4. Everything You Hear

Niko had good days and bad. The bad ones were never something he could control entirely, and they would always be here for the rest of his life. A good day left his legs numb or with occasional rippling twinges of nerve pain. A bad one found Niko in agony as the nerve pain erupted into what felt like fire. On those days, sensation in his legs ebbed and flowed from a tingling numb to feeling like he was standing in searing flames, the pain sharp, vibrant, and unlike almost anything else he’d experienced in life since the fall that had rendered him paralyzed.

Sometimes the worst days came along, unexpected and cruel. Other times, he triggered them by overexerting himself—like he had the night before at the concert. Running down the Kestrel had brought about the worst day he’d had so far.

His legs spasmed and ached, sending electric jolts up his shins and thighs, and phantom burning in his feet. He had definitely overdone it by running so much, making demands of body parts that had nothing left to give. He had never been merciful to himself, extending all his care to others. Niko threw himself away in the process, and he knew that he did. But he could never stop himself from doing it. Once he was caught up in the moment, the only thing that mattered was reaching his goal.

It was why he’d been so afraid to come back to hunting.

Niko preferred to spend the worst days inactive and lying on the couch, watching a comfort movie and drinking enough beer that he didn’t have to think anymore, but today, he was scheduled for rehabilitative physical therapy, and with being back in hunting again, he figured he couldn’t afford to miss it. So he was, instead, pushing through the worst of the pain.

The morning and early afternoon were spent in Loolae’s little state of the art, mirror-lined studio—so called Destination: Reclamation—where she guided him through exercises and stretches. Morning hours had been for walking, running, learning coordination in the neurotech armor. When afternoon came, he was back out of the suit and working on therapeutic exercises to keep his legs healthy and his body in prime condition.

Loolae was a Xermotl, an alien people who hailed from the torrential, oceanic world of Valaevanas. Amphibious, their skin was rubbery and smooth, with four long tendril-like legs built more for water than land, but capable of maneuvering on both. Loolae was teal green with bright yellow stripes and patterns. Xermotl weren’t capable of speaking Galactic Standard, but she wore a small translator chip at her spindly neck and Niko could see her natural excitement each time he succeeded at a set of exercises by how her yellow patterns lit up brightly, the bioluminescence rippling across her.

Niko had gotten to meet Loolae when Zann introduced them shortly after he’d gotten out of the hospital, and considered her one of the only friends he still held closely left in his life.

Normally he wouldn’t have gone to an alien with vastly different biology for delicate and intensive physical therapy, but Loolae was the best at what she did, and she took pride in helping grievously wounded veterans, officers, and others injured in service of protecting others. In fact, it was Destination: Reclamation’s specialty—the empowerment and discipline Loolae espoused present in the studio’s name itself.

Niko didn’t regret it for a moment.

“Hellooooo? Niko? Are you still in there?”

Niko twitched, his attention returning to their exercises as he found two wide, golden pairs of alien eyes staring at him curiously. He cleared his throat.

“Yeah, sorry. There’s been a lot on my mind.”

“I can see that,” Loolae commented, leaning back slowly, her patterns dimming to a gentle blue. “Try it again,” she counseled, carefully moving his leg into position so Niko could grab his ankle and stretch forward. He did, wincing into the pain that sizzled up along his leg at the movement. “So, I heard you’re back into hunting now.”

“Yep.”

“Does this distraction have anything to do with that assassin by any chance? The Kestrel.”

Niko grunted, reaching forward to stretch more intensely into the pain, a flare of frustration sparking in him. “Yeah. The guy is impossible. He thinks he’s better than everyone in the damn galaxy and evades every chance I have to get at him. It’s been driving me nuts.”

“Hmm,” Loolae hummed neutrally. “Other leg now.”

Since she’d asked, Niko couldn’t stop talking. It was all falling out now. “I’m doing my best. I’m giving the best I can. And it’s not good enough. He just keeps getting away. The guy is pretty much untouchable. I thought I was better than that, you know? Different from anybody else who wants a shot at him. But every time I get close, he shit-talks me like I’m nothing before disappearing again and it kills me.”

“I can’t tell if you sound more like a jilted ex-lover or someone who’s angry they can’t get their turn dating him yet.”

“Oh, hell no.” Niko balked at the idea, insulted at being linked to this asshole in any kind of sexual or romantic way. He had no interest in fucking the galaxy’s number one most wanted criminal. He wanted to punch him and drag him into the station for the judgment and punishment he deserved.

That’s all he wanted. Even if the Kestrel was infuriatingly, disgustingly good-looking. It only made Niko hate him more.

“Niko, please be careful. I’ve been following the news on him. He’s incredibly dangerous and you have to remember that while you’re very capable of hunting, you’re still learning how to do it all over again in a different way after your injury. It won’t be the same as it was before.”

“Yeah,” Niko sighed. He had no way of telling her what, exactly, the Kestrel did to him, though. The need he had to see this through, to best him. How he’d been called upon to put an end to this and kept slipping up again and again. “You’re right.”

“I heard about the human man he killed yesterday. Some big CEO.”

Niko grimaced, focusing on the quiet burn of his stretches to blot out the sting of what he was unable to forget. “The owner of StarSeam. Guess he was a big fan of Hayura.”

“Right, the shipping company. Do they know why it was him? Everybody’s surprised it wasn’t the singers.”

Yeah. Me too,Niko thought. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. The brief and bewildering exchange with the Kestrel filled his thoughts all morning. They had robbed him of virtually any sleep, tossing and turning, feverish half-dreams, half-memories of the blond man pausing to assess him, to tell him every victim was somehow guilty of—of something. Niko had been frustratingly robbed of whatever the Kestrel had been about to say.

They know what they’ve done.

As if the universe were wreaking some cosmic irony on him, Gravity began playing softly over the speakers, filling the studio with its effervescent beat, the same debut song at Vhesa that had been ground to a halt by the Kestrel’s little game. “Gravity can’t touch me when I’m with you.”

Niko barked out a bitter laugh.

“Niko?”

He grunted, murmuring another apology. “No. They don’t know. I’m sure Zann’s guys are working on it though.”

“You were there last night, right? I saw footage on the news somebody recorded of you running and telling people to get to safety.”

“Yeah. I was so close, and then I—I messed it up again.”

“You’re doing the best you can, I’m sure,” Loolae graciously offered, her glow shifting to a soft lavender Niko had come to recognize as trying to soothe. “Let’s go back to the left leg.”

Niko wasn’t so keen to agree. Guilt and shame flooded him, melting with the sting of another failure. If he’d really been doing his best, he wouldn’t have hesitated. He wouldn’t have given the Kestrel a moment to talk. The man had been standing right in front of him. Niko could have taken the opportunity, could have broken through the bizarre trust the Kestrel had given him. If he had, the man would be dead or in custody right now, and whoever was next on his list would be safe. The galaxy wouldn’t have to worry about him ever again.

Instead, Niko had listened, and not taken action. And now the assassin had vanished again.

“Good job today,” Loolae said once they finished up, patting him on the shin with a rubbery tendril. “Even if your head was in the clouds most of the time.”

Niko wiped his face and neck down with a towel when his phone rang. A caller ID hologram of Zann’s photo appeared before him. For a brief moment, Niko hesitated, his gut icy and crawling at the idea of talking to his brother. His shame deepened at the thought of avoiding him, and he answered. “Zann.”

“Niko, hey. Good call on the concert, after all. I guess I’m the one who owes you a beer. Even if Kestrel got away last night, we gained some invaluable info on him. A treasure trove, really.”

“You mean the Kestrel?” Niko blurted out automatically, then winced at himself. It was the most pointless and unnecessary correction he could have said. He rubbed at his face.

“Uh, actually, no,” Zann said. “Listen, you’ll want to be here for this. Can you come out to the station?”

“Yeah, I’m just finishing up with therapy.” Niko glanced at Loolae, who waved in the background, her patterns flashing a bright and rosy, mottled pink. “Loolae says hi.”

“Well, I say hi back. Get down here, Niko. This is big.”

“Should he be here? Should we be sharing any of this with him? He’s not Galapol,” Fourier asked, his thick eyebrows rising as Niko entered the conference room. Niko saw a cluster of exhausted-looking investigators sitting around and murmuring, their features brightly illuminated from a wall-to-wall scattering of holograms. He paused briefly, stricken, at seeing several images of the Kestrel staring back at him—personal photos and professional ones. Clearly, they’d found who he was.

Niko had come in the armor again. He’d worn it to physical therapy and came straight to the station, but this time Fourier didn’t say a word about it, nor laugh. Zann must have explained the situation to him, or at the very least, had chewed him a new one for mocking Niko over it. Fourier, instead, had chosen to single out and question Niko’s legitimacy.

“He’s on the case,” Zann said with a clipped air of finality. “Besides, this is about to be public knowledge by the end of the day.”

Fourier shrugged but quieted down.

Niko sank into an empty chair, glancing again at the dozens upon dozens of holographic files that lined the presentation wall, including the photographs of a face so beautiful it still made Niko’s chest ache. It was jarring to see. He forced his gaze away.

“Alright. To catch Niko up, this is Elliott James Kestrel,” Zann started, bringing one of the man’s professional portraits front and center. Someone whistled a catcall from the back of the room and Zann stared at them before continuing. “It wasn’t a nickname or title. That was his actual fucking name. He’d written ‘tell them that Kestrel is coming.’”

A couple detectives chuckled around and behind Niko. He winced at the holographic image of the atrocious spray-painted message as it was brought to the forefront now. It could say ‘that’ instead of ‘the’—if one were squinting, drunk, and had a generous imagination. Another image of the man’s professional signature was moved next to it, matching the illegible chicken-scratch.

Zann continued. “Signature matches. Age twenty-six, from Delevia, out in the Ourros System. We were able to match facial recognition from security cams and DNA tracing from the damaged mask. Now handwriting too. This is our guy.”

He held up a vacuum-sealed transparent bag which contained the half-melted remnants of the avian masquerade piece Niko had come to disdain so much. Up close like this, bare and unconcealed by the—no, by Elliott Kestrel’s—usual cloaking tech, Niko could see it was simple, flimsy, plastic. Something that likely came from a cheap costume store. It was oddly surprising to him; he’d expected something more elaborate, somehow.

“He was actually born Elliott Johann Kestrel, after Daddy, but filed for a legal name change on his eighteenth birthday,” Zann continued, setting the evidence back down. “Earned fantastic grades at Graceleaf League Uni. Graduated top of his class and early. Then worked as a robotics engineer at LaraTech. We already have guys out to interview his old boss and coworkers. His old professors. We’ll try to see if he has any close confidants too—best friend, girlfriend, the like—and talk to them.”

Niko peered at several photos lined up, most professional in nature. Carefully curated images taken from business cards and security badges looked back at him, a clearly tepid but admirably cordial smile on Kestrel’s lips. Some of the photos were personal in nature, likely grabbed from old social media accounts. He looked much happier and more relaxed in those, eyes painfully beautiful, his smile easy. The same blond cowlicks fell around his face, albeit marginally more maintained and shorter trimmed. He looked like a perfectly normal person who didn’t regularly engage in killing sprees of planetary leaders, celebrities, and mega-corporate CEOs.

Aside from how exceptionally handsome he was. It almost hurt Niko to look at. He couldn’t express how much he hated that, how much it made something deep inside him squirm uncomfortably.

“Now we get to the juicy stuff. We’ve acquired reports on his medical history, and there’s a lot. Childhood history of psychological treatment and therapy. As an adult, he suffers from delusions and mental illness. He had to be hospitalized for a month and a half over it. Delved pretty swiftly into conspiracy theories and went off the deep end about three years back, after his sister, Cleo, supposedly cut contact with him. He lost his job over it and became estranged from most of society.

“Behold, Cleo Marie Kestrel.”

Images of an equally beautiful, radiant woman appeared on the wall now next to Kestrel. Cleo had the same coloration as him, right down to the seafoam eyes. Long blonde hair fell around her face and shoulders in fluffy waves. In almost every picture, Cleo was smiling—sincere, lovely, and bright. Many of them had a distinctly professional, beauty industry sort of look to them.

“Fashion model with mid-level renown. We’ve been able to contact and question their parents, and they claim they thought she dropped out of the public eye just over three years ago and went no contact due to her being afraid of her brother, but we’re not ruling out the possibility that he killed her too. We’ve been trying to contact her at all her last known numbers but they’re not turning up anything. Her industry colleagues claim she stopped showing up for work, too. Evidence is pointing to him disappearing her, unfortunately.”

Zann brought up another picture, this time of Cleo and Kestrel embracing each other. They grinned jubilantly on what appeared to be his graduation day, both faces so resplendent with obvious joy it shook Niko to his core. It felt almost perverse to see this personal moment. And it felt absolutely nothing like the deranged, cold killer he’d been hunting.

It told a different story of two siblings who had loved—and trusted—each other intimately, of a sister who had come to celebrate her brother’s milestone achievement in life with him. They looked unburdened, faces pressed together as they hugged, Kestrel clad in a dark cap and gown and Cleo in a vibrant sundress. Cleo had clearly taken the picture herself, one arm extended forward, disappearing out of the edge of the image.

The idea that Kestrel had likely turned on his own sister, had hurt her, had maybe even taken her life made the photograph feel haunted rather than the celebratory moment it portrayed. Just like the pop music Kestrel had been listening to, it shone and glimmered on its exterior, but held a dark and eerie truth deep beneath the surface.

“Interrogators brought in and spoke with Mary and Johann Kestrel this morning, just preceding this conference. Mary says both children have been estranged from them for years, and that Elliott had problems when he was a child, including lashing out with a history of violence towards them and Cleo. She says Elliott frightened her, though, even as a child, and that she believes Cleo went into hiding because she was afraid of him too. They don’t seem ready yet to accept that Cleo might be deceased.”

Kestrel’s history looked bad. If he was delusional and unwell, it certainly wasn’t out of the question that one day he could be functioning just fine, and the next, having a violent breakdown. The very person who loved and celebrated with his sister in one moment could be tearing into her with a hurricane of violence the next. Niko knew very well the cruelty some people were capable of.

And Kestrel had dove into conspiracies, parroting them enough to estrange him from his coworkers and cost him his job at a renowned tech development company.

They know what they’ve done. Every one of them—

“Folks, it looks like we have a case of delusional conspiracy, mixed with a persecution complex. Throw in mental illness and a lifelong history of violent outbursts and there’s a glimpse into our motivation,” Zann said.

“The guy was a ticking timebomb. Typical nutjob,” Fourier said, “but with an unusual skill for building neat toys that make him invisible and bulletproof.”

“Something like that,” Zann said.

“Makes you wish being able to execute minors you know are just inevitably going to be a shitstain on society was possible sometimes.”

The room went silent, the other investigators craning their heads to stare at him.

“Fourier,” Zann said. “You might want to shut up.”

“You want to execute minors?” Niko said, appalled.

“What?” Fourier asked, holding his hands up defensively. “If we were able to, creeps like this wouldn’t be walking around as adults, ruining everybody’s lives. I’m not talking about every juvie who commits a crime. I mean the obviously fundamentally broken ones you can see turning into destructive, messed up adults from ten miles away.”

“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that,” Zann said dryly. “Because that’s beyond fucked up. Let’s move on.”

“So,” Niko started, shifting uncomfortably. If he’d disliked Fourier before, it had sunk into disdain now. “Where’s the guy live? Is he still on Delevia? Can we do a raid?”

Zann shook his head. “Says he sold his property just over two years ago in a private sale and disappeared off the map, couple of months after Cleo disappeared. They used to share the house together. We don’t know where he’s staying. We sent guys out there to surveil anyway but it belongs to an Anong Saetang now. We’re questioning her too.”

“Did we send out some cadaver dogs to sweep the place?” a Dvaab investigator asked, scratching a clawed finger around her face in a gesture Niko interpreted as frustration. He didn’t recognize her; she must have been one of the new transfers to the station since he’d retired from hunting.

“Not yet, but that’s happening as soon as possible.”

“This can never be easy, can it?” the investigator lamented.

Zann smiled. “Never is, is it? But we’re on the right path now.” He brought up a video this time, of another Dvaab interrogator speaking with an exceptionally thin, brown haired human woman and pale blond man in the station’s interrogation room. It was quite clear whose parents they were—both siblings had favored their mother’s mildly aquiline nose and father’s hair.

These guys work fast, Niko thought, shocked at how quickly Galapol was able to get all the little working parts in motion to piece this months-long puzzle together overnight. The DNA sample must have been confirmed sometime throughout the night; Kestrel’s parents must have been contacted immediately after and escorted to the station within hours. It was dizzying how rapidly it had all transpired. While the station had been in a chaotic frenzy after the concert, Niko had been sleeplessly tossing and turning through all of it. He glanced at Zann. His brother looked exhausted, wearing deep creases under his eyes, a mug of coffee sitting half-drank next to the evidence bags on the table.

The recording ran through the usual formalities, where both individuals being interviewed swore their honesty and granted permission to be recorded.

“Interrogation Officer Kulna’vuan’deii’vulman’de’caaa. I’ll be speaking with you today regarding Elliott James Kestrel. What can you tell me about your son?”

“He was always problematic,” Mary Kestrel began, one elegant hand on the table, her fingers absentmindedly touching at its surface. “Johann and I were honestly afraid of him, even when he was very little. He’d have tantrums. Violent ones. Would throw things, try to hurt us, attack us. He choked Cleo once and almost killed her. We tried to keep them separate and even considered surrendering him to some sort of foster care or detention center. We tried to educate ourselves and get him help but nothing stuck. I was honestly terrified of what he’d turn into when he became a man.”

“See?” Fourier spoke over the recording.

“Shut up,” Zann said.

“He was delusional too.” Johann spoke now, clearing his throat often as he talked, his words halting. “After he’d go through these violent episodes, he’d get confused, and start accusing us of doing to him what he’d actually done to us. I’d try to show him the marks and bruises he’d leave on me, and say, ‘Elliott, you were the one who did these things, not me,’ but he would get mad all over again and say we were lying to him. That we hurt him and hurt Cleo. He was always getting mad, and getting confused. He had a hard time keeping track of what was real and what his broken brain had fabricated.”

“He was always blaming and accusing other people of being violent, or bad somehow,” Mary interjected. Unlike Johann, who stared down at the table as he spoke, her eyes were wide and intense, darting around and often landing on the camera, as though addressing it straight on, instead of the interrogator. “As he got older, it turned into complex conspiracies and theories and just delved into all kinds of craziness. I think he found them on the internet.”

Officer Kulna leaned forward, tilting his head. “Our research shows Elliott not only got into a prestigious university, but he graduated top of his class. How is something like that possible with the problems he was espousing?”

“Oh, he was always very smart,” Mary said.

“That was probably the crux of the problem,” Johann added. “Sometimes I wonder if his brain was too sharp and it just started turning on itself, making and inventing things where there was nothing. But yes, Elliott has always been exceptionally smart, despite his problematic grasp on reality. To be honest though, we haven’t spoken to Elliott since he was thirteen. He left home far too young and cut contact. I—I only just learned he changed his name, even.”

“Were you aware he and Cleo had been sharing a residence prior to her disappearance?” Kulna asked.

“Yes,” Mary said. “She was trying to reconnect with him, though we cautioned it was a bad idea. She thought she could even help him. Whatever he did or said to her, though…” Her voice trailed off before she spoke again. “She stopped reaching out or answering her phone too.”

Something about the interview didn’t sit right with Niko. Something barely perceptible, hiding away between the words. Everything Kestrel’s parents said was logical, matched with the man’s sordid actions and medical records. But Mary kept staring at the camera, eyes afraid, as though trying desperately to convince someone of the validity of her words. As though begging someone to believe her. It could just have been the guilt and horror of realizing the very person you’d created and released into society had gone on to do terrible things. He knew it could be Mary merely pleading to whoever was watching that she hadn’t been a bad mother, hadn’t directly contributed to what her son had gone on to do.

But there was something more. Niko had seen it plenty of times, that same bewildered, tense pleading from criminals he’d cornered on his jobs when they’d realized they had no way out except a last-ditch effort to try and bargain.

He glanced around the room at the other investigators, but whatever they were thinking was a mystery to him. No one else looked particularly suspicious, some shaking their heads at the abuses Mary and Johann described. Many were taking notes. Zann, for his part, just continued to look tired.

“When you told us he was the Kestrel— I thought it was a nickname, you know, and nothing to do with our actual surname,” Johann explained. “The killer. I thought— Well, I hate to say this. I really do. There was some small part of me that wasn’t even surprised. I mean, I was very shocked, of course. But I—”

He paused, exchanging glances with his wife. “Mary and I always knew Elliott wasn’t, well, right.”

They both looked at the camera.

“You— Officer, earlier you mentioned protection in exchange for cooperating,” Mary said. “Is that still on the table?”

“Of course it is,” Kulna said.

The rest of the interrogation went as Niko expected—they didn’t know why Kestrel was killing galactic leaders, but had plenty of theories with past violent outbursts and a tenuous grasp on reality. Officer Kulna brought up—gently as he could—that they couldn’t currently rule out the possibility that Kestrel had killed his sister and Mary began crying again, this time requesting a break.

When it was over, Niko said his goodbyes—goodbye, really, to Zann, with an obligatory grunt towards another couple of faces he recognized and a pointed snub of Fourier. Zann promised to send him everything from the updated files. Then Niko headed back home, only then allowing himself to give in to soul-deep exhaustion from the devouring pain he’d been enduring all day long in his feet and legs. Even now, they punished him with a barrage of constant phantom flames clawing up through his nerve pathways.

He sprawled on the couch and started to open the compressed file that Zann had dutifully transferred over before Niko had even gotten home, but the day’s pain and exhaustion had raked him hollow. Niko was simply far too spent to go there right now, closing it all out instead before it overwhelmed him. For several moments, he simply lay with his eyes closed, brain empty and numb, nerves drenched in acid. He wondered if this was what it would feel like to get splashed by bog-theun toxin.

“Don’t forget to eat today, Niko!” T1-N4 cheerily reminded him from beside the couch.

“Mmh, not hungry,” he mumbled, already slipping into the hazy twilight that lay between consciousness and sleep.

Dream imagery danced a fever with memory, intertwining until they were one and the same, indecipherable. Niko was back on Vhesa Station, running after Kestrel. Always running, always pursuing, always too slow. The lithe, blond figure was clad in black, ever maddeningly out of reach, but always in sight.

Niko surged forward with the last of his strength, knocking Kestrel to the ground beneath them. This time, the other man didn’t slip away, didn’t outmaneuver him. This time, Niko pinned him down with his own weight, body against body. He held Kestrel against the cool floor beneath them, the other man panting, cheeks flushed with the exertion of his run, his fight, his effort to survive.

Niko kissed him.

He pressed his lips to Kestrel’s own—warm, wanting, parting for him—and slipped his eager tongue inside. Exploring him. Claiming him. Kestrel moaned into Niko’s mouth as his body went limp in surrender.

Had it really happened this way? Or maybe Niko had once dreamed that it had. Maybe he was dreaming now. It was too hard to tell anymore as he slipped out from the tight grip of nauseating pain and sank into the honeyed warmth of Kestrel’s arms instead.

It had been so long since anyone had held him.

Kestrel combed his fingers through Niko’s hair, the touch divine and sending pleasurable chills racing through him. They weren’t on Vhesa anymore, but somewhere safe and hidden away, with dim lighting and a soft bed. He didn’t need armor here. Kestrel brushed his mouth against Niko’s ear, breath hot against his neck.

“You don’t believe everything you hear,” he whispered. “Do you?”