“Yeah,” I say, already striding off in the direction of FISA’s cells. “I’ll meet you down there.” Then I hesitate, looking back to meet Rohan’s eyes again, adding firmly, “If I take too long, get Leo away. He’s the priority, okay?”
I don’t think I’ll need to convince Rohan to choose Leo over Dan and me. Even under the best circumstances, and even if I weren’t the man who murdered his mother, it should be a piss-easy decision to make. Leo isLeo. He should be any semi-sane person’s number one choice, always.
But still, Rohan hesitates, a scowl marring his expression, seeming unhappy with the request for some God-forsaken reason that I do not have the time or patience to understand right now.
“Rohan!” I bark at him, glaring viciously. “You fucking protect him first, got it?” I demand, pointing at Leo, who is still doing his best to try and pretend like this alarm isn’t crippling him. He’s looking up at me with desperate eyes that I do my best topretend don’t cause genuine anguish to twist my stomach into acid-infused knots.
Finally, after a mini staring contest, which I’ll admit Rohan is very close to winning, he gives in and jerks his head in a nod of uneasy acquiescence. I try not to imagine the likelihood of Leo convincing Rohan to wait far longer than he should, forcing myself to trust that Rohan will knock Leo out and drag him away from the base if he has to, believing Rohan entirely capable of it if he wants to. If he wants to, though, is the thing in question here.
With one last, lingering look at Leo, I turn away and start sprinting toward my brother.
My mad dash through the FISA base goes mostly unobstructed, apart from dodging out of the way of terrified noncombative personnel who absolutely did not sign up to be shot in the head by OI agents today. All the agents I come across are too focused on either getting somewhere safe or, in the case of the field agents, rallying to fight the insurgents, a good number of them headed in the direction where the explosion came from. It seems like OI has blasted their way through the literal front door as much as a secret base under the ground canhavea front door.
I hit the first wave of OI agents outside FISA’s cells, and it becomes quickly apparent they came here with the same plan as I have because Dan is with them, having already been broken out likely only moments before.
Dan meets my eyes from across the corridor, looking bizarrely surprised to see me as if he thinks I’d be somewhere else, and I’ve fucked up whatever plan he’s mapped out inside his head. That surprise slowly morphs into rage, his mouth tearing across his face until it becomes a feral thing.
There are several OI agents, each of them toting guns and familiarly cold expressions, flinty eyed and with a determinedset to their shoulders. All of them are locked in an intense fight with a handful of FISA agents, including, of course, Damon North.
It’s clear the OI agents came here ready for a fight, and none of them seem afraid of getting into one despite the fact FISA has the home-turf advantage. That suggests they have some extra reason to feel confident, which is ominous as fuck.
Dan isn’t involved in the fighting, instead standing off to the side, apparently content to let the OI agent who came to “rescue” him do all the work. But when he sees me, that need for violence reignites, and he rushes forward to meet me in the middle of the corridor, throwing a punch at my face before I have the chance to get out his name.
Pain blooms across my jaw, black blood bursting free inside my mouth, hot and metallic.
I don’t want to fight my brother, not here, not ever, but he isn’t giving me a choice although his first blow was more playful than serious, meant to incite my temper rather than cause any lasting damage to my face.
Dan further proves that point by drawing back after that first hit, balancing on the balls of his feet, legs spread and shoulders set, his body primed to attack but waiting for me to make the next move. FISA’s base is thankfully devoid of glass, all metal and concrete, sturdy and functional to a fault, so at least neither of us will be able to use our power this time.
Nostrils flaring, the metallic smell of blood pervades my nose when I open my mouth to ask, “This really how you want things to play out right now?”
Dan looks at me then like he did on the roof of that facility, a spike of pure black rage, and for a moment, it’s all encompassing, lightning scorching across the night sky in a violent arc, a brutal flash that temporarily splinters the dark. But then it eases, doused but not put out, and becomes somethingclose to hate but not quite as intimate. It’s hotter, more fragile, like the burst of flame from a wet log, like dying embers in what was once a bonfire.
“Don’t be weak,” Dan admonishes me coldly.
I can’t stop myself from bristling at his tone. It’s familiar from so many of our past sparring sessions. He always pushed me when I got too slow, too complacent, too kind, even though he was the one who balked at the bloodier missions OI sent us on. Back then it wasn’t about how either of us felt, it was about survival, raw and unchecked. I didn’t realise until he died, until he let me kill him to save my life, that Dan’s seeming contradiction in how he acted in training and out on missions was in fact a misunderstanding on my part. Dan was trying to make me strong and merciless so thatIwould survive.
Regret churns in my guts, dampening any anger I might have been feeling toward Dan over what he did to Leo. Dan spent our whole lives protecting me even if I didn’t see all the different and shaded ways in which he did it at the time. Now OI has done whatever the hell they did to him, stuck their poisoned fingers into his mind and torn it up, and he thinks that after everything we lived through together, the years of blood and agony and despair, of having every part of us stripped away, infused with violence and cruelty and then stapled back around our bones, that I just left him behind.
It's an impossible atrocity that OI found a way to take even more from my brother, to steal any trace of light from his memories, to spit venom on our past and watch it corrode past recognition, until it became something else, something decayed and mangled and razor sharp to the touch.
“I’m sorry,” I choke out, the rough sandpaper scrape of the words like blades slicing the wet flesh of my vocal cords. I don’t know what I’m apologising for. Killing him? Letting OI ruin his mind? Not pulling my gun and putting a bullet in hishead like the Dan of my childhood would have wanted me to if he could see himself like this? The Dan I grew up with would have abhorred the idea of OI controlling him with some bullshit chemical, making him hurt me against his will. Our choices were few with OI, but we still had them.
It's why I can never let Leo forgive me of all my sins. I did them willingly. No matter what they threatened, kill or dieisa choice. Dan’s sacrifice in the grey room proved that—if nothing else.
Dan, unimpressed with my ragged outburst, doesn’t deign to acknowledge it, seems entirely unmoved by it except for the sharp disappointment in his eyes that cuts into my abdomen and cleaves harshly to the left, spilling my innards onto the ground between us and leaving behind a gaping emptiness.
“Guilt,” Dan reminds me, voice measured and sure, “is for real people.”
Turning my head to the side, I spit out a mouthful of blood on the floor and throw myself into the fight Dan that seems determined we have. If the only way to get my brother out of here is to knock him the fuck out and drag him, then that’s no worse a crime than I’ve already committed against him or anyone else.
We trade blows back and forth, both of us pulling our punches just enough that it seems deliberate rather than sloppy, but not enough that I don’t have to put some real effort in to keep him at bay. He draws more blood from me than I do him because he’s better and meaner now, but that won’t matter once I drop him. All that really counts in a fight like this is how it ends.
It takes longer than I’d like, but with Dan weakened by his stay in FISA’s cells and my superior determination, I win the second round, taking Dan down to his knees and disabling him with a hard crack to his temple. He isn’t knocked out, but he’s decently disoriented for the moment.
Down the corridor, Damon and his backup dancers are making good headway with the OI agents. Damon has at least four collapsed around him in defeat, sporting injuries that look satisfyingly lethal in nature.
It isn’t until the second wave of OI agents arrive that shit gets complicated, seeing as one of the newbies produces a metal canister that he tears open and throws at the group of FISA agents. The canister hits the ground right in front of Damon, and blue gas explodes from the opening. It billows upward fast, encompassing Damon and the other FISA agents in seconds.
