Chapter 35: 35: Vatak

"I don't know who I'm working for, exactly," The bird alien said.

I'd had enough of their beating around the bush. I summoned the beginnings of an energy beam into the palm of my hand and allowed it to sizzle and crackle against my own skin.

"I'm running out of patience here, buddy," I said. "What do you mean you don't know who you're working for?"

"They went through an intermediary, someone from Clan Pren, but the one who hired me wasn't from Clan Pren themselves," The alien explained.

"You want me to believe that the people who ordered you to kill her," I said and pointed straight at Rin, "Wasn't, in fact, the gang that she ran away from when she was a kid, but some random that was using them as an intermediary? That doesn't sound likely."

The would-be assassin glanced over at Rin.

"I didn't know anything about her past, man. I was told to kill whoever came to meet you. You were the target, not her! You gotta believe me!"

I shoved the alien back and sent the chair clattering to the ground again, where the alien ended up on their side. The thing was, for some reason, I did believe them. All of this being orchestrated by Clan Pren was too easy, it was too clean and obvious. Why would one of the three big gangs who all relied on the trade that they got from the megabuildings in Prespian City want to bring their own megabuilding down. The more and more I thought about it the more and more I was beginning to think that we'd been led on a goose chase.

Either way, our answers would still be found with Clan Pren. If they had been used as the intermediary to set up the hit, then someone in Clan Pren had been in contact with the person who had set the hit up.

We needed to find that person.

"Did you ever meet the Pren intermediary?" I asked, and lifted the chair back up once again. The bird alien was starting to look a little dazed after all the drops.

"No… We only ever spoke through holo-texts, I can't give you locations or anything like that."

I breathed out heavily through my nose. I'd managed to get one piece of information, but this was going nowhere fast. We would have to rely on Rin's knowledge of the clan, as out of date as that may have been considering she hadn't been a part of the gang for a decade.

"Then you're useless to me," I said with a shrug.

I unleashed the energy beam that I had been storing up in the palm of my hand. The bird-alien squawked again, but it wasn't them that I was aiming at, it was the chair that they were sitting on. The chair was disintegrated in moments, which caused the alien to drop down onto his butt.

I let the bindings that had been holding the alien fade away and allowed another energy blast to pool in my hand.

"You're… letting me go?" They asked.

"That's right, I'm letting you go. But you better find the very next transport off of this ocean world, you better run far far away," I said, allowing the toothy sinister grin to form across my face once again. "Because if I ever see you again, your end won't be nearly as pleasant."

The alien didn't bother to say anything in response this time, they just turned on their heel and began to run. As the door to the bar swung shut behind them, I couldn't blame them.

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"Do you think I went too far there, Yr'Arl?" I asked, worried that I had tarnished my reputation with the one other being who seemed to have some level of respect for me on this planet.

<What am I, chopped liver?> BB asked as I finally let the synchro mode come to an end.

I didn't think that the AI really counted as another being considering it had been based on my own personality engram. If I could only count on another version of myself to give me respect then I really was in a sorry state of affairs.

"You could have ended their life, and yet you chose to let them go," Yr'arl stated, "Many in the Guard would suggest that you did not go far enough. They tried to eliminate you, of course."

I nodded slowly before turning to face the only alien that I was beginning to categorize as my friend.

"You're not starting to doubt the faith you have placed in me, then?"

"Not at all, Jacob Lyre."

"In that case, Yr'Arl, we've got some work to do… and Rin isn't going to like it."

The two of us walked over to the pair of Lyrin at the bar, who were still deep in a conversation of their own. I couldn't catch what their hushed voices were saying, but I was hoping that Fal had already started trying to convince the other lyrin that she needed to help us find the base that Clan Pren were using, or at the very least to guide us to where she had been kept all those years ago.

"Did the Vatak give you anything useful?" Fal asked as we drew closer.

"Vatak?" I asked, before realising that must have been the alien that we I had been… persuading… with force.

<Torturing, you mean?> BB snarked. I ignored him.

"Yeah, the Vatak you were interrogating, did they give you anything good? A person or a location?"

I shook my head. "According to the Vatak, Clan Pren aren't actually the ones behind any of this."

"If it's not Clan Pren, doesn't that mean I can go?" Rin cut in, the red hue to her eyes suddenly replaced by a purple one. Did Lyrin transmit their emotional state through the colour of their pupils? That was cool.

"I'm afraid not, Rin," I replied. "Clan Pren is still being used as intermediaries. In fact, we're going to need something from you… something I really didn't want to have to ask of you…"

"No…" she whispered under her breath. She had already figured it out.

"We need you to take us back. Back to where it all began for you. Back to where they kept you as a child."

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