doesn’t make any sense. I knew you had been talking to Isabelle. I have spent time with Bob, and obviously, I know logically that they’re not the enemies I always thought they were, but ... I don’t know, it’s like dealing with them at home, where it was safe...” she bounced her fingers in an air quote at that, “ ... was different. Now we are here, right in the thick of it. If shit goes sideways...”

“Yeah, I get that,” Fiona nodded. “I suppose it’s a little different for me—the suspicion, I mean. Working with Uri for all those years kinda taught me to be suspicious of everyone. This isn’t all that different, but this time, we have him.” She nodded her head at me.

“Me?”

“Yup,” Fiona grinned. “They need you, and as long as they need you, they aren’t going to be a threat to us. Besides, I think if they tried anything against us, you would drop this castle on their heads without as much as a blink. But more than that, Jerry has been here for a few weeks now. I haven’t heard from him much, but enough to know that he is fine and comfortable here.”

“Where is Jerry?” I asked. “Last I spoke to him, he said he was gonna meet us on the tarmac at the airfield.”

Fiona shrugged. “He said the same to me. I dropped him a message last night to see if everything was okay and to ask what the plan was; he said everything was fine and that he would be over to see us in the morning. I can message him again, if you like, to tell him we’re up.”

I nodded absently. I had gotten to know Jerry fairly well over the time of my supposed capture by the Praetorians; we hadn’t spoken about him much - he seemed very aware of his role as my link with the outside world and a sounding board, rather than a two-way conversation to keep me company - but I knew enough to know that if he said he was going to do something, it invariably got done. So, for him to change a plan at short notice like that had my radar up a little. Charlotte was right; we were in the belly of the beast; we were in the thick of it. You could tell from a simple glance that the walls had eyes and the shadows whispered secrets, even if the owners of said walls and shadows were friends, and a change of plan like that could mean absolutely nothing, or it could mean everything. It was a ripple in otherwise calm waters, or maybe it was nothing more than a fully explainable passing breeze ... or maybe I was just thinking too much into it.

Charlotte caught my eye; she was looking at me. She could see that tension inside me, those nerves, that on-edge-ness that was still defined by my paranoia and my suspicion. It may have been lessened, but it was still there, and Charlotte’s observation about where we were was no less valid because we were among friends. The contrast and the choice were stark; Uri had been right, and perhaps it was his influence inside my mind that was making me feel like this; trust really was a commodity that was hard to come by, especially recently, but I had to start somewhere, right? And neither Bob nor Isabelle had been anything but steadfast allies since the beginning. “Yeah, send him a message, if you don’t mind,” I smiled at Fi, bringing the glass of OJ up to my lips and taking a sip. “Hopefully, we can get a game plan together after we see where everyone stands and after we know Isablle’s thoughts on this whole situation.”

I sat down on the sofa, on the other side of it from Fiona, and sipped some more of my drink, enjoying the warmth of the morning as Fi sent her message off to Jerry and then returned to her conversation with Charlotte. I would love to be able to tell you what it was about, but the truth is that I wasn’t listening. It wasn’t that I was lost in my own thoughts, I wasn’t considering potential events, I wasn’t considering strategy, I wasn’t mentally wandering the halls of the castle with my mind, looking for humans to tap for information, I wasn’t sending Jeeves and the computer off to hunt for any treasons ... for the first time in months, since the Party in late October, I felt that I was finally able to relax and just ... be. Without thinking, without plotting, without worrying, but to just ... be. For the first time in forever, I let my mind still and go silent, and I relaxed in the warm embrace of the morning sun.

I couldn’t tell you how long I sat there with the girls, listening to them talk about nothing in particular as the heat of the morning grew with the vibrancy of the sun. The conversation flowed like a gentle stream, meandering through trivial topics and shared memories. It could have been ten minutes, it could have been an hour, but for the first time in as long as I could remember—especially recently—I felt able to genuinely let myself relax.

Not complete peace, mind you, for the specter of what still needed to be done loomed persistently at the back of my thoughts. Yet, for that brief, golden window of time, I was able to set aside my burdens, to be present in the moment with my friends and supporters, and to let my mind unwind in a way I had not afforded it for far too long.

The realization that it had been an age since I last allowed myself to truly relax brought a bittersweet twinge to my heart. The memories came rushing back of the last time my mind had found such respite. That occasion had been a night with Olivia—a carefree karaoke night filled with laughter, smiles, alcohol, and music. It was one of the few times I could remember genuinely feeling as though I didn’t have a care in the world.

Back then, Becky and Philippa were both alive and well, their presence a soothing constant of text messages, phone calls and unexpected bonds being formed. Faye was yet unknown to me, my friendship with Charlotte was still blossoming, and my camaraderie with Jimmy had reached unparalleled heights. Jimmy was, and still was, closer to me than any brother I could have imagined. He was my partner in crime, my right-hand man, the steadfast rock in the tumultuous sea of my life. He embodied everything I could ever ask for in a friend, and more.

As I sat there, the sunlight filtering gently through the windows, casting a warm, lazy glow over the relaxed German morning, I let my mind wander back to that night. It wasn’t Olivia’s flirty, joking friends at the table that drew my thoughts, nor was it Olivia herself and the potential joy of the night we were going to have. It was Jimmy. It was the simple, unadulterated joy of being in his company, the way he knew me for who I was and accepted me wholeheartedly.

Of course, the same could now be said for Charlotte, whose friendship had grown to a similarly cherished place in my life. But Jimmy was the first, and for the longest time, he was the only. The comfort of his presence, the reliability of his support, and the depth of our bond were unparalleled, forging an unbreakable connection that had carried me through the darkest of times.

In that serene moment, I allowed myself to bask in the warmth of these realizations, to soak in the gratitude for the bonds I had formed and the moments of respite that, although rare, reminded me of the beauty and value in companionship and genuine connection. It was a fleeting escape from reality, a temporary sanctuary where the weight of the world could momentarily rest on someone else’s shoulders—even if just for a moment.

But all good things had to come to an end, and this particular moment was interrupted by a knock at the door, which wrestled the attention of all three of us away from what we were doing and back to the moment. I got up and headed over to it, unsnapped the beat bolt, and pulled the door open.

“Pete, it’s good to see you, man!” Jerry beamed happily as I stepped aside with a smile and let him in. How’re you doing? Hey ladies,” he flashed a wave to Charlotte and Fi, who both called over their greetings from the sofa. Jerry didn’t step all the way into the room, though—over the threshold, so to speak, but not far enough inside to let me close the door behind him.

“I’m good, thanks,” I smiled back at him, still awkwardly holding the door. “It’s been good to get some downtime. How about you?”

“I’ve been busy. I’ve got a little surprise for you all.” He stepped aside and looked back out in the hallway. “C’mon bud,” he said. “They won’t bite. Well, Fiona might, but she’s feisty like that.”

Fiona giggled, both she and Charlotte standing and starting to wander closer to see what the fuss was about before I looked toward the open door, just in time to see the last person I had expected to see step around the corner. “Hi, Pete.” He said.

It was the face of a man I hadn’t seen since the party. That smug look that had seemed to be so permanently fixed on his features had - the last time I had laid eyes on him - been replaced by the twisted agony of grief as he cradled his dead bandmate in his arms, pleading for him to wake up after the devastating damage done to him by Praetorian bullets. I had paid him no mind at the time; I had been too lost in my own raging pain, my own burning fury, and, if I was being honest, I hadn’t spared him a single thought since.

“Rhodri,” I gasped. “Jesus, come in, both of you.”

Rhodri smiled weakly and nodded, stepping in behind Jerry and letting me close the door behind him. I had no sooner clicked the door back into its portal when the blurred form of Fiona rushed past me and wrapped the startled but grateful-looking Rhodri up in a hug, the likes of which could only be reserved for long-time friends.

Rhodri had been my adversary during the duel at the party. He and his partner, Neil, had attempted to ‘cheat’ by secretly teaming up on me, with Neil staying invisible and trying to infiltrate my city while Rhodri distracted me. God, I had been so pissed when I discovered the ruse. It had been at a time when I was first coming to grips with the true scale of my power and that slight had enraged me to the point where I used my abilities to make an example of them in front of everyone. Considering everything that happened since then, their underhanded tactics were almost comically minor. It seemed so trivial now, almost funny; one of those things that annoyed you at the time but you can laugh about later.

Uri, Fiona, Jerry, and Marco had all been there to witness it. It may even have been that event that showed Marco that I was someone to take seriously as a potential ally or enemy.

But laughing about how inconsequential an exposition duel had been wasn’t an option here. I didn’t know at the time, but Neil and Rhodri had been bonded for years, much further along the process than I have been with Faye, but Neil had been slaughtered like so many others that night. The rage, the grief, the abject, utter agony I had felt at losing Faye, I somehow knew, paled in comparison to how Rhodri must have felt at watching Neil die before his very eyes. The last I had seen Rhodri that night before the red mist descended and I massacred almost every man who had attacked us; he was holding the body of his partner, his bond mate, his soul mate, begging him to wake up and Neil’s blood soaked into his clothes. The look on his face had been ... haunting.