I want to go to him. Put my hand on his shoulder, but he needs to answer for himself. Needs to make this choice without me influencing it.
"Yeah," he says finally. The word comes out rough, dragged from somewhere deep. "I can do that. Children first. Cross second. But if I get a clear shot..."
"If you get a clear shot, you take it." Jagger nods. "Just don't create that shot at the expense of the mission."
"Understood."
"Good." Jagger closes the briefing, powering down the projection. "We leave in twelve hours. Get some rest. This is going to be a long operation. And if anyone has second thoughts, now's the time to voice them."
Nobody speaks.
"Then we're agreed. Singapore. Extraction. And maybe, if we're lucky, the chance to take down one of the worst monsters the Silent ever created."
The meeting breaks up. People scatter to their preparations. Jinx lingers by the window, staring at nothing.
I cross to him, stand close enough that our shoulders brush.
"Hey."
"Hey." He doesn't look at me. His voice is distant, hollow.
"You okay?"
"No." He laughs, but there's no humor in it. "I haven't been okay since I was six years old and they strapped me to a table for the first time. Helena Cross was there. Watching. Taking notes. Making sure her precious protocol was working."
"Jinx..."
"I don't remember her face from that day. I've tried. But I remember her voice. Calm and relaxed, like she was discussing the weather instead of watching a child scream. 'Subject is responding well to stimuli. Increase intensity by fifteen percent.'" His hands are shaking. "That's what she said. Like I was an experiment. Like my pain was just data."
I take his hand and lace our fingers together. Anchor him to the present.
"She doesn't get to define you. Not anymore. Whatever she did, whatever she made, you're more than that now. You're JinxHarrison. You're my partner. And you're going to help us save those children before she does to them what she did to you."
He finally looks at me. The fury is still there, but underneath it, pain. Old pain, dragged up from places he's tried to bury.
"I want her dead, Asher. I want to watch the light leave her eyes and know that she'll never hurt another child again."
"I know."
"Is that wrong? Does that make me what they designed?"
"No." I squeeze his hand. "It makes you human. She took everything from you. Wanting justice isn't the same as wanting violence for its own sake. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Yeah. The difference is why. You want her dead because she hurts people. Not because hurting feels good."
He considers that. The tension in his shoulders eases, just slightly.
"Singapore," he says finally.
"Singapore."
"Let's go save some kids."
The flight to Singapore is eighteen hours of silence and planning.
We're traveling commercial, scattered across the cabin in ones and twos using fake ID’s we got on a bargain. Less conspicuous than a private charter, less likely to draw attention from whatever eyes the Silent might have watching international travel patterns. Jagger and Jinx are somewhere in business class, running final simulations on tablets that look like they're displaying movies. Marlee is three rows behind me, pretending to read a thriller novel while her eyes scan every passenger who moves through the aisle.
