As the taxi rolled to a stop in what appeared to be a parking lot for a church, Jackass barked, “Hood up,” before flipping his and climbing out of the vehicle. Rachel followed him and stood near her door not sure what she should do as she waited for the other vehicles to pull into the lot.

When Adam exited his taxi, she joined him. He gave her his usual haughty smile and put his arm around her waist, pulling her close. After a brush of his nose against hers and a muttered “get a room” from Zach, he released her to speak with his brother. They spoke a different language and after a few moments Rachel grew bored and drifted away to take in their surroundings. While she explored, several dark silver sedans pulled into the lot with windows tinted to the point they were almost black.

One of the cars rolled to a stop in front of her, Inquisitor Jackass stepped forward and opened the door. After everyone settled, the driver handed Jackass, Dr. Campbell and herself a blindfold.

Rachel eyeballed the colorful fabric as she took it from him. “If I bought a nice silk sleep mask for myself, would that work as a blindfold or does it have to be an Order issued one?” The driver snorted. “I mean, as long as my eyes are covered, anything would do, right? Because, if I’m going to wear one of these all the time, it would be nice to have one that slides on and off without snagging in my hair,” she added, wincing. “Like now would be nice,” she mumbled as she tried to free the strands of her hair stuck in the newly made knot at the back of her head.

Silence reigned.

They’d been in the car for ten or so minutes when the air immediately cooled in the car, and her skin no longer registered the heat of the sun. Rachel shivered at its disappearance. When the sun never seemed to return, Rachel asked, “Are we in a tunnel?”

“Yes,” Jackass replied. “And we will be for the rest of our trip.”

“Then can I take off the blindfold?”

“No.”

But a tunnel meant she couldn’t see, and if she couldn’t see… “Why not? I can’t give away a location if I don’t know where it is.”

Someone sighed.

“The headlights will illuminate our path,” Jackass said.

Well, duh! But… “What does that matter. I don’t know how to get here”—she said, pointing to her car seat—“so seeing the turns inside a tunnel won’t matter.”

“We cannot take that chance.”

Dr. Campbell added, “As the city encroaches on our land it becomes harder and harder to hide our destination’s true purpose. The outer walls are left to ruin, but we built these tunnels so that our arrival is hidden from prying eyes.”

“I still don’t see how wearing the blindfold now will help. I’m in the tunnel with no knowledge of how I got here.”

Someone sighed again.

“We can’t let you see. We can’t risk the Org learning anything about these tunnels,” Jackass answered.

“Circular logic is circular,” Rachel muttered sarcastically.

“Excuse me?” Jackass asked, his tone brisk. Angered.

“Your logic makes no sense,” Rachel exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air in frustration. “Knowing the path once inside the tunnel doesn’t matter as long as the Org doesn’t know how I got in here.”

“The Organization was once part of the Order,” Dr. Campbell said. “That’s why it matters.”

His statement halted her thoughts. Part of the… Whoa! What? Rachel’s mouth dropped open. Before she could fully absorb this latest information, Dr. Campbell continued, “It’s something the Order doesn’t like to acknowledge.”

“Enough,” Jackass barked.

“But—”

“No,” Jackass replied.

“Come on guys!” Rachel exclaimed, excited about the possibility to learn something new. “Trust is a two-way street. For better or for worse, I’m a member of your group. How the hell am I to ever learn your ways and adopt your mission as my own—as I swore to do!—if no one will talk to me or explain it!”

An awkward silence filled the car.

“She has a point,” the driver said. “Someone should tell her.”

Thank you, nameless driver! Rachel made a mental note to learn his name and to thank him later.

Someone sighed.

Don’t pull a muscle there, Rachel thought to the sigher as she rolled her eyes behind her blindfold.

“The group we now call the Organization dissociated itself from us in the eighteenth century,” Campbell said.

“Okay.” Darius and others had told her that already, and Rachel craved something new. “Why?”

After a few moments, when no one answered, she revised her question. Order members, as she’d learned, responded better to straightforward questions, rather than to the more open-ended bids for information she tended to favor.

“What caused them to break off and why didn’t you guys”—Rachel waved her arm in their general direction since she couldn’t see them and managed to land a smack against Jackass’s stomach, or at least, she hoped it was his stomach—“do something about it?”

Dr. Campbell replied, “By the time the split happened, the rogue faction was too large for the Order to control. Quietly.”

“Too many to kill, you mean,” Rachel interjected, but was ignored.

“And then, no one realized how much of a problem they would become.”

She tapped her fingers on her thigh, thinking about her next question. “What caused the schism?”

“The age of Enlightenment,” the driver replied with a chuckle. “Even the Order couldn’t keep living in a bubble.”

“New philosophers were calling for the betterment of mankind,” Dr. Campbell resumed his explanation. “Men like Rousseau, Hobbes—”

“You know, the humanists,” the driver supplied.

“Some,” Dr. Campbell said over the driver. “inside the Order heard the message and started thinking the artifacts—our relics—should be studied for this goal. It caused a rift that has lasted all these years.”

“It was a fight between ones who wanted to leave the artifacts alone and those who wanted to study and used them,” the driver confirmed.

“In the end, the acting Polemarchos refused,” Jackass said, his tone hard.

Dr. Campbell once again talked over him to explain, “No compromise could be reached. Some key people were eliminated, others were silenced through other means. This horrified many in the Order. Hashashin had never been used to assassinate our own people before. It was an ugly period of our history. By the time the split occurred, those people who were once friends and colleagues had become mortal enemies. The rogue members had no difficulty recruiting new sympathizers from the Order’s ranks.”

Rachel stared in Jackass’s general direction. She’d intended to be flip in her earlier quip about killing the enemy and was horrified to find she’d been right. Though in hindsight, she should have known, but the thought of Hashashin being used to kill other Order agents regardless of how ugly the argument had become between the two sides was appalling. Not to mention, she wasn’t too sure the rebels had been in the wrong. The artifacts should be studied and understood. Just, not used.

“The Polemarchos couldn’t contain the movement,” Dr. Campbell continued, “and the Organization was born.”

“Were the rogues living here—in this fortress?” Rachel asked.

“Yes,” Dr. Campbell replied.

“Then how can its location be a secret?” she asked, exasperated. “Wouldn’t someone somewhere inside the Org know?”

“Maybe,” Dr. Campbell responded, “I’ll grant you, it is probably a false hope to think the Org doesn’t have a record of the fortress’s location, but we keep it well protected in the event that information has been lost.”

The car grew quiet.

After a few minutes and several turns, Rachel tried again, “So, if I understand you right, what you are saying is that even though the Order is lying to themselves about the Org not knowing where this Fortress is, you fear they may capture a non-combatant—like myself—and glen this information from them, all because they didn’t wear a blindfold?”

“Yes,” the driver answered.

God! That was so stupid.

“Okay. Sure,” Rachel said.

“No one has attempted to breach our defenses and we have no proof that the information exists on their side,” Dr. Campbell replied. “but, you are right, they probably do have some record of our location.”

“It would be foolish to believe the Org doesn’t,” Rachel grumbled to herself. How could a group of super-secret killers have such a blinded mentality toward their biggest weakness?

“Okay. Sure,” Rachel said louder, and because she couldn’t let go of an illogical argument, she added, “You have a huge plot hole in your logic.”

Rachel heard someone sigh, but now she was positive it was Inquisitor Jackass. Changing the subject, she asked the next question to pop into her mind, “When that other faction left the Order, they ran away with some of your artifacts, didn’t they?”

Dr. Campbell affirmed her query, “We believe that is where the technology they release comes from.”

“But we don’t know that for certain,” the driver added.

“True,” Dr. Campbell said. “We don’t know if they have found a previously hidden cache of their very own.”

“Cache?” Rachel asked, but remembered Zach had said something similar about securing multiple locations of artifacts.

“They need to be stopped at all cost,” Jackass bit out. “One day, they’ll release something truly dangerous and it will be catastrophic.”

“Cache?” she repeated. How many caches were there? How big was the problem, truly?

“We control six,” the driver answered.

“But we don’t know if that is all of them,” Jackass added, and a shiver chased up Rachel’s spine. 

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