“It happened barely a few hours ago!”
“Yeah, exactly, it’s in the past. God. You’re like one of those tabloids that won’t stop banging on about Princess Diana. Like, yeah, she’s dead, we get it already!” I hunch down in my seat and squint up at Jack from my slumped position. “Look, there comes a time when we all have to move on from tragedy and get on with our lives, and for your thighs and Princess Diana fans, that time is now.”
Jack mimes strangling me, which isn’t very sensitive of him considering he once tried to choke me out in a rage.
“You bother me,” he says.
I bite the tip of my tongue between my teeth and make a face at him. He valiantly resists the visible urge he’s feeling to smack me in the mouth.
Jack’s casts a glance around the plane, eyes flitting from person to person, then widening when he realises who’s missing.
For the second time in the wake of a fight with OI, Jack looks to me with trepidation and asks, “Dan?”
Brutally, I have to offer the same answer.
“Gone.”
Past
Rohan
After our heavy-handed rescue of Malik, getting out and getting gone is the only priority. We don’t meet much resistance on the way out of the facility, and whatever guards remain are taken care of easily enough by the four of us. Malik is especially brutal in how he eviscerates any OI guard who dares to come within poking distance of him.
I’m honestly stunned he doesn’t try to make a run for it the second we get him away from the black site until I remember he still has that electronic chip in his neck, implanted by OI and designed to both track him and also to zap him with electricity when he misbehaves.
We have to take him to a nearby FISA safe house to remove the chip. I volunteer to dig it out of his neck with a butter knife, but Aaron vetoes that idea, calling in some FISA doctors to attend to Malik instead.
Once we get back to the FISA base, Malik in tow, Aaron is called into a meeting with Snow. I’m unsurprised that I don’t warrant an invite to Aaron’s official telling off by the agency director although I’m slightly disappointed I won’t get to see Aaron in full “come at me, bro” rebellion mode.
Damon goes along with Malik to medical so he can be checked out properly, which Malik agrees to with suspicious compliance. Although I’m just glad I don’t have to look at his face anymore. If I have anything to say about it, I won’t ever have to again. This base is big enough that my wish should be more than possible. I have zero interest in being in the vicinity of any Liquid Onyx survivor.
I take myself to the showers so I can wash the mission off me. No one comes to arrest me for treason to the crown or anything suitably banal, and I assume that means Aaron has convinced Snow she was being a cowardly bitch by not sanctioning the mission. Or more likely, there’s zero point in having a fit over it now the deed is done.
It’s early evening, and I’m back in my lab again when Aaron comes to find me. I’m alone this time, which I’m glad for as I get the feeling from the intense expression on Aaron’s face as he bears down on me that we’re about to have some kind of “talk.” It’s probably going to be excruciating, no matter how we go about it, but Aaron is stubborn; he’ll just chase me down if I try to run.
Aaron comes to lean against my worktable, pitching himself next to me with barely a foot of distance between his hip and my shoulder. I stand up straight and turn around to park my arse against the edge of the table, crossing my arms and trying not to tense up too much at the bubbling hot pot of nerves steaming up my stomach in response to Aaron’s close proximity.
I don’t like how my body responds to him; it’s far too much, terrifyingly out of my control, and he doesn’t deserve it given theshort amount of time we’ve actually known each other. It makes me kind of pissed off at him, which I know rationally isn’t fair, but I don’t much care about being fair with him right now.
For a while we stand there together without speaking, the silence neither oppressive nor entirely comfortable. There’s a heaviness to it that could be jump-charged with hostility or exhilaration, depending on which way this interaction tips, and I’m not sure I care if I wind up fighting Aaron or fucking him. I don’t need anything from this tension other than to break it, to crack that shit open and let whatever poison is inside bleed out.
Aaron, true to form, doesn’t bother with niceties. I like that about him.
“Director Snow has decided to let this infraction go unpunished. For you, at least.”
“Why?” I scuff my boot against the lab floor. “Did you tell her you blackmailed me into it?”
Aaron releases a short bark of laughter and turns his head to look at me. I don’t have to do the same to know; I can feel his eyes on my face. “What the hell would I blackmail you with, kid?”
I shrug, suppressing a smirk. “Figured maybe you’d make like a real lawman and plant evidence or drugs on me. Some classicpo-liceshit like that.”
“Not quite,” Aaron says, still sounding reluctantly amused by me. “I told her I pulled rank and made out like it was a real mission. So if she asks, you were tricked into it, okay?”
“You lied to Snow to protect me?” I gasp sarcastically. “Myhero.”
Aaron wisely doesn’t respond to that, hopefully because he knows how stupid I think that was of him. He knows by now how I feel about heroes.
Not. A. Fan.
