“I don’t know. All I know is going back will bring up a lot of sour memories.”
“Really? That’s what you’re worried about?”
“It’ll be dangerous, yes, but seeing all those people who don’t know, I think that will be worse.”
I understood what he meant. He was talking about all the Faction mages with chips in their necks. Slaves, effectively. Well, not really slaves; more like dogs on short leashes. I wasn’t sure how I would be able to deal with seeing them either— those people I used to work with all the time still living the lie.
I arrived at my door and turned to look at Abel. He looked tired in the dim light of the dull, concrete corridor, but I bet I didn’t look much better. My blonde hair was matted and dirty, my hands were covered in grime, and I didn’t even want to know what color the bags under my eyes were.
“Thanks,” I said, “for sticking with me today.”
“Anytime, Cartwright,” he said, nodding. While he turned around and went for his door, I thought for an instant he was about to say something else. It was his stare, the intensity of his deep brown eyes, that gave me reason to pause and wait for him to speak. Then again, maybe it was just my tired eyes playing tricks on me.
I let him leave, exhaled the breath I had unconsciously held in my lungs, and opened the metal bulkhead into what was my new room. Aisha was there, sitting on one of the two beds we had been given. There was a small desk with a single stool next to the beds, a military-style chest on the floor, and an empty shelf above that. Fluorescent lights embedded into the corners where the ceiling met the walls cast a harsh, white incandescence through the room, making the cracks in the concrete seem all the more prominent and ugly.
She stood up and hugged me, and I hugged her back, and in that quiet, comfortable moment we mourned what had happened to us, what had happened to the Order of Prometheus. People had died, and those who hadn’t died had lost everything—their possessions, their homes, their routines. We pulled apart, and I smiled at her.
“You don’t look so scary anymore,” I said.
“Yeah…” she said, trailing off. “I bet that was an eye-opener, huh?”
“Yeah, it was one hell of a shocker,” I said, smiling as I sat down on the stool. I ran my hands through my dirty hair, wincing as knots caught against my fingers. “I need another shower.”
“Take a number; they’re communal. I thought I’d wait until later when everyone’s done, then go.”
I scanned the room. “It’s not exactly like our apartment, but it is like old times, isn’t it?”
Aisha nodded. “Yeah… I’m happy enough with that. I’ll miss my stuff, but I’ll survive.”
“I know. At least we’re okay, most of us—shit, where’s Ada?”
Aisha pointed at the top of the tall, metal locker in the room. There the albino python sat licking the air. Relief allowed my muscles to relax. “How did you get her out?”
“Spider did. She likes him.”
“Good. I’m so glad. We need to get her some food, don’t we?”
“She’ll be fine for a while—she ate before… before everything happened.”
I nodded, but said nothing.
“I want you to let me help now,” Aisha said.
It struck me out of the blue, and made me pause before responding. “What?”
“Now that you’ve seen what I can do, I want you to let me help you.”
“Help me… fight the Faction?”
Aisha nodded, her eyes burning with intention.
“But—”
“But nothing,” she interrupted. “Those guys have taken everything from us. First, they take your life, then our home. They won’t stop taking, and I’m not going to sit down and wait for them to come and take something else. I want to fight them with you.”
“Aren’t you worried they’ll throw you back to Arcadia?”
“Do you really think they’ll bother throwing me anywhere? I think they’ll just kill me, especially now that the dragon’s out of the bag. The fact that you’ve got fae on your side probably hasn’t gone unnoticed.”
“I’d say it’s definitely not gone unnoticed.”
“Right, so what’s the problem?”
I let my hands sink between my legs, and my shoulders fell. “There’s no problem, I guess… I just never wanted you to have to get involved in all of this.”
“I never wanted to get you involved in my business either, remember?”
A faint smile traced across my lips. “Right. You just fell into my bathroom that day. God, I was only a kid. Barely seventeen.”
“Me too, but you were fucking relentless about wanting to help me.”
I looked up at her. “What can I say? You grew on me.”
“You saved my life, Max. You gave me somewhere to stay, helped me learn enough about this world to survive on my own, and you did all that knowing exactly who you worked for, knowing exactly what the penalty for hiding me was.”
“I remember…” I said, trailing off.
“I’m not going to ask you to let me return the favor. I know people around here won’t trust me much now that they know what I am—”
“That’s not true. You saved me this time. You’re the reason Abel, Jamie, and I made it out of there in one piece—you and that fire-breath of yours. Remind me never to piss you off.”
“Oh please, you’ve pissed me off a ton of times, but I’ve never felt the need to barbecue you… at least, not yet.”
The corner of my mouth tugged into a smile. “Alright, fine. From now on, you’re a member of the Order of Prometheus too.”
“Do you have the authority to grant me that status?”
“Fuck authority.” I extended my hand, and Aisha came up to me, and shook it.
A comfortable silence followed, one in which I felt like I could allow myself to unwind a little. I stood, walked over to the metal lockers I had only just noticed, and opened one. Inside there was a single spare bedsheet, a pillow, two towels, and two black jumpsuits. I grabbed them all and set them down on the top bunk. Aisha, who had decided to lay down on the bed, popped her head out of the side and looked up at me.
“You know what I wanna talk about?” she asked.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I wanna talk about Jamie.”
My eyes narrowed. “Jamie? No, we aren’t doing that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s unnecessary.”
“I don’t think so. I saw the way he looked at you when you were hurt. He looked like he was about to die himself.”
Hot blood flushed into my chest and cheeks, and I didn’t think I wanted to wait until there wasn’t anyone at the shower facilities; there was no way I was going to get comfortable until I had managed to wash the dirt out of my hair and from under my nails. I grabbed my change of clothes, my towel, and headed for the door.
“You’re going to have to talk about it sometime, you know,” Aisha called out.
“Not with you.”
“If not with me, then with who? Abel? Spider?”
“You’re unbelievable, you know that?”
“I think the word you’re looking for is relentless, and I learned that from you.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you should learn less.”
“But you’re such a good teacher!”
“Bye Aisha.”
I opened the door and headed out into the corridor, shaking my head but happy for the way things had made a turn for the normal, thanks to Aisha. Maybe there was something to talk about, or maybe there wasn’t. I’d be concerned if Jamie was hurt too, and it would probably show on my face. That was a totally normal, human reaction to someone you care about being hurt.
It didn’t mean anything else.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The only thing this bunker had going for it was the gym, and not because it was a good gym, but because there was one. Finding it the next morning felt like some kind of small victory—a consolation prize fo
r having not only stayed back to fight the bad guys, but also for sleeping in one of the most uncomfortable beds I had ever slept in.
The fluorescent lights embedded into the walls and ceiling kicked on automatically as I entered through the door. It was a big room with enough space in the middle for a decently sized training mat. I noticed a rack of weights along one side, as well as a manually operated—not even digital—treadmill. Hadn’t seen one of those before. The air was cold and carried that dry, stony, underground bunker smell.
Figuring I should warm up first, I decided to step up to the ancient treadmill, carefully placing my hands on the supports along the sides and setting my feet on the belt. Without a display or an option to select a speed, the only thing to do was start walking, and even though its joints were as stiff as mine, after a while, the belt began to move. It even moved freely along the track on its own, allowing me to speed up and slow down at will.
Running presented a decent change of pace. I had considered running around the bunker, but the halls were tight, and I didn’t want to bump into anyone. After everything that had happened to the people living here, I didn’t want to further ruin someone’s day by smashing into them as I blindly turned a corner. The only downside, I realized, was that I had no music to listen to while I worked out; all my music had been left at HQ, and that place had gone up in smoke. Fat chance I would ever get it back.
Not having any music to distract my hearing, though, meant I heard the heavy bulkhead door open, which allowed me enough time to slow my run to a halt. My heart was pumping hard, and I had worked up a sweat on the treadmill, but it started beating even faster when I saw Jamie coming through the door. He was wearing a duplicate of my jumpsuit, and we looked very much like prisoners going to the yard for a workout session.
“Hey,” I said, stepping off the treadmill and wrapping my hands around the back of my head to help me breathe. Even though Jamie had healed me with magic, my chest was still a little sore.
“Hey yourself,” he said. “Guess you beat me to it.”
“You know the saying; early bird gets the worm. Now, beat it, Armstrong; this is my gym.”
Jamie’s eyebrows went up with his hands, a gesture of mock surprise. “Woah, hey now… I didn’t come here looking for trouble.”
“Well, you found it, buddy.”
“Is that so?”
I squared up to him. “That’s right.”
Jamie put his hands up in a fighting stance. “How about you fight me for it?”
My hands came to rest on my hips. “Really? You want to fight me? Are you forgetting what happened last time?”
“Cheap shot—mental manipulation shouldn’t be allowed in a gym. If we’re gonna fight for this gym, there’s gonna be no magic.”
The jackhammer in my chest didn’t exactly speed up, but the strength of each individual beat became inescapably prominent, almost as if they were trying to get my attention. “Alright,” I said, stepping away from him. “I hope you’re not forgetting my many years of training as a hunter. I won’t go easy on you just because you’re the boss’s son.”
Jamie stepped up to one side of the training mat and limbered up, stretching as many of his muscle groups as he could in a few seconds. I did the same, only with the advantage that my body was already warm and ready to get into a confrontation. This wasn’t really a confrontation, though; we were training.
“I hope you don’t forget I’m not the kind of person to back down from a challenge,” he said.
“Ready?” I asked.
Jamie spread his legs shoulder-width apart and let his arms fall on either side of his body, his hands balled into fists. Where had I seen that stance before? “Ready,” he said.
I nodded and approached, walking at first, matching Jamie’s speed. He then broke into a dash that caught me off guard and went to grab me, but a quick side-step saw him grabbing nothing but air and stumbling forward a couple of steps. Before I could feel smug, he quickly dropped to the floor, hooked his foot around my leg, and pulled my leg back, throwing the world out from under me. I fell, but I didn’t hit the ground hard—my hands broke my fall, and allowed me to slip into a forward roll, a couple of feet away from him.
I flipped my hair up and out of my face. “I know those moves,” I said, eyes narrow and alert.
Jamie only smiled. “Surprised?”
I went to stand. “How in the hell did you convince Abel Rios to show you some of his moves?”
“He did more than that,” Jamie said, grinning.
“Is that so? How about you come here and show me?”
Jamie dashed across the mat, and then launched himself into the air, executing a near perfect flying kick… that missed by miles. It may as well have been a show kick. I grabbed the back of his shirt, hooked my foot behind his leg, and pushed him down to the mat, pinning him to the ground by sitting on his chest and pressing his hands into the mat with my own.
“Are you going to tell me what the hell that was about?” I asked, barely able to contain my laughter.
“It looked better in my mind,” he said, his chest heaving beneath my thigh.
“You don’t want to worry about the way you look when you’re fighting someone,” I said. “You want to worry about doing to them what I’ve just done to you.”
“That so?” he asked, his voice low. “What have you done to me?”
“Well…” I looked left, then right. “I could be wrong, but I think I just pinned your show-boating ass to the mat.”
“Don’t think I can get out of this?”
I shook my head and let a smile form along my lips, not that I had to let it happen. The smile was already there, and had been ever since he had entered the room. In that moment of quiet introspection, I realized my heart had started beating so hard I thought he may have been able to feel it through my hands, or hear it with his own ears. Jamie seized the moment. With a jerk of his abdomen and a quick, decisive kick of his legs, he was able to push my center of gravity far enough that I toppled off him, freeing his body.
By the time I sat upright and turned around to look at him, he had grabbed my shoulders and pushed me down against the mat, pinning me down by my shoulders and arching over me. From my vantage point beneath him, his face appeared upside down. His cheeks were flushed with blood and life, his fingers and arms were strong, and his gaze was a waterfall of intensity cascading over me, edging my rampaging heart to pump harder, faster.
I would have already mopped the floor with him if I hadn’t been so damn distracted, no matter who had taught him the moves he knew.
“Had enough?” he asked.
I wanted to trash talk back, but I couldn’t find any words to say. I simply stared at him, breathing through the rapid pulsing of my heart, listening to it beating against my ears, feeling it pounding against my neck, my chest, in my hands. And then, for the faintest of instants, a moment that may have actually existed or I may have made up, I thought his face was… getting closer to mine, inching slowly, inevitably, like a storm travelling implacably, but at its own pace.
The world went away, drowned out not only by the sound of my own heart, but by the feel of his fingers pressing into my shoulders and the closeness of his face… his slightly parted lips. The lights disappeared, faded to black, taking the rough, cracked concrete walls away with them so all that was left was Jamie’s sparkling eyes, his sandy brown hair, and his cheeks flushed with blood, slowly closing the distance between us. I saw all of this happening in slow motion, like a sequence in a movie, and then a harsh, electronic bell resounded, breaking the silence of the room, and dispelling the moment the way a fan splits apart a cloud of smoke.
When Jamie retreated, I wasn’t sure if I had imagined us getting close, or if it had actually happened. I allowed myself to stand.
“That’s breakfast, right?” I asked. “I was told it would be a bell.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Then I’m going to go and eat. I can come back to work out l
ater.”
“Sure.” Jamie gestured to the door, and I started walking. “But I don’t think you’ll be coming back here today.”
I looked at him. “What? Why not?”
“My dad wants to see us after breakfast.”
“Why?”
“Oh… it’s about what you were talking about when we got here yesterday—breaking into Faction HQ. I’m going to miss seeing your face when we’re undercover, but what can you do.”
“Miss seeing my…”
Jamie walked ahead down the corridor, thinking I had fallen in beside him, but I hadn’t cleared the bulkhead leading out of the gym yet. He’d miss seeing my face, and we’d just shared… an awkward moment. Was I reading into it too much? I shook it off and followed him. We had stuff to do.
CHAPTER NINE
“I work… in administration?” I asked, tearing my eyes away from the ID badge Charles had handed to me to look up at him. “Me? In administration? You’ve gotta be kidding me. I’m a hunter. I haven’t worked a desk job in my life.”
“It was the best we could do,” Charles said. “They were the only Faction staff members we could act on quickly.”
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Jamie said. “Says here I’m an engineer. I don’t know a damn thing about engineering. What does yours say?”
“Hunter,” Abel said.
“Swap roles,” I said to him, but Abel pulled the ID badge out of reach, and considering he was much taller than me, he succeeded in keeping it out of reach.
“No,” he said. “I think admin suits you; might learn a little humility.”
“I’ll teach you some humility,” I said, under my breath.
“Please,” Charles said. “Let’s all just calm down. I understand this is all happening quickly, but it was the best I could do on short notice. What few field agents we had deployed inside the city during the time of the attack were all mobilized to collect the people to whom these badges belong and put them in a safe place, all so that we may infiltrate Faction HQ and see if we can make a go of your plan to get out of the shield. If you’re unhappy with your roles, you’re just going to have to deal with it.”
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