Edward's hands tremble. The acidic heat of Bye-Lye, the paste-like substance recently developed by Lilim to quickly dispose of bodies, coats the inside of his nostrils. It voids his sinuses of the pressure the high-speed flights in their stealth jet, SHVA, typically cause. Even now, an hour after the two corpses have melted into water-soluble puddles of gunk, the inside of his skull burns. It doesn't matter. The images of the dead sear his mind.
The blood still roaring through his veins overpowers the steady hum of the engine. His periphery is tinged red in fury, his gaze down to the corrugated floor of the plane. No one speaks. The silence is thick with avoidance.
A slight beep from behind his neck signals the power drain on his exosuit. The ARMS, the Assistive Robotic Musculature System, has become a natural extension of himself on missions. He rolls his forearm, inspecting the carbon frame to distract from the bubbling rage. He spots the notch that hides the Kill Switch; Lilim's catch-all to stop rogue agents. Following his first mission, Colonel Cullen had inspected him, found he didn't take it, and made it a requirement. Like the rest of the ARMS, Edward didn't think about it. Looking at its compartment, his heart accelerates. Beneath the panel, a single press would eliminate Emmett from his concerns. His vow to never use it floods his mind like a whispering chorus. Guilt crushes against his chest.
As freeing as it would be, Emmett isn't rogue. He's right. That incessant fact digs at the base of Edward's skull like an icepick. The human bystander couldn't be ignored, seeing the team and the Devil. Their target seemed impossible to control. In an impossible situation, Emmett made the easiest decision. The rush of blood grows louder in Edward's ears. He doesn't have to like it.
What was the Devil speaking of, though? Who's collecting cryptids? Or was Emmett right again and the creature was just mad?
"ETA in three," Emmett says from the pilot seat. His bored voice pops through the radio like an idea.
Raising his gaze from the corrugated floor, Edward catches Jacob flashing a forced smile. Twisting his lips, he begrudgingly returns the gesture. It evaporates his remaining energy.
Shaking the dead and the threats from his mind, Edward looks past Bella's curved wings and out the small patch of window that allows him to see the sky. The stars are gone and the night is lavender. The sun prepares its ascent beneath the horizon. Distant clouds shrink and lower before disappearing in a flash of black trees.
The trees are replaced by the flight tunnel; alternating flickers of light reveal the curved seams of its walls shooting past. SHVA's nose dips, the only sign of their descent. Before long, the tunnel opens to the metal-lined chamber of the cavernous Pen. Edward's gut shifts with the plane's braking and rocking. It momentarily hovering before setting down with a gentle thump.
"Clear," Emmett says, reaching across the console and shutting off the engine.
Nausea presses against the bottom of Edward's throat. They're home, but that only means he has to explain what happened.
"Right," he says, "Recover your gear and head to the conference room for debrief." He hopes the shake in his voice isn't as obvious as it feels.
"Can we shower first?" Jacob asks over the loud clicks of their unbuckling harnesses.
"Sure. Be quick."
The metallic whirr of the lowering rear door reverberates in Edward's mind, blocking out the shuffling and motion of his team. The grotesque images of the dissolving corpses flickers back to him and he sighs. Emmett did the right thing, he thinks. It's not convincing.
Before the boarding ramp is completely lowered, he sees Alice approaching. The normal bounce in her stride is heavy. Her typical, broad smile is a cautious scowl. It's a look he's never seen on her, but what it means is obvious. He quickly departs SHVA and meets her where the team can't hear them.
"The Colonel—" she begins.
"Yeah. When?"
"Now." Alice's eyes glisten with disappointment and guilt. Her bob of hair hangs meekly around the edges of her face. She won't meet his eyes.
Of course. He bites the inside of his lip. "The whole team?"
"Just you and Bella."
Glancing over his shoulder, he sees Bella's ridged, transformed face watching him with sympathy. He doesn't want to drag her into this, but he has no choice. He turns back to Alice. "When's sunrise?"
"About ten minutes."
"Can we wait for her to transform back?"
"She can." Alice's answer is quick, expected. "Sorry," she adds under her breath.
"You didn't do anything," Edward says. His lungs, his heart, his chest, everything feels like sludge. "Give me a second."
"Yeah."
He returns to the plane, the team's gear set in individual piles around the unload ramp. Jacob and Bella step away from the inventory of their equipment. Emmett remains in the pilot chair conducting the post-flight checks.
"Can you hear me, Emmett?"
"Carlisle wants to see you and Bella," he answers back. His focus doesn't leave SHVA's console.
"Yeah," Edward says. His soldier's flippancy is infuriating, but somehow encouraging. Maybe this isn't that uncommon. "You and Jacob continue recovering our gear, but standby in case the Colonel wants to talk to you."
"Yessir," Jacob answers.
Edward can't help but smile at the young sergeant. "Bella, join us at sunup."
The sharp tips of her fangs protrude from the seam of her lips as they tighten and she nods.
"Edward?" Alice calls.
"Coming." He leaves his team and follows Alice across the Pen. Their footsteps echo gently in the empty silence between them. He holds the door open for her as they exit into the low, painted cinder halls that make up the underground compound.
Every moment of the mission replays in his mind. It becomes a bulletized synopsis, details fading into supplemental information only to support what happened. Unimportant. In the Army, before Lilim, he faced investigations when his soldiers inadvertently fired their weapons. But that was in a warzone, not a covert mission in New Jersey. And no one died. What Emmett did was brazenly worse than anything Edward had witnessed before.
But Emmett was right. The words repeat. He kept their existence secret. Even through repetition, Edward finds belief difficult.
They stop by the door to the conference room. Alice stands to the side, her arms behind her with hands gripping each other. "I'll send Bella in when she gets here."
"Thanks." Edward forces a half-smile, trying to reassure her. Or maybe himself.
She returns the expression with a nod.
He enters the conference room and remains standing. The two massive monitors on the wall display a satellite closeup of the New Jersey pier. The buildings are desaturated into grays and blues. Edward watches the bright globs of red and orange move between the rectangular shapes before five of them group into a single warehouse. A sixth shape approaches, joins them. Two quick twinkles of light and then two of the globs begin to fade.
It's then when Edward realizes he is holding his breath. The video doesn't surprise him. He's reviewed the satellite footage of previous missions with the Colonel before. But the vivid splashes of heat slowly fading into their dark surroundings, it saddens him. Before he was just angry.
"Sit down," Colonel Cullen says. He leans back in his chair at the head of the table. His arms stretch forward, palms flat against the table's surface. The pose looks like he's bracing himself, but there's no tension. The typically stern frown is relaxed and his eyes do not leave the screen as Edward takes his seat beside him.
His ARMS forces his back to remain straight against the chair's curve and he keeps his hands on the armrests.
The two hot globs have faded to a bright green before the Colonel taps the tablet resting between his hands and freezes the image.
"Sir, I—" Edward begins.
"Let's wait for Agent Eliz," his superior says, using Bella's code name like he always does.
The distant formality of the name has always bothered Edward, but here he heeds it like a warning. This discussion has no place for the familiarity he uses to keep his team cohesive.
There's a gentle knock on the door, immediately followed by its opening. A human Bella enters. Her brown hair gathers at the back of her neck in a hurried bun, errant strands splaying around the sides. Edward can't help but notice the rings beneath her eyes, and wonders if he looks just as haggard. It's been a long night.
"Colonel," Bella says.
"Sit." Colonel Cullen tips a hand up from the table, motioning the chair opposite Edward.
Crossing behind the Colonel, Bella shoots Edward a quick grin before she sits.
It's an uneasy silence; Edward and Bella mutely face each other, avoiding eye-to-eye contact. Colonel Cullen's focus doesn't leave the screen. His lips shift with thought. The longer it goes, the louder Edward's heart sounds in his ears.
"First," the Colonel says, "Who fired?" The words are steady, deliberate and quiet.
"Agent Vejo," Bella says before Edward has a chance to inhale.
"Who died?"
"The target," she answers again.
Edward catches Colonel Cullen's dismissive head tilt. True, many of the team's missions were to eliminate threatening cryptids, but the Devil wasn't a threat. It was scared.
"And?"
Edward sees Bella swallow and jumps in. "A human, sir."
That pulls the Colonel's gaze from the screen and straight on Edward. The light glancing of his clean-shaven skull creates an intimidating mask around his emotionless brow. "I asked, 'Who.'"
"There was no ID, sir." Edward remains stoic. "He looked like a homeless person."
"But he was human."
"Yes, sir."
"Agent Eliz?" Colonel Cullen's eyes don't leave Edward.
"Captain Masen is correct, sir," Bella says.
The Colonel's eyes narrow and his jaw tightens. "Kill Switch, Captain."
The order makes the air in Edward's lungs disappear. He doesn't want Bella here for this, but he can't refuse. He forces his hands to unclench the armrests and brings them above the table. He runs a finger across the forearm of his exosuit, finding the notch that reveals the Kill Switch. Opening it, are four buttons, one for each of his team, Emmett, Jacob, Bella and Alice, remain unpressed.
This was Lilim Division's doctrinal enforcement of what they were terrified they couldn't control. Implanted in each cryptid working for the organization was a small-yield explosive that could be detonated by their human team leader. Colonel Cullen referred to it as their "leash," but Edward had promised himself, and Bella, he would never use it.
Edward can sense Bella's discomfort at the inspection, and tries to focus only on the Colonel as he displays the Switch.
"You had an agent kill a non-combatant human," Colonel Cullen says. "That's why you have these."
"Em—" Edward catches himself, "Agent Vejo wasn't disobeying orders. He was ensuring the secrecy of the mission." Even saying the words, Edward isn't sure if he believes them.
The Colonel says nothing. He turns his attention back to the screen and, without looking, swipes a finger across the tablet in front of him. The video rewinds back to the team's arrival on the dock. The three of them watch the video without a word. The airborne Bella, Jacob's chase, the confrontation in the warehouse. The unfortunate human's arrival and death.
As they watch, Edward's heartbeat accelerates. The formless shapes of color allow him to revisit every moment of the mission. The terrified clamoring of the Devil echoes back into his mind. The shocked scream of Emmett's homeless victim. Could he have stopped it? Was Emmett going rogue? His fingers go numb and the video blurs. Was he losing control of his team? Did he ever really have it?
"I'm going to have a full investigation conducted," Colonel Cullen finally says. He freezes the video. "Until that's completed, Gamma Team is suspended from any field missions."
Edward's gut turns at the verdict.
He looks to Bella. Her jaw juts forward. Eyes narrow. Gaze shifts away. The apparent fury in her face makes him feel even worse.
"Go," the Colonel adds.
Without a word, Edward and Bella leave. Edward only watches Bella storm off ahead of him back to the Pen.