Chapter 7
Quentin sat in front of his laptop, watching a video play over and over on the screen.
It was surveillance footage from the Ashfield subway station.
The video kept looping, but there was no sound.
The video was silent.
In the footage, a guy wearing a hat and a face mask was gripping my hand as we went down the escalator.
He brought me over to a chair tucked away in the corner.
He crouched down and said something to me.
I couldn't make out his face.
All I could see were his eyes.
His eyes looked blurry in the gLunay footage.
Yet they stood out, bright and clear.
After he finished talking, he ruffled my hair.
Then he stood up and walked off without a second thought.
He slipped into the crowd and vanished in no time.
He never once looked back.
Quentin hit the pause button.
The video froze at the exact moment the guy turned away to leave.
He zoomed in on the image.
Then he zoomed in even more.
The guy's figure became a blurry mosaic of pixels.
But Quentin's eyes stayed fixed on one spot.
The guy's wrist.
As he reached up to ruffle my hair, his sleeve slid up a little.
His cuff inched higher.
A small section of his wrist was exposed.
Right there, on that patch of skin, was a tattoo.
The tattoo was tiny and hard to make out.
It was faint, almost indistinct.
It resembled a...a scorpion.
A black scorpion, its tail arched high.
Quentin's breath suddenly grew rapid.
He sprang to his feet.
The chair screeched across the floor from his sudden movement.
Quentin locked his gaze on the tiny, almost invisible black mark on the screen.
He breathed out some words.
His voice was barely audible.
Yet it carried a chilling, icy edge.
Quentin said, "The Scions of Scorpio."
Those words dropped like ice cubes into boiling oil.
The sizzle was instant.
The tension in the room crackled like static.
The female officer had just walked in, and her face instantly went ghostly pale.
She looked at Quentin, her lips moving, but no sound came out.
I didn't even know what "the Scions of Scorpio" was.
Was it some kind of bug?
Like those fierce bugs in the desert from the stories my brother told me.
But why did Quentin and that lady's faces look so scary?
The look in their eyes was way scarier than when they saw a criminal.
There was a mix of anger and fear in their eyes.
Quentin rushed to the door.
He called out into the hallway.
"Lock down the news!
"From now on, every detail about this girl's case is top secret!
"Nobody touches it, nobody talks about it unless I say so!" he ordered.
His voice lost all its warmth.
It turned steely and icy.
A flurry of hurried footsteps echoed in the hallway.
Someone called back.
"Yes, Captain!"
Quentin shut the door.
It was just the three of us in the room again.
But it was like he'd forgotten I was even there.
He stared at the computer screen, his eyes locked onto the scorpion tattoo, zoomed in so much it was nothing but a blurry smudge.
Quentin's gaze burned with fury, as if he could set the screen on fire.
"Captain, is it really them?" the female officer asked, her voice shaky.
"No doubt. It's them," Quentin said, his tone cold and hard.
Quentin gritted out the words through his teeth.
"I've been chasing this mark for five years," Quentin thought, his mind burning with obsession.
"Even if it was nothing but ashes, I'd know it anywhere," he added.
Her breath hitched, shock written all over her face.
Her gaze flicked to me, voice trembling, "What about the kid...?"
She looked over at me.
Her eyes brimmed with pity.
It was way more intense than the look she gave me back at the subway station, like a hundred times stronger.
I didn't know what to do with myself under her stare.
Did I do something wrong?
Why were they all staring at me like I'm some kind of mystery?
Quentin glanced my way, too.
His gaze was even more conflicted than before.
He seemed like he had something he wanted to tell me.
But he stayed silent in the end.
He just let out a deep, weary sigh.
That sigh was so tired it hurt.
And there was a heaviness in it I couldn't quite grasp.
"Heard anything from Geoffrey yet?" Quentin turned to the female officer and asked.
"Any news from Ashfield?" the female officer asked.
"Yeah," Quentin replied.
"Not yet." She shook her head.
"They've sent someone to Samuel Thorn's house. It'll take a while," she added.
"Hurry them," Quentin said, his voice cold and commanding.
"Have them confirm the identity of this so-called 'Anna Thorn' immediately. No excuses," he ordered.
"Find her, dead or alive," he added.
Dead or alive. The phrase lingered in my mind, chilling me to the bone.
It seemed like I had heard that somewhere before.
But I just couldn't remember.
I just felt cold.
"And one more thing."
Quentin kept barking out orders.
"Keep running those hundred numbers through the Forensic & Tech Unit. Don't stop for a second," he said.
"Even if that Anna Thorn turns out to be legit, we still need to pin down that number.
"There must be more clues tied to this kid.
"Not a single seam, not a single thread. Don't miss a thing," he ordered.
"Send everything she was wearing straight to the Forensic & Tech Unit," Quentin added.
"Do the most comprehensive analysis," he demanded.
When Quentin looked at me, his eyes changed.
He wasn't just seeing a lost little girl anymore.
It was like he was staring at...a crucial piece of evidence.