I hurt.
It was the first coherent thought I had. The first wisp of intelligence in a dull haze of agony.
From my toes to my fingertips to my scalp, pain pulsed like a rapid drum, hollow and hot, and it kneaded its way through each muscle and limb and cell. My bones sang with aches, my muscles with fatigue and misery, and my blood pounded. It scorched branching lines through every limb.
I lay on the floor of my dorm room, vaguely remembering being dragged through empty halls sometime in the dead of night and dropped by my bed. An equally hazy memory revealed Misha sliding out of bed the instant the door shut, kneeling beside me with tears in his bruised eyes. Hands hovered above my ragged body with fear and concern, but the lack of knowledge made him hesitant to touch. Hesitant to hurt.
I couldn't say anything—neither to comfort or console. I just faded again.
Still, I could feel now—far more than I wanted to—and I felt the pillow under my head and the blanket over my shoulders—not that it was doing much. I shivered, and bloody hell, it hurt, but the concrete floor was leeching the warmth from my body, like a cold parasite, and likely had been for several hours.
Still. Misha—he'd put them there. And, judging by the way he was slumped shivering on the floor beside me, head lolling and eyes waning, had sat next to me nearly all night.
Despite the pain, the muted fear, I couldn't regret what I'd done. Not for the innocent boy in front of me. Not for the endgame of being left alone, if only by the other kids. But…
I hadn't been beaten so badly, so completely, in my entire life.
It was humiliating, demoralizing, and it stirred something inside of me, something not quite forgotten but buried, and it rose. It clawed its way up through the dirt of my dreamscape and tried to emerge, a morbid exhumation of the fear, the true fear, I'd never quite managed to truly bury.
I wanted Lion. I wanted Wolf. I wanted them.
I moaned, low and miserable, but the cold had one benefit—it numbed me just enough that I could bear sitting up. The blanket fell from my shoulders as I breathed, one knife-slash after the other in my chest, and winced.
Misha started awake as the blanket fell. I supposed he hadn't really been asleep, to be woken by a noise so slight.
"Alexei," he said as he shot up, scooting hastily to my side and stopping before he touched, fear and regret in his wide eyes. "Alexei. Are you…"
His voice wobbled with thick tears, and I tried for a smile. Pain knifed in my cheeks. "I'm okay." I was not okay. "Are you okay?"
Misha's lower lip trembled. "Mm-hm."
"Good," I managed. I breathed.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream and hide and run away. To crawl under my bed and hide under this blanket and disappear.
"…what happened?"
Misha sniffed, wiping at his nose with the sleeve of a very old, very tattered shirt. "They hurt you. 'Cause of me."
I started to shake my head, thought better of it as my neck and skull roared, like brutal waves against cliffs buffeted by wind and rain, and said, "No. Not…this wasn't your fault Misha. Don't…don't t-take this on."
"But it was my fault," Misha continued, fat tears fighting free. "It was…Ira had it out for me and since you sat with me, a-a-and it was my dad who hurt you, a-and Helena who brought you back and told me it was my—"
"Hang—wait, hang on," I said quickly, readjusting myself as my knees threatened to freeze themselves to the concrete. I choked on a whimper as I rearranged my limbs, leaning gingerly back against the corner where my bed frame met the wall. Misha hastily grabbed the blanket and more or less threw it over my legs, retreating once he'd done so. I tried to gentle my voice, but I could barely think, barely see, past the painful haze. "Your—your dad? Your father?"
Misha blinked, nodding slowly. "I thought…I thought you…? Knew? Mr. Plizetsky's my dad. S'why everyone hates me—he does the punishments. He…hurts us."
Us.
Misha said us.
The other children weren't the only ones making those bruises his face.
Fire melted the ice from the cold concrete, riding on waves of anger, but I was far too injured to use it. "Misha." Words were lost on me at the moment, so I hoped his name conveyed what I wanted to say.
That I was sorry. That this wasn't his fault. That I was angry for him.
That he didn't deserve it.
I couldn't imagine. Knowing your father not only hurt you, but beat dozens of the children around you. Misha was twelve years old—he couldn't do anything to stop the beatings, to himself or others, and yet…
And yet the children here were broken, pitiful things, and as children do, only wanted to hurt as they had been hurt. And since they couldn't hurt Plizetsky…
They hurt Misha. Kind, innocent, vulnerable Misha.
I thought of Ira's eyes, filled with displaced hatred, refracted through the lens of possibility and capability until it become an ugly and twisted thing, and thought of how they pierced right through Misha's paper-thin defenses, and I wanted to kill. Or die. Or both.
Misha sniffed and didn't respond.
I flexed my hands, hoping to encourage some blood flow into my fingertips, and was surprised by how little it hurt before I remembered that I hadn't fought back. It would've been stupid to do so—Alexei Aslanov was difficult, but not impossible. He was an annoyance, but not a threat.
Despite the logic in that, looking at my bare knuckles, unblemished compared to the rest of me, was like looking at a badge of shame.
I couldn't do this right now. Maybe not ever. But…definitely not now.
"W-will you…" I started, swallowing thicky around the lump in my dry throat. "Will you…help me onto the bed?"
Misha, probably ecstatic to have been given something productive to do, jumped up.
The process was slow, and agonizing. It involved a lot of very careful movements, a lot of shuffling. Misha was trapped in a perpetual wince as I kept trying to choke down whines of pain, but I was mostly unsuccessful.
When I finally made it onto the bed, I could only let myself fall apart inside, swallowing the pain as best I could.
I'd swallowed so much pain that it felt like it was clawing me apart from the inside out, like I'd swallowed glass shards and they were revolting inside of me, but there was nothing I could do about it.
"Go to sleep," I whispered to Misha. "You have…work tomorrow."
Misha, lower lip wobbling, nodded.
"Thank you," I said into the silence as he trudged back to his bed. He stopped, though, at my quiet, simple words. "I don't…blame you, Misha. Not you."
He sniffed. Then silence descended upon us once again as he climbed into his bed, a little boy with nothing but hatred on his skin, plastered against him.
He slept. I tumbled into unconsciousness.
I dreamed of Lion, of Snake, of the others, burning in a car as I watched from far away. There was a hand on my shoulder—I didn't know whose it was, but it was as solemn as it was congratulatory. It was a hand of pride, gloating in what I'd done, even as the smell of burning flesh was snatched towards us and away by the wind.
I stood inside a plume of fire and burned right alongside them, the hand on my shoulder remain unmarred. It was still pristine as I crumbled to ashes and woke up the next morning.
…
I was convinced I had a vindictive guardian angel, a compassionate devil, or a combination of the two on my side, and I didn't know which I really wanted.
I didn't want either of them, because whoever it was, they'd killed someone.
I woke the next morning in agony, but the compound had been in chaos—I could hear it even beyond the closed door, beyond the shallow lake of pain tugging at my bones. Still, chaos followed me, and I knew this must be something to do with me, even if no one knew it yet. That knowledge alone was enough to propel me out of bed.
I winced, holding my right arm close to my chest—it felt broken, or maybe fractured, but the bones ground together. I wondered if I could get it checked out later and catalogued it at the bottom of my priorities.
Misha was nowhere to be seen, and as much as that worried me, I knew it probably wasn't my biggest worry at the moment.
The rest of me throbbed, but adrenaline, sharp and bitter, overrode it for the moment. I stumbled to the door and, barely remembering to put my glasses on before I opened the door, crept into the hallway. Shouting ricocheted off the walls from deeper within the compound. The doors to all the halls on this room were open, save one.
And it had a smudge of blood, thin and dried brown, just in front of the doorway. A bloody fingerprint stood on the handle.
I stumbled towards that doorway, hissing, but I staggered close enough to read the nametags on the door.
Kyril Lev. I didn't know him.
Ira Dobrev.
My heart dropped into my stomach.
I peered into the room, expecting it to be empty.
It wasn't.
Well, it was. But…
Blood. There was—oh, my God, there was so much blood.
Alexei Aslanox, Matthew Smith, Alex, Cub, and even Jaguar wanted to stumble back in horror, let himself sink down the wall, and stare at the gore-stained scene in shock until someone came to forcibly remove him. They wanted to keen at the sight, retch at the smell, the metallic, noxious atmosphere of so much blood, on the walls and floor and bed and belongings—they knew that no one could lose this much blood and live—that it would be a miracle, and this was no place for miracles, and they wanted to run away.
Agent Rider swallowed, curled his hand into fists and ignored the absence of the sting in his knuckles and pushed his was into the room.
The body—bodies?—had obviously been removed, but the blood remained. The setup was the same as my and Misha's room—a small room, perhaps 14 feet by 14 feet. Two beds, lofted just enough to shove a dresser beneath it, were tucked into opposite corners of the room. The remaining wall space held desks that faced opposite walls. A small window was plastered on the back wall, with bars on the outside, and there was a ceramic sink that spit rusty water in the only unoccupied corner of the room.
No piece of furniture was left untouched.
This room was down the hall from mine. I would have heard the screaming—that would have woken me, no matter how exhausted I was.
No, either they hadn't screamed—had died too quickly to scream—or they had been kept from screaming.
The blood was on the drier side of tacky—not fresh, but it hadn't been more than a few hours since the murder—murder? It must have been—had taken place.
There were several footprints in the blood, so I couldn't be sure which belonged to the supposed murderer. I skirted around the edge of the largest blood pool, searching for clues, for anything to give insight to what had happened.
I didn't like Ira, but this…I didn't wish death on him. I wondered if Kiril, the other boy, was alive. If he'd seen. If it was Kyril that was dead, and not Ira.
The not knowing made it hard to breathe.
This was a threat. A message. But I didn't know who it was for, who it was from, or what it meant – yet.
If someone asked me later, I couldn't say how I spotted it.
I thought, at first, that it was a trick of the light. A shadow dancing in the metallic tinge of the air. A smudge that may have resembled something salient, like…like seeing Abraham Lincoln on a pancake, or something. Something innocuous and innocent.
I should have known immediately that innocence had no place in this room.
It looks like someone had taken a crude stencil and splashed blood against it on a hidden section of the wall. With how widespread the blood was, it was no wonder it had made its way into every line and crevice of the room, but the spot—above the door, where there was no other blood—was a bit to secluded to have gathered that amount of blood.
Wincing, picking my way through the hellish scene, I craned my neck as much as my screaming body allowed to study the odd splotch.
With cold, icy fingers ghosting down my spine, I felt like I was back doing the Rorschach test with Rothman. Looking at inky pictures with no rhyme or reason and trying to find answers that wouldn't get me killed. But I saw it.
This time, feeling like a child trying to spot shapes in the cloud, I felt even that tiny shard of innocence drowned in the blood in this room.
A scorpion.
Normally, I'd laugh. I'd convince myself that I was, in fact, seeing things. That Plizetsky had given me a concussion (which I hadn't yet ruled out, given the sporadic wavering of my vision), something, but not this. It was there—I knew it was, clear as day.
Above the door, on the mantle of the doorway, like lamb's blood—not to spare, but to condemn.
I had no idea what SCORPIA wanted to gain from this, but they'd been here. They'd spilled blood here.
And they'd left it for me to find.
I stumbled out of the room, feeling nauseous, unwilling to spend another minute in the room. I coughed when I got into the hallway, leaning against the wall, heaving until I was sure I wouldn't be sick.
The voices had stopped in my time in the room, but I continued down the hall, anyway.
I had to see. Had to know.
Had to know if this was my fault, or something else entirely.
My arm was throbbing. I was sure moving around hadn't helped, but I pressed on.
I didn't know what time it was, but passing the window, I saw early morning light rising beyond the trees. Perhaps it was just after seven – everyone should be at breakfast. The cafeteria was on the other side of the compound. I could only hope they hadn't seen the horror of the room. I wonder if Misha hadn't woken me on purpose, wanting to let me sleep, and that nothing worse had happened to the other kids.
I clenched my teeth and kept moving.
I stumbled to a stop when I came across the hallway I'd been taken before Plizetsky beat me, remembering the workroom I'd seen with my heat-seeking glasses. I knew it had to be around here somewhere, but I didn't know this part of the compound very well; I'd never gotten to do that recon I'd planned, despite being here for a few days. I'd reviewed the blueprints in the notebook from MI6, but I didn't remember every detail. I tapped my thumb surreptitiously against the button and watched heat forms beyond concrete spring to life.
It was the same break room as earlier, probably the one most central to the compound, but many more people were inside than last time I went.
I knew the cameras would pick it up if I suspiciously waited outside the room, eavesdropping, but I hoped (and then felt sick for the blasé feeling) that with a murder this morning, the security would be watching entrances and exits for suspicious escape attempts, and not the inner hallways.
I made my way to the break room's hallway and crept along the wall, listening to the voices become more distinct with each step. The forms became clearer the closer I got; there were four, five people inside. Four, I realized, finally stopping outside the door, a few paces away. If anyone came out, I was thoroughly screwed, but I didn't have a choice unless I wanted to hear.
"—a murder, Ivan," I heard Helena's voice, taut like wire, more tense than I'd yet heard the cool woman. "Of one of the children we're supposed to be keeping! You can't possibly think we're going to explain that away, not with the other fucking investigations—"
"They won't find anything," Ivan responded, and I recognized his voice—Plizetsky. My entire body seized, and I took a sharp breath of fear. The memory of his fists was still far too fresh.
"We're going to scrub that room so fucking clean it'll break a blue light," he continued, seething. I could hear the firm set of his jaw and the harsh crack of his knuckles. "And we're going to figure out the son of a bitch who did it and pin everything on them. In a way, this is better—we'll have the perfect scapegoat."
Scapegoat. Other investigations? Looks like they had some skeletons in the closet I wasn't yet aware of.
"But right now," another man cut in, and I could hear an accent in his Russian—I couldn't pinpoint it, but it sounded Asian, perhaps. Maybe I recognized the clipped syllables of Japanese, but I could have been imagining it. "We have another priority."
"Yes, your little side project," Ivan said, and I could almost hear him rolling his eyes. "I leave that entirely to you. Truth be told, I want nothing to do with it, so you can manage the repackaging. According to the books, half of it is being delivered tomorrow, but I don't know what the rest of your deal was."
"Tomorrow?" The mystery man said, shock evident in his voice. "It's not scheduled for two weeks—I'm nowhere near prepared—"
"This was your idea, not mine," Plizetsky said gruffly, seemingly washing his hands of the issue. "Figure it out without breaking too many laws or using too many of the kids. Use the young ones—they don't ask as many questions."
I heard the other man mutter something, perhaps obscenities or grunts of frustration, and I strained to make it out, slipping the slightest bit closer to the door.
The mystery item—the timeline shift—it had to be the bomb.
But I didn't know when the other half would get here. And I wasn't—there was no way I could do true recon in my condition. I didn't know how I'd figure it out, but I wanted to. Hope buzzed, small at first, in my blood.
I could get out of here. I could leave.
The hope died when I remembered the conditions I'd return to weren't all that great, but…
I didn't want to be here anymore.
I barely had time to refocus on the conversation before I missed something important, chiding myself for slipping out of focus.
"—regardless, a boy is dead," a woman, not Helena, said. "A boy that we recruited—he was supposed to graduate and come work here. He'd signed a contract. That's going to make news, Ivan. It's not something we can keep contained."
"I don't care if it can't be contained, it's going to be," Plizetsky snarled, slamming a hand against a hard surface. I flinched, shuffling a timid step back before I remembered he couldn't see me. "And if it can't be contained, then at least contain the details. We can spin it as a tragic accident. A great loss. Get a fucking plaque for him or something."
I held no love for Ira, and I didn't know Kyril, but…for either one of them, whoever had died…it felt wrong to hear their deaths discussed so crassly. So coolly. It rolled my stomach with sickness in the worst way.
"And your paranoia?" Helena said, a cold bite to her words.
Plizetsky's voice was ice when he responded. "Watch your tone, Helena. It's not paranoia. This is too rich a fucking coincidence to be one at all. I know there's someone here that shouldn't be."
My blood went cold. I wanted to collapse into a puddle and sink into the floor – anything to escape, to leave unharmed, to get away.
"We've only gotten three new people in the last month," Helena argued, "and none of them are smart enough to be a spy."
I'd never been so happy to be insulted.
"The employee, Bostyov, and the children, Esfir and Alexei," Plizetsky counted off, thoughtful. "Bostyov is too dumb to realize half the things we do here; he's only good for scooping slop onto plates. Esfir?"
"Quiet," the woman's voice offered. "Very. Like she doesn't speak at all. Never had a problem with her."
"And Alexei," Plizetsky said.
Hearing my name from his mouth, even if it wasn't real, was a punch to the sternum.
"Alexei is a brat, not a spy," Helena argued with a scoff. "He wouldn't draw so much attention to himself if he wanted to stay hidden, to observe. If Esfir is really so quiet, perhaps she's worth looking into."
"Look into them both," Plizetsky said decisively. "I won't take any chances. And you," he said, but I couldn't tell who he was referencing at first. "Do not let either of them anywhere near your little project, understood?"
The unnamed man sighed, obviously frustrated, but remained silent.
The conversation seemed to be over, so I scurried away as fast as my injured body would carry me, rushing towards the cafeteria.
I'd pretend I'd slept late due to my injuries and staggered to the cafeteria in hopes that I wouldn't be late to my—God, what was it, school or work? I couldn't remember. Whichever one. But I'd claim, if asked, that I hadn't seen a thing. I could only pray they didn't check the cameras.
The bomb—half of it—was arriving tomorrow. Once the other half arrived, once I located them, I could get out. Still, I didn't know how long that would take, and time wasn't on my side.
A murderer from SCORPIA had become my shadow, and I didn't know if it was an angel or the devil.
No matter what, my days here were numbered, in more ways than one.
…
Tiger was awoken, violently and suddenly, by the constant whine of a sharp tone.
He rubbed his eyes blearily, grumbling, fumbling for his phone, wondering if he'd set an alarm without realizing it.
It took him four full seconds to realize that it wasn't his phone; he'd been sleeping deeply, finally, exhausted from all his time in the uncomfortable hospital recliner and running back and forth between here and the hotel. Exhausted from his fear and sick with worry. So yeah, it had been a deep, if restless, sleep.
But it wasn't his phone alarm. He blinked again, looking around, remembering he was in the hospital with Lion.
He realized what it was as soon as nurses, a doctor, and an orderly barreled into the room with a crash cart.
His stomach rolled. Slowly at first – the kind of sick disbelief when you first see something, but don't believe. Can't. Because the sound Tiger was hearing wasn't—it wasn't—
But then, the tentative roll became a tsunami, drowning him, and it was.
Lion had flatlined.
Someone pushed him towards the door, gentle but insistent, and he couldn't fight. He could only stare at Lion's pale face.
"No," he said belatedly, shoving back finally, fear and sticky fear and sick fear, "no, I have to stay, I'm his—I'm his friend—"
"The best way to help him is by staying out of the way," the orderly said, firm, before returning to the bed. Tiger stood, motionless in the doorway, as it swung closed.
He was frozen to his core.
Lion couldn't die. Lion could not die.
It would ruin him—ruin them.
Someone put a hand on his shoulder and shook. He took a sharp breath, the ice fracturing, piercing his lungs from the inside. Wolf. He looked concerned. Tiger didn't know how long he'd been standing there, staring at the closed door. "Why aren't you inside?"
Surely Wolf heard. Then again, Tiger couldn't hear, anymore. Not the commotion, not the constant, menacing tone. Just a numbing whine of terror.
"I thought—" Tiger began, choked on the words, and swallowed. Something in Wolf's concerned face began to reflect the panic in Tiger's eyes. They stared at each other, Tiger numb with panic, Wolf feeling the panic crash into him. "They said—he was—"
"Tiger," Wolf said quickly, jaw set, panic receding in favor of the leader. God, in the moment, Tiger had never missed Lion's presence more, because he couldn't—he couldn't— "What happened?"
"He flatlined," Tiger whispered, and saying it made it feel true.
A doctor rushed past them and into the room. Another one. The open door let slip a sliver of the chaos, and Tiger's knees wobbled.
"Whoa, whoa, okay," Wolf said quietly, grabbing Tiger under the arms. It was the only reason Tiger stayed standing. Elliot's face, his death, his life, flashed in front of his eyes like a reel, and he knew that losing Lion would destroy him. He barely survived Elliot. "He's got—Tiger, he's got the best people working on him, okay? It's—"
"What happened?" And Tiger closed his eyes, swaying, and Wolf tightened his grip, because Bear. His voice was high, strung tight with fear. Tiger forced himself to look. Bear stood there, Efrem at his side, holding a cup of coffee.
Tiger couldn't.
Wolf looked at him, seemed to know this, and ground his teeth. "Lion's…Lion flatlined. But they're working on him now, alright?"
Hearing it from someone else made it sound even more true.
Tiger distantly heard Bear's cup of coffee splash onto the floor.
From within Lion's room, they heard someone shout, "Clear!" And then a whir of electricity.
Tiger's knees did give out, then.
Wolf helped him sit, keeping him steady, but Tiger buried his face in his hands and prayed.
And prayed.
Prayed harder for every time he heard "Clear!" because it was so many times. It kept going, and going, and going, and he prayed.
And prayed.
And prayed.
A/N: Hi! I'm going into witness protection so none of you can kill me for this.
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Lira: LOL yes I hope this was some badass Alex for you. Also thanks for all the Russian tips!
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