Relieved at the knowledge my partner is safe and on his way, I feel a renewed sense of purpose. With Jack watching my six, I'm far more confident of our chances. We should be able to take the drive and get the hell out of here without suffering any significant damage.
"Jack's going to meet up with us," I tell Rohan just as the lift door opens to reveal a barren-looking fourth floor. Hopefully, that means most people have evacuated downstairs, and we won't have to shoot anyone into compliance.
Rohan's entire body stiffens against me like a feral cat in response to my mention of Jack. I look down at him in confusion, noting the extreme reaction as odd, even with how much I'm aware of the issues that Jack and Rohan have with each other. The look on Rohan's face doesn't seem to be anger or dismay at the idea of Jack's impending arrival.
"Leo, there's something else you need to know as well." Rohan's voice holds such a depth of foreboding it makes me stop altogether. His use of my first name, as well as the roiling anguish on his face, the skin around his eyes tightening in an obvious sign of distress, also raises alarm bells in my mind.
Rohan releases another shaky breath and looks up at me with haunted eyes. "It's about Jack."
Chapter thirteen
Jack
I'monthesecond-floorset of stairs when North tells me to go join Leo and Rohan on the fourth floor for some unknown, last-minute detour.
Dread curls up my throat like an overgrown vine, threatening to sprout flowers and choke me the moment North barks over comms that Leo is pulling his usual maverick bullshit mid-mission. I swear to God that fucker isallergicto following mission parameters. He always has to be doing something a little bit extra, taking risks he doesn't need to take.
I used to think he did it just to prove he can, the uncontrollable tornado of a man that he is, or to prove himself to me, as laughable as that idea seems, but now I'm certain, and horrified to realise, he's got the incorrigible spirit of a vigilante. Just like all of that lot, he feels the need to fix every single problem he comes across and save every lost cause he trips over. It's unacceptable, and I'm going to have to break him of both habits before he winds up being the first person to give a Liquid Onyx survivor a heart attack.
Storming the OI facility was more difficult than we expected, both due to the civilians and the OI guards swarming us the moment we set off the first grenade and blew up the front entrance. The civilians got in the way, forcing us to hold back our firepower and weave among them to take out the OI guards.
It was such a chaotic nightmare, I had to abandon my gun after a misplaced explosion caught me off guard and caused me to lose my extra clip of bullets. Once I was out, I was out, and I had to resort to using my power to break through the throng, literally cutting my way into the facility and sending guard after guard down in a bloodied, screaming mess.
One good thing about a modern building is the sheer amount of easily accessible glass.
In a rush to go make sure my partner doesn't wind up dead, I stop playing quite so nice with the two OI guards currently trying to kill me on the stairs.
I snatch the gun from the closest OI agent, breaking his wrist in the process. He shouts when the bone in his wrist snaps, jerking away so violently that he loses his footing and falls. He goes down hard, sprawling like a toddler trying to do a backward roll. I raise his gun and fire, blasting away the back of his skull.
The second OI guard is further away and has enough time to raise his gun and fire off a shot. His aim is fucked, so he gets me in the chest rather than the face, hitting the impenetrable body armour I suited up with before the storm.
I'm knocked back by the impact but recover fast enough to send a flurry of the glass shards at him. The shards slice away at the hand he's using to hold his gun, causing him to falter and drop it with a yelp of pain.
I take a shot with my newly procured gun, but the fucking thing jams, and I throw it away in disgust. Honestly, though. You'd think OI could afford to give its people better weapons. Ones that won't misfire like a piece-of-shit eighteen hundreds pistol.
Springing forward with my inhuman speed, I grab the arm of the guard and outright throw him over the staircase railing, sending him on a quick flight to the ground floor. He hits another railing on the way down, the definitive sound of crunching bone a clear sign he's not going to be getting up anytime soon.
Two more OI guards come charging up the stairs, guns out and haphazardly pointed in my direction. When they deem themselves close enough, they line up to take their shots. I throw a wave of glass at both of them, cutting up their faces and blinding them when the spray of small shards sinks into their eyes like sand on a windy beach.
They both make sounds of shock and pain, one of them stumbling into the other and sending them flying backwards down the stairs when the other OI guard loses his balance. They hit the metal steps hard and tumble together until they stop at an awkward angle. One of them lost his gun over the railing during the fall, and the other is too busy crying out and scrabbling shaky hands to his torn-up eyes, red flooding down his face in tear-like rivulets.
I turn away from them and put my Liquid Onyx speed to good use, taking the stairs at a sprint. My glass shards stay floating around me like a pissed-off swarm of hornets. Sometimes it feels almost as if my powers are sentient, belonging to a separate part of my mind that Liquid Onyx carved out for itself when it invaded my body and executed its brutal takeover with merciless resolve.
In less than half a minute, I'm crashing through the door to the fourth floor and continuing with the same momentum down the barren corridor. Despite the size and expansiveness of the building and this corridor in particular, there aren't many rooms to check. I'm halfway down the hallway and coming up on my fourth door when I find Leo and Rohan in a room filled with database storage towers, red and green lights flickering across them, and the sound of whirring technology filling the space.
They're standing near one of the bleeping towers, Leo holding the door to it open as Rohan reaches inside and takes out a medium-sized black box. He starts pulling wires out of it with impatient movements, and I'm assuming it's the backup hard drive North said he was so insistent on getting.
My relief at seeing Leo alive and whole almost brings me to my knees right there in the doorway. I didn't realise just how afraid I'd been of finding Leo shot and bleeding or finding out that somehow, OI had taken him prisoner the same way they had Rohan. It's become my literal worst nightmare to lose Leo for any reason. Having OI be the ones to snatch him away from me would be more than a nightmare, it'd be something too real for me to live with. It's a horror I had to survive once before.
Leo looks up at me when I come striding into the room. He has his gun up and aimed at me before his eyes can clock who it is. The second he realises it's me, his eyes taking in my face and then the glowing shards surrounding me like a devoted entourage, he immediately lowers the gun although his shoulders remain hiked up and filled with visible tension. There's a strange, tormented quality to his expression as well, like whatever has kick-started this extreme depth of emotion hurts him just to think about.
If I didn’t see Rohan standing there looking, admittedly, like shit but alive and perfectly capable of being a sarcastic prick for yet another day, I'd think maybe Leo had found him half dead or something.
I resist the urge to wrap an arm around Leo and tuck him into my side, to ask him what the hell's upset him so much. Or better yet, to pick up him and get us both the fuck out of here as soon as possible. Instead, I give his shoulder a light shove and make my displeasure with his recent life choices clear via heavy-set sarcasm. "Just so you know, I am very glad you decided to throw your reckless arse into danger the first chance you could. I was starting to get bored with how easy this storm was going, so, thanks for keeping the magic alive."
Leo doesn't heave a sigh and tell me to piss off like he might have at any other time, which just makes me think something is wrong even more than I already did.
Rohan barely reacts to my sudden presence, sparing me an irritated grunt as if we've just run into each other at an awkward family event rather than mid-rescue from the supervillain organisation he's spent the last month incarcerated by. It's only when Leo nudges his arm that Rohan looks up from fiddling with the hard drive to give me a far more irritated scowl.
