Nero stood still as he studied the man sitting in the dark corner. The azure light of his flickering flame was not the best to see in the dark, but at least it was enough to push away the dark.
The man was wearing some skin tight, black clothes that made him blend in with the darkness much more than any normal clothes should have. He seemed to not be solid, and instead looked like he was a morphing shadow.
His face was hidden behind a mask, and his voice was entirely neutral, sounding neither masculine nor feminine. In fact, the only reason Nero assumed that the person sitting in front of him was a man was because of his mannerisms and the style with which he sat. Of course, that too could have been a ruse.
Nero took in everything. The way he was sitting was for comfort, rather than stealth or convenience, which meant that he was extremely confident. There was no weapon visible on his person, but he could have had cards hidden beneath his black clothes. His shoes were either a part of his clothes, or blended in seamlessly with them so no division was visible.
Nero summarised that the man was not here with overtly hostile intentions, and seemed rather pleased with himself over his display of power and stealth.
"Do I have you to thank for this?" Nero asked as he raised his card case.
"Quite clever. I'd ask how you came to that conclusion, but I find that not knowing keeps the mystery alive. To avoid any ambiguity, I'll say it out right. I am from Unity, Bael told you about us, and you can call me Flintlock. For the foreseeable future, I will be your sole means of communication with Unity."
"I haven't officially joined Unity yet," Nero said. "I still don't know anything about your organisation. Your choice of venue for my introduction was not so great."
"Yes, yes, you haven't joined, yada yada yada. Listen, I'm going to skip over the part where I impress you with how powerful Unity is, and I'm not the biggest fan of desperately trying to recruit others either. Let's get one thing straight here. You made use of Unity, and now Unity is going to use you.
"It's going to be a pleasant cooperation, where you are going to help us out. Do not worry, we won't make you do anything too questionable. Once our cooperation is over, you can live your life, and we can go about doing our own thing. We're going to do the whole standard oath of secrecy spiel where we promise to not blackmail you for working with us, and you have to keep what you did a secret. Deal?"
Truthfully, the offer did not sound so bad. Unfortunately, Nero did not trust it whatsoever.
"No deal," Nero said as he walked to the opposite end of the cell and sat down. "I am not averse to working with Unity, but unless I know exactly what I am agreeing to, I refuse to take part in anything. As for me making use of Unity, I told Bael that helping me keep my cards was just a way to make me consider working with Unity."
The masked man did not respond immediately, instead beginning to tap his finger on the stone seat where he sat. Though his words sounded pleasant and straightforward, Nero heard something else in them. He heard impatience.
He did not know if it was his own doing, or Unity's, but Flintlock was clearly in a rush to get this over with, which meant that Nero absolutely had to take his time. Considering this was his jail cell, Nero wasn't exactly in a position of power, but he had some power and he needed to use it.
Though he was already involved with Unity now, for better or for worse, he still had to make sure they didn't pull him into some kind of trap.
He was not even free from his first treason case, he didn't want to set himself up for another one without knowing it.
Most importantly, however, though he had no power at the moment, Unity didn't necessarily know that. From what he could tell based on what June said, his trial had caused quite the commotion. If he could get Unity to believe that he was entirely aware of what had happened, and it was a result of his connections, then he could gain some leverage.
The fact that Flintlock hadn't immediately responded automatically proved that his strategy was effective.
"You know what you don't need right now, Nero? It's more enemies. You already have people after your life, and you don't even know who they are."
"Are you threatening me? I just said you wouldn't blackmail me, and now you're doing just that."
Flintlock shook his head.
"You misunderstand, Nero. I am not threatening you. I am reminding you that you do not know who your enemies are. But with the help of Unity, you can find out. From what I understand, Bael was not able to elaborate deeply on what Unity is. I was really hoping to not have to bother with this, but fine, I will.
"Unity is a private, intelligence organisation with a very specific agenda, but at the same time, it has a very loose organisational structure as well. The existence of Unity is not a secret from any of the states, and in fact many of them even avail some services from Unity from time to time.
"Unfortunately, since the existence of Unity is common knowledge among the states, they are also extremely wary of having their secrets revealed. For example, if your affiliation with Unity is revealed someday, as long as you haven't acted against Kolar, or revealed some unacceptable secrets, you will not actually be penalised.
Instead, it is more likely that Kolar will put you in a position where they can use your affinity with the organisation. Unfortunately, that also means that you won't be exposed to the inner secrets of the state.
"Bael, although he doesn't know it yet, is in such a situation. His identity as a Unity affiliate was actually never a secret from his own father - it's just that he himself does not know that his father knows. As for whether the commander has shared the details of his affiliation with anyone, that is open to speculation.
That is one of the reasons why we were so open to having Bael publicly antagonise you. Even if his identity was revealed, considering how poor the relationship between you two appears to be, no one will suspect that he has tried to recruit you."
Nero frowned, as Flintlock's story sounded completely absurd. Why would any state accept a foreign intelligence agency working within their borders? He believed the part where a state would be willing to work with Unity against others, but why would they tolerate the existence of Unity within their own domain?
"If Kolar knows about Unity, why would they allow its existence? That's a hazard to the country and a security risk, especially if it's an intelligence agency."
"That's because, as you can probably tell from the name, Unity's goal is to actually prevent the fallout of another world war. I'm not talking about the kind of deterrent war that Kolar just orchestrated. I mean a true, genuine world war where states try to destroy one another and take over all of Neire. The repercussions of such a war, as I'm sure you think you can imagine, would be dire.
In truth, whatever repercussions you think you can imagine, the truth would be much worse.
"In pursuit of that goal, Unity has worked with various states multiple times to prevent… undesirable events from taking place. In fact, it was because of how amenable each of the states became to the operations of Unity that its structure changed, and room for external recruits, or affiliates came to be.
"Just so you know, if you do join Unity, that's what you'll be - an affiliate. Bael is also an affiliate. I myself am also just an affiliate. People like us work for Unity, and in exchange we get perks from Unity that are hard to find elsewhere. All actual missions within Unity are decided and assigned by inner, true members of Unity. It's not so easy to become one of them."
Nero shook his head, finding the story too fanciful.
"An international spy agency, working in various countries around the world, with the sole goal of maintaining world peace. Sounds like the kind of fairytale one would tell to a thirteen year old kid."
"You, yourself, are just fifteen," Flintlock said. "You're not that different in age."
"Regardless, your story sounds very unlikely, and the more you tell me that Unity wants world peace, the more I suspect them of doing something entirely nefarious."
"Yes, I didn't think you'd buy that, which is why I didn't want to do the speech to begin with. Now, let me get to the pragmatic reason for why you might want to work with us."