Terrence Brooks Jr's Arc

Chapter 16 of 7

The council let Terrence go, but the hall did not feel safe. Someone on the council had erased his name. That person now knew Terrence could raise the dead clean. Beno, Demo, and Ladybug stood with him, but none of them knew this city. They knew nothing about Terrence's father, or why he had hidden a ship on a dead world. Terrence had proof of his blood now. What he did not have was one person inside these walls who could point him at the truth. He found Killbo alone in the records room. The blue-skinned clerk sat bent over a wide table, sorting thin sheets by hand. His stolen badge caught the light. Killbo did not look up. "You should be gone," he said. "They watch the halls now." "You said your name got pulled too," Terrence said. "Same as mine. Three years ago." He set his hands flat on the table. "That's not a coincidence. Whoever hid me hid you." Killbo went still. He set down the sheet. "I've been hunting that person since I took this job." He tapped the table twice. "I sit at the source and read the files they scrubbed. I know which drawers stay locked." "Then we want the same thing," Terrence said. "You want the name. I want my father. Same file." Beno stepped closer, one hand near his pistol. "He clean?" he asked Terrence, low. Terrence watched Killbo's face. In the council hall, Killbo had told him hard truths without dressing them up. He had warned Terrence when it cost him nothing to stay quiet. "He warned me when nobody else would," Terrence said. "That's enough." Killbo pulled a locked drawer open with a key from his own pocket. Inside sat one sheet, edges burned. "Your father's flight record," he said. "Half of it's ash. But the name that signed the erase order is on the bottom." He turned it over. The signature line was scraped down to bare fibers. Someone had gouged it out. Demo leaned in. "So we got nothing, bro?" "Not nothing," Killbo said. "Only one council member has clearance to scrape a signature after the fact. One office." He looked at Terrence. "I can get you to that office. Tonight. But once we go in, they'll know I moved. I've spent three years staying invisible. I spend that tonight." Ladybug studied him. "Why burn it for us?" "Because I can't reach that office alone," Killbo said. "You can raise a dead servant in front of the whole council. I can't do that." He folded the burned sheet into his jacket. "I need you as much as you need me." Terrence held out his hand. Killbo took it. The lost man in a strange city now had one ally who knew its locks and its lies. But the deal had a price. To find his father, Terrence had to break into the office of the very person who had erased them both. And that person would know by morning.