TAKEN (What's yours is Mine) - 4/6
Part Three
Part Four
*
Gwaine didn’t like the Lower districts. They had an air about them that was decidedly dirty. Not literal dirt, Camelot had plenty of that no matter where you lived, as did any town. No, the Lower Districts were different, there was something fowl in the air, corrupt, which, given his own provocations to do with the law, was slightly hypocritical but still unsettled him. Merlin had no qualms about it, the Lower Districts were full of people on the fringes of society and Merlin had grown up a part of them. So had Gwaine, and he was determined to stay as far away from the squalor of his youth as he could. Others weren’t quite so voracious in their attempts to leave and so never did. Or they grew accustomed and decided against it. A few of them were of a good sort, willing to help Merlin out more than once and that tended to put them in Gwaine’s good books.
Gilli was one such fellow. He was only a little younger than Merlin, and while he hadn’t the magical talent Merlin had in spades, he was determined to keep himself free regardless. Gilli had been lucky, he’d managed to slip through the testing and had kept his head down, until his little sister’s powers had manifested - so much stronger than Gilli’s and had caused so many more problems. They’d run as far as they could, but not quite far enough. Gilli’s sister, Mara, had been terrified and whether through accident or no, Mara and her mother had been killed in a car accident while trying to move from one location to another to avoid the Witchfinder. Gilli and his father had been ignored after that, by the authorities at least, Gilli’s own magic still too weak to be picked up - but as puberty and anger were wont to do, he’d grown to a grade five by the time he was eighteen and met Merlin.
Merlin’s extra-curricular activities had him moving from place to place like a sparrow, while Gilli had settled down in Camelot, in the lower districts, using the contacts he’d made to help pass information along. He’d established himself as a reliable fence and had an open network of information.
If Merlin’s database didn’t know anything about his kidnappers, then Gilli was the next person to check.
Running up the last couple of stairs he knocked on the peeling green painted door and waited, listening to the muffled shuffle in the hallway before the door cracked open.
“Gwaine?”
“Merls needs your help,” he said and watched the surprise fade out of Gilli’s expression. He pulled the door open wide and let Gwaine in. The flat wasn’t large and ostentatious like his own. Gilli was happy to sit pretty in a modest place that didn’t draw attention. Half his information came from staying out of the limelight.
Who was Gwaine kidding? Pretty much all his information came from staying out of the limelight. Gilli was a paranoid bugger, with caterpillar eyebrows and a twitching mouth to match his quivering personality.
“What’s happened?” Gilli asked quietly, leading Gwaine further into the house.
“Bloody Arthur drew some attention somewhere. Gang of seven came to take him away, Merlin was there instead. They’ve taken him. Dont know where, all we know is that they’re after a file on some bloke called Kil Gareth.”
Gilli’s eyebrows bunched together and his lips pursed.
“Don’t recognise the name, sorry.”
“What about them?” Gwaine pulled his phone out and clicked into the gallery, pulling up the pictures of Merlin’s kidnappers.
“First bloke looked to be the one in charge. The rest were lackies. My bets are that they’re not working alone, though.”
Gilli was quiet a moment, flicking through the pictures.
“They aren’t working alone, no,” he said, carefully and something crowed in victory in the back of Gwaine’s head.
“Who?”
Gilli looked anxious before he walked across the room to his own computer setup and started typing.
“That first guy is a hired goon. Not very smart, but he knows how to organise. He’s a sorcerer by the name of Alvarr. Grade six, if my memory serves me.” He typed something and Alvarr’s profile opened up onscreen.
“My bet is everyone he’s working with there are his. They won’t be bright, but they’ll be loyal and determined. Not easy to knock out, either. Better to outrun.”
“You sound like you’ve had a run in.”
“Not me, but a friend has.”
“Some friend.”
“Mmmmm. The worst part about Alvarr, is that he doesn’t work for himself. He tried once, it didn’t end well. Who he does work well with, is her.” Gilli clicked something and another picture opened up, this one settled a weight in Gwaine’s stomach.
“Bugger,” he swore and Gilli sighed.
“Yeah. Morgana Le Fay. And if you’ve been paying attention to all things ‘about to bite Merlin in the ass,’ word on the street says that Morgana has a sister. Morgause Gorlois.”
“Excellent: more problems. I’m going to smack him one when I see Merlin again,” Gwaine glowered and Gilli hesitantly smiled.
“Yeah, that’s if you don’t get killed first.”
“You’re not helping anymore, Gildred. I gotta go,” he said, clapping Gilli on the shoulder before heading across the room.
“Hey, you can’t send that stuff to Perce, could you?” he asked, just as he reached the door.
“Already done, Green,” Gilli replied, not even looking away from his computer. Gwaine smiled and let himself out. A wind had picked up in the time he was inside and the chill in the air did little to soothe him. Pulling out his mobile again, he hit speed dial and listened to it ring three times before Percy answered.
“What did you find out? ” he asked, in lieu of greeting. Normally Gwaine would have pulled him up on it, and the urge was there, but he let it slide.
“We’re fucked.”
“How?”
“Morgana and Morgause.”
“Oh. Fuck.”
“Yeah. How did we not think of them?”
“Because they’ve left Merlin alone. Well, Morgana has. Has he done something to piss off Morgause?”
“Piss off Morgana?”
“That would be enough, wouldn’t it?”
“Of course it would, it’s Merlin. Well, technically this whole thing was about Arthur. So what did Arthur do to piss them off?”
“Dunno. He hasn’t checked in.”
“Fucking hell. I bet you a grand, Percival, that the Princess has gone and got himself caught.”
“We shouldn’t have let him go in.”
“No, we shouldn’t. But it was the best we had. It still is,” Gwaine conceded. He sighed. “The Knights have got Arthur, Morgana’s got Merlin, who they’re gonna kill unless Arthur gets what the Knights have, who still have it, cause they’ve got Arthur. What the hell do we have?”
“Internet access.”
“Beyond watching porn, what does that give us?”
“The ability to warn Arthur?”
“What do you suggest, Perce? We call his mobile and see if he picks up? If the Knights have Arthur, they have his mobile.”
“Then we tell them that it’s Morgana and Morgause. They might be able to do something with the information from Kil Gareth that we can’t.”
Gwaine sighed. He close his eyes and enjoyed for a second the feel of the wind blowing through his hair.
“Fucking hell, Merlin,” he murmured and then opened them.
“Do it, text him or something. Make sure they can’t trace it though. The last thing I fucking well need is for them to be able to trace it back to my bloody house.”
“Will do. Get back here.”
“Yes, love,” Gwaine answered before he could think and exhaled, letting the tension slide out of his shoulders as he stood on the corner of a street in the Lower District, feeling like they were in more shit now than they’d ever been while the Knights were after them.
Fucking Merlin.
*
In the two and a half years he’d been missing, Leon had thought through too many possibilities of how he’d find Arthur again. He’d been desperate to. After all, they’d grown up together, gone to school together, college, university - hell, they’d even sat their Qualifiers together. He’d failed and had to wait to follow Arthur through, but they’d been together after that. Arthur had been adamant that he wanted Leon and well, Arthur had been the wholesome type that Leon couldn’t help but believe in him. He was willing to follow Arthur anywhere he went because the daft sod was just a natural leader and he had a heart of gold. He’d wanted to do good since they were bloody kids no taller than knee height, pretending to be Knights while their fathers actually were.
After Arthur had disappeared he’d missed him with a fierce longing that had been really rather unsettling. There had been no trace of him at all, it had been like Arthur had just stood up from his kitchen table where he’d been eating a korma and halfway through a beer and decided he was pissing off for a while. It had been the least-like-Arthur thing to ever do, and so for months Leon had been determined that something had happened to him.
But the flat had been perfect, no disarray. There had been no prints, no suspect phone calls, no evidence that anyone else had been there at all. And then the rumours had started, bloody Emrys had pulled a job in London two months after Arthur disappeared and it was like the light bulb the Missing Persons division had been after. Emrys. Arthur’s obsession, the criminal that had been sitting in the back of Arthur’s head niggling at him for the five years they’d been in the Knights. It had been chasing Emrys that Arthur’s career had taken off. He’d seen the case in a pile of nothings handed out to probies and found a gold mine that just kept growing. Everyone had had their share of mocking Arthur, how five years later and he still hadn’t caught him, he’d found the case, but he hadn’t caught him.
But then, no one else had either.
The Director had taken the case off Arthur for six months, handed it over to an experienced Knight, someone who’d been there for decades and had the grey hairs and divorce to show for it. But he’d found less than Arthur had, and Emrys, Emrys had gotten bolder. He’d spent that six months tormenting Olaf constantly. He’d pulled more stunts and gotten away with more brazen jobs in that six months than he had with Arthur as his case agent. The mocking had increased then. Arthur had his own pet conman. Arthur had taken it in his stride, but clearly it had been more than that. There was something about the waver in Arthur’s voice as he’d talked about Merlin ‘Emrys’ Ambrose that made that kid who had known Arthur for nearly all his life start to smile. Some part of him that had found that happy ever after that Arthur and Leon had talked about when they were in college and determined not to follow in their father’s footsteps when it came to family.
That had been what had bonded them the greatest, growing up: the fact that they didn’t have anyone else. Their fathers spent too much time at work, their caretakers swapped like seasonal fruit and there was no chance their mothers were ever coming back. Arthur’s at least had the excuse that she was dead, Leon’s had simply been unable to take any more of her husband’s crap. She’d tried to take Leon with her, at least, that’s what his memory told him. His memory also told him that he’d told her he wanted to stay and be just like his dad, saving the people of Camelot. He’s thankful he can’t remember the way she looked when he’d said it.
He’d broken her heart just as his father had, and there was something in that, something in Arthur that made Leon stop. Stop and think, because he’d battled with the judgement of Arthur’s Blacklisting for over two years, after the rumours had taken hold and one of their inside men swore that Arthur Dubois was in fact alive and well, and working for the other side. Working with Emrys, the very man he’d spent so much time chasing.
Leon had thought he’d buried his friend’s betrayal, but now, having him here, alive, in the Compound, pacing back and forth with a furious patience and a haunted pull in his expression, it was very different to the man he’d buried in his head. This Arthur held so much of the old, the pride, the stubborn resolve, the compassion, the love for those he held dear - it was all there, it was still there. Only this time it was driven by a man that Leon himself had been chasing, Merlin Ambrose. Arthur was back in the Compound, because of Merlin - for Merlin. He’d attempted breaking into one of the most secure buildings in the country because his love had been taken. Arthur’s desperation to protect those he loved was still there, was still so brazen it almost hurt.
“How long have you known him?” Owaine asked. Leon watched in the reflection on the monitor as the other man’s eyes flickered from Leon to Arthur on the screen and back.
“I mean, I assume you knew him. It was this team that did, right?”
“Yeah, Arthur was ours,” Leon replied, watching Owaine’s expression relax.
“It must be hard, seeing him like this,” he said quietly and Leon snorted. He didn’t have the time to entertain Owaine’s compassion. The man was nosy. He was quick to draw his gun, lazy in his investigations and was half the man that Arthur was. But it had been Owaine who was their latest stand in, and their longest running. He wasn’t Arthur, but he wasn’t bad. He was useful and had fit what they were looking for in their team, Leon couldn’t begrudge him that. And he hadn’t, not since the man had started with them six months ago. But with Arthur on the other side of that glass, and their history so close to his tongue, he begrudged the man everything.
“Something like that,” he muttered half heartedly towards Owaine as he walked towards the other end of the room where Elyan was leaning back in his chair, his feet resting on the table as he scrolled through the files.
“Anything in there?” he asked, quietly, glancing back at the monitor.
“Not much. The files have been redacted. All that’s here says that Kil Gareth was employed by the Knights as a researcher in MRD for over twenty years. It doesn’t say much. There’s piss all here, mismatched pages, like it’s been stapled together with the unimportant bits. There’re definitely bits missing. The only thing it does mention is this last lab he was working, something called ‘Ivan Bliminse’. God knows what that means.”
“It’s an anagram,” Leon said, reaching for the file Elyan was offering.
“For what?”
“Invisible Man. It’s a thing,” Leon shrugged and scanned the page. Elyan was right. The first page was the standard Bio, including the rare mention of the old MRD labs. That would be the reason why Arthur was here, had to be here. These hadn’t been uploaded onto the system, and they weren’t going to be. They were locked up downstairs and left there until they were in dire need.
“Well, this Ivan Bliminse/Invisible Man thing was what he was working on when he was discharged in 1979. My little red flag says that might be the reason why. I mean, that was before the whole MRD was shut down. It had to have been this project.”
“Do we have the project file?’’
“Well that’s just it. All that’s left of the project file is the cover sheet and a whole bunch of blank paper. ‘TOP SECRET’ blah blah blah, Camelot Magical Research Department, Lab Chief - Knight Kil Gareth, Alpha Division. He was an Alpha, so this shit was special. Special enough that he got thrown out of the Knights for it and some thirty years later, we got a bunch of Magical Kidnappers wanting his files. My bet is that they know what this thing is and they want it.”
“Then we need to find out what it is that they want. Take this down to Gwen and get her to look deeper. I want to know if anyone has any idea what this is. I want the files.”
“On it,” Elyan said, swinging his feet off the table and sweeping out of the room a minute later.
“Owaine, I need you to go and double check the vault, make sure we didn’t miss anything. “
“On it,” Owaine answered with a little smile and disappeared after Elyan, leaving Leon alone in their office space with the monitor showing his old friend pacing back and forth and nothing else.
Leon cast it one last glance before he closed the door and headed towards Mithian’s office.
Normally their sector was quiet, very little foot traffic and the fellow Knights usually kept to themselves unless they needed something. If it hadn’t been that Leon had been in the hall at the right time and seen the familiar flash of blond out of the corner of his eye, then they wouldn’t have been anywhere near this case. It would have been handed straight up the command. But it had been Leon who caught Arthur Dubois, and Mithian who was given the case and she was leaving it with them. Giving them a chance they otherwise wouldn’t have had.
And everyone seemed to know about it. He could feel people’s eyes on him as he followed Elyan. It was stifling, feeling so many covert gazes and trying not to listen to the quiet buzz of people pretending not to talk about you. And they were going to be talking about them for weeks to come.
They’d caught Arthur Dubois.
Arthur, dammit, who was determined to go down as long as they helped him free Merlin.
Leon calmly crossed the room and took the stairs that lead up to the second level, where the run of supervisor’s offices ran around the edge of the bull pit. Counting six doors down, he knocked on the door and let himself in before Mithian could call him.
She looked up immediately and Leon took in the frown she was wearing, how it curved her mouth down into a near-pout and creased a line between her brows.
“Leon,” she said, her voice with an ounce of warning and intrigue.
“The Gareth file. It’s been redacted,” he said, watching for her reaction. “There’s all but nothing in it.”
“I guessed as much,” she sighed, sitting back in her chair.
“Oh you did, did you? Why?”
“A feeling. A half remembered memory.”
“And how is that going to help us? Or Arthur?” he asked, sounding more annoyed than he felt, really. Which was strange, even for him.
“I’m looking into it,” she said fixedly.
“How?” he pressed. “The pages are empty or otherwise a biography. We probably could have got the same information out of Google.”
Her scowl deepened and Leon knew he was close to stepping out of line. He’d never gotten close before now, but then Arthur’s appearance had an effect on everyone and perhaps it was showing in them both now.
She spoke slow and calmly, like she was trying to explain something to a child.
“The old files are redacted, yes. But if I’m right, this has something to do with Uther Constance.”
Leon exhaled in an attempt to calm himself. It seemed obvious in hindsight, it made sense. Uther; no wonder they went after Arthur then, the only person on the planet who Uther Constance would blink for. If they had captured Arthur as they had planned, then it would have been Uther handing over the information, not Arthur stumbling around blindly searching for something he didn’t know anything about.”
“That still doesn’t change the fact that there’s nothing in those files. There isn’t another copy, Uther made sure of that. I’d like to see him read through all that black ink.”
“If Uther’s involved, Leon, then the information we need is on floor zero, in the MDD labs.”
“Even if it is, Uther won’t share his information. Not for this. Not for Ambrose. He might if they got Arthur and we had Ambrose in custody, but not the other way around.”
“I know. Uther won’t help voluntarily. He’s fought tooth and nail to keep what he’s doing down there in the utmost secrecy. The board, however, can overrule the individual directors. I’ve lodged a request with Bayard. This coup could get us Ambrose, a Black Listed Knight and an organised syndicate with enough draw to take on Emrys and get away with it. I’m hoping it’s enough pull.”
“Have they said anything?”
“Not yet. But Emrys made a fool out of Bayard years ago, he’ll have held onto that grudge. It might almost be enough to get us what we need.”
Leon nodded, as much as he knew he was going to hate what this whole thing was about to become, it was a good plan. There were reasons Mithian had scaled so high so quickly in the treacle thick world of the Knight’s political sphere.
“Call me if you need help with the boxes,” he said with a curt nod, before heading to the door.
*
Morgana watched in abject fascination as Merlin blinked slowly, his eyes without focus, staring blankly ahead. His body was slumped against his restraints and he was in no way lucid, but a part of her pitied him all the same. His body was going to ache in ways he’d never experienced once he gathered back his wits and she relished the chance to see it. If he ever did regain his wits at all, that was. It would be interesting to see just how far her sister’s torture could be taken, because Morgana had never seen it pushed quite as far as Morgause had on Merlin.
But he still hadn’t said a thing. His broken, crying repetition when she had returned at the end of her sister’s fury had finally been accepted when it became the only thing Merlin had been able to utter, a whispered cry that she had half believed he wasn’t even aware he had been saying.
Merlin stirred, just a little, and his head lolled to the side. Once again he moved in a long, slow blink and once done, continued to stare into the distance. Morgana in turn shifted in her position in the doorway.
She became aware of a caressing warmth from behind her and she glanced over at her sister’s approach before Morgause could get within distance of the doorway. Neither sister said a word until the elder leant on the opposite side of the frame and looked at their captive. She snorted in disdain.
“He will return to himself soon,” she said simply, her annoyance still shining through.
“Will his wits?”
“He’s somewhat conscious now, I see no reason he will not be fine. And if he isn’t then it will make no matter. I assume you have not changed your mind about returning him to his lover?”
“I have not, no,” she replied, eyeing Morgause. Her sister had never wavered in the time Morgana had known her. She had maintained this irrevocable calm that Morgana envied. Especially now. They were close, Merlin’s capture instead of Arthur’s had posed a threat earlier, but it had worked out in their favour, now. However, despite what profit they could make by exchanging Merlin in Arthur’s place, having him within her grasps was enough to make her blood boil. It was difficult to withhold her anger and throughout it all Morgause barely blinked.
“Then it will be fine,” Morgause soothed, “Uther will get Emrys, Arthur will bring us what we need to disappear without a trace. We will return him to you, Morgana. Never fear that.”
“I don’t,” she replied, sharper than she intended.
Morgause smiled. “I am glad. It was a pity that Emrys couldn’t be more forthcoming. You were right in your assumptions, sister. He does not know about his gift. If it were my own I would have sought out its origins.”
“Merlin has never been quite so curious in that regard. A consequence instilled in him by his mother.”
“Then she was a foolish woman to have trained such a stubborn child. He has paid for his pride.”
“And Uther? Do you believe he will agree?”
“He will. For Emrys, he will. To have the life of the man who stole your son away sitting in the palm of your hands, if it were you, Morgana, would you be so merciful to Uther?”
“No.”
“Then have faith that your revenge on Emrys will be swift from Uther’s hands. When Mordred is safe we will return for Uther, until then, we let this plan come to fruition. It will not do well to burden ourselves too greatly.”
Morgana nodded, looking back at Merlin. She should be more happy about him like this, she knew. Merlin had played his part, but seeing him so vulnerable now, barely cognizant and without his magic, it was hard to punish him.
But she would, she would take her chance when she got it. Merlin would pay for making her forget Mordred when he needed her.
“Have you made the call to Uther?” Morgana asked, looking to her sister. Morgause frowned.
“I think that would be best left to you, sister,” she replied and Morgana nodded.
“Soon,” she said. “After Merlin wakes.”
*
She had been fourteen when she had first thought that one day Arthur Constance was going to give her an ulcer. He had been an irritating child, pompous and proud. He had been determined to follow in his father’s footsteps and had no qualms about telling everyone they were wrong if they disagreed with the finely tuned rules of the world that Uther had instilled, whether by direct influence or Arthur’s desperate need for approval.
Some fifteen years later (give or take, please god, take) Arthur seemed to be living up to her whims rather well, in that irritating way he had of over excelling everyone’s normal expectations.
Only Arthur could use the only spontaneous thing he had ever done and turn it into something that gave her more work to do in the space of several hours than she did in a month. Ok, so maybe she was overestimating, but she was damn well allowed. Her childhood friend was on a one way road to a life term prison sentence, and it was her job to save said friends lover, who, if she was doing her job properly, she should be arresting as well.
Not to mention this whole thing had suddenly found her bumping heads with Uther Constance, the old man she used to be scared of as a child. Who had always seemed ten foot high and terrifyingly stern.
What was worse, was that she was having to play one Director against another against another to get it all happening and if it went tits up, then she was going to have to pay the price just as much as Arthur was.
Bruce Bayard fixed her a stern stare of his own over his glasses and then turned to face her properly.
“And you’re sure that Constance has the information.”
“I’m certain, sir,” she said and watched the indecision flitter across the man’s face before it settled.
“Right. Well, I put it to the board, and they agreed to give you the clout, Agent Nemeth, on the proviso that you bring Merlin Ambrose into custody. I want that boy found and brought to justice. Is that understood? This team of yours is being given the chance to bring down a handful of dangerous criminals. Don’t let this slip out of your fingers, you hear?”
“I won’t, Sir,” she replied, determined to keep the flush of success off her face. She couldn’t help it; this wasn’t something to take lightly. As of this moment, she had authority over Uther Constance.
Bayard nodded and reached into his inside pocket, pulling out a folded set of orders.
“If Constance argues your point - as he undoubtedly will - give him this,” he said, handing her the paper.
“And remember agent Nemeth, keep me posted, will you?”
Mithian smiled, feeling oily as she did it.
“I will, Sir,” she said, with a saluting nod and left, clutching the orders with a too tight grasp, really. They were going to tear.
*
Out of them all, it really was going to be Gwen who took the news of Arthur’s strange reappearance the worst of them all. At the time of his disappearance, she had been dating Lance all the same, and it had been over two years since she had broken up with Arthur (who had been rather determined in catching Emrys, if Leon’s memory served him correctly, how telling hindsight was), but that hadn’t stopped her caring for him in the slightest. There was very little any of them could do, Leon reckoned, that could stop Gwen loving them. Even Elyan taking assignment overseas for eighteen months without telling her where, hadn’t stopped her caring.
This was sort of similar, Leon guessed. But Elyan had at least told her he was going. He couldn’t have told her where, given that it was an undercover mission and delicate on its worst days, but she had known he was going. Arthur had just disappeared on them all without a word. Given, if he’d said what his plans were they probably would have had him sectioned, but it still sort of mattered.
So it was no surprise really, when he entered her den of monitors and whirring engines to find Lance sitting on the opposite side of the room looking put out and wistful as only he could after being told off, as Leon guessed had happened.
“Knock, knock?” he asked, pausing in the doorway. Gwen turned to face him.
“Have you talked to him?” she asked a little wildly, jumping straight into a conversation that was already half finished.
“Yes,” he replied, not bothering to ascertain they were both talking about the same person. There was only one person they could have been talking about.
“I interrogated him.”
“You interrogated him?” she shrieked, spinning on her chair and waving her arms. “Why?”
“He was caught breaking into the vault, Gwen. Arthur’s - there’s no changing his blacklisting now.”
“Of course there is!”
“No, there isn’t. He broke the law.”
“Because his boyfriend has been kidnapped! Don’t tell me there’s nothing you wouldn’t do if someone hurt someone you love. Don’t even try.”
Leon sighed.
“I wish there was something I could do,” he offered, somewhat lamely.
“Then do it! Find it and do it!” Gwen demanded.
“I can’t. We have our orders. The best way we can help Arthur is to get Ambrose free. The only way to do that is to treat Arthur like a criminal.”
Gwen’s face fell, her anger softening.
“I thought he was dead, Leon. We looked for him and he wasn’t anywhere and dead was so much better than being a crook. And now I learn that he was happy. He found someone to love and love him back, and I wish he could have found that with us, but he didn’t and now we have to treat him like he’s dirt.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” Leon said again, feeling just as low as Gwen looked.
“The best we can do is free Merlin Ambrose. That’s what Arthur came here to do.”
“Has Mithian given you orders yet?” she asked softly, sadly. Leon paused, a little confused.
“I guess not,” Gwen said, sounding relieved.
“What orders, Gwen?”
“To arrest Merlin when we find him.”
Leon sighed.
“We’re going to have to, you know. He’s on the wanted list.”
“Maybe we should do what we think is right, instead.”
“Last week Merlin stole 3.4 million pounds worth of antique diamonds from a banks safety deposit box in Rome, Gwen. He has it coming to him.”
“It wouldn’t be for Merlin, and you know it. He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t think it was worth it.”
“Love shouldn’t be worth your life,” he argued and Gwen’s face fell. She looked sympathetic and it made him uncomfortable.
“Oh Leon,” she sighed, sounding sad. “I hope one day you discover how wrong you are.”
This had spiralled so far out of his grasp, really.
“I need you to focus, Gwen,” he cautioned and she nodded.
“What do you want?”
“Do you have anything on the MDD labs?”
“Not much,” Gwen frowned, looking confused.
“Mostly just what’s available on the main servers, their funding budgets, a private list of all active Knights - it’s really not much. It’s a closed network. Like, really closed. Massive firewalls closed.”
“Tell me you’ve been misbehaving and have a backdoor in?”
“I wish I could, but when I said massive firewalls, I mean massive. Whoever they have working it in there is good. Scary good.”
“Right,” Leon sighed, disappointed. He was jumping the gun, really. Mithian had a magic touch of her own and he didn’t have any hesitations in believing that she could get access to the MDD files. It was just a matter of time constraints, really. Arthur had said in his interrogation that he had a time limit of his own. One that had drained away considerably. There was time left, but there was also a life at stake. It was a criminal’s, but a life none the less.
“What do we need from the MDD?” Gwen asked, softly.
“The file on Kil Gareth from the vaults is redacted; Elyan should have showed it to you?”
“He came by earlier,” Lance said, finally speaking up and pushing himself off the filing cabinet in the corner, finding the area safe now that Leon had calmed his wife down.
“Mithian thinks that the MDD has an active file on Gareth.”
“Why would it be active?”
“Continue the research?”
“Why would they be continuing it? I thought with any magical experiments they’d need magical subjects to trial it on and...” Gwen trailed off quietly, looking vaguely ill.
“They wouldn’t do that, would they?”
“No,” Lance said, sounding as uncertain as Leon felt. Leon was about to agree when a sharp buzzing and several dual tone beeps echoed from the other side of the room making all three of them jump.
“What was that?” Lance asked as Leon started across the room towards the sound. Gwen had a long table covered in wires and cables, adapters, switches, motherboards and various other bits and pieces Leon had no idea which way was up or down. She also had the security footage from Arthur’s break-in running on a slow loop through a monitor in the corner and next to it Arthur’s mobile in a plastic bag, blinking at him.
The phone blinked again and Leon reached for it warily and working through the plastic evidence bag, opened the message.
And swore.
“What is it?” Lance asked, looking up from where he was leaning over Gwen’s shoulder.
“Dear Knights, If you would be so kind as to look into Taigan Alvarr, Morgana Le Fay and Morgause Gorlois? They have something of ours and we’d quite like it back.”
“Morgause Gorlois and Morgana Le Fay?” Lance asked, his voice dark.
“No wonder Arthur was desperate enough to come here,” Leon murmured.
“Gwen,” he said, pushing that first wave of dread back and took hold of himself.
“I need everything you have on Morgana Le Fay, Morgause Gorlois and this Taigan Alvarr. I want everything. Whatever you find send up to the room. Lance, gather everyone and meet me up there in fifteen minutes. I’m going to Mithian.”
Lance nodded and with a soft caress of his finger against Gwen’s neck as an unspoken goodbye, he hurried to follow orders.
Leon nodded at Gwen and followed after, instead of following Lance further into the melee of the current floor, he headed for the stairs and took them two at a time until he reached Mithian’s office again.
Mithian was on the phone herself sounding somewhat condescending as he broached the doorway, Arthur’s phone still clutched in his hand.
“No, you misunderstand me, I don’t want it done tomorrow, I want it done now. No. Now.”
Leon held up the phone and waved it.
Mithian fixed him with a dark glare and rolled her eyes.
“Yes, Agent Collins. I understand your worries, but they are irrelevant. I want the information today.”
“Mithian,” Leon said, a touch of authority in his voice that had her glaring at him. He ignored it and continued.
“You need to see this,” he said to her raised eyebrow, holding out the mobile phone.
“It’s Arthur’s phone,” he clarified and she reached out to take it, still looking annoyed. That expression changed a moment later.
“Arthur’s friends have kept working, it seems,” Leon said, somewhat jovially as she read it, her expression darkening.
“Oh dear,” she said and immediately hung up the phone on her desk, cutting off whoever had been making excuses to little effect.
“Yeah.”
“Does Lance and Guinevere know?”
“Yeah, I was there when it came through.”
“Right, well, make sure Guinevere gathers everything we have on Morgana Le Fay and Morgause Gorlois. I want everything. I don’t care who has those files, they’re now mine.”
“Yes, Ma’am, she’s already on it,” Leon said, with a grin he couldn’t help, especially given Mithian’s reaction. “They’re taking them up to the room afterwards. Lance is finding the rest of the team.
“Good, you can come with me. We’re heading down to the MDD.”
“You got the authorisation then?”
“I did,” she said, sounding grim but pleased. Leon smiled.
“Then let’s go and get them then,” he said waiting for her to take the lead.
The trip was quiet, neither of them said anything as they crossed the bullpen to the elevator and the only thing Mithian said after that was to bark at the others riding the lift to get out. Everyone scarpered. She may not have been an active Knight, but Mithian Nemeth was not someone to mess with, and everyone knew it. Everyone seemed under the impression that one day she would be running the place and had no desire to get under her feet. Leon silently agreed with them.
He watched as she input her ID into the touch screen pad on the elevators side panel and the box jerked before climbing down, down, down, further than Leon had ever taken it and his sense of direction short circuited for a moment as the doors opened far beneath the earth’s surface and he was blind sighted by the fluorescent lights against the startlingly white interior.
Mithian’s heels echoed on the tiles as she stalked out of the elevator and into the atrium hallway towards the locked door. She input her code again and leant down to hold her eye in front of the retinal scanner. Leon watched as the bright red light just below the keypad changed to a brilliant green and with a release of air pressure, the door opened and they stepped into the MDD. It was nowhere near as bustling as any other division upstairs, there was a decorum to everything, an intensity that was odd. A tension that was palpable.
Leon followed Mithian who seemed to have some idea of where she was going or enough confidence to inspire Leon to be ashamed of his own.
Which ever it was he wasn’t sure, because they hardly had to go far at all before a furious looking Uther Constance was suddenly stalking towards them through the melee of white desks that filled the circular dome of the bull pen.
“You don’t have the authority to be down here, Agent Nemeth. Agent Cameliard doesn’t have the authority to even know about this place,” Uther snarled, coming on with the offensive straight away. Leon had almost forgotten he did that. He hadn’t been quite so forceful when he and Arthur had been children, but after Arthur had disappeared, well, the gloves had come off and a part of Leon was sure that Uther blamed him in some way. But it had been months since Leon had seen Uther upstairs. It was almost like the man didn’t exist, if it wasn’t for his raging reputation.
“I’m here because I need files on a number of suspects I have, Director, and your division seems to have the only current copies.”
Uther sneered.
“Need I repeat myself, you don’t have the authority for any of my files, Agent Nemeth,” Uther growled and Leon could see Mithian’s sense of self-satisfaction go up a few notches. Uther was one of the old agents, stuck in their ways and their grievances. The man was against magic, against women, against everyone but those very few who obeyed him without question and so very few did these days. He had a department, but Leon was sure that not one of them had Uther’s trust, they were just useful. Even his own son had been beyond Uther’s reach and there had been a time when Arthur had been desperate for it. Desperate for anything his father could give him.
“I think you’ll find, Director, that I do,” Mithian said, her tone professional and direct and Leon could still hear the smug satisfaction in it. “I have the authority to claim anything that does or possibly can relate to my case, Director, which presently includes both Morgana Le Fay, her sister Morgause Gorlois, Black Listed Agent Kil Gareth and project Ivan Bliminse.”
“Says who?”
“Says the Board. Your authority has been overruled. This taskforce is mine and I’ve been informed I have maximum clearance for anything involved. So, if you will, Director. I would like my files. Please.”
Seeing the bulging of Uther Constance’s eyes at the impudence of Mithian’s tone was enough to set Leon up for life. He could die a happy man, having seen everything life had to offer, now that he had seen Uther Constance speechless.
*
All but two boxes of files were digitised, much to Leon’s relief, but it still left him with the two boxes to carry.
The rest of their team was waiting in the Room for them just as they had been ordered, even Gwen had left her sanctuary of computer monitors in exchange for their round table. However, at that present moment she was fiddling with the large television screen that Leon had been watching Arthur on earlier.
She looked up as Leon set the boxes down on the table and Mithian followed behind him to hand the external hard drive over to Gwen.
“In these boxes are the MDD’s current files about Kil Gareth. As you’re all aware, Arthur Dubois broke into the lower vaults looking for information about said ex-Knight. He tells us it’s in exchange for Merlin Ambrose. I want to know what exactly this information is, what it means and how much it’s worth to Mr Ambrose’s captors. Everyone take a file and lets work through it all. Gwen, run through the digital copies and print out anything of importance. Everyone else, dig in.”
No one wasted time dallying around Mithian’s orders. Lance pulled the first box to him and tossing the lid aside split the contents with Elyan. Leon pulled the second his way and tossed a wad of folders into Owaine’s waiting grasp, emptying the last of it in front of himself. He was dimly aware of Gwen on the other side of the room flipping open her laptop and plugging in the tiny hard drive Mithian had given her.
For a while there was nothing but the sound of Gwen’s fingers on the keyboard and the gentle crinkle of tuning paper echoing around the room.
The files were absorbing. It hadn’t passed Leon by the extremity of their situation. They were looking into high profile files, high clearance secrets because someone who had been one of their own was in the Fishbowl downstairs. They were being allowed access to Uther Constance’s secrets.
The secrets that had split the Knights in half and weakened a sector of the force who had once been an integral part.
Kil Gareth had been one of the first casualties.
The files in Leon’s hands were about the man. Kil Gareth had been dedicated, it was obvious from the way the files had been written, each of them dated after the man had been discharged. But the honour was still there in the way they were phrased. It was still there in the way the old man had disappeared. His research had been shut down and confiscated and he had been thrown out on his own. But it hadn’t stopped him. The man had kept going in the face of adversity and so had others.
Peyton Balinor had helped him. The Knights had tried to keep track of the old man, but he had disappeared. They had spent a good stretch of time chasing him and when he had been found, it had been Balinor’s fault.
Balinor, a young man in his early thirties when he had disobeyed his code and like Arthur, had broken into the vaults and attempted to steal Gareth’s files. He had been more successful than Arthur. There had been information for him to find, it appeared and he had help. August Gorlois, a man who felt familiar on the edge of his tongue in a way he couldn’t place.
Gorlois had been killed, but Balinor had made it out, and he had made it to Gareth, who had disappeared again. But Balinor was wanted from that point out as well, and Balinor had contact with Gareth.
Among others.
It was as he read through the report on Balinor that made him stop short. He pushed his chair back and while the wheels didn’t shriek against the floor, his movement had the same reaction - everyone around the table stopped to look at him as he got up and walked over to Mithian.
“Look at this,” he said softly, pushing the file in front of her and pointing to the line. He watched as her eyes flitted back and forth down the information and then widened as it sank in. She looked up at him, her shock turning into that shrewd concentration that said her brain was buzzing and that someone, somewhere should duck for cover.
“What? What is it?” Elyan asked, intrigued, breaking the quiet spell around the room. Leon glanced at Mithian, who nodded once in affirmation.
He cleared his throat.
“When Gareth was discharged, his research had to stay behind. At some point he made a contact in a young Knight, a magic user called Balinor. Balinor broke into the vaults and stole back most of the research before disappearing. We still couldn’t find Gareth, but we could find Balinor. He was staying with a woman named H. Ambrose.”
Lance blanched, the information registering quickly.
“Ambrose,” Lance said. “As in...”
“Gwen, pull up Merlin’s file,” Mithian ordered and Gwen jumped to follow, every pair of eyes in the room staring at the screen.
“Bloody hell,” Lance swore, which was saying something.
“This just got a whole hell of a lot more interesting,” Elyan muttered, throwing his file down on the desk.
“Do you think Arthur knows?” Gwen asked softly and every pair of eyes turned to her.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Mithian said, pushing her chair back.
“Lets compile everything we have. After that we’ll deal with Arthur.”
*
Gwaine had never been one to sit idle. It drove him mad. The trip back to his own house and a waiting Percy had been enough to stir his thoughts around the bend more than once.
Percy was just where he’d been before, sitting in front of the screens, his fingers pressing at the keys similar precision to how Merlin usually did. He wasn’t as fast, but Gwaine had to give it to him.
“Have you found anything?” he asked warily as he descended the last few stairs and headed towards the desk. Percy spun in his chair to face Gwaine as he sat down. His expression was weary. He was getting tired. It was still relatively early, but given the amount of stress the day had already involved, it was only time permitting that had them all still standing. That’s if bloody Dubois still was.
“Not really,” Percy said, grimly, turning back to the keyboard.
“I looked up Morgana and Morgause in Merlin’s system and there’s not much. The last time Merlin mentions her was a few years back. She was out in Escetia for a while, hitting up magic antiquities. There’s nothing here mentioning her being back in the city.”
“Damn, what about Morgause?”
“Merlin has even less on her. Morgause usually hides up North, again, Escetia is her big hangout spot, so I think we can guess what Morgana was doing up there, and I’d like to place bets they had something to do with Cenred while we’re at it.”
There was the briefest hint of a smile on Percy’s lips then and Gwaine had to swear because when his brain caught up a moment later he realised he was going to lose out on a lot of cash regarding that next time they met up with Tristan.
“When she’s not getting rid of idiots like Cenred, there’s a couple of jobs up in Caerleon she looks to have pulled. She plans though, they’re all big jobs. She’s got big contacts too - the Black Knights of Medea for one.”
Gwaine whistled through his teeth. That took balls.
“What does she like to take then? That might give us some idea of what she’s wanting out of this Kil Gareth bloke.”
“She’s big on the old stuff. Magic relics, mostly.”
“Well then let’s safely say this has got something to do with magic then. Little bit obvious but I’ll say it anyway. Does it say what grades they are?”
“Merlin thinks Morgana’s a 7,” Percy grimaced and Gwaine couldn’t help but wince.
“I think it’s safe to assume that Morgause is higher than that.”
“Yeah. Merlin’s a nine, though. Or something high. He’s never really been definite but he’s always said he’s never met anyone who could beat him in power stakes.”
“But Morgana and Morgause study.”
“Does it say that?”
“Yeah. They’re dangerous, even for Merlin. And if they’ve got old magic relics.”
“Do any of them work anymore? Magic isn’t as strong as it used to be.”
“No, but it’s been hours, I think we have to accept that something they have is holding Merlin. I’ve been hoping he’d man up and just use his magic to get away, but clearly he wont. Or he can’t.”
“Clearly.”
“So something more is going on here. Merlin’s not coming back of his own volition and Arthur would have checked in by now if he could.”
“We should have put a wire on him,” Gwaine scowled and Percy shot him an exasperated look.
“You know their sensors would have picked it up straight away, Gwaine. We had to rely on Arthur and that’s fallen through. We have to figure this out on our own. For Merlin.”
“I’m not arguing there, Perce, but I don’t see what we can do. It’s not like we have the phone ourselves, else we could talk to the bitch sisters ourselves,” Gwaine snarled and Percy scowled, opening his mouth to answer but Gwaine shut him off.
“We don’t even know whether or not those bloody Knights are going to do anything useful of their own. It’s not like they could reply to that text and tell us they even got it.” He said with a dramatic flail of his arms. “They couldn’t right?” he pressed, quietly, a moment later. This time Percy rolled his eyes.
“They couldn’t reply. It was routed through too many servers for them to be able to trace. I might not be Merlin, but I’m using Merlin’s system and it’s one step away from being sentient, so quit whining.”
Gwaine was quiet for a moment.
“Could we stake out the Compound, see if we can trace whether or not they’re making a move?”
“The boundary is monitored, Gwaine. It’s as stupid for us to do that as it was for Arthur to actually go inside the bloody thing.”
“Then how are we going to do anything, then?”
“We do what we can from the outside. We know its Morgana and Morgause. Someone has to be crazy enough to help us find them.”
Gwaine smiled, the name bursting on his tongue before he had time to breathe. Percy must have been able to read it on his face because he looked wary.
“Don’t tell me, Gwaine. Come on. She’s not in town, is she?”
“You made me swear I wouldn’t bring her round anymore and I haven’t. Deal’s a deal.”
“Gwaine,” Percy growled and Gwaine couldn’t help the bursting laugh that bubbled up inside his chest despite everything.
“She is sorry about that Matisse, you know.”
“She bloody well should be!” Percy growled and Gwaine laughed again before he sobered.
“She’d help us in a heartbeat; even if it weren’t for Merls.”
“Call her then, see what she can find out. Realistically we need all the help we can get. But whether or not Elena will be any help...”
“Pfft, she’s a diamond, you big lug.”
“You’re only saying that because she sleeps with you whenever she’s in town.”
“It’s true,” Gwaine confirmed, still smiling. But there truly was something to Elena Godwin. She was the daughter of an oil tycoon, an heiress with no desire to do anything proper with her life and a father who loved her to the point he seemed unable to think anything bad about her. She was reckless and wonderful and Gwaine could never get enough of her.
“Do you need to head out or can she come here?” Percy asked, softly. Gwaine shrugged.
“Let’s see?” he said, pulling out his phone.
Part Five
Part Four
*
Gwaine didn’t like the Lower districts. They had an air about them that was decidedly dirty. Not literal dirt, Camelot had plenty of that no matter where you lived, as did any town. No, the Lower Districts were different, there was something fowl in the air, corrupt, which, given his own provocations to do with the law, was slightly hypocritical but still unsettled him. Merlin had no qualms about it, the Lower Districts were full of people on the fringes of society and Merlin had grown up a part of them. So had Gwaine, and he was determined to stay as far away from the squalor of his youth as he could. Others weren’t quite so voracious in their attempts to leave and so never did. Or they grew accustomed and decided against it. A few of them were of a good sort, willing to help Merlin out more than once and that tended to put them in Gwaine’s good books.
Gilli was one such fellow. He was only a little younger than Merlin, and while he hadn’t the magical talent Merlin had in spades, he was determined to keep himself free regardless. Gilli had been lucky, he’d managed to slip through the testing and had kept his head down, until his little sister’s powers had manifested - so much stronger than Gilli’s and had caused so many more problems. They’d run as far as they could, but not quite far enough. Gilli’s sister, Mara, had been terrified and whether through accident or no, Mara and her mother had been killed in a car accident while trying to move from one location to another to avoid the Witchfinder. Gilli and his father had been ignored after that, by the authorities at least, Gilli’s own magic still too weak to be picked up - but as puberty and anger were wont to do, he’d grown to a grade five by the time he was eighteen and met Merlin.
Merlin’s extra-curricular activities had him moving from place to place like a sparrow, while Gilli had settled down in Camelot, in the lower districts, using the contacts he’d made to help pass information along. He’d established himself as a reliable fence and had an open network of information.
If Merlin’s database didn’t know anything about his kidnappers, then Gilli was the next person to check.
Running up the last couple of stairs he knocked on the peeling green painted door and waited, listening to the muffled shuffle in the hallway before the door cracked open.
“Gwaine?”
“Merls needs your help,” he said and watched the surprise fade out of Gilli’s expression. He pulled the door open wide and let Gwaine in. The flat wasn’t large and ostentatious like his own. Gilli was happy to sit pretty in a modest place that didn’t draw attention. Half his information came from staying out of the limelight.
Who was Gwaine kidding? Pretty much all his information came from staying out of the limelight. Gilli was a paranoid bugger, with caterpillar eyebrows and a twitching mouth to match his quivering personality.
“What’s happened?” Gilli asked quietly, leading Gwaine further into the house.
“Bloody Arthur drew some attention somewhere. Gang of seven came to take him away, Merlin was there instead. They’ve taken him. Dont know where, all we know is that they’re after a file on some bloke called Kil Gareth.”
Gilli’s eyebrows bunched together and his lips pursed.
“Don’t recognise the name, sorry.”
“What about them?” Gwaine pulled his phone out and clicked into the gallery, pulling up the pictures of Merlin’s kidnappers.
“First bloke looked to be the one in charge. The rest were lackies. My bets are that they’re not working alone, though.”
Gilli was quiet a moment, flicking through the pictures.
“They aren’t working alone, no,” he said, carefully and something crowed in victory in the back of Gwaine’s head.
“Who?”
Gilli looked anxious before he walked across the room to his own computer setup and started typing.
“That first guy is a hired goon. Not very smart, but he knows how to organise. He’s a sorcerer by the name of Alvarr. Grade six, if my memory serves me.” He typed something and Alvarr’s profile opened up onscreen.
“My bet is everyone he’s working with there are his. They won’t be bright, but they’ll be loyal and determined. Not easy to knock out, either. Better to outrun.”
“You sound like you’ve had a run in.”
“Not me, but a friend has.”
“Some friend.”
“Mmmmm. The worst part about Alvarr, is that he doesn’t work for himself. He tried once, it didn’t end well. Who he does work well with, is her.” Gilli clicked something and another picture opened up, this one settled a weight in Gwaine’s stomach.
“Bugger,” he swore and Gilli sighed.
“Yeah. Morgana Le Fay. And if you’ve been paying attention to all things ‘about to bite Merlin in the ass,’ word on the street says that Morgana has a sister. Morgause Gorlois.”
“Excellent: more problems. I’m going to smack him one when I see Merlin again,” Gwaine glowered and Gilli hesitantly smiled.
“Yeah, that’s if you don’t get killed first.”
“You’re not helping anymore, Gildred. I gotta go,” he said, clapping Gilli on the shoulder before heading across the room.
“Hey, you can’t send that stuff to Perce, could you?” he asked, just as he reached the door.
“Already done, Green,” Gilli replied, not even looking away from his computer. Gwaine smiled and let himself out. A wind had picked up in the time he was inside and the chill in the air did little to soothe him. Pulling out his mobile again, he hit speed dial and listened to it ring three times before Percy answered.
“What did you find out? ” he asked, in lieu of greeting. Normally Gwaine would have pulled him up on it, and the urge was there, but he let it slide.
“We’re fucked.”
“How?”
“Morgana and Morgause.”
“Oh. Fuck.”
“Yeah. How did we not think of them?”
“Because they’ve left Merlin alone. Well, Morgana has. Has he done something to piss off Morgause?”
“Piss off Morgana?”
“That would be enough, wouldn’t it?”
“Of course it would, it’s Merlin. Well, technically this whole thing was about Arthur. So what did Arthur do to piss them off?”
“Dunno. He hasn’t checked in.”
“Fucking hell. I bet you a grand, Percival, that the Princess has gone and got himself caught.”
“We shouldn’t have let him go in.”
“No, we shouldn’t. But it was the best we had. It still is,” Gwaine conceded. He sighed. “The Knights have got Arthur, Morgana’s got Merlin, who they’re gonna kill unless Arthur gets what the Knights have, who still have it, cause they’ve got Arthur. What the hell do we have?”
“Internet access.”
“Beyond watching porn, what does that give us?”
“The ability to warn Arthur?”
“What do you suggest, Perce? We call his mobile and see if he picks up? If the Knights have Arthur, they have his mobile.”
“Then we tell them that it’s Morgana and Morgause. They might be able to do something with the information from Kil Gareth that we can’t.”
Gwaine sighed. He close his eyes and enjoyed for a second the feel of the wind blowing through his hair.
“Fucking hell, Merlin,” he murmured and then opened them.
“Do it, text him or something. Make sure they can’t trace it though. The last thing I fucking well need is for them to be able to trace it back to my bloody house.”
“Will do. Get back here.”
“Yes, love,” Gwaine answered before he could think and exhaled, letting the tension slide out of his shoulders as he stood on the corner of a street in the Lower District, feeling like they were in more shit now than they’d ever been while the Knights were after them.
Fucking Merlin.
*
In the two and a half years he’d been missing, Leon had thought through too many possibilities of how he’d find Arthur again. He’d been desperate to. After all, they’d grown up together, gone to school together, college, university - hell, they’d even sat their Qualifiers together. He’d failed and had to wait to follow Arthur through, but they’d been together after that. Arthur had been adamant that he wanted Leon and well, Arthur had been the wholesome type that Leon couldn’t help but believe in him. He was willing to follow Arthur anywhere he went because the daft sod was just a natural leader and he had a heart of gold. He’d wanted to do good since they were bloody kids no taller than knee height, pretending to be Knights while their fathers actually were.
After Arthur had disappeared he’d missed him with a fierce longing that had been really rather unsettling. There had been no trace of him at all, it had been like Arthur had just stood up from his kitchen table where he’d been eating a korma and halfway through a beer and decided he was pissing off for a while. It had been the least-like-Arthur thing to ever do, and so for months Leon had been determined that something had happened to him.
But the flat had been perfect, no disarray. There had been no prints, no suspect phone calls, no evidence that anyone else had been there at all. And then the rumours had started, bloody Emrys had pulled a job in London two months after Arthur disappeared and it was like the light bulb the Missing Persons division had been after. Emrys. Arthur’s obsession, the criminal that had been sitting in the back of Arthur’s head niggling at him for the five years they’d been in the Knights. It had been chasing Emrys that Arthur’s career had taken off. He’d seen the case in a pile of nothings handed out to probies and found a gold mine that just kept growing. Everyone had had their share of mocking Arthur, how five years later and he still hadn’t caught him, he’d found the case, but he hadn’t caught him.
But then, no one else had either.
The Director had taken the case off Arthur for six months, handed it over to an experienced Knight, someone who’d been there for decades and had the grey hairs and divorce to show for it. But he’d found less than Arthur had, and Emrys, Emrys had gotten bolder. He’d spent that six months tormenting Olaf constantly. He’d pulled more stunts and gotten away with more brazen jobs in that six months than he had with Arthur as his case agent. The mocking had increased then. Arthur had his own pet conman. Arthur had taken it in his stride, but clearly it had been more than that. There was something about the waver in Arthur’s voice as he’d talked about Merlin ‘Emrys’ Ambrose that made that kid who had known Arthur for nearly all his life start to smile. Some part of him that had found that happy ever after that Arthur and Leon had talked about when they were in college and determined not to follow in their father’s footsteps when it came to family.
That had been what had bonded them the greatest, growing up: the fact that they didn’t have anyone else. Their fathers spent too much time at work, their caretakers swapped like seasonal fruit and there was no chance their mothers were ever coming back. Arthur’s at least had the excuse that she was dead, Leon’s had simply been unable to take any more of her husband’s crap. She’d tried to take Leon with her, at least, that’s what his memory told him. His memory also told him that he’d told her he wanted to stay and be just like his dad, saving the people of Camelot. He’s thankful he can’t remember the way she looked when he’d said it.
He’d broken her heart just as his father had, and there was something in that, something in Arthur that made Leon stop. Stop and think, because he’d battled with the judgement of Arthur’s Blacklisting for over two years, after the rumours had taken hold and one of their inside men swore that Arthur Dubois was in fact alive and well, and working for the other side. Working with Emrys, the very man he’d spent so much time chasing.
Leon had thought he’d buried his friend’s betrayal, but now, having him here, alive, in the Compound, pacing back and forth with a furious patience and a haunted pull in his expression, it was very different to the man he’d buried in his head. This Arthur held so much of the old, the pride, the stubborn resolve, the compassion, the love for those he held dear - it was all there, it was still there. Only this time it was driven by a man that Leon himself had been chasing, Merlin Ambrose. Arthur was back in the Compound, because of Merlin - for Merlin. He’d attempted breaking into one of the most secure buildings in the country because his love had been taken. Arthur’s desperation to protect those he loved was still there, was still so brazen it almost hurt.
“How long have you known him?” Owaine asked. Leon watched in the reflection on the monitor as the other man’s eyes flickered from Leon to Arthur on the screen and back.
“I mean, I assume you knew him. It was this team that did, right?”
“Yeah, Arthur was ours,” Leon replied, watching Owaine’s expression relax.
“It must be hard, seeing him like this,” he said quietly and Leon snorted. He didn’t have the time to entertain Owaine’s compassion. The man was nosy. He was quick to draw his gun, lazy in his investigations and was half the man that Arthur was. But it had been Owaine who was their latest stand in, and their longest running. He wasn’t Arthur, but he wasn’t bad. He was useful and had fit what they were looking for in their team, Leon couldn’t begrudge him that. And he hadn’t, not since the man had started with them six months ago. But with Arthur on the other side of that glass, and their history so close to his tongue, he begrudged the man everything.
“Something like that,” he muttered half heartedly towards Owaine as he walked towards the other end of the room where Elyan was leaning back in his chair, his feet resting on the table as he scrolled through the files.
“Anything in there?” he asked, quietly, glancing back at the monitor.
“Not much. The files have been redacted. All that’s here says that Kil Gareth was employed by the Knights as a researcher in MRD for over twenty years. It doesn’t say much. There’s piss all here, mismatched pages, like it’s been stapled together with the unimportant bits. There’re definitely bits missing. The only thing it does mention is this last lab he was working, something called ‘Ivan Bliminse’. God knows what that means.”
“It’s an anagram,” Leon said, reaching for the file Elyan was offering.
“For what?”
“Invisible Man. It’s a thing,” Leon shrugged and scanned the page. Elyan was right. The first page was the standard Bio, including the rare mention of the old MRD labs. That would be the reason why Arthur was here, had to be here. These hadn’t been uploaded onto the system, and they weren’t going to be. They were locked up downstairs and left there until they were in dire need.
“Well, this Ivan Bliminse/Invisible Man thing was what he was working on when he was discharged in 1979. My little red flag says that might be the reason why. I mean, that was before the whole MRD was shut down. It had to have been this project.”
“Do we have the project file?’’
“Well that’s just it. All that’s left of the project file is the cover sheet and a whole bunch of blank paper. ‘TOP SECRET’ blah blah blah, Camelot Magical Research Department, Lab Chief - Knight Kil Gareth, Alpha Division. He was an Alpha, so this shit was special. Special enough that he got thrown out of the Knights for it and some thirty years later, we got a bunch of Magical Kidnappers wanting his files. My bet is that they know what this thing is and they want it.”
“Then we need to find out what it is that they want. Take this down to Gwen and get her to look deeper. I want to know if anyone has any idea what this is. I want the files.”
“On it,” Elyan said, swinging his feet off the table and sweeping out of the room a minute later.
“Owaine, I need you to go and double check the vault, make sure we didn’t miss anything. “
“On it,” Owaine answered with a little smile and disappeared after Elyan, leaving Leon alone in their office space with the monitor showing his old friend pacing back and forth and nothing else.
Leon cast it one last glance before he closed the door and headed towards Mithian’s office.
Normally their sector was quiet, very little foot traffic and the fellow Knights usually kept to themselves unless they needed something. If it hadn’t been that Leon had been in the hall at the right time and seen the familiar flash of blond out of the corner of his eye, then they wouldn’t have been anywhere near this case. It would have been handed straight up the command. But it had been Leon who caught Arthur Dubois, and Mithian who was given the case and she was leaving it with them. Giving them a chance they otherwise wouldn’t have had.
And everyone seemed to know about it. He could feel people’s eyes on him as he followed Elyan. It was stifling, feeling so many covert gazes and trying not to listen to the quiet buzz of people pretending not to talk about you. And they were going to be talking about them for weeks to come.
They’d caught Arthur Dubois.
Arthur, dammit, who was determined to go down as long as they helped him free Merlin.
Leon calmly crossed the room and took the stairs that lead up to the second level, where the run of supervisor’s offices ran around the edge of the bull pit. Counting six doors down, he knocked on the door and let himself in before Mithian could call him.
She looked up immediately and Leon took in the frown she was wearing, how it curved her mouth down into a near-pout and creased a line between her brows.
“Leon,” she said, her voice with an ounce of warning and intrigue.
“The Gareth file. It’s been redacted,” he said, watching for her reaction. “There’s all but nothing in it.”
“I guessed as much,” she sighed, sitting back in her chair.
“Oh you did, did you? Why?”
“A feeling. A half remembered memory.”
“And how is that going to help us? Or Arthur?” he asked, sounding more annoyed than he felt, really. Which was strange, even for him.
“I’m looking into it,” she said fixedly.
“How?” he pressed. “The pages are empty or otherwise a biography. We probably could have got the same information out of Google.”
Her scowl deepened and Leon knew he was close to stepping out of line. He’d never gotten close before now, but then Arthur’s appearance had an effect on everyone and perhaps it was showing in them both now.
She spoke slow and calmly, like she was trying to explain something to a child.
“The old files are redacted, yes. But if I’m right, this has something to do with Uther Constance.”
Leon exhaled in an attempt to calm himself. It seemed obvious in hindsight, it made sense. Uther; no wonder they went after Arthur then, the only person on the planet who Uther Constance would blink for. If they had captured Arthur as they had planned, then it would have been Uther handing over the information, not Arthur stumbling around blindly searching for something he didn’t know anything about.”
“That still doesn’t change the fact that there’s nothing in those files. There isn’t another copy, Uther made sure of that. I’d like to see him read through all that black ink.”
“If Uther’s involved, Leon, then the information we need is on floor zero, in the MDD labs.”
“Even if it is, Uther won’t share his information. Not for this. Not for Ambrose. He might if they got Arthur and we had Ambrose in custody, but not the other way around.”
“I know. Uther won’t help voluntarily. He’s fought tooth and nail to keep what he’s doing down there in the utmost secrecy. The board, however, can overrule the individual directors. I’ve lodged a request with Bayard. This coup could get us Ambrose, a Black Listed Knight and an organised syndicate with enough draw to take on Emrys and get away with it. I’m hoping it’s enough pull.”
“Have they said anything?”
“Not yet. But Emrys made a fool out of Bayard years ago, he’ll have held onto that grudge. It might almost be enough to get us what we need.”
Leon nodded, as much as he knew he was going to hate what this whole thing was about to become, it was a good plan. There were reasons Mithian had scaled so high so quickly in the treacle thick world of the Knight’s political sphere.
“Call me if you need help with the boxes,” he said with a curt nod, before heading to the door.
*
Morgana watched in abject fascination as Merlin blinked slowly, his eyes without focus, staring blankly ahead. His body was slumped against his restraints and he was in no way lucid, but a part of her pitied him all the same. His body was going to ache in ways he’d never experienced once he gathered back his wits and she relished the chance to see it. If he ever did regain his wits at all, that was. It would be interesting to see just how far her sister’s torture could be taken, because Morgana had never seen it pushed quite as far as Morgause had on Merlin.
But he still hadn’t said a thing. His broken, crying repetition when she had returned at the end of her sister’s fury had finally been accepted when it became the only thing Merlin had been able to utter, a whispered cry that she had half believed he wasn’t even aware he had been saying.
Merlin stirred, just a little, and his head lolled to the side. Once again he moved in a long, slow blink and once done, continued to stare into the distance. Morgana in turn shifted in her position in the doorway.
She became aware of a caressing warmth from behind her and she glanced over at her sister’s approach before Morgause could get within distance of the doorway. Neither sister said a word until the elder leant on the opposite side of the frame and looked at their captive. She snorted in disdain.
“He will return to himself soon,” she said simply, her annoyance still shining through.
“Will his wits?”
“He’s somewhat conscious now, I see no reason he will not be fine. And if he isn’t then it will make no matter. I assume you have not changed your mind about returning him to his lover?”
“I have not, no,” she replied, eyeing Morgause. Her sister had never wavered in the time Morgana had known her. She had maintained this irrevocable calm that Morgana envied. Especially now. They were close, Merlin’s capture instead of Arthur’s had posed a threat earlier, but it had worked out in their favour, now. However, despite what profit they could make by exchanging Merlin in Arthur’s place, having him within her grasps was enough to make her blood boil. It was difficult to withhold her anger and throughout it all Morgause barely blinked.
“Then it will be fine,” Morgause soothed, “Uther will get Emrys, Arthur will bring us what we need to disappear without a trace. We will return him to you, Morgana. Never fear that.”
“I don’t,” she replied, sharper than she intended.
Morgause smiled. “I am glad. It was a pity that Emrys couldn’t be more forthcoming. You were right in your assumptions, sister. He does not know about his gift. If it were my own I would have sought out its origins.”
“Merlin has never been quite so curious in that regard. A consequence instilled in him by his mother.”
“Then she was a foolish woman to have trained such a stubborn child. He has paid for his pride.”
“And Uther? Do you believe he will agree?”
“He will. For Emrys, he will. To have the life of the man who stole your son away sitting in the palm of your hands, if it were you, Morgana, would you be so merciful to Uther?”
“No.”
“Then have faith that your revenge on Emrys will be swift from Uther’s hands. When Mordred is safe we will return for Uther, until then, we let this plan come to fruition. It will not do well to burden ourselves too greatly.”
Morgana nodded, looking back at Merlin. She should be more happy about him like this, she knew. Merlin had played his part, but seeing him so vulnerable now, barely cognizant and without his magic, it was hard to punish him.
But she would, she would take her chance when she got it. Merlin would pay for making her forget Mordred when he needed her.
“Have you made the call to Uther?” Morgana asked, looking to her sister. Morgause frowned.
“I think that would be best left to you, sister,” she replied and Morgana nodded.
“Soon,” she said. “After Merlin wakes.”
*
She had been fourteen when she had first thought that one day Arthur Constance was going to give her an ulcer. He had been an irritating child, pompous and proud. He had been determined to follow in his father’s footsteps and had no qualms about telling everyone they were wrong if they disagreed with the finely tuned rules of the world that Uther had instilled, whether by direct influence or Arthur’s desperate need for approval.
Some fifteen years later (give or take, please god, take) Arthur seemed to be living up to her whims rather well, in that irritating way he had of over excelling everyone’s normal expectations.
Only Arthur could use the only spontaneous thing he had ever done and turn it into something that gave her more work to do in the space of several hours than she did in a month. Ok, so maybe she was overestimating, but she was damn well allowed. Her childhood friend was on a one way road to a life term prison sentence, and it was her job to save said friends lover, who, if she was doing her job properly, she should be arresting as well.
Not to mention this whole thing had suddenly found her bumping heads with Uther Constance, the old man she used to be scared of as a child. Who had always seemed ten foot high and terrifyingly stern.
What was worse, was that she was having to play one Director against another against another to get it all happening and if it went tits up, then she was going to have to pay the price just as much as Arthur was.
Bruce Bayard fixed her a stern stare of his own over his glasses and then turned to face her properly.
“And you’re sure that Constance has the information.”
“I’m certain, sir,” she said and watched the indecision flitter across the man’s face before it settled.
“Right. Well, I put it to the board, and they agreed to give you the clout, Agent Nemeth, on the proviso that you bring Merlin Ambrose into custody. I want that boy found and brought to justice. Is that understood? This team of yours is being given the chance to bring down a handful of dangerous criminals. Don’t let this slip out of your fingers, you hear?”
“I won’t, Sir,” she replied, determined to keep the flush of success off her face. She couldn’t help it; this wasn’t something to take lightly. As of this moment, she had authority over Uther Constance.
Bayard nodded and reached into his inside pocket, pulling out a folded set of orders.
“If Constance argues your point - as he undoubtedly will - give him this,” he said, handing her the paper.
“And remember agent Nemeth, keep me posted, will you?”
Mithian smiled, feeling oily as she did it.
“I will, Sir,” she said, with a saluting nod and left, clutching the orders with a too tight grasp, really. They were going to tear.
*
Out of them all, it really was going to be Gwen who took the news of Arthur’s strange reappearance the worst of them all. At the time of his disappearance, she had been dating Lance all the same, and it had been over two years since she had broken up with Arthur (who had been rather determined in catching Emrys, if Leon’s memory served him correctly, how telling hindsight was), but that hadn’t stopped her caring for him in the slightest. There was very little any of them could do, Leon reckoned, that could stop Gwen loving them. Even Elyan taking assignment overseas for eighteen months without telling her where, hadn’t stopped her caring.
This was sort of similar, Leon guessed. But Elyan had at least told her he was going. He couldn’t have told her where, given that it was an undercover mission and delicate on its worst days, but she had known he was going. Arthur had just disappeared on them all without a word. Given, if he’d said what his plans were they probably would have had him sectioned, but it still sort of mattered.
So it was no surprise really, when he entered her den of monitors and whirring engines to find Lance sitting on the opposite side of the room looking put out and wistful as only he could after being told off, as Leon guessed had happened.
“Knock, knock?” he asked, pausing in the doorway. Gwen turned to face him.
“Have you talked to him?” she asked a little wildly, jumping straight into a conversation that was already half finished.
“Yes,” he replied, not bothering to ascertain they were both talking about the same person. There was only one person they could have been talking about.
“I interrogated him.”
“You interrogated him?” she shrieked, spinning on her chair and waving her arms. “Why?”
“He was caught breaking into the vault, Gwen. Arthur’s - there’s no changing his blacklisting now.”
“Of course there is!”
“No, there isn’t. He broke the law.”
“Because his boyfriend has been kidnapped! Don’t tell me there’s nothing you wouldn’t do if someone hurt someone you love. Don’t even try.”
Leon sighed.
“I wish there was something I could do,” he offered, somewhat lamely.
“Then do it! Find it and do it!” Gwen demanded.
“I can’t. We have our orders. The best way we can help Arthur is to get Ambrose free. The only way to do that is to treat Arthur like a criminal.”
Gwen’s face fell, her anger softening.
“I thought he was dead, Leon. We looked for him and he wasn’t anywhere and dead was so much better than being a crook. And now I learn that he was happy. He found someone to love and love him back, and I wish he could have found that with us, but he didn’t and now we have to treat him like he’s dirt.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” Leon said again, feeling just as low as Gwen looked.
“The best we can do is free Merlin Ambrose. That’s what Arthur came here to do.”
“Has Mithian given you orders yet?” she asked softly, sadly. Leon paused, a little confused.
“I guess not,” Gwen said, sounding relieved.
“What orders, Gwen?”
“To arrest Merlin when we find him.”
Leon sighed.
“We’re going to have to, you know. He’s on the wanted list.”
“Maybe we should do what we think is right, instead.”
“Last week Merlin stole 3.4 million pounds worth of antique diamonds from a banks safety deposit box in Rome, Gwen. He has it coming to him.”
“It wouldn’t be for Merlin, and you know it. He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t think it was worth it.”
“Love shouldn’t be worth your life,” he argued and Gwen’s face fell. She looked sympathetic and it made him uncomfortable.
“Oh Leon,” she sighed, sounding sad. “I hope one day you discover how wrong you are.”
This had spiralled so far out of his grasp, really.
“I need you to focus, Gwen,” he cautioned and she nodded.
“What do you want?”
“Do you have anything on the MDD labs?”
“Not much,” Gwen frowned, looking confused.
“Mostly just what’s available on the main servers, their funding budgets, a private list of all active Knights - it’s really not much. It’s a closed network. Like, really closed. Massive firewalls closed.”
“Tell me you’ve been misbehaving and have a backdoor in?”
“I wish I could, but when I said massive firewalls, I mean massive. Whoever they have working it in there is good. Scary good.”
“Right,” Leon sighed, disappointed. He was jumping the gun, really. Mithian had a magic touch of her own and he didn’t have any hesitations in believing that she could get access to the MDD files. It was just a matter of time constraints, really. Arthur had said in his interrogation that he had a time limit of his own. One that had drained away considerably. There was time left, but there was also a life at stake. It was a criminal’s, but a life none the less.
“What do we need from the MDD?” Gwen asked, softly.
“The file on Kil Gareth from the vaults is redacted; Elyan should have showed it to you?”
“He came by earlier,” Lance said, finally speaking up and pushing himself off the filing cabinet in the corner, finding the area safe now that Leon had calmed his wife down.
“Mithian thinks that the MDD has an active file on Gareth.”
“Why would it be active?”
“Continue the research?”
“Why would they be continuing it? I thought with any magical experiments they’d need magical subjects to trial it on and...” Gwen trailed off quietly, looking vaguely ill.
“They wouldn’t do that, would they?”
“No,” Lance said, sounding as uncertain as Leon felt. Leon was about to agree when a sharp buzzing and several dual tone beeps echoed from the other side of the room making all three of them jump.
“What was that?” Lance asked as Leon started across the room towards the sound. Gwen had a long table covered in wires and cables, adapters, switches, motherboards and various other bits and pieces Leon had no idea which way was up or down. She also had the security footage from Arthur’s break-in running on a slow loop through a monitor in the corner and next to it Arthur’s mobile in a plastic bag, blinking at him.
The phone blinked again and Leon reached for it warily and working through the plastic evidence bag, opened the message.
And swore.
“What is it?” Lance asked, looking up from where he was leaning over Gwen’s shoulder.
“Dear Knights, If you would be so kind as to look into Taigan Alvarr, Morgana Le Fay and Morgause Gorlois? They have something of ours and we’d quite like it back.”
“Morgause Gorlois and Morgana Le Fay?” Lance asked, his voice dark.
“No wonder Arthur was desperate enough to come here,” Leon murmured.
“Gwen,” he said, pushing that first wave of dread back and took hold of himself.
“I need everything you have on Morgana Le Fay, Morgause Gorlois and this Taigan Alvarr. I want everything. Whatever you find send up to the room. Lance, gather everyone and meet me up there in fifteen minutes. I’m going to Mithian.”
Lance nodded and with a soft caress of his finger against Gwen’s neck as an unspoken goodbye, he hurried to follow orders.
Leon nodded at Gwen and followed after, instead of following Lance further into the melee of the current floor, he headed for the stairs and took them two at a time until he reached Mithian’s office again.
Mithian was on the phone herself sounding somewhat condescending as he broached the doorway, Arthur’s phone still clutched in his hand.
“No, you misunderstand me, I don’t want it done tomorrow, I want it done now. No. Now.”
Leon held up the phone and waved it.
Mithian fixed him with a dark glare and rolled her eyes.
“Yes, Agent Collins. I understand your worries, but they are irrelevant. I want the information today.”
“Mithian,” Leon said, a touch of authority in his voice that had her glaring at him. He ignored it and continued.
“You need to see this,” he said to her raised eyebrow, holding out the mobile phone.
“It’s Arthur’s phone,” he clarified and she reached out to take it, still looking annoyed. That expression changed a moment later.
“Arthur’s friends have kept working, it seems,” Leon said, somewhat jovially as she read it, her expression darkening.
“Oh dear,” she said and immediately hung up the phone on her desk, cutting off whoever had been making excuses to little effect.
“Yeah.”
“Does Lance and Guinevere know?”
“Yeah, I was there when it came through.”
“Right, well, make sure Guinevere gathers everything we have on Morgana Le Fay and Morgause Gorlois. I want everything. I don’t care who has those files, they’re now mine.”
“Yes, Ma’am, she’s already on it,” Leon said, with a grin he couldn’t help, especially given Mithian’s reaction. “They’re taking them up to the room afterwards. Lance is finding the rest of the team.
“Good, you can come with me. We’re heading down to the MDD.”
“You got the authorisation then?”
“I did,” she said, sounding grim but pleased. Leon smiled.
“Then let’s go and get them then,” he said waiting for her to take the lead.
The trip was quiet, neither of them said anything as they crossed the bullpen to the elevator and the only thing Mithian said after that was to bark at the others riding the lift to get out. Everyone scarpered. She may not have been an active Knight, but Mithian Nemeth was not someone to mess with, and everyone knew it. Everyone seemed under the impression that one day she would be running the place and had no desire to get under her feet. Leon silently agreed with them.
He watched as she input her ID into the touch screen pad on the elevators side panel and the box jerked before climbing down, down, down, further than Leon had ever taken it and his sense of direction short circuited for a moment as the doors opened far beneath the earth’s surface and he was blind sighted by the fluorescent lights against the startlingly white interior.
Mithian’s heels echoed on the tiles as she stalked out of the elevator and into the atrium hallway towards the locked door. She input her code again and leant down to hold her eye in front of the retinal scanner. Leon watched as the bright red light just below the keypad changed to a brilliant green and with a release of air pressure, the door opened and they stepped into the MDD. It was nowhere near as bustling as any other division upstairs, there was a decorum to everything, an intensity that was odd. A tension that was palpable.
Leon followed Mithian who seemed to have some idea of where she was going or enough confidence to inspire Leon to be ashamed of his own.
Which ever it was he wasn’t sure, because they hardly had to go far at all before a furious looking Uther Constance was suddenly stalking towards them through the melee of white desks that filled the circular dome of the bull pen.
“You don’t have the authority to be down here, Agent Nemeth. Agent Cameliard doesn’t have the authority to even know about this place,” Uther snarled, coming on with the offensive straight away. Leon had almost forgotten he did that. He hadn’t been quite so forceful when he and Arthur had been children, but after Arthur had disappeared, well, the gloves had come off and a part of Leon was sure that Uther blamed him in some way. But it had been months since Leon had seen Uther upstairs. It was almost like the man didn’t exist, if it wasn’t for his raging reputation.
“I’m here because I need files on a number of suspects I have, Director, and your division seems to have the only current copies.”
Uther sneered.
“Need I repeat myself, you don’t have the authority for any of my files, Agent Nemeth,” Uther growled and Leon could see Mithian’s sense of self-satisfaction go up a few notches. Uther was one of the old agents, stuck in their ways and their grievances. The man was against magic, against women, against everyone but those very few who obeyed him without question and so very few did these days. He had a department, but Leon was sure that not one of them had Uther’s trust, they were just useful. Even his own son had been beyond Uther’s reach and there had been a time when Arthur had been desperate for it. Desperate for anything his father could give him.
“I think you’ll find, Director, that I do,” Mithian said, her tone professional and direct and Leon could still hear the smug satisfaction in it. “I have the authority to claim anything that does or possibly can relate to my case, Director, which presently includes both Morgana Le Fay, her sister Morgause Gorlois, Black Listed Agent Kil Gareth and project Ivan Bliminse.”
“Says who?”
“Says the Board. Your authority has been overruled. This taskforce is mine and I’ve been informed I have maximum clearance for anything involved. So, if you will, Director. I would like my files. Please.”
Seeing the bulging of Uther Constance’s eyes at the impudence of Mithian’s tone was enough to set Leon up for life. He could die a happy man, having seen everything life had to offer, now that he had seen Uther Constance speechless.
*
All but two boxes of files were digitised, much to Leon’s relief, but it still left him with the two boxes to carry.
The rest of their team was waiting in the Room for them just as they had been ordered, even Gwen had left her sanctuary of computer monitors in exchange for their round table. However, at that present moment she was fiddling with the large television screen that Leon had been watching Arthur on earlier.
She looked up as Leon set the boxes down on the table and Mithian followed behind him to hand the external hard drive over to Gwen.
“In these boxes are the MDD’s current files about Kil Gareth. As you’re all aware, Arthur Dubois broke into the lower vaults looking for information about said ex-Knight. He tells us it’s in exchange for Merlin Ambrose. I want to know what exactly this information is, what it means and how much it’s worth to Mr Ambrose’s captors. Everyone take a file and lets work through it all. Gwen, run through the digital copies and print out anything of importance. Everyone else, dig in.”
No one wasted time dallying around Mithian’s orders. Lance pulled the first box to him and tossing the lid aside split the contents with Elyan. Leon pulled the second his way and tossed a wad of folders into Owaine’s waiting grasp, emptying the last of it in front of himself. He was dimly aware of Gwen on the other side of the room flipping open her laptop and plugging in the tiny hard drive Mithian had given her.
For a while there was nothing but the sound of Gwen’s fingers on the keyboard and the gentle crinkle of tuning paper echoing around the room.
The files were absorbing. It hadn’t passed Leon by the extremity of their situation. They were looking into high profile files, high clearance secrets because someone who had been one of their own was in the Fishbowl downstairs. They were being allowed access to Uther Constance’s secrets.
The secrets that had split the Knights in half and weakened a sector of the force who had once been an integral part.
Kil Gareth had been one of the first casualties.
The files in Leon’s hands were about the man. Kil Gareth had been dedicated, it was obvious from the way the files had been written, each of them dated after the man had been discharged. But the honour was still there in the way they were phrased. It was still there in the way the old man had disappeared. His research had been shut down and confiscated and he had been thrown out on his own. But it hadn’t stopped him. The man had kept going in the face of adversity and so had others.
Peyton Balinor had helped him. The Knights had tried to keep track of the old man, but he had disappeared. They had spent a good stretch of time chasing him and when he had been found, it had been Balinor’s fault.
Balinor, a young man in his early thirties when he had disobeyed his code and like Arthur, had broken into the vaults and attempted to steal Gareth’s files. He had been more successful than Arthur. There had been information for him to find, it appeared and he had help. August Gorlois, a man who felt familiar on the edge of his tongue in a way he couldn’t place.
Gorlois had been killed, but Balinor had made it out, and he had made it to Gareth, who had disappeared again. But Balinor was wanted from that point out as well, and Balinor had contact with Gareth.
Among others.
It was as he read through the report on Balinor that made him stop short. He pushed his chair back and while the wheels didn’t shriek against the floor, his movement had the same reaction - everyone around the table stopped to look at him as he got up and walked over to Mithian.
“Look at this,” he said softly, pushing the file in front of her and pointing to the line. He watched as her eyes flitted back and forth down the information and then widened as it sank in. She looked up at him, her shock turning into that shrewd concentration that said her brain was buzzing and that someone, somewhere should duck for cover.
“What? What is it?” Elyan asked, intrigued, breaking the quiet spell around the room. Leon glanced at Mithian, who nodded once in affirmation.
He cleared his throat.
“When Gareth was discharged, his research had to stay behind. At some point he made a contact in a young Knight, a magic user called Balinor. Balinor broke into the vaults and stole back most of the research before disappearing. We still couldn’t find Gareth, but we could find Balinor. He was staying with a woman named H. Ambrose.”
Lance blanched, the information registering quickly.
“Ambrose,” Lance said. “As in...”
“Gwen, pull up Merlin’s file,” Mithian ordered and Gwen jumped to follow, every pair of eyes in the room staring at the screen.
“Bloody hell,” Lance swore, which was saying something.
“This just got a whole hell of a lot more interesting,” Elyan muttered, throwing his file down on the desk.
“Do you think Arthur knows?” Gwen asked softly and every pair of eyes turned to her.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Mithian said, pushing her chair back.
“Lets compile everything we have. After that we’ll deal with Arthur.”
*
Gwaine had never been one to sit idle. It drove him mad. The trip back to his own house and a waiting Percy had been enough to stir his thoughts around the bend more than once.
Percy was just where he’d been before, sitting in front of the screens, his fingers pressing at the keys similar precision to how Merlin usually did. He wasn’t as fast, but Gwaine had to give it to him.
“Have you found anything?” he asked warily as he descended the last few stairs and headed towards the desk. Percy spun in his chair to face Gwaine as he sat down. His expression was weary. He was getting tired. It was still relatively early, but given the amount of stress the day had already involved, it was only time permitting that had them all still standing. That’s if bloody Dubois still was.
“Not really,” Percy said, grimly, turning back to the keyboard.
“I looked up Morgana and Morgause in Merlin’s system and there’s not much. The last time Merlin mentions her was a few years back. She was out in Escetia for a while, hitting up magic antiquities. There’s nothing here mentioning her being back in the city.”
“Damn, what about Morgause?”
“Merlin has even less on her. Morgause usually hides up North, again, Escetia is her big hangout spot, so I think we can guess what Morgana was doing up there, and I’d like to place bets they had something to do with Cenred while we’re at it.”
There was the briefest hint of a smile on Percy’s lips then and Gwaine had to swear because when his brain caught up a moment later he realised he was going to lose out on a lot of cash regarding that next time they met up with Tristan.
“When she’s not getting rid of idiots like Cenred, there’s a couple of jobs up in Caerleon she looks to have pulled. She plans though, they’re all big jobs. She’s got big contacts too - the Black Knights of Medea for one.”
Gwaine whistled through his teeth. That took balls.
“What does she like to take then? That might give us some idea of what she’s wanting out of this Kil Gareth bloke.”
“She’s big on the old stuff. Magic relics, mostly.”
“Well then let’s safely say this has got something to do with magic then. Little bit obvious but I’ll say it anyway. Does it say what grades they are?”
“Merlin thinks Morgana’s a 7,” Percy grimaced and Gwaine couldn’t help but wince.
“I think it’s safe to assume that Morgause is higher than that.”
“Yeah. Merlin’s a nine, though. Or something high. He’s never really been definite but he’s always said he’s never met anyone who could beat him in power stakes.”
“But Morgana and Morgause study.”
“Does it say that?”
“Yeah. They’re dangerous, even for Merlin. And if they’ve got old magic relics.”
“Do any of them work anymore? Magic isn’t as strong as it used to be.”
“No, but it’s been hours, I think we have to accept that something they have is holding Merlin. I’ve been hoping he’d man up and just use his magic to get away, but clearly he wont. Or he can’t.”
“Clearly.”
“So something more is going on here. Merlin’s not coming back of his own volition and Arthur would have checked in by now if he could.”
“We should have put a wire on him,” Gwaine scowled and Percy shot him an exasperated look.
“You know their sensors would have picked it up straight away, Gwaine. We had to rely on Arthur and that’s fallen through. We have to figure this out on our own. For Merlin.”
“I’m not arguing there, Perce, but I don’t see what we can do. It’s not like we have the phone ourselves, else we could talk to the bitch sisters ourselves,” Gwaine snarled and Percy scowled, opening his mouth to answer but Gwaine shut him off.
“We don’t even know whether or not those bloody Knights are going to do anything useful of their own. It’s not like they could reply to that text and tell us they even got it.” He said with a dramatic flail of his arms. “They couldn’t right?” he pressed, quietly, a moment later. This time Percy rolled his eyes.
“They couldn’t reply. It was routed through too many servers for them to be able to trace. I might not be Merlin, but I’m using Merlin’s system and it’s one step away from being sentient, so quit whining.”
Gwaine was quiet for a moment.
“Could we stake out the Compound, see if we can trace whether or not they’re making a move?”
“The boundary is monitored, Gwaine. It’s as stupid for us to do that as it was for Arthur to actually go inside the bloody thing.”
“Then how are we going to do anything, then?”
“We do what we can from the outside. We know its Morgana and Morgause. Someone has to be crazy enough to help us find them.”
Gwaine smiled, the name bursting on his tongue before he had time to breathe. Percy must have been able to read it on his face because he looked wary.
“Don’t tell me, Gwaine. Come on. She’s not in town, is she?”
“You made me swear I wouldn’t bring her round anymore and I haven’t. Deal’s a deal.”
“Gwaine,” Percy growled and Gwaine couldn’t help the bursting laugh that bubbled up inside his chest despite everything.
“She is sorry about that Matisse, you know.”
“She bloody well should be!” Percy growled and Gwaine laughed again before he sobered.
“She’d help us in a heartbeat; even if it weren’t for Merls.”
“Call her then, see what she can find out. Realistically we need all the help we can get. But whether or not Elena will be any help...”
“Pfft, she’s a diamond, you big lug.”
“You’re only saying that because she sleeps with you whenever she’s in town.”
“It’s true,” Gwaine confirmed, still smiling. But there truly was something to Elena Godwin. She was the daughter of an oil tycoon, an heiress with no desire to do anything proper with her life and a father who loved her to the point he seemed unable to think anything bad about her. She was reckless and wonderful and Gwaine could never get enough of her.
“Do you need to head out or can she come here?” Percy asked, softly. Gwaine shrugged.
“Let’s see?” he said, pulling out his phone.
Part Five