"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

Winston Churchill

Jacob Trials sat unmoving in his hotel room somewhere on the Continent. He’d had to get out, get away from anywhere he might be found. Someone would come looking for him, he felt certain. Who, and when, he didn’t know, and that made it all the more imperative he move before they did. So he'd withdrawn a large amount of cash from one of the Ministry's deniable operations accounts and jumped on the Eurostar, switching to further trains before disembarking at a random stop.

He sat staring at the notes scattered across his desk, the files he’d gathered and begged, records recovered from the detritus of what had been the Ministry HQ, pictures and clippings downloaded from the net.

He saw nothing but a mess.

What did Korez, or his employers, more probably, gain from the massacre at the Ministry? How did they know they would be able to use the Organisation to do it? Why did they come after him first?

And what the hell did this have to do with Nigel Matterson? What was a cold-blooded cult-leading serial killer doing pretending to be a member of the Organisation, spending years carefully working his way up the levels of trust and responsibility the naïve leaders of the group established?

It was definitely him. The high cheek-bones, the cold, steel-grey eyes, the same gaunt features that had dominated the papers years ago. True, he had dyed his prematurely silvering hair a deep shade of brown, and wore a pair of steel-rimmed glasses perched upon the bridge of his nose, but it was him.

Matterson may well have still escaped identification, however, had he not identified himself.

It was all there, every pattern the same. Under his Tarquinius pseudonym he would use the Organisation's codes to arrange private discussions with a member, discussions that revealed Matterson's sublime ability to adopt a persona designed to perfectly blend with the person he was speaking to. He would be coldly cynical to one member, a bleeding-heart liberal to another, a raving nationalist to another. Man of the people, elitist, pragmatic realist or idealistic dreamer, Trials had to admit that he was impressed. The man was the smoothest talker he had ever seen.

Next, Matterson would arrange a physical meeting. Though most of the Organisation's members were usually far too smart, or scared, to risk such a thing, the combination of flattery and passion he showed drew them out, convincing each one that here was someone they could trust. So they would agree to a meeting.

Prior to the meetings, the tone would be much as you would expect: fearful, insecure, wary.

After the meetings, however…

Trials muttered silently to himself as he read, and brought out the burner phone he'd bought for such an occasion.

Trials spoke to and used his connections within the CDC and police to trace Matterson's progress through the prison system, transfer after transfer creating a messy trail that proved difficult to follow. The most common reason given for Matterson's moves was for his safety, the authorities claiming that when his identity became known to the other occupants of each jail he immediately became an at-risk prisoner. Further reasons included 'necessary upgrading of prisoner's quarters,' 'inability to provide legally-required living conditions,' and most ridiculously, 'awarded for good behaviour and cooperation in building an atmosphere conducive to good prison management.'

Trials took some time to investigate the meaning of the latter. Apparently, Matterson had been such an influence on inmates at one notoriously brutal jail that violent incidents had dropped 65% during his time there, for which he had been moved to a lower-security wing and provided with a dedicated guard. Trials had never heard of such a thing, and none of his contacts could explain it either.

What Trials was looking at was a master of manipulation.

Prison guards, wardens, officers, the members of the Organisation... he'd taken them all in. In just a short time, with just a few meetings, Nigel Matterson managed to convince people to follow him, to support him, to work with him towards mysterious purposes, even at the expense of themselves.

The emails between Matterson and Organisation members after their meetings read like a conversation between teacher and student, child and parent, messiah and disciple. Whereas before Matterson had supported every opinion a member offered, elaborating fully-formed and convincing arguments that only strengthened the beliefs of their holder, where he had previously listened attentively and encouraged his partner in discussions, now Matterson led the conversation, and his partner responded like an eager student, questioning only to understand better and responding to every comment as if it were a revelation. Trials had never seen the like.

Some time during the meeting Nigel Matterson must have revealed who he really was, as the forum conversations would occasionally make references to his past. Lucy Lawntie, the girl Trials and The General had subjected to experiments in what felt like another lifetime, was mentioned first, in a context that made it sound more as if her imprisonment was an injustice and a crime rather than for the public safety.

Other names appeared during the conversations, the names of other victims, and names Trials had not heard before. Those became a priority. Nigel's name was rarely used, but it did occur, and Matterson seemed unbothered by it.

A day before the attack on the Ministry HQ, the forums went quiet. A final message, coded but easy to unravel, organised a meeting for all members at the 'agreed-upon locations,' and that was that.

Am I heading the right way? Trials thought to himself.

The IP address Matterson had been using was somewhere within Rome, and it was for this reason he was gradually making his way there. It was his only lead.

The papers strewn in front of him blurred. When had he last slept? Even with the nanites in his blood managing the toxins in his body, replenishing his ATP and isotonic stores, he'd never managed more than three days straight without ill effects. Now, he'd been on the move for... what? A week? More?

Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would head to Rome.

He was asleep before he hit the pillow.