Secrets of the Crown Assassins

05

INDIGO

The base was in complete chaos.

Men ran back and forth, children screamed, women pushed past me, teenagers either making jokes about the body or crying in the corner. I could barely think through the scene unfolding around me.

Nydia stood to my left, regaining her composure as she was sipping a second cup of caramel hot chocolate, her grin returning though not quite as wide as before. Out of respect, she would turn grim and nod to friends and family of the dead before turning back into crazy-grin-Nydia. I sighed as we stood leaning against the railing.

"What are we supposed to be doing?" I asked. Nydia just dragged me up to the second-floor railing looking over the mess hall.

Nydia shrugged. "I just felt like coming up here."

I pushed off the railing. "Then I should probably go help with the body-"

Nydia grabbed my sleeve. "Don't. I feel like we're supposed to be here."

I hesitated for a moment before leaning back against the railing. It wasn't uncommon for Nydia to follow a gut instinct so religiously, and I couldn't blame her for it. Her instincts were always uncannily on point, whether it was something big or small. I wasn't about to fight against it.

Nydia had reached the very bottom of her glass by the time Wolf came into view. He was alone and a spot of blood was still on his shirt from cleaning out the body. His eyes scanned the crowd below before they landed on us and nodded in greeting as he passed.

"Nydia. Indigo."

We nodded back, neither of us failing to notice the slight tilt of his head, which said "Follow me."

Waiting a few seconds, Nydia and I followed at a distance as he wove through the halls, journeying away from the mess and training halls towards the area of the dorms. At last, he paused and opened a metal door, standing aside to let us in first. We stepped into a cluttered custodial closet that didn't look like it had been used in a while. He shut the door behind us and it clicked. Locked.

Nydia sneezed.

"If your only intention is to make us clean the crime scene, I'm never listening to my gut again," she glared at him.

"I know better than to put you in charge of cleaning."

"Then what are we doing in here besides magically activating allergies I never had?"

"There's a mole," Wolf whispered, getting straight to the point.

"A mole?" I asked.

Wolf nodded. "The way our victim was murdered out in the open couldn't have been done by someone breaking in unless they were an assassin. But, if it were an assassin, they would've killed everyone, not just one person."

"Maybe it was an Intellect," I said. "They could've been planning to make it think it was one of our own and tear each other apart all by ourselves."

"It's possible," Wolf said. "But what about the murders all summer? You yourself said it wasn't the assassins' MO."

"You think the murder in the training hall is related to the murders of our spies?"

"It has to be," Wolf said. "For months, we've been wondering how others were getting their hands on our own secret operatives, but what if there was a mole all along? They would have easy access to our information. And if someone figured it out, the mole would've needed to silence them someway, and quickly without leaving room for much planning..."