I’ve made mistakes. I thought I’d be protecting you by not involving you, but now … I know that you were shot. You’re going to be OK, but still. You were shot because of me. I put you in danger because I didn’t want you to realize what I’d be willing to do to find out the truth. If I’d told you from the start, if we’d done this together, it would have worked out so differently.

How are we going to move on from this?

This is what happened. Here are your answers, T.

I first stumbled onto the whole Ratel business by accident. Mia met Adam in a Zealot lounge. He recognized her, but she didn’t know who he was. They met up a few times. He tried to get her off the drugs, and they bonded enough that he told her who he really was. She ran, moved house, changed as much as she could, terrified that he was sent from Mana-ma to kill her. Remember when she upped and moved halfway across the city and took a few trips to the flesh parlors? That’s when it was. Maybe he really was after her, too. I don’t know.

She didn’t tell me eveything at once. I was curious from the start. Someone from the Hearth who had changed their face? Who? When she told me it was Adam, that he was alive and working for the Ratel, then I knew I couldn’t walk away. I tried to, but it burned at me.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that Vuk was a hitman for the Ratel, so that to even look into this meant capital-D Danger. I still couldn’t leave it alone, though, especially when he walked into Zenith. I watched him for months, whenever he came in, though I didn’t get too close. He didn’t recognize me because I’d waxworked myself (that’s why I did it, T: for your protection, not because I didn’t want us to look the same any-more). I had blue hair, and you don’t expect to see one half of a pair of conjoined twins from your former cult in an exclusive club in San Francisco.

That’s what I thought at first, anyway. Until I realized the Ratel had changed him. Overwritten his personality with what they wanted. Someone who could kill in cold blood, to order.