Page 14 of Siege of Shadows

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AT WELL OVER SIX FEET,director Chafik with his stocky build towered over all of us, except maybe for Lake, who was model tall in her own right. After a short greeting, we followed him into the facility.

There must have been one standard design for all Sect facilities. So far I’d been in two headquarters—one in Argentina and one in London—and the twisting, sterile corridors looked just the same. Communications, too. Once Chafik typed the security code into a keypad by a set of wide silver doors, and once the small screen scanned and verified his face with a gentle blue light, the door slid open and there it was, two stories of busy agents in suits hurrying past one another as they carried information to different stations. Most of the agents sat at rows of computers, typing away at a furious pace, speaking into headsets to whom I could only guess were agents in different parts of the facility, or maybe even agents at other facilities.

Since the Sect was an international nongovernment organization, they had facilities all over the world, some specifically for training agents while most were for base operations. Others, like the headquarters in London, were equipped for training Effigies. Not this one. This one was more research-based than anything else. Judging by what Chafik told us, their Research and Development building was even bigger than the one in London. That’s where they’d taken the mysterious young soldier.

“We are holding the body there,” said Chafik in an accent that made it sound as if he were slurring his words a bit. “First we will perform the autopsy and then continue on with other examinations. It will be a few days before we can send over any information from our findings.”

Director Chafik’s thick black beard stretched to his ears. The wrinkles across his face may have come from age, but I was sure the permanent frown lines cutting across his sandy brown forehead could only be attributed to having an intense stare as his resting face. As he and Belle kept pace with each other through Communications, I could see that they both matched in the severity of their expressions. It was like each was trying to outserious the other.

“Thanks, we appreciate it,” I said, my footsteps heavy against the tiled floor.

I looked over at Belle, who probably had the flash drive still on her somewhere, maybe in the pocket of her checkered flannel shirt. It was a delicate dance, trusting the Sect without trusting too much. Natalya’s own parents had warned us against them, and as it turned out, they’d had a point. The Sect was involved in Natalya’s death. But we were still part of the organization, still party to their rules. And if we were going to recapture Saul and get to the bottom of the mysteries that surrounded him, we had no choice but to work with them. Even though there was no telling how many agents had played a part in Natalya’s demise.

Agents. My mouth dried again, and my chest felt tight just like it always did whenever my thoughts drifted to him. I squeezed my eyes shut.Don’t think about him.

Shaking the half-formed thought away, I crossed my arms over my chest, about to speak again when I caught the eyes of some agent who swiveled back around in his chair in an instant.

Sigh. Now that we were here, some of the agents couldn’t help but peek up from their computers to take a gander at us. No matter how many weeks it’d been, I still couldn’t get used to the curious, unsubtle glances of those who didn’t,couldn’t, see Maia Finley the Girl because to them, I was only,always, Maia Finley the fire Effigy. They gave us that quick, self-conscious look, the kind people give when they know they shouldn’t stare but can’t help it. Lake stood a little taller when she noticed their eyes on her, while Chae Rin sighed with obnoxious volume. Belle never seemed to care. I, on the other hand, shifted on my feet, uncomfortable in my skin. It was like walking into every room perpetually smelling like a litter box.

“You said you had some info for us?” I said once he’d reached a terminal at the center space of the room. Unlike the rows of benches in front and behind us, this small, circular area just had the one terminal with two flat-screens sutured together on the surface. I guess this was specially made for the director of the facility. “What kind of information?”

Chafik gave me with a curt nod as he tapped the computer screen awake. “Yes. Rousseau has told me the circumstances by which you came to find the body. You tracked an Effigy frequency to the desert.”

“Yeah, we figured it was Saul’s,” Chae Rin said before adding under her breath, “But after finding that other guy instead, we’re not so sure anymore.”

Every once in a while, when Chafik was deep in thought, he’d breathe out a deep, baritone grumble like the one I heard now. It sounded a little like the earth should have been trembling beneath my feet. “Yes. This is a strange situation. Stranger than usual. Our facility has been checking for Saul’s spectrographic signature.”

I perked up. “And?”

He only needed to tap the computer screens with his fingers to bring up the satellite map of the world. A dull red circle blinked over the Sahara hideout like a pulsating heart. The thick green words hovering over it spelled outLAST WHEREABOUTS.

“This is the only signal we’ve been able to pick up in weeks,” Chafik said.

“The only signal in weeks,” I repeated. “And it may not have even been his.” I sucked in a breath to calm myself down. The Sect’s scanners may have actually been picking up Dead Guy’s frequency all along. It was a possibility. But none of us knew what to do with its implications. The discovery of Saul, a man with Effigy-like abilities in a world that only had room for four of us, was shocking enough. The mere idea of countless others grew more disturbing each time I considered it.

“We did have reason to believe it might have been Saul’s,” Chafik continued, thankfully sparking a little glimmer of hope. “According to our scanners, an Effigy signal did appearjustafter your battle in France. First it popped up suddenly outside of London.” As Chafik spoke, he tapped the screen so that the blinking lights representing his frequency appeared over their location. “Then, shortly after, it reappeared in Greenland before vanishing. We searched the area, of course, but didn’t find him. He was off the grid.”

“Saul fled shortly after Maia cut off his hand,” Belle said, and when she turned her head, her blond ponytail swished gently to the side. “He must have gone back to London. Why? To see someone? And why would he then go to Greenland? Why would his signal end there?”

“Usually, an Effigy’s signal will show up on the monitor, pulsing at a particular rate. However, while we were monitoring his signal, it was erratic, arrhythmic, even as he jumped from area to area.”

“Sibyl said Saul’s spectrographic signature had been unstable for several days after we faced him in France,” I told him. “Then nothing until now.”

I thought back to that day I’d watched Sibyl interrogate him in lockup when we had him captured at the London facility. I could still picture him clearly: caged in that cold, metallic chamber, drugged and rambling. But the tired fear in his eyes as he sputtered out incoherent phrases eventually dissolved into an expression wholly different—and sinister. The fear and desperation had flickered out, leaving only that glimmer of malice I was too familiar with... and that vile smile. The same he’d worn as he and the phantoms under his control had torn through bodies in New York.

“Well, I mean, Saul’s nothing if not unstable. The last time Saul was in Sect custody, they measured his spectrographic signature and his brain waves,” I said. “That’s how we learned that Saul actually has two personalities: Alice and—”

“Nick Hudson.” Chafik tapped away the satellite map and, in a few seconds, there he was. Saul—no, Nick.

He was handsome, almost beautiful. It was a fact I couldn’t escape even after all the evil he’d done. Then again, Nick wasn’t Saul. The black-and-white image Chafik showed us was of a young man in a nineteenth-century frock coat and trousers smiling boyishly without a care in the world outside a stone building. He was just one of a group of boys packed into the stairwell leading up to the grand entrance, but he stood out through his beauty alone: the same full lips, petite nose, and sculpted face, which was maybe a little chubbier in this picture. He was still slender, though with the slight muscular build of a casual athlete. If the photo were in color, I might have seen the ghostly sea blue of his eyes.

The hair alone was enough to make the difference. His was dark, not the silver I’d come to associate with Saul.

“After the interrogation you spoke of, Ms. Finley, we were able to research his history. Nick Hudson, born in 1847 to a wealthy British family that owned a small but lucrative railway company in Argentina before it was bought out and absorbed into a larger British firm.”

“So Nick was a little rich boy.” Chae Rin scoffed.

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