Chapter Text
Friday, January 11, 2028
11:50 PM
It would be one thing if it was the Chief Prosecutor’s desk phone that was ringing. It would be one thing if, when Edgeworth picks up the receiver, it was a specifically designated police negotiator, someone trained and qualified to be delivering news in real-time that there was a crisis situation calling for his attention.
Instead, reality takes the shape of his cell phone and a quietly mortified Phoenix Wright, and the end result—when it manifests—is worse.
“Hey, uh…Edgeworth?”
“Wright.”
Phoenix’s sigh clouds over the speaker. He sighs in a way Edgeworth hasn’t heard in years. It makes him think of deadlines and tracking down the purchase order of a giant stuffed bear and having a cell phone chucked across the courtroom. Despite something fond coloring those age-old memories, there’s a mild taste of alarm and copper on his tongue.
Edgeworth rises to his feet. “Wright, what is it? Are you all—”
“—we have a problem.”
Edgeworth turns to the large wall of windows behind his desk. All right. Frustratingly vague it is, then. “What kind of problem?”
“A hostage problem.”
Edgeworth’s mind spins quickly. They’ve been through this twice before, and isn’t it sad how precedent paves way for quick analysis and conclusive, decisive strategies? Somehow, he thinks, it’s all a little backwards: when did they lead such lives that allowed them to get used to having hostages? “And the culprit is permitting you to talk to me?”
“He wants me to.”
Interesting. Didn’t culprits normally say, Don’t go to the police?
“Are you the hostage?”
“No.”
“Tru—”
“—no.”
The relief is oddly tangible. “Then…”
“Apollo.”
Edgeworth’s eyes flit back to his desk. There was an outing they did fairly recently; he’s half-certain the whole venture was orchestrated by the magical Trucy herself, but there were several turnouts from both the Wright Anything Agency and his own Prosecutor’s Office. They took a group photo together on the beach, grinning and sunburnt—the whole lot of them.
Apollo is in that photo on the far right with his mouth twisted in a characteristically fitting loud belt of a laugh. He has his arm wrapped around Klavier’s neck, pressing his knuckles into the top of that head of bright, blond hair.
His chest seizes for one awful, tight-fisted minute. He looks away. “Has the culprit made demands?”
“Yes.”
Demands I must be able to satisfy if I am within the limits of acceptable persons to know about this hostage in the first place.
“What is it?”
Phoenix takes another breath. Edgeworth hates the small tremor in it; he doesn’t need Athena’s keen sense of hearing when years and years and years of companionship and love and sharing your life with someone else can attune you so perfectly to every shade of emotion there is in the way someone breathes.
“He wants the Phantom released.”
Apollo’s day hasn’t been all that great, all things considered. It didn’t start out great when chloroform was shoved up his nose in the alleyway outside his apartment building; it’s probably not going to end great now that he has a gun pointed at his head and both of his wrists handcuffed to the leg of a desk in a nameless, dusty office. Overall, this has just not been a great day.
Is he fine? Of course.
He will be.
As soon as he can convince the guy holding the gun to his temple to point it elsewhere, he’ll be golden. He’s kind of tired of staring down the dark barrel of a pistol and wondering when the trigger is finally going to be pulled and if that’ll happen while the video feed from the propped-up phone is still trained on him, because the last thing he wants is for Trucy, of all people, to see his brain matter splatter everywhere.
He thinks it’s probably already enough that she had to see him get a bullet through his leg—and all for evidence to prove that this threat is real and his weepy-eyed captor is serious and to silence every warning of, “You hurt one hair on that kid’s head—” with “—all due respect, Mr. Wright, but you aren’t in a position to be making demands of me.”
Mr. Wright is still talking to Mr. Edgeworth on the other end of the line. He can hear the quiet, tinny murmur of their voices, even if he can’t see them. He wonders what it is they’re doing, what it is they’re thinking and planning. Because they’ve got to be planning something; they couldn’t possibly actually genuinely think about agreeing to his captor’s demands. They know what will happen the instant Bobby-not-Bobby-Fulbright walks out into the light. Right?
He licks his lips and forces his voice out. His volume is propelled by pain: “Mr. Wright! I’m gonna be fine! You can’t—”
Apollo bites his tongue. Blood fills his mouth at the same blooming red rate as the bullet hole in his thigh as a black oxford steps hard onto his leg.
A sharp inhale slides in through his teeth, cold and thin.
Apollo yanks his head back. His body seizes; his other leg kicks out on sheer instinct alone. Pain is a white-hot flare that flash-floods him, sends him reeling and dizzy and he presses his forehead into the cool wood of the side of the old teacher’s desk he’s cuffed to. His quick, fevered breaths cloud against the grain.
“Apollo!”
Trucy.
Shit. Fuck. Damn it.
His captor steps back. He takes one look at his now blood-smeared shoes and with a thin spread of his lips, turns to run the bottom against the faded blue carpet once, twice, three times.
Apollo turns his head to watch him out of the corner of his eye.
“If you wanted…to keep them clean…maybe you shouldn’t have done that, huh?” he rasps.
A set of deep baby blues snap to him. It’s funny; they look almost like the eyes of those Precious Moments dolls, so upturned at their inner corners that he looks perpetually sad and pitiful. They shine a little too brightly to be intimidating. If it weren’t for his fancy dark suit and the pistol in his hand, Apollo might think he could take him. Except for the fact he’s bound to a desk and curled against the floor. With a bullet in his leg.
His chances of winning this imaginary fight are looking more and more slim.
“I don’t have to answer to you. Shut up.” His captor’s voice shakes on its way out of him.
Apollo sneers and tosses a glance to the black, beady lens of the phone trained on him.
Right. Their audience.
“Apollo.” There. That one’s Mr. Wright, sounding close to the speaker like he’s hunched over it. He can’t see Mr. Wright’s face, but he can picture what he must look like all the same, with that stern, determined, undefeated poker champion’s face on. Ever cool, even under pressure. “I have Edgeworth on the line. He says he wants to talk to your captor.”
The man’s head of black hair tilts to the side. He gives a strange twist to his neck and then clears his throat. “All right. Put him on speakerphone.”
There’s a distant clatter. A tap.
“Hello?”
Oh. It’s him. That really is Mr. Edgeworth.
It’s kind of strange the amount of guilt that floods Apollo at hearing the Chief Prosecutor’s voice. He had known they would be concerned, of course; he had known these people cared about him. But it’s another thing entirely to hear and know that his boss and his lifelong partner are in this situation and under such difficult duress because of him.
There’s got to be a way I can help…
His captor clears his throat. Like before, like he has the entire time they’ve been in this little office, the man is careful to keep his face out of view of the camera lens. He steps around the phone; his eyes light on the screen. “Hello, Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth. I take it you’ve heard my demands?”
“I must confess: I am not in the habit of making agreements with criminals, Mr…?”
A brief pause. For a moment, the stranger lowers the gun from being trained on Apollo, and Apollo takes a breath of relief. Then: “Call me Marion.”
“Very well…Marion.” It would be funny, the near-discomfort Apollo can hear in Edgeworth’s voice at being on a first-name basis. But the man takes it in an easy, measured stride. “As I mentioned before, I must confess I am hesitant to so readily agree to such a demand—”
“—so…what? You don’t care about—”
“—do not misunderstand me, Marion.” Edgeworth’s voice hardens into the sharp edge of a knife. Apollo blinks hard. “My hesitation is born not out of a lack of caring. Only realism. It takes time to receive the approval from the Chief Warden Officer to release a convicted serial murderer, time that I am not certain you have taken into account.”
Marion scoffs. It sounds strange, almost wet. Warbled. He shakes his head. “Time, you say? How much time?”
A moment of hesitation.
Marion pounces, baring his teeth. “You’re lying—”
“—I beg your pardon?”
“You don’t need time to release the Phantom. You need time to trace the call to this phone.”
“I—”
“—but because I am so nice, I’ll save you the time such an endeavor would take, Mr. Edgeworth.” He takes a breath. “You can pull back the little forensic investigator you’ve sent out to the Wright Anything Agency to aid Ms. Cykes. Neither of them will be able to do anything, as I’m sure Ms. Cykes herself is realizing now. This device’s signal has been encrypted, and will prove to be nigh untrackable for your pitiful trash you call technology.”
Apollo lifts his head. His mind whirls.
Forensic investigator? Ema? Ema was on her way to the office? He thinks about that more. Breaks it down. Processes it. His eyes snap up to his captor and watches the side of the man’s chiseled face.
How does he know Mr. Edgeworth sent her at all…?
“You are making baseless assumptions.”
“As are you, Chief Prosecutor.”
Edgeworth pauses. “Very well, then. Tell me, what assumptions am I making?”
Marion does not answer. Instead, suddenly, sharply, he lifts the pistol again and fires.
Apollo flinches hard, tucking his body instinctively against the drawers of the old desk as much as he can. Wood splinters and frays above his head. The bang is just as loud and reverberating as last time. Sharp. He can hear the echo of it inside of his skull.
“Wright!” Edgeworth cries. “What happened? What was that—”
“—Apollo—!”
“—he’s fine; he’s fine!” Mr. Wright is the only calm, reassuring voice of reason in the midst of the sudden burst of panic. “He’s fine. It was…it was just the desk. He fired at the—”
“—you assume, Mr. Edgeworth, that with every minute that passes, you are more and more in the clear. That with every minute you linger on this ridiculous phone call, that this boy is not in any more danger of being hurt and killed in front of your associates. I’m afraid this arrangement does not work like that, sir.”
There’s a frightened, hitched gasp of a sob on the other end.
Trucy.
Edgeworth takes a haggard inhale. After a moment of holding it, he finally answers, but with far less steel in him now. “I still need time to make this happen. I was not fabricating that; I truly do need—”
“—you have one hour, and then I want the Phantom to see the light of day.”
His captor leans forward and with a tap of his finger, the other line drops completely silent.
The call ends.
Friday, January 11, 2028
12:07 PM
59 minutes remain
The instant the screen on Trucy’s phone goes dark, Phoenix jerks his attention to the two desks pressed together on the far side of the office. Just as immediately, Athena looks up from her laptop and shakes her head. Her blue eyes are wide. Shiny.
Phoenix twists away and rubs a hand over his mouth. “Fuck.”
“I—I’m sorry, Boss. Whoever that Marion guy is, he was right. I couldn’t do anything. It’s like the signal doesn’t even exist. I couldn’t even—” She pauses to swallow. “—couldn’t even pin an IP address.”
Phoenix sucks in a cold breath through his teeth. “Marion,” he snarls. “What the hell kind of name is that, anyway? ‘Marion.’”
“An alias, no doubt.” Edgeworth’s voice rings from Phoenix’s phone, still lying flat ahead of Trucy’s. His sigh clouds the other end. “Trucy, dear, could you check your phone? Does the call at least appear in its history?”
It takes Trucy a second to tear her red eyes up from her lap, where her hands are tightly fisted. She jerks to a stand, sniffing. “Oh! R-right. Um—I can—I can check—”
Phoenix’s phone is nearly knocked to the floor in her haste to grab hers. Trucy mutters a quick, stuttered apology that Phoenix hurriedly brushes away. She taps through her call history. Drags the screen down to refresh. Opens and closes the application.
With a tight face, she shakes her head. She shakes it and shakes it and bows her head.
“How?” Athena hisses. She shoves herself to her feet. “How is he doing that? That’s not how digital footprints work; there’s always something left behind. There’s always a trace to be found. Nothing is ever completely wiped—especially remotely! Right?”
“You’d know more than me,” Phoenix mutters lowly. He curls a finger in front of his mouth. “But this does tell us something about who we’re dealing with.”
“Yeah.” Athena’s gut swims. She straightens and reaches for Widget at her collar.
Though not the ‘why.’
Phoenix turns for his phone. The instant he has it cradled in his hand, mouth open, Trucy interrupts him, soft and quiet.
“Maybe it’s like a magic trick.”
Phoenix and Athena snap their heads to her.
Trucy lifts her face. Her cheeks are tear-stained; her eyes are red. But the set of her mouth has transformed into a firm, determined line. Anger sparks in the blue of her eyes. “You know, when you make something disappear it’s not like it isn’t there anymore. Sometimes, all you’re doing is making your audience believe that it’s gone.”
Athena’s eyes light up. “M-maybe you’re right, Truce. So then the signal, the record of the call, all of that still could be…”
Phoenix jumps on that chance. He has to. “Athena, start examining Trucy’s phone again. As soon as Ema’s here, maybe she can help.” He turns to his cell as the two girls both spring into action, huddling together at Athena’s desk. “And Miles—”
“—we need plans B through F immediately. I know,” Edgeworth rumbles.
“F being we actually let the Phantom walk, right?”
Edgeworth hesitates on the other end. Then, finally: “F being…we let the Phantom walk.”
Phoenix looks out the office window for a moment. With a quick glance behind him at the USB hooked from Trucy’s phone to Athena’s laptop, he taps off the speakerphone icon and lifts his cell to his ear. “Do you mean that?” He remembers Apollo’s voice—smart kid, so desperate and so brave right now—trying to tell them he’ll be fine while bleeding out on a stranger’s floor. “It’s a lot to ask of you, I know—and if anything happened to the Phantom, we both know who would be blamed for it—but if we had to…if there was nothing else we could do…”
“I…” After a brief moment’s pause, Edgeworth’s voice turns equally tight and pained. “No, do not ask me that again, Wright. I cannot, for a second time, give you the words that you want to hear. I’m sorry.”
“Miles—”
“—all of our options and resources are not yet exhausted. I am not yet willing to admit I am cornered and have no other choice left to me. I must insist that there is always something we can do until there isn’t.”
“Believe me, I believe in that more than anyone.” Phoenix’s heart is somewhere at the bottom of his throat, wrenched tight around its own cords. “But if it comes down to it…?”
He pauses.
When Edgeworth doesn’t say anything, he continues: “I know you have things that you have to do. You have a responsibility to a greater number of people than just me and us. You’re Chief Prosecutor; I know, but—Miles—as selfish as it is to say—I know what I’d prefer.”
“Let me guess…”
“I’d rather have Apollo live than a convicted murderer.”
“You think I’d let the Phantom die if we did arrange that he be freed?”
No, Phoenix thinks. But I didn’t think I’d ever let anything happen to Apollo, and yet—
“Wright, is there something you’re not telling me? Why are you so convinced the Phantom will be killed if he walks, anyway?”
Firmly, even though Edgeworth can’t see it, Phoenix shakes his head. He bows his chin to his chest. “It’s just…this gut feeling, Miles.”
“A premonition?”
“I guess you could call it that.”
“Ah.” Edgeworth pauses for only a brief moment. Then, softly: “About what?”
Friday, January 11, 2028
12:20 PM
46 minutes remain
Apollo is beginning to lose sensation in his leg. It feels as if the world is pressing in on his temples, as if there are firm, broad heels of two hands squeezing in on either side of his head. It’s probably not a good sign, he thinks. It probably has something to do with his blood loss. Definitely not a good sign.
Augh, but I can’t afford to pass out now! I have to focus! There has to be something else I can do!
His eyes flicker back on up to his captor, who is pacing back and forth and back and forth.
He’s thinking. That makes two of us.
Apollo glances around the small office they’ve been stuffed into. There are no windows here; more appropriate for that of a dingy janitor’s closet than an intern’s office. It reminds him of what he used to have at Mr. Gavin’s when he first started out, before he started dressing well enough that Kristoph no longer thought he would ward away clients because he made them think they were “unpresentable” when they first walked in.
Damn. And there’s not a clock I can see in here, either.
But there is something warm in the air. Savory.
Apollo squints at the books stuffed into the bookcases on either side of the far door where Marion continually walks. He can’t make out the titles from where he is curled at the desk-side, but he thinks some of the bindings look vaguely familiar.
Is this another law office?
Finally, Marion sighs. He tosses out a hand from scratching the back of his head. There’s a tightness in his face and shoulders that makes Apollo pause. “Are you…doing alright?”
Marion—if that even is his name—snaps his gaze around. It starts out as an incredulous chuckle when their eyes meet, before something else bursts out of him. Apollo thinks it’s supposed to be a laugh, but it sounds too unhinged and hiccup-y to be genuine. Did he start crying?
Marion turns away. “You’re asking me if I’m doing alright when I’ve just shot you?”
“I…yeah, okay. Fair.” Apollo shifts his weight. He sucks in a sharp breath when that causes pain to flare up his leg again, and Marion looks back at him.
Apollo frowns when his eyes light on Marion’s ear.
Bingo. He definitely saw it that time.
Slowly, carefully, now: “It’s just that…you don’t seem like the type of person that’d do this.”
“What? What does that mean?” Marion narrows his watery gaze at him. “You don’t know a thing about me. Do you want another bullet—maybe this time in your other leg? I could do that, you know. I will do that, if you don’t shut up.”
Apollo flicks his gaze to his bracelet.
Interesting.
He licks his lips. “Well, wait a second. Let’s not be hasty. I don’t think I want another bullet in me anymore than you want to fire that bullet.”
Marion frowns and doesn’t answer.
Damn it.
“What are you getting at?”
Apollo takes a breath. “Well, sitting here for an hour in complete silence is kind of boring, isn’t it?”
“How come you aren’t afraid?”
Apollo’s eyes flash over Marion’s figure. Are you?
Instead, mustering something else inside of him that maybe has always been there, that’s always been stronger than pain and bigger than fear, he asks, “I think everything hurts a bit too much to be frightening.”
Marion looks away.
Apollo, not for the first time, takes notice of the man’s black suit and his combed-back hair. Ever since he first saw it when he groggily woke up over an hour ago, he thought it reminded him of something—it tickled the back of his mind, nagging at him that he’s supposed to associate it with something—only now does he think he is picking up on what his subconscious was trying so hard to make him take note of. He swallows. “Why—”
No. Wait.
Marion’s sad-looking blue eyes are drilling holes into the side of his head. “Why…? Why what? Why am I doing this?”
Yes or no questions, kid. Apollo can almost hear Mr. Wright’s voice somewhere in his own thoughts. Stick to yes or no. Two possible answers will make it easier to spot the lies, and easier to pick apart what he’s saying because it’s forcing an extreme: either you will get the truth or not. And you know what happens when you don’t.
“You can’t really want the Phantom out in the world again.”
Marion blinks. He hesitates.
Apollo very intentionally does not look at his ear. Not while the man is staring at him.
“What I want is none of your concern.”
“In case you somehow forgot, my life is in the balance, here. I think that’s more than enough to make it my concern.”
“I—” Marion stops himself. His brows furrow at the same time as he very visibly bites his own lip.
Apollo tries a different angle. “Do you know the Phantom?”
“No.”
His bracelet doesn’t move. “But you have a reason why you want him freed.”
For some reason, this makes Marion laugh. “First you try to suggest I couldn’t possibly want him free, now you’re insinuating that I must have a reason—such a constant back and forth and back and forth. The attorneys of the Wright Anything Agency really don’t know anything, do you?” There’s distinct relief in his tone, a lack of tension in the cords of his muscles underneath his suit. “You’re all just scrabbling at straws.”
Apollo presses his mouth into a line. He tries to center his foggy mind and think. “But you’ve heard about us.”
“Who hasn’t?”
Mm. Another truth. Maybe I should have figured that one would be obvious. “All right. Then did you hear about us because of State vs. Cykes?”
“State vs. Cykes?”
Apollo’s heart picks up its pace. His eyes flash to Marion’s face, but Marion doesn’t even realize his mistake yet. “Never mind. Do you have a plan for after the Phantom is released?”
Marion looks away. “Of course I do.”
The bracelet lies still. “But you’re not going to tell me about it.”
“That’d kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?”
“What purpose?”
Marion’s eyes light on Apollo’s. Fast. Razor-sharp. The words are not even fully out of his mouth before Apollo’s bracelet squeezes tight and tight and tight around his wrist like a second manacle: “Nothing. Forget I said anything,” he says and turns around, cutting off the rest of the conversation.
Apollo winces and rolls his wrist to loosen it. Great. Now what…?
His eyes scan around the floor of the small closet office. It’s too bad Marion took his phone; that’d make it easier to notate anything. It’s probably destroyed by now, too, if the lack of an immediate rescue is anything to go by. Mr. Wright was always strangely adamant about the GPS signal being turned on. Now, Apollo figures why. There’s frustratingly no paper around him, either.
Apollo eyes one of the small, thin, pointed chips of wood that dust the carpeted floor around his bloodied leg.
Hm.
Friday, January 11, 2028
12:36 PM
30 minutes remain
“No one saw anything?”
“Negatory, sir.”
“And nothing is on any of the traffic cameras…?”
When Gumshoe sighs, it’s with his entire body. He deflates, head hanging with a gigantic, sympathetic pout. “We’re doin’ our best to check every single one of all the intersections inside the radius you marked, sir. I’ve got my best men on it and they’re workin’ as fast as they can, but so far we’ve got no plates of stolen cars or nuthin’.”
“Might not even be a stolen car that took him away.”
Edgeworth glances briefly behind him at a violet-coated back, staring out the tall windows with an antsy energy he hasn’t been able to calm since he first had to say the words There’s a hostage situation at the Wright Anything Agency and at the center of this strange circus is Apollo Justice. I’m sorry. We’re doing everything we can.
It hadn’t been a conversation Edgeworth has ever wanted to have.
Klavier, admittedly, is handling the situation just as well—and poorly—as he was fearing.
“This isn’t an exhaustive measure; we’re just crossing off possibilities, Gavin. We have to begin somewhere. If it’s not a stolen car, then it’s a purchased or rented one, but it is a car, because any other vehicle would have attracted attention.”
Klavier exhales tightly. His fingers dig into his sleeves over his arms. “Noch neunundzwanzig Minuten, Herr Edgeworth,” he mutters.
“Ich weiß.”
As if on cue, Edgeworth’s desk phone rings. It isn’t his cell—which, he admits, is hopefully good—
“Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth, speaking.”
Klavier turns around. His blue eyes are bloodshot but sharp, inquisitive. Taking in every detail he can. Edgeworth shares a glance with him as the voice on the other end murmurs into his ear. He nods once, twice, and gives furtive sounds of affirmation. Then: “I understand. Tell the Chief Warden Officer I’m grateful. We’ll begin to secure the area in fifteen.”
There’s a soft hitch of breath.
Edgeworth returns the phone to its cradle and plants his hands flat on his desk.
“The Phantom is walking?” Klavier asks, rounding the other side. Gumshoe is quick to step back so they don’t collide.
“He might be, should no other avenue be open to us.” Edgeworth sighs. “Believe me, Gavin, I am trying to open every door possible all at once, here, so that I have tried our every option. But should it come to that…I wonder if we could time our exchange exactly right…”
“Has this ‘Marion’ agreed to an exchange?”
“I should hope that’s what he is planning. Unfortunately, from what it sounds like on Wright’s end, this culprit has taken away our ability to initiate contact.” Edgeworth lifts his gaze and looks to Gumshoe. He straightens. “I’m afraid I’ll need what men you have at the station to set up a perimeter around the penitentiary.”
“On it!” Gumshoe salutes and spins on his heel.
Klavier watches Gumshoe leave the office with as much earnest, careless bluster as he entered.
Edgeworth, in turn, watches him. After a moment, after the silence has lingered and grown both delicate and thick, he calls, “Gavin.”
“Mm?”
“I am going to ask you a question that might be uncomfortable.”
“Well, if you think it will help Herr Justice, then you are welcome to ask any question, no matter how I feel.”
Klavier turns back in time to see something soften in Edgeworth’s steel, grey eyes. Then, he opens his mouth.
Friday, January 11, 2028
12:54 PM
12 minutes remain
“Why me…?”
Apollo doesn’t feel good. He really, really doesn’t feel good.
He blames it entirely on his leg that he can hardly feel now, still aching and throbbing, though his blood has—finally—mostly congealed. It just hurts. Hurts and robs him of thought and breath and makes the world gooey at its edges. He presses his wide forehead into the lower drawer of the desk, the wooden surface cool and forgiving. It gives nicely under the chip he’s started to pick at the grain with.
Marion frowns. “Is that a ‘why you,’ as in ‘why me in the entire world’ or ‘why you’ as if there’s a specific reason we took you?”
“Is there a difference?”
Silence is his answer.
Apollo takes that as a yes. He closes his eyes and then remembers he probably shouldn’t keep them closed; there’s probably rules out there about that kind of thing. He looks back at Marion and frowns. “So there is a reason, then? Why…it’s me, anyway?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Apollo’s eyes flicker to his bracelet.
Okay.
He takes as deep of an inhale as he can. “You wanted to leave the others out of it.”
“If you’re talking about your coworkers at the Wright Anything Agency, then allow me to say that I think you have much bigger problems on your hands right now. They’re not the ones with their lives in danger.”
Apollo looks to his bracelet again and sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth.
Interesting.
Actually, kind of worrying.
Apollo picks at the side of the desk with renewed purpose. “That’s good,” he says and tries to quell the tightening knot in his stomach. “Although I’ve…got to admit…this whole plan of yours doesn’t make sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re going to such lengths to free a man you don’t personally know,” Apollo starts with because he can. Because it’s the most obvious, jarringly strange thing about this entire situation. He takes a sluggish breath and continues picking at wood with a sliver. “Even so far as to most likely get arrested for this. Do you honestly think they’ll let you go? This plan you supposedly have for ‘after’ the Phantom’s out…” He swallows. Glances at the handsome, dark suit that must have cost thousands. Loses track of that thought because he knows where it leads. He starts over with something else. “Besides, it’s not like I alone was the only reason the Phantom was put away. All three of us worked together. I mean, it was mostly Mr. Wright, but…”
There’s a pause that lingers and drops with sudden tension that Apollo doesn’t have the slightest idea what to do with. He swallows and when he looks up, Marion is watching him with a strange look in the weary blue of his eyes.
“If you’re trying to get answers out of me, I’m afraid you’ll get none. Trust me. The less you know, the better.”
Apollo doesn’t need his squeezing bracelet this time to identify that one as another solid lie. But he takes a thin breath and blinks hard to focus and ward off the bleary-eyed fatigue that threatens to pull him in and drown him. Or maybe that’s just an effect of the salty smell still in the air, so delicious and familiar, and so, so much.
Friday, January 11, 2028
1:05 PM
1 minute remains
The call comes at 1:06 exactly.
Athena and Ema jerk up from where they are hunched over the keyboard as Trucy scrambles for her phone. Phoenix comes stumbling in from the far room, eyes wide and mouth parted in a question of, Apollo? that Athena only minimally nods to before Trucy accepts the call and props her phone up on the edge of the desk.
Just like before, just like it had been an hour ago, the video feed pops up with a visual on one pale, baggy-eyed Apollo Justice, slumped against the corner of an old, wooden desk.
Phoenix leans in over Trucy’s shoulder and squints his eyes.
Still no windows, so no change in location. They’re where they have been for the past hour. But there is still nothing he can see that looks familiar and identifiable among the grey-blue carpet floor and the off-white walls and the fake plant in the corner with the wicker basket at its base. Not even wall decorations.
“He…doesn’t look so good, Daddy…” Trucy whispers.
Phoenix’s mouth thins.
“Mr. Wright?”
“Here.” Phoenix straightens up and slips his hands into his pockets.
“Does your boyfriend have the Phantom ready?”
“Do you have Apollo ready?”
Silence falls. Phoenix fists his hands in his pockets and waits, achingly patient, until Marion mutters, “I will tell you the address on where you can find us only after the Phantom is free. That, I’m afraid, must come first.”
“Why?”
There is a click on the other end, the unmistakable metallic tin of a gun being cocked.
Shit. Fuck. On the small phone screen, Apollo’s eyes snap open and towards the man standing beyond the camera’s reach. Phoenix’s face tightens. Trucy stiffens at his side. He forces himself to relax. Think calmly. Treat it like a game of poker. Negotiate.
“Do you want to try that again?”
“No.” Phoenix takes a breath and lets it go. “I trust you’ll want evidence once the Phantom is freed?”
“No need. I’ll know.”
Of course he will. Phoenix sighs and digs out his phone. Because we’re all just dancing to his tune, apparently. Like puppets on wires and don’t your hackles just rise at the mere implication, Feenie. His thumb swipes for his most recent call. He scrolls and waits and the moment his thumb is posed and ready to once again dial one Miles Edgeworth—
—he stops.
“Daddy?”
He frowns.
Slowly, he bows over Trucy’s phone and places both hands against the desk. “Us,” he says. “Just a second ago, you said ‘us.’ So, what, are you planning on turning yourself in afterwards? Surrendering to the police after all you’ve done?”
“Something like that.”
That doesn’t make any sense. And Phoenix likes even less the implications that stir in his gut, the possibilities that arise. “Why?” His mind whirls. “You have to know they won’t go easy on you.” Is it the Phantom himself who arranged this? Who convinced a man to hold my kid at gunpoint to get a cell door open and turn himself in afterward?
He opens his mouth.
“Think again before you say another word, Mr. Wright. You still haven’t held up your end of the bargain.”
Shit.
Phoenix yanks up his phone again and smashes his thumb against Miles’ name. It rings only once.
“Edgeworth—”
“—is Mr. Justice all right?”
Phoenix breathes out harshly, once. “Yeah,” he rasps. “For now.”
“Still no determining his location?”
Phoenix shakes his head, forgets that Miles can’t see him, and sighs again. “No. We have frustratingly little to work with. And you?”
“Plans B through E all failed. I take it that means it’s time for Plan F?”
“Yeah.”
There’s a shuffle on the other end. A sigh and murmur. Phoenix thinks he can hear Klavier’s voice in the distance; his chest pangs and he has to turn away. He can only imagine what the young man must be thinking. What he must be feeling. How badly his feet must itch to turn and burst out the door and chase down wherever it is in all of Los Angeles that Apollo Justice is hidden away.
Then: “It is being done as we speak.”
Marion takes a long and slow breath; Phoenix can hear every second of it swelling inward and releasing out.
“Good.”
Phoenix pictures it in his mind’s eye: the Phantom, Bobby-not-Bobby-Fulbright, slowly stepping out beyond the front doors of the penitentiary and into the light. Is he wearing the same kind of shoes he wore on his way in? The kind with the rubber soles that clip against the concrete? Is the sun bright and harsh above him? Does he raise his hand to shield his eyes? Is he still wearing glasses?
It’s Klavier who speaks in the distance, accented voice tinny and off. Phoenix can’t make out his words, before Miles clears his throat and prompts, “Your address, Marion?”
“Y-yeah.” His voice is tight.
For the first time, the young man steps around to be in front of the phone. For the first time, he puts his face in view of the camera.
There are tears streaking down his cheeks.
“In the old, abandoned Meraktis Clinic,” he says. “Room 209.”
Phoenix sees the gun raise and lunges for the phone before he can think better of it.
Apollo doesn’t know how he knows what’s going to happen. He feels like maybe some part of his fuddled brain already figured it out before the rest of him. But maybe that was just the bluffing part, the part Mr. Wright has practically trained and honed.
His eyes flick up as Marion moves in front of the camera lens.
Something about the motion tells him this is it.
He doesn’t know what ‘it’ is. He straightens.
“In the old, abandoned Meraktis Clinic. Room 209,” Marion says, voice warbled and small.
Apollo sees the gun move.
He doesn’t quite think he’s ever had his perceive ability act up when there’s not a lie to detect. He doesn’t think it’s how his ability is normally supposed to work. But there’s something in the body language of his captor—something in the way he holds himself—something in the aim of the gun—the point of the barrel straight at the side of his head—and he sees, with perfect crystal-clear clarity—exactly where that bullet is intended to go and what it’s intended to do.
He turns his head to face it.
Dying, Apollo finds, must be very simple:
There’s a bang.
And then there’s the dark.