According to Laedio's initial reports, the key to Alpheo's grand design was a waif of barely eight years,a cog in a machine who had spent the last eighteen months buried in the soot-stained belly of a criminal syndicate. She was a tabula rasa, a blank slate with no living kin, and no attachments to the world outside of what the gang had provided, which was not a lot.
For a man like Alpheo, she was the perfect instrument.
However, as he stood in the private sanctuary of Laedio's solar, he realized his friend had omitted a rather glaring "nuance." The girl did not simply have a preference for silence; she seemed to exist behind an impenetrable wall of glass. Alpheo would have pegged her as a mute, had he not just witnessed her tugging on Laedio's sleeve and standing on tiptoe to murmur a frantic, buzzing secret into his ear.
She could speak; she simply refused to acknowledge that Alpheo existed.
That...admittedly tickled his pride a bit.
