Leo takes a sudden step toward me, and my trigger finger twitches precariously.
“Stop!” I shout at him in a wild panic. “I don’t know how this shit works, Leo. I don’t know what will make me shoot you, so stop fucking moving, okay?”
But Leo is Leo, so he doesn’t stop. “I’m just gonna make sure your brother doesn’t bleed out,” he says, and he has the audacity to sound mildly exasperated about it as if I’m not one wrong move away from killing him.
Leo swerves around me with a confidence he has no right to and kneels down in front of my brother. I’m compelled to keep my gun trained on him, but my finger doesn’t twitch again, so the order I was given must have been very specific.
Dan darts a wary glance between my gun and Leo. He seems equally unnerved at the impossible position we’ve found ourselves in.
“How bad is it?” Leo asks, brow furrowed as he looks toward Dan’s shoulder.
Dan shrugs, then hisses at the pain that movement elicits, growling under his breath.
“Yeah,” Leo says, the ghost of smile curving his mouth, “maybe don’t do that.”
Dan gives Leo an unimpressed look in response.
Leo holds his hands up and asks, “Mind if I check it?”
Dan hesitates for a second, darts another look up at the gun, then nods at Leo jerkily.
Leo grasps the collar of Dan’s shirt and rips it, drawing black fabric apart until the fresh bullet wound is revealed. Blood is still oozing out of the hole in his skin, but I can already see the sign of healing around it. Leo searches Dan’s back for an exit wound and sighs in relief when he finds it.
Dan notices and scoffs, “Didn’t fancy digging a bullet out of me?”
“Not without my special bullet-retrieving tools,” Leo says.
“Oh, didn’t bring those with you?” Dan asks sarcastically.
“Nah,” Leo says wryly. “Left them in my other world-saving jacket.”
“Shame,” Dan hums. “Thanks for ruining my shirt.”
“I’ll buy you a new one,” Leo placates him.
Dan goes to say something else, but he’s interrupted when OI’s machine starts making some very alarming noises. As in, the kind of noises you’d expect from a machine gearing up to do whatever it was designed to do, which in this case is wreak catastrophic damage to the human race. So. All in all. Not good.
“Fuck,” Dan bites out, looking up at the machine in a genuine mix of irritation and horror.
“How the hell is it working?” Leo asks, looking around frantically. His eyes land on me when he can’t find any random OI scientists nearby to blame.
“They must be able to control it remotely,” I say. “The plans we got didn’t say anything about that, but … who the fuck knows, maybe Rohan was mind-controlled into giving us the wrong set of schematics for the machine.”
At this point, anything is possible.
Panic threatens to take over as it becomes clear that we’re stuck with no way out. We need to destroy the machine now, but there’s no way Leo can do it with my gun pointed at his face.
Leo and I gaze fearfully at each other. There’s nothing we can do. OI has fucked us. From beyond the grave, Ian Stone has fucked us.
But then Dan looks up with a grim set to that fun house mirror of my own face and holds my gaze for a handful of heartbeats before saying, “At least I know you won’t miss this time.”
Before I can parse the meaning of that, Dan leans forward to grasp the back of Leo’s neck and drags him in, pressing his lips firmly to Leo’s mouth. It’s over almost as soon as he begins. Leo is stunned; Dan just jerks his chin up at me and says, “Look after my brother, Leo Snow.”
I’m caught off guard just enough for Dan to push off the ground and start springing toward the machine at a blurring speed. He takes a flying leap, jumping up onto the machine and climbing up it.
My arms are up, gun aimed straight at Dan before I can process any of it.
“Jack, no!” Leo yells as he throws himself at me, knocking my aim enough off balance that my bullet pierces Dan’s back rather than his head. Dan’s entire body spasms at the impact of the bullet, and he loses his grip on the machine, falling off it to land with a crash.
