“Hey.” I blinked my eyes open, the nap I was enjoying suddenly interrupted by someone jabbing their foot into my ribs. Whoever they were, they were standing over me, the sun obscuring their face. They nudged me again, gently. “Justice. Are you okay?”
I held my hand over my eyes to block out the bright light and saw none other than Theo standing in front of me. I sighed in relief, closing my eyes and letting myself drop back down. “I’m doing just great, Theo. Everything’s fine.”
“Is that why you’re lying down next to a dumpster in an alley?” I shrugged without opening my eyes; it just seemed like too much work. “The smell doesn’t bother you?” I shrugged again. “Justice, get up.”
I blindly waved my arm around until my hand landed on a fabric of some sort. I patted that fabric comfortingly, chuckling. “Theo, you work too much. Stop focusing on the bad and concentrate on the good stuff in the world. Just let your worries go. Things will work out. Lie down and take a nap like me.”
His hand clamped down around my wrist, stopping me from patting him. “Justice, what are these are on your arm?” I didn’t respond, but I knew what he was talking about. They were everything I needed in this world. “Justice.” He yanked me upright, forcing me to confront the mid-afternoon sun and the harsh light of reality. His face was only inches from my arm, glaring angrily at my skin. “Justice, what the fuck are these? You shouldn’t be using illegal Links at all when you’re working for us, but using this many at a time is just--”
“Oh, get off your high horse. I know what I’m doing here, Theo. I’m an Link addict. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s knowing my emotional tolerance levels. This is just a common street mix; Relief and Sympathy. Don’t you know anything about mixing?” I squinted at him, searching his face for some emotion other than anger. “Haven’t you ever tried Links before? Links besides that of your fancy-schmancy company?”
“God damn it, Justice, I’m taking these off of you.” There was a sudden pain on my arm as he ripped one of the glorified stickers off me.
“No! Stop it! Get away from me!” I started smacking at his hands whenever they touched me and just flailing about in general.
“Ow! Stop...moving!” He held me down as he finished pulling them off of me and then yanked me up to my feet. He pulled me along behind him, ignoring the sounds of complaint that escaped me. “We’re going to get you sobered up and then figure out our next move from there.” He opened the door to a black SUV and helped me climb inside before buckling the seatbelt around me. As he shut the door, my head lolled against the cool window and I sighed at the feeling of glass on my forehead. He climbed into the driver’s seat and the car roared to life before rumbling down the road.
I was pretty much sober by the time we pulled up outside of the fast food restaurant. “How did you know where I was?” I asked Theo, opening the door of the car. He held his hand out for me to use as leverage while I stepped down and I took it gratefully.
“I made you swallow that GPS, remember?” he asked, grinning at me as he slammed the door shut behind me. “Aren’t you glad I did that now?”
“I’ll admit that it wasn’t your worst idea ever...probably. Especially considering what happened.” I got in line so we could order our food. “But you obviously knew that it would happen, so my main question here is...why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you have the Memento Moris kidnap me?”
We stepped up to the register just as he chuckled. “Going straight for the tough-to-answer questions there, aren’t you? Order your food first and then we’ll talk.” I ordered the first thing I saw on the menu and sat down with my tray of food, drumming my fingers anxiously on the table while I waited for Theo to order, pay, and join me.
When he did, I tried to ask him the question again. “Why did you try and have me kidnapped by the Memento Moris without telling me?” I wanted to ask, but he shoved one of his french fries in my mouth and shushed me.
“I get to go first.” He pulled a small notebook out of the pocket of his pants and a pen, which he clicked open and held to the paper. “What happened after I left the room?”
I chewed and swallowed the french fry, trying to remember what had happened while the remaining vestiges of my Links still muddied my mind. “There were four of them that showed up. They drilled a hole through the wall like all the way through and you know how thick those jail cell walls are. And then they blew it all up with a bomb. I got brought out to a car, where they put a Link on me, but it wasn’t like any Link I’ve ever had before. This one didn’t simulate an emotion, it straight up made me unconscious. When I woke up, they’d tied me to a chair.”
“And the?” His pen was practically flying across the paper in the notebook.
“Then they introduced themselves, but they were just so normal that I didn’t think it was really possible that they were the Memento Moris. When I told them that, they--”
“You what?” asked Theo, the grip on his pen tightening until his knuckles turned white. “You told them that you didn’t think they were the Memento Moris? God, you should be thanking every god there is that you’re still alive, you idiot!”
“Hey, they seemed like decent people at first, okay?” I said, glaring at him. “They didn’t tell me they were the Memento Moris until they’d cut me out of the chair and introduced themselves. They were hanging out in an apartment, for Christ’s sake.”
The pen was now scribbling faster on the paper than I thought was humanly possible. “Hold up, go back. They introduced themselves? Like with real names?”
I nodded. “Yeah, and then after all of that, they gave me a tour of their facilities. My turn for a question.” I took a sip of my soda and glanced up at him. “Why did you have the Memento Moris kidnap me? And before you give me some bullship answer about how it’s classified and on a need-to know-basis,” I added, seeing his mouth open to probably do just that, “remember that I have information that you still need and I’ve also got an in-road with the Memento Moris now.”
He bristled across the table for a moment, before setting down his paper and pen. “Fine. I suppose that at this point, you do have to know this information, in any case. My company got it on good authority a few months ago that the Memento Moris were searching for a computer expert-- for what exactly, we didn’t know, but we weren’t going to pass up a chance like this again.”
“Again?”
“Before Pacta Sunt Servanda was hired, we’d heard they were searching for a weapons expert and we didn’t have enough time to get someone inside who would feed us information.” He took a bite out of his burger and took a moment to chew and swallow. “And with Utrinque Paratus, we have no actual idea how they found him because there was no word that they were searching again. But with this position, we knew we had to try to get someone working for them who was really on our side. Of course, we tried getting our own techs in there, but they didn’t trust any of the people we tried to send them. And then someone remembered you and the little stunt you pulled on us when you were fifteen.”
I rolled my eyes and groaned. “I would have been less in debt if I’d hacked the freaking government, wouldn’t I?”
“Wouldn’t have been nearly as fun or difficult as hacking our systems was, I can imagine,” he said, chuckling as he shook his head. “In any case, you seemed like one of the most perfect solutions for us. You’d already made quite the name for yourself, you had a criminal past which they could corroborate from your years of Link abuse, and-- most importantly-- we knew we could get you to work with us without too much difficulty. A little payment and you could be ours.”
“Speaking of that,” I said, nodding my head. “Those rewards. Am I going to get those soon?”
“Soon enough.”
“And when would that be exactly?”
“When we don’t need you to be undercover for us anymore. What Feel Inc needs from you is to act as our undercover informant; keeping us up to date on what they’re doing, giving us information that can be helpful in revealing their true identities, and eventually helping us bring down their whole criminal empire.”
“Thanks, but no,” I scoffed, wiping a napkin across my lips and throwing it down on the table. “If that’s everything, I think we’re done here.”
“Justice.” Theo’s hand shot across the table to grab my wrist, stopping me from walking away. “Please. We need your help and now that we’ve got them accepting you, we can’t stop now. You want those rewards, don’t you? The rehab, the apartment, the clean record?”
I yanked my wrist away from him, holding it tightly to my body. “That was before I knew what I had to do. It’s not fair to offer me something but not tell me all the rules. I just...I can’t, Theo. The Memento Moris showed me some awful shit and I have no intention of ever seeing them again, let alone double-crossing them. No matter what. So bye.” I stormed out of the restaurant, leaving both him and the food behind.
Unfortunately, Theo wasn’t a very passive person and he followed me almost immediately. “Hey, wait up,” he called, jogging after me as I kept walking. I ignored him and kept my head down, hiking the hood up on my jacket to blind me as he started jogging at my side. He put a hand on my shoulder and I pulled away from him roughly, hurrying a bit faster in an attempt to get away from him. That did not seem to deter him, though. “Justice, stop for a minute,” he said, jumping in front of me and holding me in place.
“Get your hands off of me before I scream, Theo,” I said, glowering at him. “Nothing you can say, nothing you can offer me, nothing in the entire known universe will convince me that I should work for the Memento Moris as a spy. You don’t know what they did back there. You don’t know what I saw. That could be me, Theo.”
“So tell me what happened,” he said, pulling me under a bus shelter and setting me down on the bench. I sighed and wrung my hands together without saying anything. He looked at me expectantly. There was no getting out of this.
“They tortured someone that I knew...from back in the group home. Not because I knew him, of course, but because he’d done something to them. They didn’t even know that I knew him until I said I did. It was at the end of the tour and Dave…”
“Who is Dave?”
“He’s Ex Malo Bonum, but he introduced himself as Dave. He wanted to prove to me who they were and what they could do, so he wanted me to watch. But his girlfriend, Bella, didn’t make me; I couldn’t watch all of it. She said that she didn’t want me seeing this side of her and another Memento, but she trusted that Dave knew best so I had to be there.”
“Wait, that sounds like Hic Manebimus Optime. She’s dating Ex Malo Bonum? This is fantastic, Justice; you’ve already helped us so much!” He’d broken out the notepad again and was scribbling down the tidbits I was giving him. “What else did you learn?”
“Are you kidding me?” I said, smacking his pad and causing him to create a thick line where he hadn’t intended. “A person died, Theo, and it was painful and unnecessary. Show some respect.”
He looked down at his pad and then up at me. “I’m sorry,” he said after a minute. “I let the job take over sometimes and I know I need to work on that. Please, continue.”
“They made me be there while they tortured him. I looked away for most of it, but it was still…” I shook my head roughly, as though that could erase the memory of that horrible experience. “It was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. And then, when all was said and done, they killed him. Stabbed him in the chest. I was right there beside him, too. I saw the knife go in. And do you know why they did all of that?” I asked, standing up from the bench. Theo looked up at me quizzically. “They tortured him because he robbed two of them and stole their car. Dave killed him because he made a rude joke about Bella. Now imagine what they’d do to me if they even suspected that I was working with Feel Inc. I’m not about to take that chance.”
Once again, I tried to walk away; once again, he grabbed my wrist, holding me in place. I glared at his hand, narrowing my eyes in anger. “What is it with you and holding onto my arm?” I said, trying to pull away from him. This time, he didn’t let me go so easily. “Let go of me, Theo.”
“If you work with Feel Inc...if you work with me...to take down the Mementos, you’ll be able to stop them from doing that. You’ll prevent them from ever hurting anyone ever again. The company won’t let harm befall you if you work with us as a confidential informant and nothing that you do while working for the Memento Moris will become a legitimate charge on your record. This is a lot to ask for after what you’ve been through, I know, but I’ll see if we can’t get you extra rewards. Enough money to buy your own country, immunity from any past and future crimes you way commit, a helicopter to Cuba, whatever you want. We’ll make sure to get it for you if you stay on board. Help us take them down and avenge the death of your friend.”
I stared him down, trying to will him to let go of me. There was no budging in his eyes, though; he seemed just as determined to get me to say yes as I was to avoid answering at all. Eventually, though, there was no avoiding anything anymore. “Fine,” I said, sinking back down onto the bench. “But you have to promise me that I’ll be protected at all times. And that when I’m done here, I’m done. For good. You erase all my files in Feel Inc and I never hear from any of you again.”
“Aw, I’m fond of you, too,” said Theo, grinning-- no, legitimately smiling at me. “Now we’re getting somewhere. So I had an idea for your cover story that I think will work well…”