Chelen City: Chapter Twenty-Four, Part One

Notes: Yay, more Elanus today! He's about to go get him some answers...maybe. I might throw a wrench into the works... ;) 

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Twenty-Four, Part One 

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Chapter Twenty-Four, Part One

 

“Catie, show me the feed again.”

Catie complied, piping in the completely unsecure secured feed that connected to President Marco Moreno’s cell. As a man whose empire had just collapsed, whose house of cards had tumbled down in a pile at his feet, Elanus expected to see him mourn. He expected to see him rage. He wanted for him to scream and cry out and suffer, and his expectations were more than met.

Moreno had been elected for a few reasons: first off, he was likable. He projected an air of enticement and affability that could turn the most hardened hearts a bit softer in his presence, like the incredible con man he was. Second, he had the amazing ability to convince people he was doing work for them even when it was clear, undoubtedly and crystalline clear, that he was only working for himself and his cronies.

Even now, after Caria had ousted him and was working with the interim government with complete transparency, there were still protestors who showed up outside the prison chanting his name. Most of them were poor; many of them were xenophobic. Moreno’s wealthy backers had fled, but the embattled lower classes he’d convinced he could elevate (as soon as he got rid of the sick, and the alien, and the over-educated) stood by him to the end.

It was a good thing Elanus had no interest in being a fascist tyrant. Otherwise, it would be so easy to step into this man’s shoes. He knew the right things to say and how to say them; he knew how to appeal to the broad masses, how to give just enough to make himself look like a rich prospect, how to assuage the glitterati and appeal to the poor at the same time. He was afflicted with Elfshot, which made him less of a catch, and was marrying an alien, another tick against him, but enough money could smooth those bumps over. He could do it. He could rule this whole fucking planet, and he could rub his rule in Moreno’s face.

He wasn’t going to, but goddammit he could.

“How badly do you want to punch him right now?” a warm, familiar voice murmured in his ear. Elanus turned to look at Kieron, leaning up close against his chair with mischief on his face.

“So bad,” Elanus confessed. “I can’t even tell you.”

Kieron nodded. “As autocrats go, he’s not the worst I’ve ever seen,” he said, shrugging as he wrapped his arms around Elanus’s shoulders. Elanus welcomed the touch, but there was something about it that sat badly with him too. Kieron before had never initiated contact like this—or he had, but rarely. Not unless he thought there was a good reason it was needed. Kieron now, though, was far more tactile than Elanus had expected.

Had he been this way on Trakta? When had he lost it? Or was he just making an extra effort to get Elanus and the girls on his side again?

Fuck off, you’re already on his side. It was true, Elanus was, but…he couldn’t say he didn’t miss the prickly version of Kieron, either. The one who growled like an angry catterpet whenever you tried to touch him, but eased into your embrace and eventually went pliant under your caresses.

They hadn’t slept together yet. It had been a fucking month, and they hadn’t slept together. Or rather, they slept together but they weren’t having sex. That was longer without than they’d gone even in the very beginning of their relationship, when they didn’t really like each other but were terribly attracted to each other all the same.

Elanus missed it terribly, but there was some part of it that felt like taking advantage. He couldn’t bring himself to initiate it, and Kieron hadn’t either yet, so maybe that was the best way to go for now.

“He’s not as bad as my grandfather,” Kieron went on. “Or maybe my grandfather wasn’t as good as him.”

“Just a different type of violent,” Elanus said. “And they both got overthrown in the end, didn’t they.”

“I suppose so.” Kieron stared at the screen a moment longer, watching Moreno walk across his cell floor with his hands clenching in his hair, then patting it flat again, over and over. “What’s next for him?”

“Caria wants a public trial.”

“That sounds reasonable.” Kieron glanced at his face. “What don’t you like about it?”

“I should like everything about it. Public trials are a cornerstone of democracy and the rule of law.” Neither of which was really in effect here on Gania, but at least with Moreno they could genuflect in the right direction. “But I don’t want to give him all those chances to grandstand, either. Moreno is a shithead, but he’s an eloquent shithead. Caria’s strong and does her best, but she doesn’t have the same level of charisma.”

“True,” Kieron said. “Hmm. Would any assassin take the contract?”

A contract on the embattled president of Gania? Elanus laughed. “Ryu might.” Ryu was mobile again after intense physical therapy, and feeling much sturdier with his new skeleton. He’d been practicing his skills non-stop, to the point that Pol was starting to try and copy some of them. They’d turned it into a game of hide and seek (and kill, without the actual killing) in the girls’ hangars, which was a terrible amount of fun for everyone involved. “He’s pretty upset about everything he had to go through on behalf of the man.”

“So he should be.” Kieron paused. “I don’t suppose he can testify against him.”

“Unfortunately, no. We don’t have that kind of chain of evidence.”

“Is it possible he could walk?”

Elanus considered it. “With a jury trial? It’s not impossible, I suppose. He’s well-liked, and he’s been quick to heap blame on [name] now that they’re presumed dead. Unless we bring xir back, we can’t guarantee anything.” Even with xir here, they couldn’t guarantee Moreno would go down for his awful, inhumane crimes. “And I’m so biased, since so much of the evidence revolves around Elfshot propagation, that I’d never be invited to testify.”

“Mm.” Kieron looked at him again. “What do you want to do, then?”

“I want…” I want to go back in time and shoot this motherfucker through the head before he gets it in his brain to run for office. I want to eject him out of an airlock, cause a fatal flaw in one of his routine vaccinations, take him out of the picture before he becomes an issue. I want to wipe him and his influence off the face of the city, the continent, the world.

I want him dead. “I want to talk to him, I think.”

Kieron nodded. “Lucky for you, you know the interim president. I bet she can get you a meeting.”

“I’m sure she can.” Assuming Elanus wanted one that was above board. He wasn’t convinced of that yet.

After all, if he decided Moreno had to die, it would be easier to see it done unofficially.