Ciphers, Matt Rogers [a court of thorns and roses ebook free TXT] 📗

hope dies, it’s replaced by something close to soullessness.

Samuel could easily feed him misinformation, just for fun.

But a nagging voice told Slater the kid would talk.

At least, to an extent.

And he realised he only needed one answer.

‘Which Whelan is behind this?’ he said. ‘It’s just you and me here. I’m only going to ask you one question. Give me the name of the ringleader. It won’t make a difference. You know it won’t.’

Samuel half-turned, and Slater didn’t stop him. The kid looked him square in the eyes with his hollow, unblinking gaze. A skull floating on a skeleton, injected with enough skin and muscle to make the kid appear human.

He said, ‘Gavin.’

Slater shivered in the dark.

And he remembered.

Over a year ago, before he’d reunited with Jason King, before the madness of their unification, Slater had been out on his own. A rogue vigilante, a ghost as far as the government was concerned. Here in New York City, he’d first encountered the Whelans, a powerful crime family residing in an impressive townhouse on the Upper East Side. He’d stormed into their home and made a fool out of them and their security measures, beating them down with his bare hands in an attempt to create enough underground chatter to get the attention of an old government contact. He’d used the entire family as a pawn in his overall mission, but he’d especially humiliated one of the sons.

Gavin Whelan.

The man had been making unwanted advances on the daughter of someone Slater knew, and he’d responded by breaking Gavin’s ribs and beating him senseless, delivering such a shocking display of violence that it might have taken him half a year to recover. Slater had seen the same situation a hundred times before — a third-generation mobster with feared parents and grandparents, thinking he had all the power and control in the world because he was born into it, pursuing an uninterested woman.

Slater knew how often that power dynamic led to rape.

He’d responded accordingly.

To him, it had been a flash in the pan of his career. That sort of violence was nothing out of the ordinary, and by now his past was a blur of similar encounters. Sometimes, he forgot that actions had consequences.

But … this?

A near state-wide blackout?

Slater remembered Gavin well. A cocky, useless brat. There was no feasible way he could have pulled off something like this.

Unless Samuel had a point with his earlier spiel.

There aren’t really “top dogs” anymore.

A pit formed in his stomach as he formed a hypothetical scenario. A man in his late twenties, the spoiled son of a wealthy and powerful crime family, who kept largely to himself. Because the Whelans were the old world, running guns and drugs and carrying out executions, all things that existed in the physical world. Maybe Gavin had other interests.

Maybe he’d figured out early on what you could do with a laptop and some initiative.

What you could accomplish by recruiting the right people.

There was a far-fetched timeline where all this made sense.

But not yet.

Slater shoved Samuel toward the drain and said, ‘Down.’

Samuel lingered a moment too long above the lid, the same menacing smile playing across his lips.

‘You don’t need to tell me what to do,’ he laughed. ‘I’m the one showing you the way, remember?’

‘Just do as I say.’

The kid shrugged. He stepped away from the moonlight, further into the shadows, and his hollow eyes seemed to sink even deeper into his head. He put a foot on the top rung, and a voice from below said, ‘Who’s coming down?’

King’s voice.

Slater said, ‘Not me.’

‘Got it.’

Samuel clambered down, his arms and legs spindly as he descended. He vanished from sight and Slater shivered, suddenly alone. Behind him the firefight raged on, but the cracking gunshots barely registered. They’d become commonplace by now, and he knew he was well out of the line of fire. Truth was, if Riordan hadn’t charged in with reckless abandon, there’d be no distraction to allow him and King to enter the building.

Maybe the deaths of his men weren’t pointless after all…

That was if he and King could breach the bank building, neutralise every hostile, and reverse the blackout.

Big ifs.

He scrambled down the ladder, eager to get off the street. He felt strangely vulnerable with no light to work with. It would be the same underground, but at least it was an enclosed space.

Either a sewer, or a tunnel.

It turned out to be the latter.

Slater stepped down into a puddle of fetid water, the soles of his boots touching concrete underneath. Harsh white light flared as King fixed an under-barrel flashlight to his MP7 and fired it to life. The beam spilled down a perfectly rectangular, totally filthy concrete tunnel. It was barely wide enough to fit two people shoulder-to-shoulder across, and Slater found his breathing constricted by claustrophobia. But it was only one more temporary discomfort amidst many, so he ignored it.

‘What is this place?’ he said in a voice barely above a whisper.

‘Who knows?’ Samuel said. ‘We just use it.’

‘Why?’

‘Gavin is … meticulous. He had so many ways to avoid suspicion. He didn’t want dozens of people to be seen coming and going with supplies, caught on CCTV. He wanted to do it anonymously. He found this tunnel system running only a few dozen feet from the perimeter of the building and just bored his way up into the lobby. Didn’t take much effort. Not compared to … all the rest of it.’

Samuel shivered.

Slater faltered for a moment. Only an instant, but he wondered if the kid had been coerced into doing all of this.

Unlikely.

He had, by his own admission, killed dozens of people for the Whelans. People who were essential roadblocks standing between them and the power grid. That took something far, far worse than brainwashing. It took a psychopath.

Slater shoved him forward, and kept the MP7 trained on his back.

The shadows rose and fell as King trained his own weapon.

The trio advanced into the underbelly of the Bowery.

58

The walls constricted.

Soon enough, King