We pull apart, breath slightly labored, our foreheads pressed together as we inhale and exhale in tandem. It feels like we were kissing for hours, but it can’t have been any more than a handful of seconds.
“I love you, Leo Snow,” I say, so quietly that he wouldn’t be able to hear it without his newly enhanced senses.
Leo’s next breath shudders out of him, and it takes a couple more beats before he can pull away entirely.
“Okay,” Leo mutters to himself, “let’s hope that straight up staring at it works because that’s pretty much all I’ve got.”
I snort in wry amusement and bump his shoulder, silently encouraging him.
Leo turns his full attention to the castle door, dark brows pulling together in concentration. An entire minute passes where nothing happens, and I begin to wonder exactly how long we should keep this up before trudging back to the others in defeat.
It turns out, Leo can’t blow up the door. He does, however, manage to blow up the entire fucking castle wall, rendering the door moot, so that can probably be considered a win.
One second everything is still and quiet, the next the—likely very old—bricks surrounding the castle door detonate like individual bombs, stone and mortar flying apart dramatically in all directions. It’s such a large explosion that the ground quakes, and the air becomes temporarily thick with heat. I grab hold of a nearby tree and Leo’s arm to stop us both from being thrown backward by the powerful blast.
North must have had the others primed to move at the first indication that our plan worked because Leo and I have barely regained our equilibrium before the rest of our team shows up, led by North. He doesn’t stop to talk to us, choosing to use the momentum he’s built, propelling himself forward through the trees, clearly expecting us to fall in line and follow.
Leo gasped painfully when the explosion first happened, and it seemed to disorientate him for a handful of seconds, but by the time the others come charging past, he’s recovered enough to shove at my shoulder, pushing me to start running with him.
There were a few guards standing along the wall that Leo took down, each of them either torn apart in the explosion or buried in the debris left behind. We all have our weapons out and raised, ready to fire at any remaining guards that come at us.
We climb over the mound of shattered brick, like a trail of soldiers breaking free from a trench to risk their lives in no man’s land. Once technically inside the partially destroyed castle, we’re met with three different potential routes to search. Up into the nearest tower, down a flight of huge stone steps, likely to the servant areas, or straight on toward what might be the castle courtyard. We were able to study floor plans for this castle before we left, so I have a vague idea where things are, but shit always looks different when you’re on the ground. It was decided before we got here that the courtyard would be the most likely place for OI to have stored the weapon as the only space large enough and with an open top for when the machine needs to be used.
A flood of guards spill in from the tower stairs, armed and fast. We turn our guns on them and start firing, catching them as they appear like rabbits sprinting from their hole in the ground. It seems almost too easy to pick them off, but then another swell of guards come running in from the other two directions, and the fight becomes a lot more even. With a minimum amount of cover for any of us, it comes down to who has the better fucking aim for most shots fired.
“Roth, we’ll cover you, just get Snow to the machine!” North yells at me. “He has the best chance of destroying it!”
Leo will be reluctant to leave his friends with so many armed OI guards, but North’s right that Leo’s power means he’s bestsuited to destroy the machine before OI can use it. Dan takes the decision out of Leo’s hands by grabbing his arm and all but dragging him off toward the courtyard. Still not used to his enhanced strength, Leo doesn’t fight him although he looks back at me with wide, fearful eyes.
With one last bullet shot through the skull of a guard who was about to do the same to Rohan, I chase after my brother and my boyfriend.
As promised, North and the others turn their efforts on paving the way for the three of us to escape down a long corridor that eventually leads out to the courtyard. When the machine from the designs in OI’s digital plans comes into view, I’m relieved we were right. It’s situated right in the middle of the courtyard and looks exactly like the kind of thing you’d expect a supervillain to create. Imagine a rocket ship crossed with a very large, heavy artillery machine gun, oversized muzzle pointed directly up at the sky.
There are a handful of guards surrounding the fifty-foot machine, and they start shooting at us as soon as we round the corner. We take cover behind a thick pillar, Dan and I returning fire from our respective corners, Leo stuck in the space between us. Dan gets two of the guards with headshots, skulls blown out the back of their heads, merciless kills, quick and precise. I catch the three remaining guards with shots to the neck and face. They all go down, cleared out like stamped bugs.
Once we’re as sure as we can be that there aren’t any guards lurking around to suddenly spring out of the woodwork, Leo walks out into the courtyard and stands in front of the machine, ready to use his power. In seconds, this is all about to be over, OI’s plans nuked by my boyfriend’s mind, the enemy of my entire fucking life finally defeated.
That’s when I find myself raising my gun and pointing it right at Leo, entirely against my will.
Finger hovering over the trigger, I shout, “Leo, stop!”
Leo’s head jerks to the side, blue eyes widening when he realises I’m pointing my gun at him. “Jack, what are you doing?”
I shake my head, frantic, afraid that any second I’ll press down on the trigger and kill Leo. “Can’t control it.”
Realisation dawns on Leo’s face. “They must have ordered you to … I don’t know, kill anyone who gets close enough to destroy the machine.”
I catch Dan raising his gun to shoot me, hopefully somewhere nonlethal, the bastard, but whatever orders I was given kick in, and I’m turning without telling my body to do it, whipping around to fire off a shot at Dan. He darts to avoid it, and it’s only his enhanced speed that saves him, the bullet tearing through his shoulder. Dan loses his grip on his gun at the violent impact to his shoulder, and it flies out of his hand, clattering to the ground some distance away. He could run and grab for it but not before I could shoot both him and Leo.
Dan grasps at his injured shoulder, hissing in pain. He gives me a look that’s more outraged than agonised, though. There’s a tiny part of me that doesn’t feel too bad about shooting him, and he has to see that on my face because the outrage slips into something more exasperated.
“Yeah, alright, brother,” he says. “I owed you that one, I guess, you possessive fucking prick.”
I’ve already turned back around to point my gun at Leo again, and despite putting every bit of mental effort into willing my muscles to obey me, they don’t budge an inch.
Leo is staring at me, wide-eyed and conflicted, more focused on my face than the gun because of course he is, that absolute lunatic. He’s probably standing there worrying about how “upset” I’ll be if I shoot a hole in his skull rather than being afraid for his own life. If we manage to survive this, I swear I’llspend the rest of my time on this Earth trying to force some self-preservation into this man’s thick head.
Somewhere in the distance, the sound of gunshots still ring out in a consistent cacophony, bullets hitting flesh and ricocheting off brick walls, echoing through the ancient castle, out of place and out of time. Whatever’s going on out there, any hope of the others riding to the rescue seems remote, which leaves us with very few options.
