“Oh, yeah?”
“Yes,” Aaron says, his voice taking on a harsher quality. More intense. Almost angry. “Liquid Onyx is back. We want to find every trace of that chemical and destroy it.”
And there, right there. His steadfast propriety glitches. His mouth tightens, and his gaze seems to darken even more, the shadows of all that redacted information from his file coming back to haunt him.
I don’t know if it’s the notion that it would enrage my dad, because sometimes I’m just that much of a basic bitch, or my unwise interest in Aaron North’s tragic origin story that has me agreeing to sign up with an agency I was raised to despise as much as Aaron was likely raised to respect it.
“You should know,” I warn him. “I don’t work well with other people.”
Dad stopped giving me a lab team because I kept using my power on them whenever they got too far into my space without permission, which, incidentally, is a thing they would never have from me. I worked alone at Obsidian Inc., and I’ve worked alone since I left. The idea of having to be part of a unit and answerable to my colleagues already has me chomping at the bit to rebel against those constraints.
Aaron offers me the first smile I’ve seen on his face since we met, and it’s a cruel, serrated thing, malicious all the way along and wicked sharp at the edges. “Okay, but. How are you at workingunderpeople, kid?”
Right, so there’s a monster thrashing around somewhere underneath all that muscle and stoicism, then.
My mouth hooks up into a mean curve, both sides, teeth nowhere left to hide.
You know, this might actually be fun.
Present
Leo
Watching Dan Roth casually lean back on a chair in one of FISA’s interrogation rooms is a bit like going to the zoo and watching a wild animal nap in a domesticated version of their real habitat.
There’s not a single part of my mind that underestimates this man’s ability to murder me and everyone else in this base if he so chooses.
Dan has been devested of his Obsidian Inc. uniform. They’ve re-dressed him in grey jogging bottoms and a white T-shirt. His dark-blond hair is shorter than Jack’s, shorn close to his scalp, closer in length to how Jack’s was when we first met.
Now I have the chance to look him over without the buzz of adrenaline or the fear of getting shot, it’s easier to see the differences between the Roth brothers. Dan has a scar through one of his eyebrows but is missing the scar Jack has on his neck.Oddly, both scars are of similar shapes: mismatched, permanent marks of violence. Dan’s freckles are more pronounced, his skin paler than Jack’s although that could be due to the recent trip Jack and I took to Southeast Asia. Dan is slightly bigger, too, meatier in the shoulders and thighs.
Dan seems to carry himself differently as well. I noticed it the two other times we met, but it’s even easier to see now. Jack moves through life in a defensive hunch, every muscle primed for combat, his instincts set firmly on high alert, ready to lash out and protect him with very little provocation.
In contrast, his brother has a constant air of lazy arrogance. He’s resting back in his chair, feet sprawled out in front of him under the metal table and forearms resting on his thighs, like he chose to be there, and he’s doing us all a great favour by waiting to be questioned. His shoulders are so low and loose that I’d think he was asleep if his eyes weren’t open and staring with boredom up at one of the interrogation room cameras. He has an insolent curve to his mouth as if he finds the entire situation beyond amusing, like he knows something that nobody else does, and he’s laughing at us for that ignorance.
There’s not a hint of fear or defensiveness in his entire body, like nothing can touch him, hurt him, unless he allows it to. It’s disconcerting, to say the least. I can see why this sort of behaviour pissed off so many OI agents, with their false sense of hubris. It must have eaten at them that this young man, or child as he would have been, wasn’t cowed by their violence or apparent control over him.
I can also see where Jack has tried to replicate Dan’s movements, mostly when he’s trying to pretend something doesn’t bother him. But with Jack, it has only ever been a pretense of detachment, a façade of indifference to hide behind. With Dan, it seems more natural as if the mask is real rather than a fabrication.
It causes something cold and spiked to twist inside my chest, a piece of barbed wire pulling taught around my heart, imagining a younger Jack trying desperately to imitate his brother, to build up armour he could use against people who would do him harm, which at that time would have been pretty much everybody he came into contact with.
I’m not exactly nervous to be in the same room with Dan again. If anything, there’s an odd sense of excitement. This is Jack’s brother, the one person who knows my partner better than anyone else ever has or likely ever will. If this weren’t such a terrible circumstance, I’d be hyped up at the idea of meeting Jack’s family. As it stands, this is likely going to be a charged encounter, regardless of the outcome.
Anabelle, much to my surprise, didn’t seem any happier than Jack did to be sending me in alone to meet with Dan. In contrast, North seemed to have more confidence in my ability to handle the situation. They had one of those silent arguments about it right in front of me. In the end, North won, an achievement to be sure, and I was told I could sit down with Dan for whatever conversation the other man seems intent on having with me.
Dan’s eyes latch onto me when I enter the integration room, but just as quickly, they flicker away dismissively. That doesn’t mean he isn’t watching me as I move around the room to sit down across from him, or that he isn’t entirely aware of how close to him I am, but he does a good job of making it look like he doesn’t think I’m any sort of threat.
I mean, I’m sure he doesn’t think I could take him in a proper fight, but he’s still vulnerable here, and no amount of fearlessness on his part could overwhelm the training he’s gone through that makes him calculate the odds of survival in any given situation.
Anabelle wanted Dan’s hands to be shackled before I went in to meet with him, but I put my foot down hard over that. If Danwanted me dead, he could have killed me in my kitchen. Even after what he did, I’m still not afraid of him. However naive or suicidal that makes me, I don’t care. I won’t let FISA chain Dan up like OI has been doing his entire life.
“Are you doing okay in here?” I ask, subtly checking him over. “No problems?” I can’t see any bruises or other injuries on him, but that doesn’t mean he’s been treated well by any FISA agents who have been charged with looking after him.
Dan finally brings his familiar green eyes back to rest on my face. His mouth tips up into a mildly caustic smile.
“Don’t worry,” he says, “none of your agency friends have busted their fists up trying to pay me back for attacking you.”
He sounds amused that I would ask, either because he doesn’t understand why I’d care, or if he thinks the suggestion of that happening is itself ridiculous.
