We had not given a cry for help when the Menders of Taurus Hospital saw us coming forward. It was as if the ones closest to the entrance of the building had sensed our abrupt arrival, and had been able to feel the closeness of death around the ones who had arrived with me. They were fast, running to consume the distance between us, their feet barely making a sound, the concentration etched in their faces.

A soft rush of air brushed my side. The stranger was gone.

It was this that I considered, how he had left without a word, how I had wanted him to say something, anything that would make sense of why he had saved our lives, how he had known where we were. Now that we were on Earth, in the safety of Taurus’ property there was no need to fight against the light-headedness that sought to overcome my reason. But even if I had still had full command of my mental faculties I would not have understood the fact that we had been saved when we should not have been.

Voices bombarded my ears, forced me to listen to them. They were asking of the state of the ones I held. I was staring at them, bewildered and not answering. Hands were pulling Pian away from where I clutched him to my chest. Someone mentioned the wound, the blood. Others were attempting to free Orion from the hold of my power. He had not yet fallen asleep, but his lids were heavy, and the eyes were unfocused.

They placed them on gurneys and ran away with them. I saw how their fingers moved over the bodies, searching for the wounds, sensing the extent of the damages. They spoke to each other, and I realized I was standing on the line between the realm of my thoughts and reality. There was no time to float away into the haze, not now.

There were those who had remained behind; smooth fingers moved over me, searching for the total number of injuries I had received. They questioned me, wanting to know if I was suffering from internal wounds. I did not think I was. I told them so, gazing at the ever-dwindling gurneys that travelled down the passage. Orion was in one of them. I had wanted to go with him.

Nevertheless they took me into a room, did the search themselves; clearly I was out of sorts, and could not give them a sensible answer concerning my condition. They proceeded to begin healing, and I looked at the curtained window, drifting away to some far off place which held memories old and recent.

That had been three hours ago.

Now I was sitting in a chair beside a coffee table in the waiting area. It was quite comfortable, that chair. It was made of pale grey woven fabric and peppered with colorful grains. The grains were tempting; I could not help but pinch and pick at them with my fingernails. They seemed to somewhat ease the tension that kept my soul rigid. My body, on the other hand, was in perfect form, and seemed relaxed. The Menders had remade it until nothing ached, and the tiredness was long gone.

It was the thoughts, however, that caused the terrible torment. I wondered if I was in shock; it felt as if I was in shock. People moved to and fro as they always did in the hospital. Always the respectful quiet and the slow atmosphere that descended upon the building when all was at peace. It was maddening, adding to the storm that raged within. I did not speak because I could not; the emotional exhaustion that was being endured during those minutes would have easily revealed my weakness in a fountain of tears or a blast of sudden rage.

I looked to my right, felt the stiff strings of my neck turn. Orion was sitting in the other pale chair, on the other side of the dark brown coffee table. He was leaning backward, taking full advantage of the soft comfort to his body. His elbows rested on the armrests and the hands were steepled so the tips touched the top of his full lips. His natural color had returned, and his lips possessed the subtle rosy shade. He was thinking rather than lost in thought, as he seemed very aware of those who passed us in either direction. He might have been aware then, that I was watching him from the corner of my eye, yet he did nothing.

The Menders had saved him, so I had been told over an hour before. They had removed the glue from the wound and had spent the better part of two hours conducting alternate healing, summoning the cells of the flesh of the lungs, chest and back to divide and increase their number until he was whole again. The remainder of that time, they said, was used to make his blood increase, as he had lost much of it on the job. He would be perfectly fine. I had listened without interruption, and afterward had only nodded and spoken my thanks.

He would be perfectly fine.

I remembered then how the Mender who had worked on my injuries had brought back my focus along with my health. As I was being healed my hands had never ceased to shake, no matter how tightly I clutched them. The woman was respectful; she had continued on as if she had never noticed this.

Never had I dared to believe Orion would live. When he had been taken from me it had seemed so much easier for him to die. Had I held faith that he would survive and been proven wrong while he breathed his last breath far away where I could not see him, the inward devastation would have been horrible. It would have been nothing compared to the few tears that I had shed. But there he was, sitting at my side in a manner that would have suggested to anyone else that he had not almost lost his life. His skin was smooth; there was not a scar present to tell the tale.

I could not discard the feeling that his survival had been my own, that had he died, I would have forever lost something within myself. It was a fearful thought, one that heightened the silent chaos. But I was not ashamed.

Now the violet orbs watched me with sudden stealth, as if he was letting me know he had known all along that I was watching him. He did not gloat, neither did he sneer. He only watched and I could not decipher his thoughts. Rather it felt as if he was seeing through me into my soul, and this was something I had always suspected he was able to do, only he had not cared to before.

A warmth descended over me. I looked down, at the stack of magazines in front of the small potted plant on the table. I ran a hand over my right thigh. My nails scraped over the black fabric of the uniform. The scent of The Amazon was no longer on us; it had been banished from our bodies now that we had been healed and had changed into fresh uniforms. I did not want that scent again, as much as I did not wish to remember the memories they triggered: the fear, the vulnerability. The devils.

I glanced to my right. He was still watching, his expression unreadable.

I had not expected Agent Rozen to find us to inquire about Pian’s health, as our target had not truly been her concern; she had not been instructed to make contact after the completion of her assignment, which had been both a failure and a triumph: Gunther was dead, but the Supernatural department had gained the powerful bracelet.

She had returned before Orion was released, when I had been sitting alone. She had decided against taking a seat, and remained standing. She listened as I told her how the Menders had found the talisman inside his back that had kept him in perpetual slumber and removed it, how they were forcing the blood cells within his marrow to divide and mature at a faster rate as recompense for the blood he had lost, how they had already closed up the wound and were strengthening the flesh so it would be as healthy as the rest of him. It would only be a matter of time before he was released, before our half of the job was completed.

Rozen had nodded then, and said her simple farewell. She had not spoken of Jones’ current condition, but there was no despair within her, so he must have survived and was on his way to being completely healed. She did not speak her farewell on her partner’s behalf; we both knew he would never have sent such a message. I did not believe he had anything to say, now that his assignment was completed. She walked away, unfolded her arms and stuck them in her pockets, and I had watched her, thinking I probably would not see either of them again. Not unless we were forced to cross paths.

Orion was gazing forward now, at the entrance of the passage before us. It was only then that I forced myself to speak.

“I will ask for the last time. Whatever your answer, I won’t forget it.” I paused. “What do you know of the exchange?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you involved in it?”

“No.”

Fury consumed my heart. He had to have been lying. His heart must have been cold as ice if he could lie to me even after what had happened between us after he had been attacked. But what was this voice that argued his innocence, that told he might have been just as ignorant as I was of the dark currents that ran beneath our agency and the other agencies that were connected to it? But how could he be; he had proven time and again that he was not just any other Escort agent. He was something different. I needed to be certain of something, anything, and as much as I wanted to be certain of the state of his involvement, I always lost hold as soon as he spoke.

My fingertips ached. I had unknowingly dug them into the armrests. I released them, took a breath. My voice could not be allowed to betray what I felt.

“You should have died—back in The Amazon when Willford found us. The roots that attacked us should have killed you. I saw when one of them struck...and you saved Jones. The both of you would have died from the impact alone under normal circumstances. Any Telekinetic would. But your shield was strong—unreasonably strong.” I closed my eyes, opened them. “That bullet should have killed you, Orion. You should have died in the first hour.”

“It sounds like you wanted me to die.”

Whatever I had been about to say was forgotten.

He quickly repented. “I apologize...I should not have said that.”

Orion looked downward. “Sometimes it is best to be ignorant of the things that happen around us: the dangers that happen and can happen when we know too much. The secrets of Life and the unfairness of our existence. There are times when one is destroyed because his ignorance has crippled him, I won’t deny that. If he had known enough to save himself he could have done so. But in other cases one’s ignorance can cause him to be overlooked by the ones who can destroy him.

“Knowledge is power, you know that. There are those who, either in their greed or their concern, do not want others to have that power. They will, therefore, be seen as a threat, and will be removed or forcefully contained if they are not strong enough to protect themselves.

“The Sevens are more powerful than we are, having earned that power in unknown ways. We fear them and we respect them because of their power and cunning. But what the Sevens know has not made them invincible, neither are they as safe as you and I; they keep themselves hidden because of what they know. You and I do not want that burden.”

I considered my words. “The man who saved us, who killed Gunther—what was he, Taurean? I could not identify him then. But he could not be one of us. He was a...he had fangs, Orion. Did you see them?” My voice held a note of desperation.

He nodded. He did not seem surprised.

“He’s a vampire?”

A nod.

“How the hell is a vampire working for us? It doesn’t make sense. There have never been any of them within an agency. Not one. After all the stories I’ve heard of them...Agencies hunt them. Sixes are supposed to hunt them, aren’t they?”

“What exactly did you hear about them, vampires?”

“Stories.” Somehow his simple question had caught me off guard.

“Do the Sixes really hunt them? Are you sure of that?”

“I heard—I mean, I was never told exactly. They never came up in basic training. Now that I think of it, I haven’t...But there are the myths, the kind of myths that have existed for hundreds of years that even the Humans are aware of them.”

“You shouldn’t rely on old myths. You yourself are a being that does not truly exist to Humans. You are, therefore, a myth as well. Yet you are apparently just as real as the vampire who saved our lives.”

“Why did he do it? Why did he save our lives? He compromised the job but knew enough to protect us, as if he had been informed.”

“He had been informed.”

“By whom?”

“White was the one who sent him to track and get us out of there. He had known that the job would have taken our lives. It would have all been for nothing from the start.”

“Is he a rogue?”

“I don’t know who he is. I, like you, have never met him before.”

It bordered on unbelievable.

There were, I knew, many creatures who walked our Earth but were unknown to most of the world’s population. Despite this vampires were spoken of only in tales and old yarns; they were hardly mentioned in agencies. I had not bothered to question this, as their existence had never concerned me, but was always a very remote presence. I was not part of the department that was involved in anything supernatural, and I had taken it for granted that they were a malignant species which the agents monitored; that their difference, their need to consume the blood of others, had automatically named them as enemies.

Yet now that I had taken the time to consider their existence, I could not help but question everything else about them. The one who had saved our lives, he had found us in the light of day, when his body should have been burnt by it. He was civilized, not wild and mindless as some tales would have one believe. He was a Gifted vampire; it was this that I questioned the most. I was part of the Gifted society, yet I was not aware of his race, when I knew every other Gifted race that existed in our world and in others. That his kind had hidden themselves from us and continued to do so with success had pulled the rug from under my feet, reminding me again that I was not as knowledgeable of the Gifted society as I had thought. It was becoming quite clear that I did not know much of anything.

I certainly did not understand enough of what was going on, including the mystery surrounding our captain, one whom my thoughts had never brushed aside because of his involvement in the exchange. But his mystery gained a new dimension upon Orion’s revelation that it was he who had sent the vampire to find us.

It was common knowledge that if a unit was given a job, they were to complete it efficiently. It was also common knowledge that not all jobs were completed because the agents were killed, proving themselves to be weaker or less skilled than their adversaries. Captain White, I knew, had seen many agents fail to return to their desks from their last jobs, and he had done nothing to help save their lives before it was too late. For him there could never have been time to do this, to keep track of everyone.

Even if he had wanted to save them, the act bordered on illegal; Administration did not allow captains to use their authority to order agents to involve themselves in the jobs, missions and assignments on a whim. The reasons were obvious. But it was this that Captain White had done, and the very act had revealed his concern. That he had handed the job to us knowing we would most likely die was not reason enough; he had known that some of his agents were going to their deaths in the past. But he had felt the need to send help, and Orion, the one who had apparently spoken to him after being released from the hospital, claimed he did not know the reason.

I sighed, but it did not alleviate the growing headache.

I wondered, then, if he was an agent at all, the one who had saved us. Perhaps Captain White had not wanted to involve another Taurean so his tracks would remain covered and the members of Administration would have no reason to question him. Neither could he have temporarily hired someone who belonged to another agency; it was almost unheard of. The stranger might have been a rogue, an agent who had abandoned his profession by force and, for whatever reasons he held, refused to accomplish whatever tasks his agency continued to give to him.

It was what I had done, up until a fortnight ago. Only I had returned before Athena had given her employees the instruction to hunt and destroy me.

A great many questions to consider, and for all my thinking not much had been revealed.

Orion moved to stand. He was looking down the passage where a Mender was leading a boy forward. It was Liang Pian. I stood as well, relieved that the job would finally be resumed. His steps, I saw, were uncertain and slow, and he did not cease to look left and right, wanting to absorb and understand all that was happening around him. That he was inside a well-protected hospital did not diminish his caution; he had been stolen from the supposed safety of his own home, after all.

They had given him another set of clothing, as well as a pair of shoes for his feet. I remembered he had been barefooted while Gunther was trying to escape with him, and suspected he might have been taken from out of his own bed. When he stopped in front of us I glanced at the place where the bullet hole had been. He must have been told that he had been shot, though not by whom. He must have thought with great fear of his helplessness when he had been put to sleep, that Gunther could have killed him without him knowing. True helplessness; his life would have ended, and he would have not been able to do anything to stop it. These were not things a boy should have to consider; the stain should not have begun in his youth.

His eyes bore the same intelligence as I had seen in that small picture that had been on the right hand corner of the file we had been given four days ago. But now the eyes were distant though they struggled to remain anchored in the present. He was in traumatized. He was half-listening to the Mender as she told him we would take him home, back to his parents. She laid a hand on his shoulder, told him he did not have to be afraid.

She did not linger, but gave to us a simple nod and left to continue her work.

Pian did not move. His arms, gangly from the blooms of puberty, hung at his sides. He looked beyond, at the wall behind us. The film of moisture that caused his eyes to glisten told he was trying not to cry. It was something to consider that his life had been intertwined with ours for four days yet we had never truly interacted, that we had not ever heard him speak. I told myself it did not matter whether he did or not; in another few minutes he would be forgotten.

I spoke. “Come along, Liang. Your father is waiting to take you home.”

My tone had been soft enough, as, I hoped, had been my expression. But he was hesitant. This was understandable. But time could not be wasted. I walked away as if his hesitation had gone unnoticed, knowing he would follow because he did not want to be alone to the many questions that I did not doubt haunted him.

I chanced a glance over my shoulder. He was walking close behind, head half-bowed to hide the tears. Orion was behind him. I saw that he was watching me, but the glance was far too short to read the expression he held. Not that I would have been able to read it. And it was good that he could not see my face; I needed to empty my eyes again, to bring to them the illusion of control.

Captain White had sent Mia Burne, a fellow Escort agent who was fresh from another job, to take us to our next destination, as time was against us; Saracen Ephora and the agents of Guan-Yu wanted the boy and refused to wait any longer. She had been waiting by the hospital’s entrance for quite some time, and had even resorted to flipping through the pages of a few outdated magazines to pass the time. Upon seeing our approach, she rose and stretched her lithe frame. She put on her gloves and flexed her fingers.

Burne began to close the distance between us, with her arms already held out to do the deed. She would take us to the east bank of the Songhua River.

The Songhua River, more commonly known as the Sungari River, flowed in the northeast China from the Changbai Mountains through both the Jilin province, where Pian’s mother lived, and the Heilongjiang province, where he had lived for most of his life. It was the largest tributary of the Amur, the Heilong River. And it was here we appeared like solidifying puffs of air, standing on the east bank 140 km away from Harbin City through which the river also ran.

Sunlight filled our vision, enough to sting our eyes. The heat was strong here, but not sweltering. We were standing beneath the burning sun; it was, in our eyes, a trembling liquid ball of hot gold, and our skins were being scorched by it. Perhaps we should have expected the heat and brought an umbrella along, though we would not remain there for long. Stones, pebbles and dirt crunched beneath our boots on the somewhat level earth. Light wind cooled parts of our bodies before vaporizing.

We were not alone: two Guan-Yuan agents were standing by the river’s edge. Their postures were both erect and patient, legs spread apart and anchored in the dirt, backs ramrod straight. They were standing, I saw, under sturdy umbrellas made almost from the same khaki color as their uniforms to shield themselves from the heat. Their eyes were covered behind sunglasses, as were ours. Beyond them was the river, a tempting great white stretch that continued its journey downstream. I could hear the gurgling, the soft crashing. Immersing myself within it would have countered the heat. But I had not forgotten the violence of the underground river in The Amazon. This new temptation could be resisted.

The agents were standing on either side of Saracen Ephora, the boy’s adoptive father. He had moved when we appeared on the riverbank, but had not dared to go any further, not knowing how far we could be trusted. Now he watched from beneath silvery eyebrows and clasped his hands, his eyes trained on us more than his son.

Upon seeing him Orion and I proceeded to cross the empty distance, hearing to the dry earth crack under our weight. Burne remained behind, no doubt folding her arms again. She watched without a word. We had taken Pian with us, and his steps were eager now that he saw we had been true to our word, that we had indeed taken him to his father. After a time he had outrun us. Though we said nothing, we did not like being behind our target. He ran past the other agents; they made no move to stop him, as they were more concerned with us.

But he slowed to a stop before embracing his father as one would have expected him to do. It soon became apparent that this would not be done. Not in the presence of us, the strangers. Ephora only revealed a pleased smile. He laid a large hand on the boy’s shoulder, perhaps saying all there was to say at that moment.

The agents, when they came to a halt in front of us, commenced to follow protocol: despite our offer to give them a direct line to an agent from Taurus’ Red Tape department they took the liberty of drawing out a cell phone of their own to go through the process themselves. In this case they did not need our target to verify his safe return; Taurus would not need it. They informed the agent well enough so that our job would be reported as a success. They went on to verify this success to our captain in order for Administration to know that Guan-Yu’s previous threat was now null and void. Now the relationship between Taurus and Guan-Yu was as it had been before: no worse, no better.

Without emotion they spoke their thanks, and we returned it. They flitted away in the blink of an eye, and appeared where Ephora and his son were standing. Pian was facing us. The fear was no longer in his eyes, but rather a decision to speak. I assumed he wanted, on the discipline of manners, to express his thanks for what we had done for him, for saving his life when he could not have done so himself. But he must have thought against this at the last minute, because his gaze shifted downward.

In the next second they were all gone.

I wasted no time; I pivoted on my heel, headed in the direction we came from in steady, firm steps. Orion must have noticed my aloofness, and of course he had said nothing, as I had expected. I kept my eyes on Burne who, despite her stance of perfect composure, wanted to leave the heat.

Pian had considered thanking us, I reflected then. I wondered if he would still have wanted to do so if we had both told him the true account of all we had done; how there had been times when most of us had not cared about finding him as much as we did about saving each other’s lives, that if it had been up to some of us we would have abandoned him, perhaps for a few hours longer, perhaps for forever. Perhaps he had thought of this, that our hearts were not as pure as he had thought at first glance, and had then chosen to remain silent.

Burne had been reading our faces the closer we approached. She unhooked her thumbs from the lips of her pockets, tucked a stray lock of hair behind an ear, and held out her arms.

“Is everything alright?” she asked. She had misread our dark countenances, wondering if it had been reported that our job had not been completed, that we had failed.

I tightened my hold on her arm. I took deliberate care to avoid Orion’s eyes.

“Everything is fine.”