Chelen City: Chapter Seven, Part One

Notes: Here we go, diving back into the main plot! Enjoooooy 🙂

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Seven, Part One

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Chapter Seven, Part One

It took another two days filled with Elanus fixing a raft of things going wrong at work, Kieron reluctantly looking after Ryu, and the girls finally making up after the fight that had made everyone in the house miserable for too long for Elanus to break through the final layer of encryptions on Deysan’s research. What he was left with…

Was gibberish. A mishmash of data that was utterly useless as written. He stared at it for two minutes without blinking, trying to make sense of the first few lines and failing utterly, before he started to swear.

It took a little longer than he liked to calm himself down after that, but Elanus did his due diligence. He went through the date piece by piece, scanning and scouring until he’d worked his way through about one percent of it by hand.

No patterns. No figures. Nothing to help him figure this out. Either the process he’d used to de-encrypt this was wrong—possible but not likely—or Deysan had been an enormous liar who actually hadn’t figured out a cure to Elfshot Disease—much more likely.

Or…hmm. Or perhaps he was missing a key. The more Elanus thought about it, the more he liked that prospect. Deysan was such a fool in so many ways, but he knew research. There was substantial evidence that he’d spend a lot of time and money on this particular project. Even if he hadn’t come up with a true cure, he’s probably advanced the state of understanding in plenty of ways. And it would be so like him to hand over a key to someone close to him as a way of tying them to him while making himself seem like the vulnerable one. Classic manipulation. Small wonder he’d been such an excellent crook.

Well. That made dealing with the list of suspects when it came to the assassination attempt much more pressing than it had been before, but it didn’t change the major players. Caria Jayde, Fritz, and Restaria Sanclare had just moved to the top of Elanus’s social calendar.

Well, almost to the top. The number one person who needed dealing with was a certain gentleman waiting with ill grace to be signed out of his private hospital room. Elanus was looking forward to it, if for no other reason than he wanted to put Kieron in a better mood. Getting Ryu off the books, so to speak, would do that.

Elanus walked into Ryu’s hospital room and clapped his hands together gleefully. “Discharge day! At last, am I right? You’ve got to be more than ready to get out of here and back home.” Kieron followed at a slower pace, suspicious of every corner and giving every face in the hall a second glance. It was so…adorably hypervigilant of him.

Ryu scowled. “Don’t I look ready?”

“You look absolutely charming, as usual.” Actually, he looked a little worse for wear, but who wouldn’t after a week in the hospital recovering from a stroke? Elanus went over to the wall and finished the sign-out with a flourish, then turned back to Ryu prepared to escort him down to the nearest Tube and out of their lives for the time being.

Only to see him and Kieron locked in a staring contest.

“What?” Ryu snapped.

“What’s wrong?”

“What the hell do you mean, what’s wrong? Nothing’s wrong.”

“Liar.”

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck you if you think I’m going to let you walk out of here without telling us why you went from being eager to go home to looking like leaving this place is the last thing you want,” Kieron replied without missing a beat.

Ryu practically snarled at him. “You can’t keep me here. I’ve been signed out, I can go.”

“So, what, are your feet glued to the floor then?”

“Fuck—”

“What’s the problem?” Elanus asked before the conversation could devolve any further.

“Nothing!” Ryu said. “Your boyfriend is delusional, that’s all.”

“Something’s got him worried,” Kieron said, ignoring Ryu now that he had Elanus’s ear. “Look around. He knew today was his discharge day and he’s been mobile for over fifty hours now, and yet he hasn’t packed anything.”

Huh. That was true—Ryu’s stuff was strewn all over the room.

“He’s got his implant running over his eyes nonstop,” Kieron went on. “Some kind of scan, I think. And he hasn’t shaved or showered today.” Kieron turned his attention back to Ryu for a second, then sighed heavily. “God fucking damn it. Someone tried to kill you, didn’t they?”

Elanus gaped for a second, then looked back at Ryu. “What?”

Ryu folded his arms over his chest and pointedly didn’t look at either of them, which was answer enough for Elanus.

“What the hells?” he exclaimed. “Someone tried to kill you here?” With what he was paying and the levels of security he’d arranged, he was stunned. “After Kieron left, I assume.”

“Obviously.” Ryu rolled his eyes. “Both times were at night. Poison in the ventilation and in the water in the bathroom. Targeted to my room specifically, since I didn’t hear any alarms, and if I hadn’t been testing for it I wouldn’t have noticed until it was too late. One time could have been a simple courtesy…”

“But twice is a genuine effort,” Elanus said with a nod.

“You people are truly messed up,” Kieron muttered.

“I can’t say for sure it was anyone on staff,” Ryu went on. “There are too many security holes. But I also received word that my apartment is currently being ‘fumigated,’ which is ridiculous, and was told to find alternate accommodations. The only other person I could stay with is my sister, which is impossible.”

“She doesn’t like you?” Kieron asked.

“She loves me,” Ryu snapped. “But she’s also a single mother with twin babies and I’m not going to bring this kind of drama to her home right now. It’s fine, I’ll get an anonymous hotel room and—”

“No.” Elanus shook his head. “If they could find you hear, they’ll be able to track you down in a hotel.”

“Well, where else am I supposed to stay? Outside? Should I go camp in the mist, ooh, yeah, that’s safe! Or maybe I should run to another city where I know nothing about the infrastructure and can’t find ways to save myself, so I can save you the trouble of having to follow through with your word, and—”

“You’re coming home with us.”

Elanus and Ryu turned equally shocked expressions on Kieron. Elanus, for his part, was sure he’d heard wrong. Kieron loathed Ryu. “What was that?”

“He’s coming home with us. Obviously.”

Ryu laughed. “Not a chance. I’d rather weather a third attack here than go home with you two.”

Kieron pinched the bridge of his nose, looking like he’d rather be saying anything other than what he was about to. “You won’t survive a third attack. Two poisonings and neither worked—the next attempt definitely won’t be poison. It’ll be something you can’t evade. It’ll be big, probably too big to hide, but the blame will be diverted because whoever is behind this has power and money.

“But…” Elanus tried. “You don’t like each other.”

“So?”

“So…won’t it make you uncomfortable having him in our home?”

“Absolutely,” Kieron said. “But I’d rather have him there than have his stupid death on my stupid conscience because he’s too stupid to know how to protect himself under the circumstances.”

“Hey!”

“Shut up. You’re coming back to our house and that’s final. If you want to live, that is,” he added like it didn’t matter much to him either way.

Elanus knew better. He smiled at Kieron, who was carefully avoiding his gaze.

Ryu unfolded his arms. He clenched his fists, squeezed his eyes shut, and shouted “FUCK” so hard that even the sound-dampening walls were challenged. “Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Great!”

Yeah, good. Great. Oh boy.

Oh…boy.