Chapter Twenty-four

Careful What You Wish For

2017

"The choice is yours, Crane. You. Or her."

No choice at all.

It'd always be him.

Kyle found himself conscious as suddenly as a flip phone snapping open. With a single flick, the waking world greeted him. Or—more accurately—ran him down as his body reported in, shouting out every single thing wrong with it. Aching jaw. Raw throat. Brittle fingers. Burning skin. A clenching in his chest where his heart should have been.

Pinching and stinging on his stomach, his chest, his arms.

And let's not forget the tinnitus.

Ring. Ring. Ring.

He sucked down a shaky breath.

Initially, Kyle wasn't ever sure why he'd been out. Let alone when he'd laid down on the bunk, his toes sticking out on the far end. Then his short-term memory upended like the devil's own kitchen drawer and it all came back.

Well.

Most of it.

Thankfully, the main attraction liked to remain vague. At first, anyway. It'd come back eventually. Sometimes hours or days later and sometimes in his nightmares, where he'd struggle to pin down the difference between a memory and his imagination.

For now, all he got were the moments leading up to the show.

"It's time," Fraser had said. His voice had struggled to make it through the thick haze of feverish anger in Kyle's head. "You're ready, but the choice is yours, Crane. You, or her."

"Me."

Moments later, he'd collapsed. Because why sit down while he waited for the gas they pumped into his box to wipe him out when standing around like an idiot until his legs bucked was just so much more fun?

Grimacing at the memory, Kyle stared at the smooth, white ceiling. Hey. They'd cleaned up his tennis ball art piece. Jackasses. All his hard work bouncing the ink-stained off the evil science lair ceiling, gone. He sighed.

They'd also dimmed the lights. Why'd they do that? To be cute? Show him how they cared, because they knew his eyes were going to sting like hell otherwise?

He squeezed said eyes. Tight.

They stung anyway.

What'd come after he'd collapsed had been humiliation and— yeah, terror. Terror, because he didn't know if today would go wrong. If today they'd fail at pulling him back and he wouldn't be waking up in his ten by ten feet large box, because that box was meant for a person. Instead, he'd wake up in the barren cage.

Where the statistics went.

There'd been some heartbreak, too. Selfish, irrational heartbreak. See, strapped to Fraser's chair of horrors, all Kyle had to do was glance to the side. There, past his arm with its veins lit up like a firefly's ass, was Fi's box.

An all-inclusive ten by ten box, much like his.

But she hadn't been there. Not at the glass, anyway. She'd withdrawn. Hidden herself away. Why? Because she didn't want to watch him go.

Had she been there, Kyle knew he'd have asked her not to be. Look away, babe. You don't need to see this.

But when he'd stared at the glass, a washed-out reflection of himself struggling (always struggling, never getting fucking anywhere), he'd wanted the opposite.

What if this was going to be the last time he'd see her? Why'd she not let him?

Choking down the renewed ache of that stupid, selfish moment, Kyle sat up. The box walls spun. His ears whistled. His heart labored.

"Okay," he croaked at himself and gripped the edges of the bunk, his head bowed and eyes closed.

The selective blackout had followed quickly. It'd started with the humiliation, the terror, and the heartbreak collapsing in on themselves to form a bright hot star made of rage. Not hot enough to burn the restraints off him, but hot enough to burn his mind in its entirety.

Kyle raised his head. He blinked his eyes open.

The whole place had been neatly cleaned and put in order. Floors swept. Laundry stacked. New stack of magazines on his lone shelf. Fresh books.

They'd even given him a new tennis ball, all clean of colorful ink to do his wall art with. It said on the desk, right next to his post-torture meal. There was an apple. Green. A cup of yogurt. With strawberries on the label. A dish of what may or may not be edible food under a plastic dome. And one very large and bulbous bottle of water. Electrolyte-infused, he guessed. For all his post-torture recovery needs.

His stomach roiled.

He was starving, but the mere thought of eating made him want to throw up. A hurdle he'd have to clear if he didn't want to get hooked up to an IV somewhere down the line because how dare he mistreat his own body. Didn't he know he was worth a big fat wad of cash money?

"You're a substantial investment, Crane. We aim to treat you as such."

Rather than, you know, like an actual human being.

This particular investment got to his feet. Shit, he even made it two steps before a wire got crossed in his head somewhere and up was down and left was right, leading to a graceful (haha, not) amble for the table, a failed grab, and a loud crash as he and the table both went down.

On the way, Kyle swore up and down how time seemed to slow. Freeze him mid-fall. And suddenly he remembered something plucked right out of the blackout from hell.

Pictures.

He'd been strapped to that damn chair, immobilized. A screen had hung above him, pushed into his field of view. Someone'd been asking him questions each time a picture appeared on the screen.

He remembered a car. It'd been one of those blocky red ideas of a car, at any rate. Like what you got in a children's book.

"Can you tell me what this is?"

There'd been a house after that. Something old in black and white. Victorian.

"What about this, Crane?"

A cartoon cat.

"No?"

A child in color, smiling brightly at the camera while sitting on a swing.

"Any associations with this one? A name, an emotion?"

A deck of cards in two stacks, sitting on green felt.

"How about—"

"Fuck. You. How about that?"

"Very good," an excited voice had said. "I believe we're making great progress. Next—"

The hazy memory of pictures and voice vanished. Kyle hit the ground. Oops, he thought and nearly broke into laughter. He'd dinged up their investment, how fucking dare he.

"Kyle?"

The laughter died at the base of his throat. Fi. Her voice slipped through the intercom, thin as ever.

"Kyle, are you okay? You've been out for hours."

His heart seized. No. No, he wasn't okay. They weren't okay. Tears scratched at his eyes and Kyle heaved himself onto his back. The motion rolled him right over the stupid yogurt cup. He squished it. Room-temperature yogurt soaked his shirt.

"I didn't know if you'd wake up again," she said. "I hate it when I don't know if you'll wake up again."

"Don't worry," he rasped and let his head roll to the side. His cheek pressed against the floor. "I'm here," he added. "I'm okay. We're okay."

Words he'd always meant.

Words he'd said with confidence even when he'd had no reason to.

Now?

Right this instance, they felt way too hollow.

Sighing, Kyle stayed where he was, flat on the floor with yogurt getting all kinds of icky against his skin and his eyes fixed forward. There'd been some sort of meatloaf on the tray. With mashed potatoes. And jam. Now the meatloaf was in pieces and the potatoes a pile on the floor. His new tennis ball had gotten stuck to the goop.

His precious, precious enrichment.

Because he was a substantial fucking investment who deserved a little fucking treat. Right?

Right…

2036

Kyle sat on the Fish Eye's outdoor stage, not fully committed to the sitting bit. He kept one leg planted on the mossy gravel, one ass-cheek hanging off the stage, and made no effort to be still.

You knew when you'd have to leap up in a hurry. Whether that'd be to beat the shit out of more Church Hounds or to simply pace up and down the benches in front of the stage. He had to be ready for it all.

A street map of Villedor was laid out next to him.

It was old. Full of creases, stains, and notes left by the previous owner(s). A PK dude, specifically. The last marks he'd put on the thing were three small red circles concentrated in the upper right corner, just below the thick line of a river.

Kyle scowled at them. And he'd have kept scowling until his eyebrows cramped, if not for a sudden light touch to his planted shoe. Not exactly startled but also not not startled, his eyes snapped down.

He'd been accosted by a football.

Not an egg, no. An actual round football you kicked with your foot. What? He'd been surrounded by opinionated Europeans for the better part of his adult life. More so, he'd had to rely on them to have his back. Come for him in times of need, etc.

That sorta thing required sacrifice. Like no longer calling it soccer.

"Pardon!" called a small, perfectly French voice. A girl at about knee height stood beyond the stage's edge. She wore small jeans and a small coat, all clashing hard with her way too big boots and the even bigger warm hat. The hat had a puff the size of a fist sprouting from its top. The puff wiggled.

While Kyle stared, a boy ran up behind the girl and immediately grabbed her shoulders, stopping her from chasing after the ball. An older brother type; leaner, taller, and with a suspicious look on his narrow face.

Yeah, there was a good reason for why Kyle was hanging out at the stage, which'd been built around the corner of the Fish Eye's canteen, tucked out of sight. A bunch of reasons, really. One, the Fish Eye's people had—understandably—grown wary around him. They made room wherever he walked. Avoided looking at him directly. Whispered (more so than before). And since they had enough to deal with between cleaning up after the attack and dreading another attack, Kyle stayed clear of them.

Two, Kyle didn't much feel like being overly social, especially with the people who were actively campaigning to chew his ear off. Frank. Aitor. That Jack Matt dude who was, supposedly, on his way over from the PK headquarters so he could assess the whole electricity, slash, Church situation in person.

No.

Kyle had neither the time nor the patience for any of them. Fi needed him focused, now more than ever, and any extra voices in his ear were only going to complicate things.

If they still wanted to talk to him once he'd brought her back? (And he was bringing her back.) Sure. He'd think about it. Until then? Until then they could all fuck right off.

Was there a third reason for him ducking the world? Why, yes there was. He couldn't stomach the damage the Church had done to the Fish Eye. The attack hadn't lasted long, but even with the PK driving off the remaining Hounds after only a few minutes, the sheer loss of life and stripping of whatever dignity these people might have had left Kyle's stomach queasy.

A queasiness which wasn't helped by the black smoke billowing up from the streets below. The Fish Eye had a dedicated funeral pyre.

It'd been working overtime.

Could he have just stayed in the shack? The shack he'd wrecked? Yeah. He could have. But Aiden had insisted he stay in the actual sunlight.

Gee, I have no idea why.

Anyway. Small, scared kids. Footballs.

"Don't worry about it," Kyle said as he slid off the stage. The words felt flat and he couldn't much bring himself to smile, but at the very least he managed to unknot his brow and wipe the scowl off his face.

He kicked the ball with the side of his foot. It was a sad, limp thing. Often patched-over. Mostly deflated. But somehow it still managed to roll right back into the girl's arms when she bent forward to scoop it up.

There was no word of thanks.

The kids just turned around and ran, parting only so they could slide to the left and the right of Kyle's new visitors: Aiden and Lawan.

Two different types of kids entirely.

Both were armed. Blades. Crossbow. Extra knives. The whole Fish Eye had started packing. Everywhere, too, with the no weapons signs hanging outside the canteen having been covered in black cloth.

"Spooking our children?" Lawan asked with a light grin Kyle couldn't readily pin down as genuine. "You're working up quite the reputation, Crane." Still headed for him, she mimicked some grand gesture befitting the stage he stood in front of. "The outlander who returns the light", she said. "The Hound Slayer. The Wild Man in the Red."

Kyle's brow went back to knitting. "The Wild Man with the what now?"

"Your biomarker. You think no one would notice?"

Oh.

He shrugged, his eyes skipping to Aiden. The kid had wandered over to the other side of the map Kyle had laid out, where he now stood with his hands folded at the small of his back and his chin turned down.

"We get a lot of crazy shit going on here," Lawan added. "But your kind of freaky? That's out there and it'll have people talking."

Aiden looked up from the map. "What do they call me?"

For a moment, Lawan regarded Aiden with a smile. It wasn't the hard-to-read half-grin she'd worn a moment ago, but something almost delicate. Honest. A tiny bit coy, even. "Junior."

"Seriously?"

"Dead." Lawan's eyes hopped back to Kyle. The smile vanished. "And Junior said you asked for me. You're looking for a tracker?"

"Yeah."

"And you picked me?"

"You know me already. And I know you."

Lawan's shoulders gave a slight wiggle. "There's that. But what you should have said is that I'm the best choice. The only one, maybe. Especially since you're headed back onto the Lady's turf." She nodded to the map and its three red circles.

He didn't argue.

"But just so we're on the same page," she added. "You want my help tracking your wife. And once we have her—" Her expression folded like someone had boxed her in the gut, even while she jerked her thumb to indicate the crossbow leaning over her shoulder.

Kyle's throat might as well have been filled with hot gravel. At least then he'd have had an explanation for the way his words felt and sounded as they scraped up his throat. "You're not touching her. You help me find her. That's it. Everything else you leave to me."

Aiden shifted on his feet.

"I heard what Aitor said," Lawan said. "She was already turning by the time she escaped. At night. While every Church hold around her lost power until the morning. And since she didn't make it to any of ours—" A pause. She grimaced. Even showed her hands, as if to apologize. In advance. "Look, man. A whole night. Out there." Lawan gestured for Villedor. "By the time we find her the only reason she'll be happy to see you is because you have meat on your bones."

"Woah—" Aiden blurted and suddenly stood in front of Kyle, his hand pressed to Kyle's chest.

Why?

Because somewhere between Lawan's last two words and now, Kyle had untethered himself from his spot and stalked right up to her. Not leisurely, either. The painful tension yanking at his neck told him he'd coiled up tight. Shoulders up. Fists clenched. All the things you didn't do if you liked to claim you had your shit together.

Lawan hadn't moved.

All she'd bothered with had been a quirk of an eyebrow.

"His wife is a— ah—" Aiden stammered between them. The hand at Kyle's chest applied a bit of pressure. Kyle, totally in control, settled back on his heels. He kept glaring though.

"She's important, okay?" Aiden added. "And a touchy subject. Very touchy."

Lawan folded her arms, and with the coy smile she'd worn for Aiden earlier returning, said, "You know what? That's kinda hot on a man."

. . .

While Kyle managed to snort up a sad, beaten single-scoff laugh, Aiden's face went through about a dozen different expressions at once. By the end, they'd collided into a hilariously tragic thousand-yard-stare, one which Kyle decided to break by slapping his hand down on Aiden's shoulder.

"Take notes, kid," he said, wishing he had it in him to throw him a toothy grin, and returned to his spot next to the map.

Lawan chose that particular moment to step up. And not only in how she closed the distance, Kyle noted with a pinch of relief. "I'll do it," she said. "I'll help you track your wife. And once we find her it's your show. I'll follow your lead."

Kyle nodded and swallowed down an uninvited knot filling his throat.

'You can't be the one to kill me,' Fi had written to him on the day when she'd decided to take that choice away from him.

He'd burnt the words with her. Watched them fall apart in charred flakes ringed by a touch of embers. But it didn't matter how hot the flame, nothing'd ever erase them from their minds.

'You can't be the one to kill me,' she'd repeated back at him years later. It'd been a bright summer's day, the sky an aggressive blue and the sun relentless. The world had only recently tripped over the GRE's hubris. Death had been front and center on everyone's mind. 'You'd never forgive yourself. The guilt'd murder you.'

Yeah. Fi'd been right. It would.

But it wasn't up to her to decide.

"Thanks," Kyle told Lawan, meaning it, and got himself an iron grip on the focus he'd need.

Each red circle on Kyle's map represented a location the Church had sent a search party to.

Each was a dead end.

At the first one (an office building with hollowed-out rooms), Kyle thought he saw a hint of her everywhere. Footsteps in the dust. A handprint made from blood, three fingers missing. A scrap of weathered, green cloth snagged on a nail.

They meant nothing.

Come number two (a fallen hold clinging to an overpass, overrun years ago), he shook his head even before they reached it. "She'd go up high," he said. They'd still searched it, Lawan and him, while Aiden stood watch, keeping an eye out for anything Church-adjacent.

Nothing.

The last one was tricker to get to. Not only was it deeper in Church territory—the closest you could get before you got on the road that'd end at Orla castle—but there was water in the way. A narrow man-made channel divided the area, with every bridge crossing it guarded. There wasn't going to be any walking over, Lawan told them. Instead, they used a bend in the channel for cover and ferried themselves over on one-person floats made of tires and sodden-through wood.

But even that'd been pointless.

There was nothing but an old chapel with a caved-in roof at the mark.

No sign of Fi.

No sign of where to go next.

He was all out of red circles. If he was going to find her, he'd need new ones.

He'd need something. Anything. Something more than another night spent tossing and turning under a UV light, guilt and sorrow eating at him. Something more than Villedor's morning clamor grating at his nerves. Something more than him staring at the stupid goddamn map, wracking his brain over where she would go. Where she'd wait for him.

Because she'd wait, right? If she couldn't look for him, she'd wait.

Wishful thinking, a dark bastard for a thought whispered.

But so what, he'd deserved to wish at this point. He deserved one of those fuckers coming true, too. Just this once, okay?

Except maybe not like this; in the whispers of unnerved men crowding into the Fish Eye, a story traded between them of how a hold had fallen in the middle of the night.

It had been an untouchable constant, an island that'd stood safe and secure for longer than the Fish Eye had been around. They'd had defensive measures. They'd had electricity.

So how on Earth had the monsters managed to get in?