Inked Wings
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE - Later

/ Kinkade’s POV/

Malicious lies lead nowhere where karma cannot follow. My subordinates, dare I say, chased after it. Their mission to retrieve the boy proved insufficient for them, it seems. They but had to play with Rebellion’s Dove, though it seems the Dove became ill of all the play. They are bedridden now, hospitalized inside the Health-fare Department.

I am sitting in the ‘waiting room’ and I am watching them lay unconscious. The one factor which is separating both sides is the see-through glass.

Soldier Four-four. He has it the worst, his chest bloodied with scars. He is expected to fall into a ‘surprise’ coma any moment from now. Their lead, One-nine, the older sibling - she has a burn line over the throat and has damaged muscles latched on her legs. The younger one, her sister, Eight-six – she earned herself a large scar, emblemed her face mask disheveled, flesh and metal carved to appear a crater, both bladed at the same while. The metal overlay of her mask, left nothing but a shattered mirror.

This isn’t the result of their lying and egoism… but their lack of cleverness, as well as their nonexistent self-awareness. Without those contradictions born, without them learned, they can never come close to the Riddleman himself. Many try but perish in return. A part of me has known I cannot trust their blindness. I have already announced letting them off. The mission is personally mine to accomplish.

I stare at them, a conversation blooming in my head. Rebellion’s Dove has the boy under one’s wing. Where the Dove flies, the boy must follow. The footage Bakhsh shamefully revealed to me confirms it. Says they acted with trust. Yes, I will not in good conscience bring the boy in, he is but a child. Nevertheless, I am obliged to manipulate the organization into giving up on the person and to enjoy the busy task his father’s work will bring our encoders.

As for Dove, as well as for the recent antics of the Rebellion, punishment will atone the mass murders and their ridding families off their dear ones. Where I will replace them, I am still debating.