26
Darren
As soon as Aidenwas out of sight, fear clutched Darren’s insides. He tried to reel it in because he knew where Aiden had most likely gone—engineering, since the core’s vibrations seemed to calm him down—but that barely helped. He understood it too, logically, that Aiden was a mess and needed to be on his own right now, but that didn’t make his heart ache any less. He wanted to comfort Aiden, to hold him and tell him everything would be okay… but did he have that right?
Nyle asked Darren some question as they sat around the table in the mess hall and Darren replied on autopilot, not quite sure what he was even saying. Discovering Claudia’s body in the vault had pushed Aiden back to that darkness within him that he’d been fighting with Darren’s help.
How much of the progress had it undone? How much of what they’d been building so slowly and excruciatingly had it crumbled? How much of Aiden was he going to lose?
Darren bounced his leg as he stared out the window, his stomach roiling at the smell of coffee wafting over from his untouched mug. He grabbed his thigh to stop himself, glared atthe gray floor and then the silvery cupboards, but he couldn’t get his mind off Aiden no matter what he tried. Catching up the rest on what exactly had happened was torture, but he suffered through it because he needed all their help if they were going to figure out how to hit Marcus again. Or if they even could.
No one had an immediate solution, and that wasn’t surprising. Rick went to engineering to run some diagnostics, leaving Darren with Bea.AndNyle, who was scowling at his tablet. His brooding was atypical and so it quickly became clear that whatever Nyle was doing had to do with their failed mission.
Darren wanted to talk to Aiden, but Nyle probably needed someone to talk to right now too, so he took a deep breath and gently nudged the blond genius on the shoulder.
“Did you find anything?” he asked, knowing it was pointless to try and reassure the man that everything was fine.
Marcus had almost caught them, and they’d also lost their chance of retrieving the ring. Claudia and Liu’s bodies too, because going back to the vault or infiltrating wherever Marcus might decide to move the cryo tanks was likely going to be near impossible now that they’d lost the element of surprise.
He wondered then, why Marcus had even kept the bodies. Out of narcissistic sentimentality? After all, Claudia was his daughter, a DuLaurent. What about Liu? Was his corpse a reminder of how far Marcus had gotten? How powerful he was because he’d taken down one of the few people who could ever stand up to him?
“Not yet. I’ve got nothing.” Nyle gritted his teeth, frustration rolling off him. “I’ve double—no, triple-checkedall our devices and comms. There were no signs of a breach, Darren,because I know what I’m fucking doing!”
“Then we must’ve missed something at the warehouse?” Darren suggested, meeting Bea’s gaze as she opened a second pack of dried apples and tossed one in her mouth.
“Ugh… I’ve no idea! I had control of all reachable systems. I’d have noticed if something wasn’t right… There was no outgoing traffic when I lost you guys in the vault either, meaning no one called anyone! Besides, with the jammers in place—” Nyle cut himself off, huffing in exasperation. “I tried to bypass them, but it took me three tries. So even if that’s how they detected us, it still doesn’t explain how Marcus got therebeforeour comms were even intercepted!”
Darren considered that, recalling the scrambled static he’d heard just before coming into the room with the tanks. The one where he’d thought he’d heard Nyle’s voice for a moment. “What if you did get through on the first try? Even if just for a few seconds.”
“Then maybe they detected that… But I didn’t get through?” Nyle scrunched his forehead, glancing at Bea. She shrugged.
“I thought I heard your voice over the comms. Maybe twenty or so minutes before Marcus’ men got to the power room above the vault,” Darren said, a surge of adrenaline filling him. His mind had gotten distracted with the conversation, but the moment his body remembered what Aiden clutching onto him felt like, the urge to hold Aiden in his arms returned.
“I’ll recheck the logs,” Nyle said, lifting his legs on the sofa and crossing them under him. “Even if they move everything, I’ll find it again, Darren. We’ll get the ring.” He met Darren’s eyes as determination made the blue of his own darker. “And we’ll retrieve the bodies of Liu and Claudia so they can both get a proper funeral.”
A spark of hope chased away some of that foreboding feeling of reaching a dead end, and Darren wanted to share it with Aiden. Or just to see him, even if Aiden wouldn’t want to talk to him yet.
“Nyle, baby,” Bea jumped in, a fond smile softening her features. “Tell Darren about George.”
“George?” Darren echoed back, the name not ringing a bell. “Who isGeorge?”
Nyle worried his lips, fingering the headphones he’d left on the table. They were still blasting music, though it wasn’t loud enough to be annoying. “One of those people I was trying to track down. I managed to get a hit… but I don’t want to get your hopes up. He’s yet to respond.”
Darren’s pulse quickened. “But you found someone? Someone who’s actually alive and exists?”
Nyle nodded slowly. His expression remained sullen and a little guarded. “Yes. I… promise not to fuck things up this time… Twice is already too much,” he vowed with a self-deprecating scoff and put the headphones on, not giving Darren the chance for any follow-up questions.
The flicker of hope in Darren grew to a flame. He needed to tell Aiden. If Nyle had found someone who was willing to help and Marcus was too busy dealing with the vault, they had the advantage this time. They could, and would, get to Liu’s people first and avoid a repeat of Gripwich.
“I’m going to find Aiden,” Darren said, his head slightly spinning as he shot up from the sofa.
“Don’t.” Bea halted him, grabbing his forearm. “Let him process what happened. It’s…” she sighed, frowning at the apple slice she was holding. “I think he needs some space. I… I’ve noticed how things between you two have been changing. This is not easy for him, Darren. It’s… probably even harder than him losing Claudia because you are the one responsible for it. But he’s let you in. He chose to do that, so you have to trust him to do it once again.”
Darren clutched the edge of the table with one hand and stared out of the mess hall’s viewport. His whole being demanded to be with Aiden right now, to give him a shoulder to cry on or a cheek to punch, but Bea was right. Darren had beenthere for Aiden in the vault, had saved him, but he couldn’t help Aiden with this. Only Aiden could decide if his future had Darren in it.
“I don’t want to lose what we have, Bea. I don’t want him to push me away. I… want to be by his side. I need it. Needhim,” he confessed, watching Nyle’s fingers obliviously tap across the tablet’s screen as the twink hummed in tune to the music.
Bea squeezed his hand, snatching Darren’s attention back to herself just as her gaze strayed to Nyle. “I know,” she said with affection in her voice, then looked back at him. “Hell, I knew you stood no chance against him the moment he came back from the hideout. I wish you could’ve seen him. He was a mess. All fired up and looking like he wanted to bring down the entire world.” She laughed and let him go. “Not that I can blame him.”
