I watched him carefully for half a second more before I turned, not wanting to waste any more of my time looking at the man who claimed to have ‘saved me’. A year was a long time. A long time to think, to wonder, to carve; a long time to build.
2
Azrael
2012
Isnapped my pocket watch shut, taking in the front doors of the Training building.
It was the first time I had been here in over a year.
I escaped the asylum two months before my release with the help of three brothers who had been there long before I arrived, and for the last four months I focused on myself. Building everything I was into something better. But the person I was now wasn’t exactly what father dearest had hoped I would become.
What they did to me far surpassed anything he could ever possibly think up. They honed my psychotic tendencies into somethingmore. Gave me the precious resources I had been tooweakto handle on my own.
I was better now. Just like my preciousdaddywanted me to be, and I came out with a mission.
It turns out that this world is far more connected than I had previously believed. Connections ran through the sinew of this earth so deeply that they led me right to these very steps.
Back to my so-called ‘home’.
I swung my custom-made cane as I walked up the front steps of our training building, my bike still parked in the parking spot labeled with my name, dust and dirt collecting on the cover they had so graciously put over it.
I placed my thumb on the pad to the right of the door, waited for the lock to slide, and walked right on in as if it were just another day.
The place looked exactly as it had 14 months ago, except for the fact that there were more people bustling around. People who stopped and stared like deer caught in the headlights when they caught sight of my cracked porcelain mask. Shattered and glued back together with gold.
A bleach-blonde, blue-eyed little vixen of a thing was the first to break free and prance away, probably to warn our great leader himself.
The thing was, I wasn’t here to see him.
I heard down the grapevine of this world that my brother had been looking for me since my release date two months ago. I didn’t know why, and I didn’t care. The mountains were calling, and I had finally made time to answer.
He was, after all, the most loyal to me out of the bunch.
I made my way through the building while those wandering the halls avoided me like the plague. It didn’t take me long at all to walk right into his room.
All of our rooms were studios. Filled with everything we needed to train, study, sleep, and eat, if we so chose. None of us ever ate here though. We came here long enough to get some sleep before we were sent out on another assignment. The mountain-boy finally had a lull in his assignments, so it was the perfect time for a surprise visit.
And was it a surprise.
He had his gun out and pointed at me before the door swung all the way open, but when he saw who it was, my smile stretching across my face, his icy-blue eyes widened, his gun lowering. “Azrael. You’re not supposed to be in the states.”
I wandered over to his desk, taking in the notebooks he had already started gathering. “And don’t we just hate when thingsdon’t go according to plan,” I hummed, using the end of my cane to turn the notebook he had been writing in towards me.
He walked over, slamming it shut, pulling my eyes up. “Does Malachi know you’re here?”
“If he’s not stupid,” I replied. “I heard you needed me.”
His face twisted. “How—you know what?” He shook his head. “Yeah.” He walked over and shut the door. “For the last year, I’ve been putting together a plan I want to eventually pitch to Malachi and Beckett, but I need your help with it.”
“And the mountains they sing with a glorious praise,” I hummed.
He gave me a look as he made his way to his desk, eyeing me carefully. “I don’t know what that means.”
“You, dear mountain boy.”
He straightened, frowning. “Don’t call me that. How did you escape? I heard a rumor you checked yourself out two months before release.”
