We take one of FISA’s nondescript black jeeps to the port and then hop a ride on the ferry to Ireland. Armitage gave us the location of an OI facility in a city called Rogue. FISA has to reach out to two active supers, Guardian and Blue Storm, to let them know we’ll be entering their territory.
Aaron tells me that FISA has a tentative working relationship with them that mostly relies on FISA leaving them alone unless the Irish supers ask for help directly. If we just show up, setting fire to random buildings and causing mayhem on their streets, there will be a reckoning, and even a powerhouse of an agency like FISA doesn’t want to piss off a couple of superhumans if they don’t have to.
Guardian and Blue Storm have agreed to help us rescue any Liquid Onyx survivors that OI has in their custody, and we meet them in a FISA safe house near the facility to plan our attack. Both supers are women. Guardian is short and compact, all dressed up in black Kevlar. She looks young, with her incrediblypale, heart-shaped face and short, light-brown curls pulled up into bunches. Blue Storm is her opposite in every way, tall and broad, with dark-brown skin and long hair twisted into one long plait, dyed a bright cobalt blue. The only similarities between them are the thick Kevlar they’re wearing and the solemnity on their faces when we talk about the second gen Liquid Onyx survivors.
Both of them would have been kidnapped from their homes as very young children and injected with the substance that gave them the powers they now wield. I’ve seen them fight on the news and in vids online. They’re a formidable team with Guardian’s ability to fly and Blue Storm’s weather-based powers.
“You Ian Stone’s son?” Blue Storm asks, eyeing me from across a table in the kitchen where the OI facility’s floor plan is laid out. She doesn’t sound angry or accusatory about it, but there’s a mistrust in the downturn of her mouth and hawkishness of her gaze that I can’t blame her for.
“Yes,” I answer simply, combating her suspicious stare with a bored once-over, dismissing any threat they might pose. The only time I’m afraid of heroes is when they’re trying to save me. I have zero interest in being anybody’s emotional support mission.
“You worked for OI,” Blue Storm says, and this time there is some acidic bite to her voice, the snap at the end of each word like a reprimand. “You helped him fight against us.”
“Yes,” I say. No point in trying to apologise for it. I did it for my mum, and she was worth more to me than any consequence my actions might cause for other people. In some ways, the world is probably quite lucky that she’s dead. I’d need to be a lot less sober than I am now to feel anything but rage over that fact.
“But you’re working with FISA now?” This time it’s a question, not a statement.
I shoot a wicked smirk at Aaron, who doesn’t react to it, apparently in full handler mode and unable to emote just in case one of the supers thinks he’s a person with weaknesses or whatever the shit they teach at baby spy school.
“He seduced me into it,” I tell Blue Storm.
She turns her head slowly to arch an eyebrow at Aaron in moderate disbelief. I don’t know if that’s because she thinks it’s an absurd idea altogether, or if she just can’t imagine Aaron doing such a low thing as to use sex to manipulate someone into turning traitor.
Aaron decides to show off that he’s a real boy after all by not denying it and just staring back at Blue Storm untilshegets uncomfortable and looks away. Then he glances over at me and rakes his eyes up and down my slimmer body with absolutely nil percent subtlety at what that slow drag was meant to communicate. But it can’t be for Blue Storm’s benefit, because she’s too busy having a silent conversation with Guardian via intense staring.
Heat ignites in my sternum, a crackling burst of sensation that spreads through my chest cavity like roots through earth, spindles of flame reaching out to wind around my ribs. Aaron notices my reaction, and the slight upturn of his mouth indicates his smug satisfaction although there’s a hint of surprise on his face too, like he wasn’t expecting that kind of response from me.
It makes me wonder for a second if Aaron would consider fucking me if I let him know it was a real option, and I file that thought away for later inspection. There have been very few people in my life who I’ve found interesting enough to bother with the often twisty and barbed results that come from acting on physical attraction. I’m not ultimately sure, yet, if Aaron really is interesting enough, but he hasn’t been excluded either, which is an anomaly within itself.
Blue Storm doesn’t ask me anything else, and Guardian doesn’t speak at all. She just watches all of us from the corner of the room, blending in with the shadows, her body so still and slight she’d disappear from view entirely if it weren’t for the stark whiteness of her face, like a mark of chalk on a blackboard.
With their help, infiltration of the facility is easy. Guardian flies each of us onto the roof of the building, and we enter from the top, making our way down, giving us the high ground as well as the benefit of surprise for every altercation with OI agents and guards.
Our thorough search of the facility comes to an end when we discover the parents of all three previously rescued children alive and able-bodied enough to aid in their own escape. They’re being kept in cells with electronic locks that require a passcode.
Blue Storm uses her lightning power to fry the system, making it far easier to break in the doors as well as avoiding triggering any alarms. Not that we’re overly worried by that at this point. A group of Liquid Onyx survivors should be more than a match for however many OI personnel are roaming around the facility.
The parents, apart from looking a little worse for wear after being kept prisoner for however long they’ve been here, seem ready to fight their way out if they need to, especially once we reveal that their children are alive and waiting for them.
To be safe, Aaron sends Guardian back off to the roof with the parents so they can be flown to safety while we remain behind so we can search the rest of the facility for any other Liquid Onyx survivors.
Now they know we’re here, the OI guards come at us with everything they’ve got. But even with their advanced weapons and training, they’re no real match for Blue Storm, who can blow her opponents away with her wind powers before they can get close enough to touch her as well as throw off the trajectory of any bullets fired our way.
Aaron proves himself to be an impressive fighter, taking out almost as many as me although not as quickly. All I need to do is get close enough to touch bare skin, and it’s over. I was once told that my power feels like I’m lighting every nerve in a person’s body on fire, the pain so excruciating that I’ve seen it paralyze seasoned fighters and cause fully grown adults to piss themselves. When I touch the OI agents on the neck or face, I hold them for a handful of seconds before letting them drop. Some lose consciousness from the shock of it, others lie on the ground, stunned, tears streaming from their wide, terrified eyes.
I don’t feel guilt over it. Hurting them. Eliciting fear so strong and primal it has their hearts pounding loud enough that my sensitive ears pick up on the rapid, static noise.
Taking down the OI guards means nothing to me. It’s more entertaining to watch Aaron, the way his large body moves with an agility and speed that indicates a high level of formal training, the sort that could never be natural and only comes from years of hard work and experience in the field. Aaron’s file hailed him as adept in many hand-to-hand combat styles from around the world, but it’s another thing to see it in person.
Aaron’s jabs are at once brutally efficient and cruelly applied. He goes for the hits that will incapacitate, but also the ones that will hurt the most. There’s a deliberate savagery in how he hurts them that I find oddly fascinating. It’s not so much that he seems to enjoy it. I’ve seen the look on a man’s face when he craves the satisfaction that only physical violence can bring. It’s more that he seems to take every shattered bone and broken shred of skin as his due as if their pain is somehowowedto him. As if there is a penance to be paid in the sum of wet screams and ruptured organs.
There are secrets I can only see glints and glimmers of sown into the fabric of Aaron’s violence. It makes me want to unstitch and tear out the truth.
When we’re satisfied that no innocent lives in need of rescuing are hidden anywhere in the facility, we make our way back up to the roof. We find Guardian dealing with her own face-off against a group of OI guards and arrive just in time to see her catch a round of reinforced bullets from some maverick’s machine gun.
Each bullet rips through the Kevlar she’s wearing and burrows into the soft flesh of her torso. Guardian is taken off her feet by the impact and hits the ground in a dramatic collapse of splayed limbs and sprayed blood.
Blue Storm expels a rageful scream that sounds as if it was torn from her throat. She sends a blast of wind at the OI agents who shot her partner, sending them all flying off the roof to their probable deaths. She rushes to Guardian and drops down on the gravelled roof beside her, clutching at her injured body with shaking hands.
