My second proper Council meeting isn’t quite the same as the first. For one thing, Gilgamesh is in attendance. He’s sitting stone-faced at the head of the table, and hasn’t moved a muscle since I arrived. My seat directly faces him, at the far end, with the rest of the group arranged on either side. Machina is directly to his right, and Geas to the left. Next to Robards is Professor Superior, then Astro, and closest to me, Zero. To Geas’ immediate left is Andrew Donovan, who I still have a hard time not thinking of as Grendel. Then Pallas, and finally Network, whose presence I find slightly unnerving. Each time I’ve seen him, he’s worn a different face- this time it’s a young man who looks to be of Middle Eastern descent -but all of them have had the same expression. Total focus.

“Good afternoon,” Robards says curtly. Pallas has only just arrived, wearing a grey suit with the Arcadian flag pinned to her lapel. Apparently, the weaponeer wishes to waste no time. “Several days ago, one of the Andromedan capital ships appeared in the vicinity of Neptune. They must have discovered a method of escaping the subspace trap we put them in. Samuel and I waited to assess their intentions before bringing it to the Council’s collective attention, but it seems undeniable that they intend to finish the job they were assigned.”

Blake doesn’t wait a moment to take over, speaking with a far more serious tone than he took when we were trading backstories at the Council’s bar.

“To make matters worse, it appears to be one of the world-killers. We targeted those specifically because the danger they represented would allow no room for failure.”

I did my research, after Blake gave me a heads-up about this meeting. The Council’s files on the Andromedans are extensive, mostly filled in from information Blake and his ‘partner’ Selene picked up off-planet. The world-killers he’s referencing are capital ships equipped with an arsenal of weapons designed to render a planet uninhabitable. It’s not easy to actually destroy a planet, but turning it into a wasteland is manageable, with the right tools. Apparently, many of them were byproducts of an effort to create terraforming technology, so they wouldn’t have to specifically seek out worlds that had habitable conditions for their species. The results were disastrous, but in a way that proved possible to weaponize. They could mess with the planet’s magnetic poles, crack tectonic plates, boil the oceans and raze cities. Blake witnessed the results firsthand, on the planet where he met his symbiotic friend, and I’ve seen the pictures he brought back. It’s not pretty.

“If we let them get close enough,” he continues, “it won’t matter if we beat them or not. They’ll be able to do enough damage that all of our efforts won’t matter in the slightest.”

Hence why this ship was specifically targeted when the Council trapped three of the five Andromedan battle cruisers in an endless subspace jump. The two that they chose to allow through were powerful, but within the limits of what Earth’s conventional and superhuman forces could manage.

“Surely it won’t come to that,” Geas says, his demeanor irritatingly relaxed considering the circumstances. “We’ve invested a great deal in planetary defense programs since the last invasion. And our heroes have only gotten stronger as well. Repelling a second attack would further justify the existence of such programs, would it not?”

Network answers, his English completely unaccented.

“The whole point of those programs is to distract people from terrestrial conflicts, and to divert defense spending towards projects that can eventually be repurposed for space exploration. If we let hysteria about the Andromedans take hold again, the lunar colony is liable to be abandoned entirely in favor of building more bombs.”

After the first invasion, Machina and his company, Anvil Inc, offered to supply the American government and its allies with more of his space-capable next-generation vehicles, provided they wouldn’t be used in sectional conflicts here on Earth. He included a backdoor that would allow him to shut them all down if they broke that promise. But as the years passed and no second invasion came, they began to warm to the idea of using the vehicles for peaceful purposes as well- no doubt aided by subtle nudging in the right places by Network. Now Robards is building ships with fewer guns and more crew capacity, and helping design a fully functional lunar colony, under the same auspices as the ISS, meaning no nation has claim over it. That sort of agreement would have been far more difficult to pull off if pretty much everyone hadn’t agreed that an alien invasion was more important than their political and territorial disputes. Plus, Network having bodies in every government and diplomatic corps, to silence the unhelpful voices and amplify the useful ones. But he’s right- another attack would reset all that progress in an instant.

“Besides,” Blake adds, “if even one of their strikes gets past our defenses, we go the way of the dinosaurs. Continents start sinking, the global communications network gets fried permanently, air starts to get harder to breathe... it’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”

Geas looks displeased, but he makes no further arguments. His telepathic influence has to be just as important as Network’s countless bodies when it comes to accomplishing the Council’s political goals, and the invasion clearly must have seemed like a big opportunity for him.

“So what are we going to do?”

That’s Donovan. From the way everyone looks at him, I get the sense that he doesn’t speak up in these meetings very often.

“What we always do,” Pallas answers. “Take care of it.”

The skepticism in Zero’s voice is undisguised.

“Just the ten of us?”

“Yes. We possess the means. I have grown far stronger since we last confronted these interlopers.”

“None of us have been idle,” Machina retorts. I can see from his face that he’s weary of the bickering already. I don’t blame him. “The question isn’t whether or not we deal with it, but how.”

I don’t blame Zero for being skeptical of this plan either, though. It took thousands of metahumans to deal with the Andromedans last time, and a not-insignificant portion of them died. The ten of us, no matter how strong, can’t match that much raw firepower alone.

“Last time, we left Earth’s defense in the hands of the metahuman community at large. They possessed the requisite strength, but lacked any sort of finesse. A blunt instrument has its uses, but this is an opportunity for us to act as a more precise one. Using the weapons at our disposal, I’m sure we could eradicate the enemy cruiser with relative ease. But that would mean losing a potential asset. Given time to study the world-killer’s weapons, we could replicate them for our own use, and expand our knowledge. Perhaps the vessel itself could be deployed under our banner, if circumstances necessitated it. And that’s to say nothing of the opportunity to capture live Andromedans. We could decipher their language and biology, perhaps even discover a path to ending their campaign of subjugation permanently.”

That makes more than a few people perk up. Some seem interested in the idea of dissecting the Andromedans or their tech, while a few are clearly more excited about the prospect of bringing down the evil alien empire. Particularly Blake, whose weapon is doubtlessly interested in getting revenge on the species that wiped out her own. To me, fighting an entire species seems a little ambitious for a group that hasn’t even solved all of its own terrestrial problems yet. But given enough time, I have little doubt that we could do it.

“Are we to presume you’ve drawn up a plan already?”

Beringer seems fairly unconcerned about the whole situation, but his tone lacks the same smugness that annoys me about O’Connor’s.

“Yes. We can discuss everyone’s individual roles later. For the time being, is this plan amenable to everyone?”

Slowly, every hand in the room goes up, including mine. It’s the first move I’ve seen Gilgamesh make since the meeting began.

“Excellent. You should all now be able to access the dossier. We’ll start at the beginning.”

The meeting goes on for a few hours after that. Somebody manages to find a point of contention with almost every aspect of the plan, and I walk away with a newfound respect for Machina’s self-control, but by the time we’re finished, even my most pessimistic impulses can’t help but feel confident in our course of action.

Unlike last time, we don’t leave immediately. The capital ship isn’t going to get anywhere near Earth within the next month, so we’ve got plenty of time to prepare. Blake, Zero, and the other ‘full-timers’ can dive straight into it, while I have to tend to my other responsibilities first. Namely, explaining my extended absence to Liv and my team.

Having plenty of experience picking apart alibis, I know better than to just try and bullshit them. Instead, I dig into my files, and find a case that would take me out of the country for a long time. It’ll require some legwork to make it believable, but I can deal with that once I get back. Clay and Haley wish me luck, and assure me they’ll get on just fine without me. Atalanta gives me shit, because we had another little team-up planned during the period I’ll be away, but I promise her we’ll go on a date or bust a drug lab before I leave- her choice -and she relents.

There are other matters I need to address as well. Cases that will go cold if I ignore them for too long. A few, I’ve just been putting off, and can be closed before I leave. Others, I have to entrust to Liv, who promises me she’ll handle them in my absence. One, I have to cut short, and send the evidence to the Pax PD early, which leaves me uneasy. The case I compiled is strong, but not airtight, and I don’t want to come back and find out that they screwed something up, or simply let the perp off the hook. Hopefully, they know better than that by now.

Doing all of that takes a few days. The thought does occur that it could have gone faster if I’d solicited assistance from the Council, but bringing them into Pax isn’t a line I’m willing to cross quite yet. Once I’m satisfied that things at home aren’t going to go to complete shit while I’m off-planet, I head back to the Council’s facility to prepare. This isn’t an ordinary mission, both in that the risks are much higher than usual, and that we have a lot more time to prep. That means I can explore the Council’s arsenal properly. Some of the measures I take are obvious, like having my armor vacuum-sealed and equipped with an external oxygen supply. I ask Blake for help with it, rather than Robards, because I’ve made a few small modifications that I’m sure the armor’s creator would notice. Fortunately, we have another super humanly smart engineer on-hand, and he proves better company while we’re working than Machina would have been. With any luck, I won’t be spending a single second in hard vacuum, but it would be foolish not to prepare instead. If I didn’t, a single hull breach could be enough to kill me.

There are more than a few surprises within the Council’s arsenal. The biggest is a seemingly bottomless supply of Koppel bullets.

Matthias Koppel is a metahuman with the ability to temporally lock any object. This prevents said object from moving through time, indefinitely. However, it pays no mind whatsoever to space. For instance, if Koppel took an apple and used his power on it, and then dropped it, it would fall to the ground, but rather than bruising, it would remain exactly as it was, even if you left it there for years. On the other hand, if someone with the opposite power, to lock objects in space but not time, did the same thing, the inverse would happen. The apple wouldn’t fall, it would hang in the air, but if you let it hang for long enough, it would begin to rot. Of course, that presumes it's being locked in place relative to the motion of the Earth, which is how most such powers tend to function.

Koppel, an Estonian national, had a cape name, but considering most people don’t speak Estonian, we just use his actual name instead. He was a petty criminal for years, fond of using his power to freeze peoples’ pants, making it almost impossible for them to move. Not especially noteworthy in any way, until he was kidnapped by the Jackals. The same people who kidnapped Jason’s pet techie, Luke Chambers. They’re arms dealers, specializing in metahuman weaponry. It’s an industry that’s traditionally had a hard time getting off the ground, for a few reasons. One, most meta-geniuses require a lot of time, money, and materials to build even a single weapon, much less enough to sell wholesale. Two, there are few enough of them in the world that they can basically charge whatever they want. The Jackals, being enterprising young businessmen, solved the latter problem rather elegantly, by simply not giving anybody a choice. As for the first issue, that was where Koppel came in.

Having been drugged and brought to one of the Jackals’ various hidden bases, Koppel was informed he’d been rigged with a remote explosive, and that his new bosses could blow him up at any time. Then he was placed in a small concrete cell with a bucket full of bullets, and told to get to work. The Jackals had realized something about his power that Koppel himself had failed to. His time-locked items wouldn’t break, ever. That meant that, unlike most things, they wouldn’t break when smashed into a super-durable surface like Adamant’s skin. Not especially useful when applied to an apple, but a bullet? That was a different story. And unlike most of the Jackals’ other captives, Koppel didn’t require time or money to make these unbreakable bullets. He could provide thousands of them a day.

Coercing Koppel was fairly simple, but the Jackals are far more cautious than most criminal organizations. They figured that someone with his powers could break out of his cell, or even fight his way out, if he developed a bit of creativity during his captivity. A time-locked blanket would make for a fairly effective shield, and an inviolable pillow would be a serviceable bludgeon in a pinch. Instead of just telling him he’d be shot if he tried to leave, they rigged him with microbombs. Another bit of meta-tech the Jackals co-opted, they’re explosives so small that they can be ingested by the unsuspecting, or injected right into someone’s veins. Alone, they don’t have enough output to be lethal, but they naturally cluster together within the body, and when detonated, they can damage organs or rupture blood vessels. There are a few semi-reliable ways to deactivate them, but none that are particularly easy. And certainly none that I would expect Koppel to have figured out on his own.

Koppel’s fate is one of the few mysteries Jason never solved. All anyone knows is that the supply of inviolable bullets stopped flowing, and none of the Jackals will say what happened to him. He and I made a project of collecting the things, both so they wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands, and because they were a useful tool for us as well. Only ten thousand or so were ever made, but they can be reused pretty much indefinitely, so long as you’re willing to dig through corpses to retrieve spent ones, and know how to get them back in a shell casing. We’ve got about a thousand locked away, and I carry a single clip’s worth at all times, just in case. The Council has more than I can count.

According to their database, the ‘mystery’ of Koppel’s disappearance isn’t really a mystery at all. Just days after his abduction, the Council- at this time consisting of less than half its current membership -intervened, killing most of the Jackals at the site, and taking Koppel for themselves. Through methods unspecified, they disabled his microbombs, making sure nobody could blow him up if they got their hands on the right detonator. Afterwards, he got offered pretty much the same deal as Jason gave Luke Chambers. Go free, and end up in chains again within the week, or continue manufacturing bullets for the Council, under much more humane conditions. He chose the latter, and apparently he’s been at it ever since.

Being rather more imaginative than the Jackals, the Council didn’t stop at just bullets. The items he produces are rigid and inflexible, which provides certain limitations, but the collective creativity of the Council has few limits. He’s made knives that will never dull or break, and locked the lining of body armor while leaving the garment itself unfrozen, meaning there’s an inviolable layer underneath while still being easy to put on and take off. They even had him freeze their entire facility, which I suppose explains why there’s no cleaning crew of any sort. It also had the convenient side effect of making the place capable of surviving a direct nuclear strike. Not that any sort of attack is likely, considering not even the entire Council knows where this place is.

Just looking at the bins full of Koppel bullets in various calibers, I almost feel like I’m cheating. They were a limited resource before, tightly controlled and highly sought-after. Now they’re just another weapon in my arsenal. I’m sure the Council doesn’t bother to retrieve most of them after they’re used, except when their presence would raise problematic questions. Working with them is like playing a game on the easiest difficulty setting. There’s no question that’s impossible to answer, no resource too precious to be used. In every way that matters, they’ve already won. I understand for the first time why Pallas was quite so confident that we could take on this Andromedan battleship on our own. These bullets didn’t even merit a special mention from anyone. They’re just another tool in the Council’s toolbox. Not for the first time, I feel completely out of my depth.

The Koppel bullets are far from the only thing I take. Some are necessary, called for in Machina’s plan of attack. Others I figure will be useful. A few I only bring to satisfy my paranoia. Most of this process, I go through alone, with the others having made their preparations while I was back in Pax, but I see Zero a few times, grabbing some gear of her own. Perhaps her experience dealing with the rogue AI has taught her the value of overpreparation. I don’t know how often the various members of the Council go on field missions, but she seems like one of the least experienced with real danger, even having acquitted herself well overall. For this operation, we’re all going, even Donovan and Beringer. Considering my own role in the plan, I probably won’t get more than a few glimpses at what most of them are doing, which makes it all the more important that I glean as much as possible from it. Going on missions with each of them individually will take far too long, and there are some significant gaps in my knowledge for all of them. Even Jason was only able to compile so much in his secret files, and he had a lot longer than I do.

On the other hand, I do have a few advantages on him. My power helps me make inferences faster, and my educated guesses tend to be right a lot more often. But just about every member of the Council likes to play their cards close to the chest. Which is why I’m rather surprised when Andrew Donovan strikes up a conversation with me.

What surprises me the most whenever I look at him is how close he appears to the picture of him they always used to show on the news. Every time Grendel was sighted, they’d display a grainy still of the monster next to a picture of the man he once was. A staff photo for the university he’d worked at, in the biochemistry department. He was still clean-shaven, with neatly combed brown hair, wearing the same white lab coat. Or at least an identical one. His insistence on wearing it at just about all times is a little odd, but Jason’s speculation on the subject was that he wore it as a reminder of his identity, as a man of science rather than a bloodthirsty sadist. I’m inclined to agree. The main difference between how he looks now and how he looked in the photo is the bags under his eyes. He’s clearly working himself to the bone.

“Feeling nervous?”

Donovan doesn’t seem like the sort of person who should be asking me that, especially because my expression and body language are almost unreadable behind my armor and mask, while his doesn’t exactly scream ‘confidence.’ Then again, maybe he’s looking for someone to commiserate with.

“Not particularly. Are you?”

“Perhaps somewhat,” Donovan answers, giving me a halfway crooked smile. “I didn’t participate in the previous effort against our extragalactic foes, so this will be my first up-close encounter with them. Even if my alter ego will be doing most of the heavy lifting.”

“Mm. There’s something I’ve been wondering about. I know the Council has useful people making things in secret all over the world. None of them are here, and none of them get a vote in meetings. What’s different about you?”

I can’t begrudge Donovan his slightly disappointed look, considering the somewhat confrontational nature of my question. Still, he doesn’t protest.

“For one thing, this facility is completely cut off from the rest of the world, so even if I lose control, I won’t be able to get out and hurt anybody. I don’t have a translocator chip like the rest of you, either.”

If this facility really doesn’t have a single conventional entrance or exit, that means it’s essentially a prison for Donovan, albeit one with better conditions than any he could have expected to end up in before his ‘death.’

“As for why I have a say in the Council’s decisions... in theory, I’m supposed to be the group’s conscience. At least, that was what Nicholas said when he sponsored my full membership. After all, I know better than anyone else what the cost of hubris can be. Should we ever forget the human cost of our choices, I’m here to serve as a reminder.”

He doesn’t seem to have done much of that, from what I’ve observed, but Donovan seems to recognize the irony. I can think of another reason he might have a seat at the table, one I suspect nobody but Gilgamesh himself is aware of. Jason’s apocalypse theory.

According to him, the time-looping leader of the Council collected its current membership, myself excepted, because they all caused the end of the world in one timeline he’s seen or another. A theory, but one he had put plenty of thought into. Along with possible countermeasures for each member of the group, he’d kept notes on the possible ways in which they might have been responsible for an apocalypse. Some were more obvious than others, like Astro having brought back some sort of alien pathogen when he returned to Earth, or Pallas going berserk and flattening cities, but Grendel was one of the few he had little idea about. Ironic, considering he’s one of the most overtly dangerous members of the group, but seemingly the least likely to do planetary-scale damage. Then again, transforming into a monster was perhaps the crudest way his sadistic alter-ego could have gone about things. Drawing on Donovan’s genius, it’s not hard to see Grendel releasing a super-plague disguised as a breakthrough medical treatment, or creating some other horrific bioweapon. With that in mind, it makes perfect sense to keep him close at hand, where the group’s resident telepath can make sure he isn’t making any dangerous plans behind the scenes.

What Jason didn’t mention in the files he left behind was what he planned to do with his theory- or how he intended to verify it. Which suggests that it had something to do with the reason he disappeared.

“Makes sense.”

Donovan looks a little relieved that I haven't torn into him yet. Whether he’s expecting it to be verbal or physical, I can’t quite tell.

“I’m glad you think so. Sometimes I worry I’m not doing a very good job.”

“Well, from what I’ve seen so far, it doesn’t seem like many of these votes are especially contentious. All you really need to worry about is your research. It sounds like you’re doing good work.”

His expression sours, despite the compliment.

“Yes, my research. And occasionally being dragged away from it so that my other half can be let off the leash like a rabid hound.”

“It bothers you, then? That they use you?”

Donovan sighs heavily.

“I recognize that what Grendel does is necessary for the continuation of my research. Were his needs not met, he would inevitably seize control from within, and destroy everything I’ve worked to accomplish.”

Transforming back into the monster that everyone thinks of when they hear ‘Grendel’ would be bad enough, but I can imagine a far worse outcome. One where it pretends to still be Donovan, and turns the life-saving medicine he’s developing into a tool for his cruelty. The Council claims to have security measures in place, but if a bad batch managed to slip through, it could have disastrous consequences. Better to let Grendel loose on people who deserve it, surely. Still, I can’t help but feel that the entire arrangement is wrong somehow. Like there’s a piece of that particular puzzle missing.

“You think going after Andromedans will satisfy it? Not quite the same as regular people, I’m sure.”

“We shall see, I suppose. At the very least, I hope you all will be able to obtain some useful samples. I’ve only had the opportunity to work with corpses before. A live subject is sure to provide plenty of data.”

It takes a fair amount of effort just to avoid making a crack about him being the group’s conscience. At the very least, I don’t think the Council will let him get up to any Unit 731 shit, even on Andromedans. And it’s not like anyone we capture will be entirely innocent. They were all sent here to conquer our planet, enslave its population, and render it uninhabitable if we resisted too hard. If we fail, that’s exactly what they’ll do. If Donovan has to cut a few open in order to figure out how they work, that’s an acceptable price to pay, particularly if it helps us eventually deal with the rest of their empire.

It’s a little disconcerting to suddenly be thinking on a pan-galactic scale, when I was concerned almost exclusively with a single city up until a few months ago. But once I started working with the Front Line, the whole world was our responsibility, and it wasn’t much of a leap from there to joining the Council and working about the entire galaxy.

“I’ll do my best, but no promises.”

“Of course. Self-preservation has to come first. With that in mind, I’ll leave you to finish preparing.”

Donovan wanders off, leaving me with my thoughts again. I wasn’t doing anything especially important when he interrupted, just a double-check that all my gear is in working order. The kind of thing I can do pretty much on autopilot, while I think back on my conversation with him, and consider what I learned.

Every part of my evaluation has to come with the caveat that it’s possible Donovan is a talented actor, and that nothing he said or showed was genuine. But even with that in mind, I can say fairly confidently that he wasn’t involved in Jason’s disappearance. At least, not on the planning side. The man himself doesn’t seem to have much in the way of cunning, and I doubt anyone would be foolish enough to include Grendel in their conspiracy, knowing it’s a sadist who wouldn’t hesitate to double-cross them. That being said, I can’t rule out the possibility that Grendel was the murder weapon.

As far as countermeasures go, Jason had the fewest for Donovan’s alter-ego. Its monstrous form was bioengineered to be virtually invulnerable, and if dozens of heroes still died in the fight to bring it down, it’s hard to see him faring much better alone. If his translocator was disabled and he was trapped inside this facility with Grendel, he’d have had poor odds of survival. I can still envision scenarios where he succeeds, either killing the creature outright or escaping, but not more than three out of ten times. That would imply a few things, though. One, the involvement of Geas. He’d have to have let Grendel off the leash, and then erased any memory Donovan might have had of the incident. A gun that doesn’t remember being fired is one that can’t be traced back to the shooter. Two, the complicity of someone who could have prevented Jason from simply translocating to safety. In theory, that doesn’t mean anyone more than O’Connor would need to be involved, but only if he used his powers to compel them. And the only people I know who have the access necessary to disable the translocators are Machina and Gilgamesh- the two people I think are least susceptible to O’Connor’s manipulations.

Obviously, every member of the council except Donovan has a psychic blocker for this exact reason, but I can’t assume that means they’re actually safe- or that I am. It only accounts for the time after the blockers were implanted, which means whoever designed them- probably Machina himself -could have been made to modify them somehow, even installing a back door of some kind. I wouldn’t put it past Geas in the slightest. However, I have a hard time believing that he’d have been able to get away with the whole thing totally undetected. Manipulating Robards or Gilgamesh would be difficult even without blockers- both of them are hard-headed, and I’m sure they’ve got the same anti-telepath training that I do. It isn’t guaranteed to work, but even if you fail to resist manipulation, it can help retain memories that the telepath wants to erase. That leaves two more probable scenarios.

Scenario one is that Machina and Gilgamesh weren’t involved at all. Instead, it could have been Zero. Her abilities would probably allow her to remotely disable Jason’s translocator without needing access to whatever switchboard Robards uses. Furthermore, I have an easier time seeing Geas manipulating her than either of the others. That’s not because I think she’s weak-willed, just overconfident. The Korea mission made that fairly obvious. The other possibility is that either Gilgamesh, Machina, or both were in on it. Willing cooperation on their parts would make the whole scheme much easier, both to execute and to cover up. That covers two of the biggest requirements when investigating a murder- opportunity and means. Which leaves just one. Motive.

Ironically enough, my understanding of the motives behind Jason’s disappearance came from the man himself. If he was right about the Council’s true nature, it would have made him a target. At the very least, Gilgamesh knows, and it’s possible he’s shared that knowledge with the two members of the Council he seems closest to- namely Geas and Machina. They were his first recruits, they alone know where the main facility is located, and they seem to have the most access of anyone in the group. If Jason figured out that the Council weren’t merely saviors, but rather would-have-been destroyers, and threatened to expose it to the rest of the group, that could have been reason enough to kill him.

It fits together nicely, but it’s still not quite right. Again, like a puzzle still missing a few pieces. I can understand why Gilgamesh wouldn’t want the apocalypse theory getting out, but it doesn’t seem like a good enough reason to kill Jason by itself. The rest of the group would be upset with him for keeping it a secret, but what would they do? Leave? That alone isn’t good enough. In fact, Jason probably wouldn’t have confronted him with the theory if that was all. He’d keep it to himself, having decided the group was better off not knowing. But if there was more that he’d found out, it could have forced his hand. And even if so, would he have chosen to confront the old man directly, or done something else?

Whatever the reason, I still have another problem. My theory about how he disappeared is plausible, but I have zero evidence it actually happened. Any other number of Council members could have been involved. Pallas is certainly strong enough to have killed him, though I still don’t know enough about her to guess whether she’d have been brought in as the killer. Blake seems unlikely, but I still haven't seen his weapon in action, which means I have no idea whether he’s a contender at all, even putting aside the question of if he’d actually do it. And I can’t forget that Gilgamesh himself might have done the deed.

I’m not exactly back at square one. My idea of why they might have targeted Jason, and how they would have gone about it, is clearer. But I still don’t have much. Not even a body. The trail is already cold, and it’s only going to get colder, considering where I’m going. But even if I’ll be working with the very people I’m increasingly certain killed my mentor, I can’t let it get in the way of the mission. The job comes first. That’s what Jason would have said.