[fic update] Piano Man Memory 05: Won't Get Fooled Again
[read at website // ff.net // objection!]
[to read from livejournal, use cuts below]
Title: Piano Man
Author:trenchkamen (via ms_asylum fic-journal)
Fandom: Gyakuten Saiban / Ace Attorney
Genre: General, romance, memory, songfic
Pairings: Phoenix/Edgeworth (throughout), Mia/Diego (this chapter)
Warnings: Really can't think of any.
Spoilers: Entire Gyakuten Saiban series, including Apollo Justice (big time)
Summary: Entry for "Who's the Hobo?" contest at narumitsu. Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth have finally been able to settle down together, and both have gained tenured professorship at Ivy University. Despite re-gaining his Bar, the need to play memories on the piano has been engraved in Phoenix's psyche.
This chapter: Right before GS4. The evidence can't be interpreted any other way. Somebody is desperate enough to start killing again. As Miles lies in surgery Phoenix begins to realize he can't let things continue like this anymore--not with Kristoph, not with the court system. It's time to start turning things around.
Memory 05: Won't Get Fooled Again
“I was able to get back down to the sub-basement on the same pulley-system the paramedics used to get to Mr. Edgeworth. It’s been left up so we can continue with the investigation. Of course, there’s a lot of sawdust, that sort of thing down there, from the work crew, and without advanced forensic analysis it would be impossible to tell if any of the sawdust in the sub-basement came from sawing away at the scaffold. However, I don’t think that was the way it was done.”
Gumshoe paused, as if waiting for somebody to ask him why he thought that. He received flat, impatient stares in return. He sighed and continued.
“The bases of the wood making up that staircase were rotted through with OrgoChew. I confirmed it was there with this litmus-like paper the construction crew gave me. It’s an industrial reagent used to eat away organic matter, like wood, without harming nonorganic materials.” He gave the words an odd enunciation that indicated he had just read them off something. “But the strange thing is that it was applied to the base of the scaffold, not from the top. The way it was applied to the base of the staircase, it was seeping up by uh-cardiac action, is that what it’s called?”
“-capillary-” said Phoenix.
“-rotting it from the base up. And like I told you, pal, nobody went down there after I tested it. I was there the whole time. Didn’t take a bathroom break or nothing.”
“Is that scaffold the only way in and out of the sub-basement?” asked Maya. “You’re certain of that?”
“Yeah, it is.” Gumshoe scratched the back of his head, furrowing his brows and looking up in thought. “Unless somebody dug in underground, but we’da heard that. We checked thoroughly for the murder investigation.”
“A Gramarye could have done that easily.” Trucy was fidgeting with her locket. “But none of us would have any reason to kill Papa Miles, ever.”
“Is that hard to do?” asked Maggey.
Trucy’s shoulders stiffened with indignation, though she kept her face calm. “For a Gramarye, it’s child’s play. Embarrassingly easy.”
“No, I mean for a normal person. Or, uh, not that I mean that you’re not normal, but, uh…” She scratched the back of her head in an odd mimic of her husband’s nervous tick. “…like, for those of us who don’t do magic.”
“Yes.” Trucy’s hand clasped around the metal. The chain bit into her neck with the strain. “It’s not something a two-bit magician would have been able to do.”
Gumshoe’s eyebrows furrowed deeper. “Which narrows the field of suspects a lot, don’t it.”
“I think you guys are getting somewhat sidetracked.” Phoenix had shoved his hands in his pockets and was staring at the ground. It was painful to watch Trucy struggle to mask her emotions, but she could sense when somebody was staring at her with uncanny accuracy-Phoenix had long ago figured out it was not just paranoia-and it would have made her even more tense. “I can’t think of a single magician who would have had the motive to kill Miles.”
Everybody stared at him. “I… I can’t believe you’re telling us not to get sidetracked, pal,” Gumshoe said finally.
Neither can I. But it’s Gavin; I know it. “How long does it take to start making something unstable with that stuff?”
“You mean OrgoChew?”
“Whatever, that. Yeah.”
“Not long. It’s volatile and travels rapidly up dried wood. Oh, well…” Gumshoe opened the manila folder and pulled out a photograph of the wreckage. He had circled in red four off-white hemispheres attached to wooden spars like fat grubs. “…this was the delivery mechanism. These capsules hold the OrgoChew in a closed space so it doesn’t evaporate, but is drawn up into the wood where it can work.”
“Wait,” said Pearl. She was chewing on her thumbnail pensively. “Detective Gumshoe said only an hour elapsed between the time he tested the scaffold and the time Mr. Edgeworth stepped on it. Somewhere in that time period, then, somebody went down there and set up those capsules. But that’s impossible.”
“I swear, pal, nobody went down there. I checked. I was there the whole time.”
“But since you’re the only one who saw any of this, and you were the last one to go down into the sub-basement, you’re gonna be the prime suspect in this case.”
Maya was right. Phoenix sighed; he had realized this a long time ago. Maggey clenched the chair arm harder and set her jaw, eyes smoldering. Gumshoe’s face went pale.
“M-Maya! I swear I didn’t try to hurt Mr. Edgeworth! I’d never-never…”
“I know! I know!” Maya waved her hands in a vague attempt at placation. “We all know that, but-it’s…”
“Wait.” Phoenix held up his hand. Everybody turned to face him. His eyebrows were furrowed in thought; he was stroking the stubble on his chin with his thumb and the crook of his forefinger. “Can those capsules be set to go off remotely?”
“Well… yes.” Gumshoe scratched his head. “With radio control. So the construction guys can set them up and climb up something while it’s still sturdy, and then set it to rot while they’re up safe.”
Phoenix gave him a flat look. Christ, that didn’t strike you as the least bit worth mentioning? That changes everything.
“That’s it, then. The killer could have come a lot earlier, waited for Gumshoe to test the scaffolding and be the last one to go down there-” Phoenix slammed his hand into the table, and Maggey squeaked and jumped in shock. He furrowed his brows, focusing. “-which would have been necessary to insure that it was Edgeworth who stepped on there. Gumshoe said he’d never let Edgeworth stand on anything dangerous, and I believe him. His confidence had to be won.” He thought for a moment, still staring hard at Gumshoe. “Those capsules, you said they were standard issue to the demolition crew?”
“We talked to some of the men still on duty there. They said that they had set up the capsules ahead of time so they could take out the stairway-before the murder-but then the body was discovered at the bottom of the shaft by the man who was setting up the capsules. The demolition was halted, but the capsules stayed in place. They didn’t realize the remote control was missing until after the stairway collapsed.”
Phoenix’s eyes went wide. He grasped the chair arm with his free hand, still leaning on the table.
Oh, for God’s sake, Gumshoe; how the hell could you not mention this?
“What’s the range on the remote?”
“Probably not more than a few hundred yards. Which means whoever set it off had to be at the scene between the time I called Mr. Edgeworth and the time he showed up. I went down to the crime scene for the last time right after we hung up. The capsules had to be set off sometime during that window of time.”
“Who was on site at that time?”
“Well… me. A few of the cops were around. I didn’t see anybody else.”
“How far from the scaffold did you go during that time period? At any point, for any amount of time?”
“Not far, pal. I was busy taking molds of shoe prints.”
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck- “So your range of vision was limited-far more limited than the range covered by the remote.”
Gumshoe’s shoulders dropped, and he looked up at Phoenix guiltily. For a man nearing his forties, it was amazing how much he could look like a kicked puppy.
“I guess so, pal.”
“Do you have a diagram of the crime scene?”
“Well-yeah.” Gumshoe pulled a map out of the folder and set it on the table. “Right here.”
Phoenix looked it over. The warehouse was in the center, the shaft to the sub-basement clearly marked in one corner. The depth of the hole and all the dimensions were given, thankfully, and were marked ‘to scale’. Phoenix searched his pockets for a pen, and when he came up dry, Gumshoe handed him his. It was almost dry and one of those cheap-ass ones you had to press down hard to get a line, and the cap was chewed up.
“What was the maximum range on that radio transceiver again?”
“I-I don’t remember exactly, pal.”
“Wait.” Maya fished in the sleeve of her habit and pulled out her phone. “I can get internet on this. If I search the model of the transceiver, maybe the website will tell us.”
“That would be perfect if I remembered.”
“They’re all roughly the same.” Phoenix leaned over the map eagerly. “See what you can find.”
“Right.”
After a few minutes’ searching and poking with a stylus, Maya looked up. “The maximum range I could find for the standard remotes was 600 feet.”
Phoenix ripped a small strip of paper off the edge of the map, marked a distance equivalent to 100 feet according to the map’s scale, and measured out a circle radius 600 feet from the hole. Gumshoe shook his head.
“That radius is outside the police perimeter, pal. He could’a been out of anybody’s sight. Didn’t have to have access.”
“Wait. Yes he did.” Maya smashed her hands into the table excitedly. “He had to get the remote in the first place, and the workers said it disappeared after the police set up the perimeter.”
“You’re both wrong!”
Phoenix, Maya, and Gumshoe looked up at Trucy. She snatched the pen out of Phoenix’s hand and drew a dashed diagonal line going from the sub-basement to the edge of the radio range Phoenix had drawn. She wrote ‘c’ next to the line.
As soon as she did that, Phoenix whacked himself mentally.
“You’re not thinking third-dimensionally!” She pointed to the line triumphantly. “Triangulation! We do this stuff all the time for magic shows. Since the capsules were in the ground, the actual range is going to be shorter from the top of the scaffold. And since we know the depth and the max range along the hypotenuse has to be 600 feet…”
“Yeah, I get it. Maya, does that fancy phone have a calculator?”
“Yup.”
“Take this down.”
Phoenix scratched out the math, shooting numbers back and forth with Maya, and drew the new radius and circumference. Gumshoe’s eyes grew wider.
“That’s within the police perimeter, pal!”
“It’s also entirely within the building.” Phoenix looked up. His eyes were hard. “If the range of this transceiver is equal to or less than the range Maya found online, the killer was inside the building between the time Gumshoe last stood on the scaffold and the time it collapsed. How much of a time window is that?”
“Uh…” Gumshoe looked up for a moment in thought. “Mr. Edgeworth said he’d be an hour, but he was early, so… less than that.”
“Hold it!”
Phoenix smashed his hands into the table. This time, both Gumshoe and Maggey jumped back, Maya hissed that this wasn’t a goddamn courtroom, and Pearl and Trucy started cracking up behind their hands. Phoenix’s eyes did not flicker from Gumshoe. He knew he looked like he was glaring-he had seen court video played back of his trials, and he was shocked by how aggressive and predatory he could appear when he was on the chase-but he did not care.
“What’s the amount of time it would take for the OrgoChew to eat through the wood from the time the capsules started releasing?”
“Uh.” Gumshoe scratched the back of his head. “No idea. Pal, you’re really making me feel like I’m on trial right now.”
“Is it variable?”
“I don’t know.” Gumshoe reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the capsules. Phoenix half-expected his eyes to fall out of his head. “Maybe it’ll tell us.”
Phoenix snatched it out of Gumshoe’s hand. “Give me that.”
“Oh.” Maya looked over Phoenix’s shoulder and glanced back down at her phone. “That’s one of the model numbers listed on the website I found. Our calculations are good.”
“Good.”
Phoenix looked the device over carefully, turning it over in his hands. The top was smooth and nondescript, void of any text or detail; the underside was flat and engraved with model and serial number. A switch with three settings was set next to the holes Phoenix assumed were for releasing the OrgoChew. It was currently set to 1L/hour.
“Maya. Look up the chemical compound OrgoChew; see how much wood it can eat per liter.”
“Uh.” She punched in some text, waited. “This is getting into some complicated stuff.”
“Just do it.”
Phoenix felt lame having to think through the problem so carefully when in high school and university this sort of thing would have been easy. He gave his best mental estimate of the width and type of the spar in Edgeworth’s arm, examined the wood in the picture relative to the size of the capsule on the table, erred on the large side, crunched numbers.
“Okay.” Phoenix slammed his pen down triumphantly. “Even giving liberal room for error on the large side for the amount of wood and the light size for Miles’ weight, it would take anywhere from thirty to forty-five minutes for the wood to be decayed enough to fall immediately under Miles’ weight, but not to fall on its own under its own weight before he could stand on it and be trapped. The timing had to be precise.” His eyes flashed. “Which means that the killer had to have precise knowledge of the time Miles would arrive so he would hit that window. And, furthermore, it means that the time window is short enough that the killer would have to have been on site after Gumshoe was the last one to stand on the scaffold. It all fits.”
“The only person he told that to was me, pal.”
Silence. Gumshoe’s eyes widened.
“Pal, I swear to God I didn’t-”
“I know it wasn’t you.”
“Isn’t it really easy to tap cell phone calls?” asked Trucy. “They do that on TV all the time.”
“It’s also easy to hear somebody speaking loudly in an echoing warehouse.”
Gumshoe quailed under Maya’s accusatory stare. “I… I had no idea it was sensitive information.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Phoenix was resting his chin in his hand again. He stared at the diagram. “What does matter is that we have established that it was possible for somebody other than Gumshoe to have known Miles’ estimated time of arrival. And, this person had to know enough about the progress of the investigation to know that everybody but Miles had been down to the place where they found the body and had no further reason to go down there. This again requires firsthand knowledge of what was going on at the crime scene within that hour window.”
“Yeah, but something keeps bothering me, pal…” Gumshoe scratched the back of his head. “Mr. Edgeworth showed up earlier than he said he would.”
“By how much?”
“I don’t know. Twenty minutes, something like that.”
“Exactly.” Phoenix smashed his hands into the table again, leaning on them, determined. The other waiting room patrons stared at him. “That’s why Miles survived. He showed up earlier than the killer expected him to. The scaffold had a halting fall because the beams were only weakened, not totally decayed. I bet anything when it started shaking, he froze up like he always does. He’s terrified of earthquakes or anything resembling earthquakes. And if he fell on all fours like he usually does-”
“-he would have had a controlled fall!” Maya smashed her fist into her palm, eyes gleaming. “And if the scaffold didn’t go into freefall, he would have had breaks along the way. It would have slowed him down. And it would have given him time to try to stop himself.”
“Yes.” Phoenix forced himself to stare through the memory of his observations, view them objectively; it was easier knowing Miles’ body was currently being knit back together and healed. “His palms were ripped to shreds. I bet he was able to slow his fall a little by trying to grab onto anything that was still standing. If things had gone as planned, if he had shown up a little later, he wouldn’t have had time for any of this to happen. He would have landed on his back or his neck, more than likely. He’d be-”
Paralyzed. Vegetable. Dead.
“You’re leaving now? Sure you don’t want another pint?”
“We’ve got to report this!”
Phoenix snapped out of his daze; Gumshoe had jumped up and was gathering up the papers on the desk.
“No!”
Phoenix smashed his hands into the papers. Gumshoe yelped in surprise and jumped back.
“We can’t take this to the police. You’re the prime suspect right now; you’d get arrested and tried for attempted murder. And you’d be found guilty.”
“Even if I was the one who reported it?”
“Absolutely. It’s classic to report one’s own murder to try to look innocent. I’d defend you in court, I swear I would-but I can’t. And Edgeworth can’t prosecute, not in his condition. You’d be at the mercy of God-knows-which pair of lawyers. You’d be found guilty of attempted murder. Any two-bit lawyer would see it that way. Open-shut case for the prosecution. Nobody would bother to try to turn it around. You’d be found guilty.” He looked at Maggey, who was clutching the arms of her chair and turning pale, and at Toby asleep next to her. “And you’ve got way too much to lose-and a real killer would walk free. We’d gain nothing from reporting this. Nothing. Not now.”
“But I don’t have a motive to kill Mr. Edgeworth, pal; how do you write that off?”
Phoenix did not realize that he was smirking triumphantly until Maya gave him an odd look. “He’s lowered your salary multiple times in the past. It’s easy to weave a story to the court that he treated you badly for years and you’d want to take revenge, make it look like an accident. Make it look like you were jealous. After all, here you are doing all of the hard work, and he takes all the glory in court.”
“That ain’t…”
“See? Just like that.” Phoenix pounded the table again. Maya looked toward the registration desk as though she feared they were about to get kicked out. “Even if we know it’s not true, what does the court know? Everybody knows he used to be an absolute jackass. It stands to reason he’d make enemies. And the killer knew all of this. He knew he could set you up. It would look like you’d have more motive than anybody else at the construction site.”
“What if it was the same guy that killed the guy down in the hole?” asked Pearl. “And wanted Prosecutor Edgeworth out of the picture? That sounds like a pretty good motive.”
Because it wasn’t. It was fucking Kristoph Gavin, but she has a point. Even if Gumshoe were acquitted, the demolition crew would be suspects well before Gavin.
“…the construction crew was all moved off the scene by that time, right?”
“Yeah, pal.” Gumshoe scratched his head. “I’d say they were all moved off before sundown.”
“Maybe one of them snuck back in,” said Maya. “They’d know the site really well, wouldn’t they? Maybe they had some kind of super-secret entrance you guys didn’t know about.”
“And wouldn’t the demolition crew know about the OrgoChew stuff? They’d know how much time they needed to make it work if they use it all the time.”
Again, Trucy was right. Phoenix sighed.
“I don’t see why they wouldn’t take out the cops or the detectives. Miles didn’t arrive at the scene until much later. The fact that Miles was the specific target is critical to the case. Somebody had to know what he looks like and what his occupation is. Public prosecutors aren’t exactly famous outside their own circles.”
“But if the guy was a hardened criminal, like in the mob or something, Mr. Edgeworth might be, like, his arch enemy!” Maya clenched her fists excitedly. “He’d be like Harvey Dent, except instead of burning his face off they dried to drop him down a mine shaft!”
“You keep saying ‘he’ like you’re so sure it’s a man,” said Maggey. At some point, Toby had crawled back up on the chair beside her and was sleeping on her arm. She was stroking his hair. “How do you know that the killer wasn’t a female gangster or something? Or maybe he broke some woman’s heart in the past and she wanted revenge.”
Phoenix, Maya, and Trucy all gave Maggey a flat look.
Yeah, if it wasn’t painfully obvious that he’s gayer than a treefull of monkeys on nitrous oxide, that would have a chance of sliding.
“He could be bi,” said Pearl cautiously.
“He’s not,” said Maya and Trucy in unison.
“It doesn’t matter.” Phoenix removed his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. His fingers were shaking. It doesn’t matter because it was Kristoph Gavin; I’d bet anything on that. “None of this matters. Detective Gumshoe would still be the prime suspect, and he’d probably be found guilty anyway. No, we have to play it off as an accident for now. Miles is going to be all right.”
He lowered his head, staring hard at the desk, seeing through it.
“Don’t worry. I’m not letting this go. I can assure you this incident will not be forgotten. Ever.”
Miles, broken, bloodied, in agony.
Paralyzed, vegetable, dead.
He clenched his hat so tightly his hands shook.
For every second of pain he suffered, Gavin, you’ll pay for this. No matter how long it takes me to get to you.
“Nick…” Maya said softly.
Phoenix excused himself under his breath and made a beeline for the stairwell. He could feel the perplexed stares against his back. He did not hear Maya following him.
-----------------------------------
“Phoenix. Stand up.”
The gravel-mulch on the roof was cold beneath his palms. He froze. The night breeze was cool, damp and salty out of the west; it was soothing against his overheated skin. He had collapsed against the wall, shaking, yanking his hair and screwing his eyes shut. His throat burned.
He stood regardless, clenching his fists, trying to regain his composure. The woman before him stared with crossed arms. She was in Maya’s robes, but was taller, far more voluptuous, commanding, sharp, and powerful. That was the word that had struck Phoenix hardest when he had first met her, all those years ago-powerful. Capable if anybody was. She had all the presence and charisma of the generals of yore who could galvanize their troops to do the impossible, in the face of impossible odds, or inspire them to gladly die trying.
“Mia…” he finally said softly.
“Phoenix.” She gave him a stern look. “Look at yourself. Miles Edgeworth is alive and well. You should be rejoicing and galvanized to action by your close call. You have a job to do. A lawyer is a person who doesn’t cry until it’s all over.”
“I’m not a lawyer anymore. You know this. I’ve told you-”
“Bullshit.”
Phoenix kept staring at the ground, clenching his fists. Mia sighed and stepped closer to him.
“I don’t care what board takes away your badge.” Her voice was softer. “You still have the desire to defend the innocent and discover the truth. It burns, it consumes you, and trying to extinguish it would only be cowardice. I can see it even now beneath that idiotic mask of faux-jadedness and cynicism.” She tilted his chin up with her fingers, and he met her eyes. She stared though him. “That emotional defender of the downtrodden and innocent, the prince of the turnabouts, is still in there somewhere.”
Phoenix lowered his eyes, and Mia withdrew her hand and stepped back. Coming from anybody else, that would have just sounded idiotic, and Phoenix would have said so. Somehow, anything coming from Mia sounded profound. She was the epitome of the concept that it’s not what you say, but how you say it. She could probably make his atrocious attempts at poetry from junior high sound like Paradise Lost.
“You can bring about the revolution of the court system. I think you were fated for this the moment you first decided to be a lawyer.”
Phoenix exhaled silently through his nose and glanced to the side, but Mia’s scowl stopped him from rolling his eyes.
And my midi-chlorian counts are off the charts too?
“Mia, come on. You can’t be serious about all of this Chosen One bullshit.”
Phoenix glanced at the ground. Mia’s eyes were smoldering. Not even Miles could make him shut up so fast just by glaring, and when he was pissed off, Miles Edgeworth could scowl with enough force to sear through lead.
“The system has since become especially hostile to the intuitive, to the unconventional thinkers,” she continued. Her expression dared Phoenix to interrupt. “It has become a relic of the outdated Platonic ideal exalting the concrete and linear-logical above all else. It has become a tunnel-visioned entity. And you-you’ve broken through that ideal not by raging against it mindlessly, but by flowing around it. You’ve mastered it, play it like a puppet. And in that, you have revealed its weaknesses. You’ve turned it over in your hands and examined the flaws and faults nobody has bothered to acknowledge. You’ve had the courage to see the hypocrisy plainly in front of you, when everybody else shuts their eyes, and eventually, the brain just erases those ‘flaws’ from their view. The flaws become invisible, can’t be seen, even if you stare with your eyes wide open. And it’s easier that way, just pretending everything’s all right, instead of doing something about it.”
Phoenix lowered his eyes again. He swallowed to wet his tongue, suddenly realizing how dry it was, and looked up, setting his shoulders.
“In the first place, it’s not like I lost my badge because I was involved in some sort of courageous rebellion or something like that. I was just doing my job. And in the second place, it doesn’t take much courage just to see something. It takes courage to do something about it.”
“Yes, you’re right.” She paused. “You were doing your job as you always have, to the best of your ability, for the best of your clients. Ultimately, you act in favor of whomever is innocent, regardless of rewards inherent in acting otherwise. But if you think about it, that in of itself is pretty special. A lot of people pay lip service to that ideal, or they want to act on it, but they just aren’t strong enough. You are.”
Phoenix sighed and stared off over the rooftops for a while. He heard Mia step closer to him, could somehow smell the essence that was hers in life-orchid perfume and botanical shampoo, the musk of clean, warm skin. The scent stirred deep, primordial memories of a young lawyer coming to his aid, so calm and confident and protective, of watching her from behind the defendant’s stand and feeling something well deep in his heart as she tore apart the woman he thought he loved, peeled away layers of lies and malice. And something about her being was so noble, so infused with the goodness he thought he had seen and the strength he had never seen in Dahlia-strength even Iris had never had for all her goodness-that he knew even as his heart was breaking that someday he was going to be okay. At the time he had rationalized it as the realization that there were better women (or men; his art school experimentation phase had made it clear that he enjoyed the company of men as well, but at the time he was going through an obsessed-with-the-feminine phase) out there, people worthy of his love and respect, but in retrospect it was a far more complex subconscious realization than just that. What mattered at the time was that it shielded him from the rot of cynicism in regard to all of humanity. Or from being crushed by the weight of betrayal and heartbreak and hanging himself as soon as he got back to the dorms, one or the other.
He loved Mia. Even at the time he was content with his love being unrequited, and never questioned its strength or purity for that. It was the first time he had truly realized what people meant when they said they could be okay with loving somebody who did not love them back, just to be near them and love them. He was content with loving her from a distance and having her as a mentor, knowing full well that she was out of reach. At the time he wondered if she was a lesbian, given how cool she was toward men when she could have her pick and choose, but it was not until after her death that he learned about her history with Diego Armando. In retrospect it was obvious that the detachment she displayed was a defense mechanism for an already-broken heart, but she never showed her pain. Through all of that, she had remained the idealistic defender of the innocent Phoenix had come to love-the manifestation of what Miles was before Von Karma had brainwashed him-and it was not until after her death he could appreciate how truly amazing she was to maintain her belief in truth and justice and the good of humanity despite the cruelty she had experienced firsthand. Anybody else Phoenix had known-including Miles, loathe though he was to admit it-would have-did-become jaded and cynical. And he had by that time realized that it was not only cruel, disaffected, weak people who became jaded and cynical. The strongest, kindest, most well-adjusted people he knew had as a defense cultivated a detached cynicism regarding what should and should not be, what is ideal and what is the reality of a situation.
To a large degree, they were right, and to a large degree, Phoenix shared their attitude. There was nothing wrong with it. Idealism taken too far could be harmful, especially when it was upheld to glorify itself at the expense of others. Choosing one’s battles saved oneself from being incapacitated over an irrelevant issue, rendered unable to help where one truly could. But Mia was never afraid to fight when it was called for. She had been the flesh-and-blood inspiration to keep hold of the ideal he experienced in elementary school, proof that it was not just a fairy tale if one chose to uphold it when the time was right. She had made him realize that becoming a lawyer to defend the innocent was not an impossible, idiotic dream in the Real World after all.
He had never known how hard it would be, how many people would think he was a simple-minded, naïve idiot to believe in these things as an adult, but she made him realize it could be done.
Trust. That was what Mia exuded, despite being given all reasons to shield herself with low expectations of humanity. She retained her trust in people. She always gave them the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.
Trust in people, huh?
Phoenix was silent for a long time. He did not realize how knotted his throat had become until he tried to speak. His voice was gravely.
“People should not fear their government; the government should fear its people.”
Mia arched her eyebrow. “That’s from a movie, isn’t it?”
Phoenix looked up.
“Miles was right. The Sherlock Holmes legacy of detective work is dead. Even juries have been eliminated from the system. We’re moving toward all those old science fiction movies where all decisions are made by computers and logarithms and hard-logic machines. There are a lot of advantages to that, I admit. Bias is cruel and witnesses are unreliable. But it feels… incomplete, somehow.” He paused. “The most brilliant discoveries are supplemented by intuition. Not even computers can do that yet; not even quantum machines can be as intuitive as humans yet. It’s a fusion. And you’ve got to have proof to link up both ends, somehow, or people would just jump to conclusions all over the place. But we’re not allowed to do even that anymore. It’s almost like they expect all the evidence to be laid perfectly out like this is some sort of crime drama or logic game or something. Like evidence can’t disappear or be destroyed. And it wouldn’t be so damn unfair if there wasn’t also the demand that somebody pay for every crime within three fucking days. The system would rather sacrifice a scapegoat than let a case go cold. It’s a return to the era of Biblical sacrifice. There’s the illusion that if somebody pays for a crime, that erases it. It’s almost like the defendant is assumed guilty until proven innocent beyond any reasonable shadow of a doubt. It didn’t used to be that way. And people say it still is. Bullshit.” He laughed humorlessly. “The legal system lost sight of itself ages ago. Somehow, since the turn of the century, it’s gotten even worse.”
Mia was silent. Phoenix stared back down at the roof. Neither one spoke for a long time. Phoenix could feel that Mia was waiting for him to speak; he was half-glad she could read his thoughts. He hoped she could glean some coherence from their form he could not articulate into words.
“…I can’t take this anymore.” He clenched his fists inside his hoodie pocket though he knew damn well Mia could see that, but at least he would maintain some pretense of stoicism. His wedding band bit into his skin. “Pretending to be friends with Gavin, just to be close to him, to make him drop his defenses… it’s so exhausting. So underhanded. So manipulative and dishonest. And after this, after what he’s done to Miles-all I want to do is rip him apart with my bare hands. Make him suffer for every second Miles suffered.”
“It is underhanded and manipulative. So is Gavin. So is the system you know you have to change.” Mia sighed. “Sometimes you have to get yourself dirty to help good people, so they don’t have to. And ultimately, that’s okay. If anybody can seep himself in the criminal underworld and return with a pure heart, it’s you. The weapons we use, espionage and entrapment, are potent; their effects, good or bad, are decided by who wields them. And I know your intentions are good, your heart is pure. You always weigh your options with a mind to what you think is right, and your standards of right and wrong exalt the sanctity of the individual and the protection of the innocent. ‘Do no harm’ and ‘turn the other cheek’ are simplistic absolutions to follow. Always sticking to the rules for their own sake is simplistic cowardice. There are people who will keep hurting and hurting and hurting until they are stopped by force. You have to have the backbone to judge when to strike back, and the fortitude and intelligence to stay your hand until those who have done no harm will not be hurt. I don’t have the heart of an ascetic. I can’t passively let evil people get away from justice. And I don’t think you do, either.”
“But I can’t do it anymore; I can’t just smile and be his friend and pretend I don’t know how much he’s-”
“So?” Mia glared, hard. “Go ahead, blow up at him, alienate him and lose everything you’ve worked for all these years. Selfishly indulge in your catharsis. Make yourself feel better. Make all the pain Edgeworth is feeling now-because he believes in you, Phoenix, and wants to help you-be in vain. But it’s not going to help you put Gavin away, or change things for the greater good. You’ve got to keep strong and stay your hand until the time is right.” Her eyes softened. “Take all that anger, take all that fear and pain he’s made you feel-made your loved ones feel-and let it harden your resolve. Let it make you determined to see this through. And rest assured that victory will be yours in the end.”
Phoenix stared at Mia for a long time. He finally set his jaw and nodded.
Mia smiled warmly. “I know you’ll make me proud, Phoenix. You always have in the past.”
His throat was tight again.
“I hope so. Chief.”
He did not know if he was breaching some unspoken taboo insofar as channeling was concerned. He stepped forward and clutched Mia in a tight embrace, one hand clutching her shoulder, the other across her narrow back. Her breasts pressed against his chest, flattening. She hesitated a moment, then wove her arms under his and clutched him back, firmly. He always forgot that she was this much shorter than him; her presence and the way she carried herself made her seem larger in his minds’ eye. He was also used to standing next to her while she was in thick heels; Maya’s sandals were far flatter. The articulation presented by the channeling was stunning; Mia felt as fully alive as she ever had, and he wondered, not for the first time, how far beneath the skin that transformation carried itself, how much spirit and physical body had to remain intertwined in some odd way, or if the physical representation he saw was merely a mode of communication for the sake of the living. He wondered if the heartbeat he felt in her chest was hers or Maya’s. He buried his nose in her hair and sniffed, clutching tighter, looking for strength. He felt on the verge of a breakdown again. He sniffed, hard, and rested his cheek on the side of her head.
“I miss you.”
Mia was silent for a moment, and then kissed Phoenix on the cheek. She leaned back so she could see his face. His skin tingled where her lips had touched.
“We’re always watching over you, in an abstract way. Even if we sometimes don’t get the details of what is going on, the dead see the big picture.”
“Is Prosecutor Godot up there with you?”
He blurted out the question before he could fully think about it. It was something he had wondered multiple times after Armando finally died of extensive organ failure from the poisoning, but had never had the chance to ask. Mia looked slightly taken aback, but she quickly smiled. It was one of those smiles that truly reached her eyes.
“Yes, he is.”
Phoenix felt an incredible warmth spread up from the pit of his stomach. Her smile was infectious; it ghosted across his own face, releasing his muscles with relief. He did not know if relationships magically got better in the afterlife. Mia had said that after death, the ego lives on, and it was precisely the ego that was the cause of so much strife between people. As long as people were separate entities, there would be misunderstanding and conflict-he thought. Or maybe the afterlife operated by different rules entirely. Maybe you could be a fusion of yourself and fully at one with another person at the same time. It would be heavenly.
He almost found himself eagerly awaiting death with Miles so their souls could entwine into that ecstatic cocktail for eternity, drifting into stardust, never again fighting and experiencing the agony that was part of love, and he could be with all his loved ones again, but he shoved that thought out of his mind. While he was alive, he fully intended to live. But he did not want to be afraid of death.
“I’m glad,” he said quietly. “I’m so glad for both of you.”
He held Mia like that for a long time, taking in her warmth, resting his cheek against her hair again. The ocean breeze stirred past them, simultaneously warming and cooling, damp.
He screamed when a radiator vent was torn from the hospital roof like tinfoil and hurled full-speed at his head. He ducked, dragging Mia down with him, and it crashed into the gravel behind him. He looked around frantically, but nobody was there. Mia was laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe.
“What the-what-the fuck-”
“I think Diego is getting impatient with you.” Mia gasped for air and stood, brushing the gravel off Maya’s robes. Phoenix gaped at her, then gaped in the direction of the shorn circle of metal in the roof.
“He’s-wha-” Phoenix stood and yelled over Mia’s head. “You bastard!”
The vent smacked him in the back of the head. Phoenix yelled and batted it away, dully noting that it was lighter than he expected, and Mia laughed harder. He looked around indignantly and rubbed the back of his head. The vent hovered threateningly at face-height, drifting around him lazily.
“Jesus.” His eyes followed the vent; he circled around with it. “What was all that about the dead not noticing small details?”
“I think this is pretty important to him.”
“Jealous prick.” Phoenix ducked as the vent swayed toward his face again. “At least it’s not scalding hot coffee this time.”
“Don’t give him ideas.” Mia’s laughter was abating, but she was still smiling warmly. “Besides, if he really wanted to hurt you, he could have torn your face off by now.”
“And I thought the dead were powerless without a body?”
“Not entirely. But perhaps you’ve perhaps heard the term ‘soul mate’? It’s not just a romantic turn of phrase. As I have taken a physical form, he can take aspects of the power I currently have, including observational powers.” She paused. “Besides, ghosts and poltergeists who remain here on earth with a grudge or unfinished business have formidable kinetic powers. Regular spirits can just move your keys to the last place you’d look to find them.”
“That’s good to know.”
The vent dropped heavily into the gravel. Phoenix sighed and kicked it with the flat of his sandal. Most guys assumed that if you were involved in a relationship with another man, you were by default not a threat to their own girlfriends. Just his luck Armando wasn’t so naïve.
“I hope the hospital didn’t need that.”
Mia laughed quietly behind her hand. Phoenix straightened and looked up at her.
“I believe in you, Phoenix. And I believe you know what you have to do. I believe you’ve known it for a long time.”
-------------------------------------
After his conversation with Mia his mind was running nonstop, a myriad of ideas running into a stream-of-consciousness he did not know how to begin articulating fully. He wished he had his laptop to type ideas as they came to him, but he did not want to leave the hospital, so he paced the waiting room and tried to fix the ideas in his head as they flowed. Trucy followed on his heels for a little while, curious and worried, though she sensed that he did not want to talk, and Maya and Pearl watched him uneasily. Maggey and Gumshoe had left with Toby after Phoenix had promised to call as soon as Miles was awake. He told the girls to go home and get some sleep, take care of Pess, and after promising that he would also call them as soon as Miles was awake, they also consented and went back to the apartment.
It was almost dawn when Dr. Mask touched Phoenix’s shoulder and startled him out of his reverie. He pulled his earbuds out of his ears and turned off his mp3 player.
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
“Dr. Stiles is done. Mr. Edgeworth is going to be fine. He’s in the recovery room waking up right now.”
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
“When can I see him?”
We don’t get fooled again
“We’ll move him to his room shortly.” Mask beckoned for Phoenix to follow her with curled fingers and started walking toward another set of double-doors. Phoenix followed on her heels, switching off his mp3 player and winding the chord around his hand before shoving it into his pocket. For such a small woman, she walked fast. “You can wait for him there.”
“All right.”
“The good news is that he is expected to make a full recovery, though after the anesthesia fully wears off he will be quite sore for a while. We are going to put him on painkillers, of course. And he will have some scars even though we applied all the appropriate salves to prevent that. Shame to mar that pretty face.”
Phoenix smiled bitterly to himself and shrugged. Miles would probably be more cross about the scarring than the pain, vain bastard that he was.
“It’s fine.”
“The district attorney’s office has already been notified of his injury. The detective you were with put in the call last night. They’ve given him full leave with pay until he is fully recovered, so I encourage you to encourage him to take this time to rest. His cases have been re-assigned.” She glanced back at Phoenix. “I am under the impression he is the sort of patient who will try to overwork himself as soon as he can see straight.”
Phoenix’s smile deepened. “Yeah, that would be Miles.”
Mask lead him up the elevator to the trauma ward and steered him into a single-occupancy room facing across the street. She excused himself and left him in the darkened room; he looked around and walked toward the window. The horizon was tinting pale purple at the edges, still deep blue at the zenith, though the stars were blurry in the Los Angeles smog. The Wright Anything Agency was barely visible if one stood on tiptoe and stared lengthwise out the side of the window. The lights were on; he wondered if the girls had set up shop there instead of going all the way back to the apartment. Hopefully one of them would remember to take Pess out before too long. The poor dog was probably beside herself with anxiety alone in the apartment. He settled back down onto his feet and collapsed into the armchair provided for family members.
He was half-asleep when somebody flicked the lights on. His first instinct was to shield his eyes and pull his cap low down his brow, but he remembered where he was and pushed it back along his hairline. A nurse was holding the door open as another nurse-a rather stunning blonde-wheeled a gurney into the room, Miles covered with a sheet supine on top, an IV rack hooked to the bedframe to wheel beside him. A man in deep blue scrubs followed them in and closed the door behind him.
Phoenix stood eagerly and hovered over Miles as the nurses checked him over quickly and moved him to his permanent bed. He was barely awake, eyelids falling shut as soon as they would flutter open, and answered inquiries with barely-audible noises. He was in a paper hospital gown, though even compared to it his skin was chalk-white beneath ugly wounds. Phoenix’s stomach lurched. The first of his bruises from the fall were starting to color, deep blue and black and red and yellow, and this was only over the surfaces of his body not covered by his gown or by the dressings from the surgery. The smell of antiseptic and something abstract Phoenix could only describe as illness and wound and blood assaulted him. It was the unnerving cocktail of sterility and morbidity he associated with hospitals. He reached out for Miles’ hand, realizing with relief that it was cleanly-bandaged and free of industrial nails, and gently curled his fingertips in Miles’. Miles curled his hand back in automatic response.
“Miles? Can you hear me?”
Miles made a quiet noise halfway between a grunt and a groan.
“He’s still really groggy, Mr. Wright,” said the nurse who was changing out his IV bag. “He’s just fine, though. He’ll be awake and hungry in no time.”
This was the blonde nurse that had caught Phoenix’s attention as soon as she walked in. She had aquamarine eyes Phoenix half-expected came from tinted contacts, but the effect was the same regardless: she was gorgeous. Phoenix felt a little guilty for ogling next to his ailing husband, but wow.
The other nurse, an elfin brunette with boyish-short hair, kneeled down by Phoenix’s side of the bed, and he realized she was securing a catheter to the bedframe. Phoenix wrinkled his nose.
Ew. I hope he can at least use the restroom by himself. I fuck him in the ass; I want nothing else to do with it.
“This will come out soon,” the nurse said when she saw Phoenix’s expression. He shrugged and turned to the man by the door, who was waiting with a chart in his hand. He was handsome, young-probably no older than Phoenix or Miles-with close-cropped, messy brown hair and glasses. The red lines from the elastic of his surgical cap and mask were still pressed into his skin. He smiled and extended his hand.
“Mr. Wright? I’m Dr. Stiles. I performed the surgery on your husband.”
Phoenix took his hand and received a warm, confident handshake. Stiles nodded toward the blonde nurse, who was hooking Miles up to a vitals monitor.
“And this is Angie Thompson, my assistant. She helped with the surgery.”
Angie nodded at Phoenix, smiling, and turned back to the machine. Phoenix inclined his head in a half-bow back to her, and turned back to Stiles.
“Thank you so much for taking care of him, both of you.”
“Oh, jeez, it was nothing.” Stiles scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “I assume Dr. Mask informed you of the extent of injuries we had to fix?”
“Yes.”
“She’ll be the attending physician. I’ve already discussed follow-up with her. Mr. Edgeworth should be fully awake soon. I’m sure he will be glad to have somebody who cares about him in here.”
Phoenix nodded. More than you’ll ever know.
“Oh, and here are his personal effects.” Stiles stepped over to a bolted plastic box on the end of the bed and pulled out a Ziploc baggie. “Wallet, keys, phone, et cetra. I’m afraid his clothes were beyond repair. We had to cut them off.”
“That’s fine. He has plenty.”
“Oh, and we had to remove this during the surgery.” Stiles reached into his pocket and dropped Miles’ cleaned wedding ring into Phoenix’s hand. “Don’t read too heavily into the symbolism of that. It was just in our way. He can put it back on after his hands have healed.”
Phoenix closed his hand around it. It was still warm from being in Stiles’ pocket. “Thank you.”
Stiles and the nurses left Phoenix to pull the armchair closer to the side of the bed-with a god-awful screech he half-expected Miles to give him an irritated look for, but he was delirious-and settled down, pulling off his cap and running his fingers through his hair. He shoved the cap into his pocket and opened up the Ziploc, going through Miles’ things absently. It didn’t feel like an invasion of privacy; God knows he had seen it multiple times before. He turned off the phone to preserve its battery, dropped it with the keys back into the bag, and opened Miles’ leather wallet. The center vellum-covered pocket housed his driver’s license, which Phoenix pulled out and looked over. Miles had not updated it since he was twenty-one, so it was one of the old-design California licenses. He looked as stern as he always looked, younger, without glasses. He still lived at the same address they lived at now. Phoenix smiled, glancing over the issue date; it was just six months after his disastrous trial for the murder of Doug Swallow, six months after he had met Mia and renewed his resolve to become a defense attorney. He was still in university, while Miles was the Demon Prosecutor Phoenix desperately wanted to save. He could not believe that was well over a decade ago. Aspects of that time period were vivid in his memory, while others were dimmed with age and well-distanced from his emotions.
He started to push the license back into its slot and smiled, halting. Beneath his license Miles had kept that ridiculous picture Maya had taken after the resolution of State vs. Edgeworth, all those years ago. It was all confetti and banners and despite Phoenix’s annoyed expression at Maya almost tripping over him, he remembered it being a moment of pure elation, though soon to be followed by the devastation of Miles’ faux suicide emo bullshit. The picture was sun-faded and creased; Miles had admitted that he kept it in his wallet ever since it was taken, even while he had disappeared. It was when he had first started having to face the fact that his feelings for Phoenix had never died. It was also when Phoenix himself was starting to realize that he loved Miles, had loved him for all these years, and still did despite how he had changed.
Change, huh?
He replaced the license in the wallet and set the Ziploc by the chair, settling back and sighing, watching Miles’ chest rise and fall rhythmically. Phoenix could think of no better gauntlet through which to run his ideas than Miles. If they had a single weakness, they were guaranteed to be ripped to shreds. He desperately wanted to talk to him about everything-about Gumshoe’s observations of the crime scene, about his conversation with Mia, about the ideas he had for a change in the court system he was realizing were not as embryonic as he at first thought, but had been long in coming-but he just rested his head by Miles’ forearm and closed his eyes. He was dead asleep within moments.
By the time Phoenix woke up, it was mid-morning and Miles was far enough out of anesthesia to be sore and cross at being bedridden when he should have been prosecuting a case. Upon hearing that Klavier Gavin had taken over he was doubly-cross, convinced the ‘useless pretty-boy show-off punk’ would screw it up, and had sent Maya and Pearl on a mission to find food that was less sub-par than the hospital fare. Trucy had been firmly sent to school, and given that Miles was in good enough health to badger her about it, she consented to going. Phoenix was mulling in the armchair beside the hospital bed, finally able to relax now that he had seen Miles patched up and cleaned of blood-though he did look strange in a hospital gown, and found the indignity near-unbearable, much to Phoenix’s amusement-and in good enough health to be back to his usual finicky, bitchy self.
“I want my laptop.”
Phoenix was staring vaguely at the opposite wall, forefingers pressed together over his lips. Half of his mind was still mulling over what Mia had said.
“Well, in the words of the great philosopher Jagger, you can’t always get what you want. Besides, you can hardly use your hands right now.”
“Don’t be glib, Wright. I have work I need to get done.”
“You need to rest right now is what you need to do.”
“I will rest better if I can at least check my email.”
“Besides, you don’t even have your glasses.”
“I’m not completely blind without them.”
“Would you calm down?” Phoenix gave Miles a wan look. “I already told Trucy to pick it up after school. Along with some of your other personal effects.”
Miles sighed and closed his eyes. “What about Pess?”
“Apparently she damn near scratched the front door down after we left, but Trucy’s taking care of her.” Phoenix paused. “She was worried sick about you, Miles. She knew somehow. She started freaking out right before Gumshoe called me.”
Miles did not respond. Phoenix exhaled through his nose and returned to his meditations. While Miles was asleep he had desperately wanted to consult him; now he kept convincing himself his ideas were not yet fully-formed enough to communicate. He did not want to have them torn apart before he even got started.
There was a firm knock on the open doorframe. Phoenix heard Miles take in a sharp breath before he had time to register the figure in the doorway, and then, he clenched his fist in his pocket so hard he almost drew blood.
“Mr. Edgeworth? Mr. Wright?”
Kristoph Gavin stood smiling disarmingly in the doorway with an overflowing bouquet cradled in his arm. It took every inch of Phoenix’s willpower to keep his face from twisting into a snarl, but he forced his anger down and smiled.
Don’t blow it. Don’t blow it. Don’t blow it. Channel the anger and smile because you’re going to nail him. Smile high on your own power. Smile because he thinks you’re not a threat.
“Kristoph.” Phoenix waved languidly. Keep on smiling, you sick bastard. Trucy would see that you’re livid Miles is still alive. “I didn’t expect to see you here. Aren’t you supposed to be in court right now?”
“My brother told me about Mr. Edgeworth’s accident this morning. We were absolutely distraught when we heard the news.” Fuck you. Fuck. You, asshole. “The court has been postponed to tomorrow to allow the new prosecutor time to prepare.”
Gavin stepped into the room. As he moved away from the doorway Phoenix could see another person standing behind him, a small, lithe young man in a rust-red vest and pants with a defense attorney’s badge on his lapel. Two of his forelocks were sticking straight up, and the rest of his hair was tied back in a low tail. He had his hands in his pockets and was standing back awkwardly, looking around the hospital room. A glint of gold caught Phoenix’s eye; he was wearing a thick, garish bangle around his left wrist, carved with an angular runic pattern and very out of place with the rest of his attire.
Phoenix felt his heart drop out of his stomach. He clenched his fists tighter. He had only days ago spoken to Valant Gramarye-
“Oh, please allow me to introduce you.” Gavin beckoned for the young man to come forward. “This is Apollo Justice, a new attorney of mine fresh off his Bar Exam. He’s been shadowing me for a few cases. Justice, this is Phoenix Wright, a dear friend of mine.”
Apollo’s eyes widened momentarily at the mention of Phoenix’s name, but he said nothing. He offered his hand and Phoenix took it. The kid tried to grip as hard as he could to impress, to overcompensate though there was no need, and Phoenix gave him a warm smile to try to disarm him. The poor kid was probably totally ignorant of Kristoph Gavin’s true nature.
“Please to meet you,” said Phoenix.
Apollo nodded and swallowed. “The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Wright.”
“And this man-though he probably cannot shake hands with you right now-” Phoenix felt his hackles raise, but he lowered his head and twisted his mouth into a grin. Fight it. Keep going. “-is Miles Edgeworth, one of the prosecutors for the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office.”
Apollo paled looking over Miles’ body. Miles nodded weakly to him and rested his head back on the pillows, closing his eyes.
“Do you-” Apollo shoved his hands into his pockets and scuffed the ground with his toe. The light glinted off the bangle. “-do you have reason to suspect foul play was involved, Mr. Edgeworth?”
Phoenix’s head snapped up. He stared hard at Apollo, who was in turn staring at Miles intently. Miles shrugged stiffly and closed his eyes again.
“Accidents happen all the time,” he said quietly. “I can think of quite a few people who would want to see me dead for bringing their true crimes to light.”
Kristoph shook his head and pushed his glasses up his nose. Everybody was all smiles. The atmosphere in the room was near-snapping tension. Only Apollo saw the surface of any of this.
“A formidable loss for the city that would be.”
Phoenix smiled and looked down darkly. His cap fell over his eyes; good. Hide them. “Rest assured, kid, we would not allow anybody to get away with that.”
“Oh.” Apollo scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “Well, that’s good, I guess.”
Silence settled over the room. Kristoph hailed a passing nurse and asked for a vase for his flowers, then set about arranging them cheerfully while Apollo stood awkwardly in the center of the room. Phoenix watched the young man carefully, brows furrowed. Something about him captured his attention, something beyond that bangle around his wrist. It may have been a nostalgic, narcissistic reverence for a reflection of his younger self, but he had a feeling it was not that simple.
“Well, I’m afraid we have to be off for the investigation.” Kristoph clapped Miles gently on the shoulder, and it took an inhuman amount of effort to keep from jumping on him and stomping his skull into the ground. “It’s a shame I won’t be facing you in court. I always loved our exchanges.”
Miles’ smile was acidic.
“Don’t pretend to start giving a damn about me now, Gavin. You’ve always hated me, and the feeling has always been mutual.”
Kristoph twitched. For a moment, the darkness of his true nature crossed his face, but he smoothed it into a smile and laughed disarmingly, turning to Apollo and Phoenix.
“You’ve certainly bagged yourself a feisty one. Is he always like this in the morning?”
“You have no idea.”
“Well…” Kristoph clapped Apollo on the shoulder, and he started slightly. The former was still staring at Phoenix. Smiling. Always smiling. “This case of mine will be nonstop for a couple of days, but after that we should have dinner, of course. How about Sunday evening?”
“Sounds good. Come by the club, and I’ll try to put you up, as always.”
“Excellent.” Kristoph held out his hand; Phoenix clasped it, hard. “I’ll be looking forward to it, my friend.”
“Yes.”
It was starting to hurt Phoenix’s cheeks to keep smiling like this. He gripped harder. His smile became more disarming.
“I’ll be looking forward to it, my friend.”
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
That Friday, April 17, 2026, Shadi Enigmar came back from the dead.