The conversation in the cafeteria had left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. For Camille, however, it was nothing new. She was always having disagreements with her brother. The two were polar opposites. Gina, the senior member of the gang, met her squad captain in the evening to discuss what had transpired earlier.
"Have a seat," Hugo said, as he moved a chair towards her. "What did you wanna talk about?"
They were in the Zaatsu's apartment at the hostel. The place was nothing fancy – a plain, cramped place with more function than comfort.
"It's about Neil, master," Gina said with a sigh and sat down.
Hugo stood behind a chair in front of her. "What about him?" he asked.
"He is becoming… I don't know. He seems more agitated than usual. More violent."
"We've talked about that before as well, Gina." Placing his hands on the back of the chair, the Zaatsu leaned forward. "We've already taken steps to calm him down… so to speak. I'll handle him. Don't worry."
"Yes, master! I am by no means doubting you."
"But?"
"What about Camille?" Gina dropped her head down for a moment before looking back at Hugo. "She takes it to heart, and he could not care less."
Hugo shook his head and walked away. Pouring tea into a cup, he looked over and asked, "Did something happen today?"
"We were having lunch at the cafeteria, as usual. And… well…"
Hugo smiled. "What did she say?"
"Not her. It was what he said that had us all worried, but Camille took it the hardest, I think. She looked way more worried than usual."
The Zaatsu walked over with two cups of tea and sat down. He gave one to Gina. "Thank you," she said, smiling.
"Him I can predict," he said. "And I also know you people are way too afraid of his temper to say anything even remotely provocative. So, tell me. What got him going? What did she say?"
Gina leaned back a little in her chair, wide-eyed and surprised. Hugo took a sip and waited.
He could read Neil's temper easily enough. Handling it was another matter.
Neil was not only his student. He was his stepbrother. And Hugo had made the mistake he always made with people close to him – treating them like duties he could return to later. His job had already cost him a wife. Now, it was getting close to costing him a brother.
Gathering herself, the Sokidu finally said, "Ah… we were talking about the White Bolt actually, and he said that had you let him, he would've killed him."
"Neil?" Hugo asked, wide-eyed and half-smiling. "Neil? Kill the White Bolt?"
"Yes."
He chuckled. "Then did Camille tell him that he could do no such thing? None of you could have beaten him. Even I would have had a hard time capturing him alone."
"Camille had already told him that, actually…"
Smiling, he took another sip then leaned closer. "Well, thanks for bringing this to me."
"Yeah," Gina said, then finally took a sip.
Silence prevailed for a while as the two drank their tea quietly. Hugo was deep in thought running his fingers on the edge of the cup, forced to reconsider his strange and fragile relationship with his siblings.
With a faint shake, he slowly dropped his head. It was tough. Unlike the calm and collected Camille who loved her brother, Neil was aggressive and doubted Hugo because of his past alleged affiliations with the Outsiders. And the fact that Hugo never gave much thought or time to fixing the broken relationship, worsened the situation.
"Master?" Gina said, trying to gain his attention.
"Hmm," Hugo said, clamping the cup in between both hands, still looking down.
"You, ok?"
"Ah, yeah!" he quickly said and raised his head to look at his subordinate. "Yes! Of course. How was the tea?"
"Tea was fine, but you don't look fine…"
"Ha-ha, I am very fine actually. Anything else you wanna talk about?"
The Master Sokidu said that she did not and, after thanking her captain, got up and left.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Elsewhere, taken over by curiosity, Camille was ready to sneak into the Atramentum – a sprawling subterranean prison complex designed to contain extraordinarily powerful and supernaturally dangerous criminals. Its architecture was a feat of engineering and magical fortification, combining physical barriers with layers of arcane defences.
Getting inside was not easy. The Atramentum was heavily guarded and meticulously watched. So, before venturing there, the Sokidu went to her brother's office in the hostel. She had a key to the room.
'One of the many perks, Cami, one of the many,' she thought as she entered the room. Very quickly she picked up Hugo's Zaatsu robe and got out. 'I am so screwed if I get busted wearing this…'
Hastily leaving the Hall she moved towards the prison. 'Time to put my training to the test,' she told herself.
The Atramentum was situated just behind the Regal Palace and was hidden on the other side by a line of trees and a canal which flowed to and through the City of Ayn. Only a small room with arched pillars and a dome overhead was visible from the rear exit of the Palace.
Camille took the narrow lonesome lane stretching from the rear exit of the Regal Palace all the way to the bridge over the stream connecting the Palace grounds to the main city area.
Walking by, she peeked – the entrance of the Atramentum was visible through the trees and bushes. It felt an arm's length away. She gulped and masked her Ki. The arched doorway was right there, lit by two lamps and watched by a nightguard who would have saluted the moment he saw the robe she had now worn. But beyond him was the reception desk, the ledger, the names, the times.
Vincent was not some pickpocket from Ayn thrown into a holding cell for the night. He was the White Bolt. Every visit to him would be recorded. Every name would be checked. Even Master Baylis's name would not pass quietly.
So, Camille kept walking.
Spotters were not trained to overpower security. They were trained to notice where security became habit. There was a service path by the canal – a lesser-known rear door of the Atramentum used by the kitchen and night staff.
As a teenager when she started training to become a Spotter, Camille used to sit in the trees nearby to study the patterns and find an opening. She found that there was barely a half-minute gap between one patrol turning the corner and the next reaching the wall.
In her mischievous way of showing off her newfound skills to her friends, she eventually began bringing Ella and others along. They ended up sneaking in and out of the kitchen of the Atramentum a couple of times.
'We barely got out that night,' Camille thought, smiling and remembering the last time she was there. 'Poor Tabitha… you had to peek in.'
But it had been several years. She was a Sokidu now and a much more experienced Spotter. She quietly slipped through during that gap, heart hammering beneath Hugo's robe.
Once inside, the robe became her shield and she easily slipped into the actual prison. Junior staff saw the Zaatsu markings on her robe and lowered their eyes before they looked at her face. A few nodded. One stepped aside so quickly he nearly dropped the files in his hands.
Senior operatives were different. At close range, they would have read her intentions through the rhythm of her Ki. Or worse, they would have recognised her. Camille avoided them completely, taking side corridors whenever voices sounded too composed, too confident, too old.
She kept her head low and her pace steady. 'Please don't be in the lower levels,' she thought. 'I can't get that far.'
It was 10 p.m. – more than an hour past sundown. Blending into the darkness where she could, or the red stone walls under the sconces, she reached the holding cells.
'If he's going to appear in front of the council,' she thought, 'then he has to be here.'
The deeper she got, however, the quieter the place became. It was a deafening silence. Not a single soul in sight. She could not even sense any Ki. There was no one there – no prisoners and no guards.
But she kept going. Crossing all the empty cells, she finally reached the last one and sure enough, Vincent was there. She recognized him from afar because of his white hair and hurried on. With his hands tied behind his back, he was lying on the ground in one corner of the small cell and appeared unconscious.
'He must have been healed after our battle,' Camille thought. 'Is he asleep?'
She approached the cell.
The White Bolt moved.
Camille heard a whispered grunt.
He looked at her with half-open eyes. He tried to say something. His lips moved just a little but he did not have the energy to speak.
She tried to read his lips. 'Did he just say "what"?' she thought. 'What happened to him?'
With closed eyes, he put in a lot of effort to push his body towards the edge of the cell. He pushed against the corner where the wall met the bars and half sat himself up. He was breathing heavily.
"What did they do to you?" Camille asked, as she stepped forward and knelt right in front of the bars, inches away from Vincent.
Charging a small amount of Ki, she snapped her fingers to create sparks. A small ball of fire lit up which hovered into the cell, illuminating the prisoner. The only piece of clothing he had on his body was a torn-up bloody pair of trousers, the same ones he wore when she met him earlier.
'But there was no blood on them,' she thought. 'And where's his shirt?'
There were bruises and scars all over his body. She leaned closer and took a good long look. 'I didn't leave you like this. What in God's name happened here?'
He opened his eyes and rested his head against the wall. "You look surprised," he said.
She could not hear his waning voice properly but again understood what he said from the movement of his lips. "Did they torture you?" she asked.
"Who's they?" He coughed.
"Did they give you anything to eat? Any water?"
He shook his head ever so slightly and her eyes shivered. In fact, she was trembling all over. The young Sokidu could not believe her eyes. She had heard many a tale of the Eye's leniency and compassion towards their prisoners. But what was this?