XIII: Septic Shock

The man who went by Frank Franklin rose at 0800, after a night that he remembered only hazily. He knew that it was just as well. He checked a closed-circuit monitor before he unlocked the double-bolted door of his flat to retrieve the newspaper. At 1000, he checked another monitor feed before he ventured down the hall to the outside door. It was a new day. He walked past the tree in the front garden. He froze but did not turn his head as a figure stepped out from behind the trunk. "Hello, Franky," Nightfall said. He did not try to run. It would not have mattered.

Eight hours later, a winch creaked as the intelligence asset known as Franklin was hoisted up, upside down. Nightfall returned his glasses to his face, fixed with tape. "Hello again, Franky," she said. "As you can see, not to mention smell, you are suspended over a secondary septic tank of the south Berlint sewer system. It's not particularly full at the moment, so if you were to fall in, you could probably climb out, or at least survive until someone found you, as long as there's no unexpected overflow. If I were to lower you all the way down while you are still bound, however, things could get far more unpleasant. Now that you have adjusted to your surroundings, I have a few questions. You've been informing to both sides again, haven't you, Franky?"

"Why do you people keep calling me that?" he snapped. "It's not even one of my real aliases!"

"To that question, people call you that because it suits you," she said. "It even helps some of them think they like you. Like the ones you didn't trick into posing as your lover under false pretenses. Now answer my question… Franky."

"I'm an independent businessman!" Franky snapped. "Of course I have clients on the Ostanian side. That's how people like me make sure we have a place to go no matter who wins. My only rule is, I don't sell out the people who pay me, even to each other, no matter how much I can get."

Nightfall grabbed his shoulders and pulled him close. "I paid you, Franky," she said. "Because of you, I'm legally married to an SSS officer who knows my name."

"Well then, I suppose you'd better take care of him," Franky said with a smirk. "Assuming you didn't do that already."

For a moment, Fiona only stared. Then she screamed. The curses of the Southlands welled up like a spring from a stone. "Don't you get it?" she shrieked, tears in her eyes. "You gave him my name! If he has my name, then they all have my name! In a day, maybe less, they will all be looking for me! My only chance is that Handler can find a place to hide me! Do you have any idea what that will be like for someone like me? I probably lost my chance, anyway, just by taking the time to find you. But if I go down, I'm making damn sure you go through a lot worse!"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm not denying anything," Franky said. "I dropped a lead that was too good to pass up. And yeah, I did it to put you in somebody's bed. Seems to me, you owe me for that. Speaking of, did you make him scream my name? Whose name do you scream? Hmm?" He laughed as Nightfall sent him swinging like a pendulum. "Oh, and I'll tell you something else. It wasn't my idea."

Nightfall shifted her grip to his hair. "I have given myself to terrorists, assassins, arms dealers and slavers, and did nothing," she said. "None of them disgusted me more than you."

"Yeah, you look at me like dog shite on your shoe," Franky said. "You all do. But I'm still human. So are you. Did you forget that? Did you think I did it just to get off? I saw the way you look at me, and I saw the way you keep sniffing after him, and I did something about it, which was more than you were ever going to do. So what are you really mad at me for, getting a good fock from a guy you can get or finding out you still like it the same as the rest of us?"

"I didn't have a choice," she said. "We got word that someone in the SSS had connected me to Twilight. Nobody said it, but I had to prove I wasn't compromised. I was in the clear. Then- he called me by my name. He lied, but he thought I knew! Dammit, I did know!" Finally, she pulled Franky in again, her blade pointed between his legs. "When, pas jebac? When did you tell him?"

"I didn't, crazy kuja!" Franky cried out. "Do you get it now? I told them about you, sure, but he came to me with the name, after he met you. He said he would have me executed if I didn't tell him if it was true. You know what else he said? He swore that if I gave your name to anyone else, he would find me, and nobody else ever would."

"He… he…" The woman named Mrozka sank to her knees. "He covered for me. After one night." Belatedly, she looked up at Franky. "He loves me."

"Sure looks that way," Franky said. Mrozka only shook her head.

"He loves me," she said. "Of course he loves me, I wrapped that scrawny little freak around my finger." She sniffed. "But… he let me go. He could have tried to make me come with him. He could have said he would hide me. But he didn't even tell me. He just… let me go." She shook Franky harder than before. "Dammit dammit dammit! Don't you see? He loves me and he let me go!"

Finally, she rose and cut the rope that bound his hands.

Then she cut the cable that held him up.