Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

"You have." Bagins kept the smile and kept the pistol where it was. The yellow bulb threw a hard point of light off the metal. "Of course you do."

I worked it through fast.

He was standing in a locked room with four men outside a door he’d closed on purpose. That was not a man carrying out an execution. That was a man taking a meeting he didn’t want recorded.

He wanted the government. He wanted whatever a CGI agent carried around in his head, and he was going to hold a gun on me while he asked for it so that neither of us had to call it a request. The pistol was the shape of the question. The closed door was the condition of the answer.

"So." The pistol didn’t waver. The barrel stayed on the centre of my chest. "Why are you still breathing?"

"I know who started the infection," I said. "And I know how it can be stopped."

The second part was a lie, or close enough to one that I’d feel it later. The words left my mouth clean and absolute and sat in the small yellow space between us.

"That doesn’t keep you alive." The smile thinned. The light caught the edges of it and left the centre empty.

"It does, actually." I met his eyes. The bulb laid hard light across both of our faces and left the corners of the room in soft, cobwebbed shadow. "I was standing behind you for the whole of that speech, professor. I watched that room. You have their hearts. All of them."

"Stop that." He gestured with the gun. Go on. The motion was small and absolute. The barrel dipped a fraction and returned.

"You have the streets and you have their belief. That’s the capital. That’s the whole capital in one building, and you built it in a day and a half."

"Which is exactly why I need what you know about putting Sinn on the ground."

"You’re a clever man." I let a beat pass. The silence that filled it was denser than the one that had come before. "But there’s something you haven’t seen yet."

"Then tell me."

He came down into a squat so our eyes were level, the pistol resting across his knee. The movement was deliberate, the posture of a man who had decided the conversation was now worth the discomfort of the floor. The chain between us lay slack across the concrete.

"Sinn isn’t your enemy. The infection is." I held him there. The words landed soft and absolute. "Stop that, and they’ll carry you into that building on their shoulders. You won’t have to fight anybody for the chair. They’ll hand it to you."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth and he put it away. The almost-smile died before it finished forming. The pistol stayed exactly where it was across his knee.

"All right." His voice had changed—quieter, more careful, the particular tone of a man who had just heard something he hadn’t planned for. "Tell me about the infection."

"I know the man who started it. If we get to him, there’s a chance it can be shut down."

"A chance." He caught it instantly. The word sat between us like something he’d weighed and found light. "So you’re not certain."

"I’m not."

"Then why in God’s name would I stake anything on a gamble?"

Behind him, Trapper sat all the way up against the wall. The motion was slow, careful, the particular effort of a man whose face had been broken with a stake and who was only now remembering how to hold his own weight. Bagins didn’t turn his head a single degree. The interruption registered and was dismissed in the same second.

"Because it’s the only thing that gives you stability," I said. "And stability is the only ground a man like you can build on. You can put down every infected in this capital and it means nothing while the person who makes them is still breathing. He’ll fill your streets again by Friday."

Bagins looked up at the ceiling and swore under his breath. The cobwebs above him hung motionless. The bulb continued its indifferent hum. The word he used was short and private and completely without performance.

"How do I trust you?"

"You don’t. You just have to."

He didn’t answer, and the silence came down over the room. Trapper’s wet breathing continued in the corner. The factory beyond the wall kept its organised noise at a distance that felt further than it was.

"Bram." Mercury’s voice came straight through the wall. Clear as anything. In the room with us. "Your blue haired girl’s awake."

The words landed with the particular clarity of thin construction and no insulation. Relief and dread arrived in the same second and sat under my ribs side by side.

Bagins smiled.

"You know Mercury?"

"Yeah."

The smile widened and something in my stomach dropped, because I’d answered before I’d thought. The word had left my mouth clean and automatic and completely without the calculation the rest of the conversation had required.

"Well," he said. "Now I know where to put the knife."

He stood up. The pistol left his knee and disappeared back inside his jacket in one clean motion. The fabric settled. The light laid his shadow long across the concrete between us again.

"That woman has been a thorn in me since before you four arrived. So here’s what we’ll do. You go out onto the streets, and you bring me people."

No. Mercury, why could you not keep your mouth shut for thirty seconds.

"Bram. Bram."

Her voice came through the wall again, thinner this time, the particular quality of someone who had just realised the channel was open in both directions.

"One hour." Bagins put the last of the smile away. The expression that replaced it was cleaner and more absolute. "Bracelets on your ankles, all of you. One new body each, back through that door, inside the hour. That is how you earn my trust, Abram."

Fine.

It wasn’t a negotiation and it had never been one. He’d decided before he opened the door. The chain at my ankle, the rope on my wrists, the four men on the other side of the thin wood—all of it had been the shape of a decision that was already finished. The hunting hour was only the price he had chosen to name out loud.

He crossed the room, turned the handle, and his four men came in. The light from the corridor spilled across the concrete in a hard rectangle. Their shadows stretched long and overlapping across the floor between us. The first of them already held the dark shape of the ankle bracelets in his hands—metal, heavy, the particular design of something that had been made to count down.

Fuck.

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