Page 12 of Retrograde

“Well, well, well.” I pull brass knuckles out of my back pocket, slipping them on my fingers. “That whole group was wiped out two months ago, as I’m sure you’re aware. Which means no one can corroborate this fairy tale of yours. Unless there’s someone else?”

He snivels, whimpering. I spit at his feet.

“Open your fucking mouth and talk.”

“Phoenix.” He raises his hands up, like in surrender, but even more embarrassing. “We got tips from Phoenix. Never in person. Only through encrypted messages and covert channels.”

He doesn’t need to tell me the last part. Nobody knows who Phoenix really is. It’s clearly someone high up in the Continuum, close to the Consuls themselves. They feed us intel through trusted middlemen or, when possible, through secure one-way channels. No way to contact them back. Personally, I find it hard to trust someone whose identity is a complete mystery. But Tristan, a man who likes to think of himself as the chief resistance leader, refuses to look a gift horse in the mouth. Phoenix has been sending us so much money that they are the resistance’s main source of funds at this point. Funds we need and have no better way of obtaining.

“Phoenix? No way to confirm that either,” I point out coldly. “And unfortunately for you, that sounds even more improbable since it was Phoenix who gave me your location yesterday.”

The first and only time that Phoenix ever hit my comms channel directly. Something stinks. But whatever it is, I’d bet anything this joker has nothing to do with it and is lying through his teeth to save his and that bitch’s ass.

“You know what I think, pal? I think you’re full of shit,” I snarl at him, leaning closer in the gravitational pull of imminent violence.

“No! No, I swear!” he roars desperately. “Please. Please! I’m sure there’s some explanation. Please, wait!”

And here we go. Tearful, pathetic begging.

I snatch both his wrists and yank his arms down, then whip my fist forward. The brass knuckles smash into the side of his face with a nasty crunch, and he collapses to the ground with a high-pitched howl. He gags on something and then spits, ropes of his bloody saliva mixing with the dust on the ground. Two broken molars land between the pebbles.

“Here’s your benefit of the doubt,” I tell him. “No presumption of innocence here. If you want me to believe you, you’d better start making some fucking sense.”

Sobbing, he raises himself onto his knees clumsily. The air shifts with his movement, and his acidic, terror-suffused stink reaches my nostrils. Fucking revolting.

“Riley.” The word is slurred, indistinct. “Don’t hurt Riley.” He makes wet, sloshing sounds that barely resemble speech. “Keep beating whatever truth you want out of me. But please, leave her alone until you have proof either way. And please take her out of that cave. You have no idea what it does to her to be there.” He spits out more blood, red mist coating the limestone wall.

“Oh no. No, no, no ...” I drawl, savouring his anguish. “You have this all wrong. See, if by some chance what you told me is true, then you have always been a double agent. Right?”

He nods vigorously. “Yeah!”

“Right. But Riley, she let Volker recruit her in earnest at first, didn’t she? And only got back in touch with the resistance a couple of years later?”

He freezes, eyes wide in realisation, mess oozing out of his broken mouth.

“I differ on this with some of my ... colleagues,” I say the word with a grimace, like it’s an insult. “But I always say that if you betray once, you betray forever. Riley is a traitor regardless. And she will be treated as such.”

“No!” He gasps and scurries closer to me on his knees. “No, please listen!”

The fucker grabs me, looking up at me the way a terrified servant would at a merciless master.

“I am listening. But there’s nothing you could tell me to alter the facts. She’s done a lot of damage. She may or may not have tried to make up for it. But that changes nothing. She will die, and she will die screaming.”

My voice lacks my usual conviction, but he doesn’t seem to hear it.

“You can’t! She’s just a kid!” He grows hysterical.

“She is twenty-two now,” I point out harshly, and he frowns, surprised that I know her exact age. “I was younger than she is now when I joined the resistance.”

“She joined the resistance when she was twenty, in secret and at a great risk to her life!” He throws his arms wide. “She was still a kid when she joined the Continuits!”

“No, she wasn’t. She was eighteen, an adult. The same age I was when I first picked up a gun and went to war.”

I crouch to look him directly in the face, smeared with blood, tears and snot. He whimpers, averting his gaze.

“Listen to me. You’re an old man, by today’s standards anyway.” I let a gentler note creep into my voice. “You knew too much of the world before to adjust. Kids don’t stay kids for long these days. And Tamara Volkova?” I scoff. “Trust me, she stopped being a kid the minute she picked up a camera and started calling herself Riley.” I pat the top of his head before standing back up. “We’re done here for now.”

I turn around, walking away from him. He keeps yelling, his voice grating against my last nerve.