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1986
The radio weighed heavily in his hands. All metal and plastic and sharp edges. Bloody angles from where the corners had dug too deeply into his palms. The stains glistened from the red light pulsing above the speaker, the only sign that the device still worked.
Down here in the darkness, it was the only light that he had left to see.
You need to eat, Jill told him.
He didn’t look up. The voice hadn’t originated from the radio, but further out, deeper in the dark. A body slumped on the other side of the room, the same size as himself. Near identical, save for the longer hair.
Before, back when he had still possessed the willpower to move, he had mapped out the interior of the bunker. Pressed up against the wall, one foot after the other, heels to toe, he had measured sixteen steps. Sixteen feet in a square, concrete from floor to ceiling. A metal cylinder that served as a toilet and stank of poop, full to the point of overflowing. A shelf stuffed with empty tin cans. One small bed, too small—his bed.
And the door. It was solid steel, save the sliding hatch that opened from the other side. It was their one window to the outside world. It kept them safe.
Jacob, Jill said.
He ignored her voice, curling tighter around the radio. If he squinted his eyes, he could pretend that the blinking red light was something more. A portal to somewhere better, somewhere safer. It kept back the darkness, the stinking rot that felt like it was suffocating him at all times.
The radio crackled. Even here in the gloom, he couldn’t miss it. He hugged the device tightly against his chest, breath quick.
“Boy. Respond.”
His thumb fumbled for the right button, hitting it after the moment. The words struggled to come, his mouth too dry. His stomach cramped with hunger. “Yes.”
“Jacob.” Not an acknowledgement, but a commandment. Father. “This will be our last broadcast.”
Fear rattled around his ribcage, trying to find purchase. He knew what this meant in the abstract. Death arriving on swift wings, carried in a thousand different ways. Planes, bombs, bullets, gas. Diseased raiders. Godless soldiers. But he didn’t—couldn’t— care about the abstract.
Powerless.
The voice was leering now, taunting him. He tried to ignore it.
“What happened?” His grip tightened on the radio, desperate for words, for a lifeline, for anything. “Sir.”
His father didn’t answer the question. “Your brother. Have you given him his last rites?”
Jacob looked over at the silhouette slumped against the far wall. His twin. Even in the gloom, he could make out faint signs of movement, the slow intake of breath or the twitch of a hand.
Just seeing things.
“No sir.”
He had waited too long to respond, he realized. The radio crackled ominously in his grip, promising another well-deserved admonition.
But the storm didn’t break. There was no angry response, none of the discipline that he deserved for his disbelief.
“Listen to me, boy. The enemy will try to deceive you. They’ve deceived you already. You know this.”
He did.
“The Soviets have pushed back our troops. Communist infiltrators have dug into our towns, assisted by collaborators and Satanists. They’re right at our doorstep.”
The news shouldn’t have surprised him. Despair filled him nonetheless.
The war. It was over now, one way or another. The bombs had fallen the day after his father had put them in the bunker for their own protection. Nuclear fallout and hellfire preceding a bloody conflict unlike any other.
Everything could have been different, his father had said. They had lived a moral life, a godly life. But the outside world, the Soviets and their allies, had been unable to abide that. Their infiltrators had tried to sabotage the American project. God had tested the unfaithful, warned them with plague and other such signs.
The people in power hadn’t listened. Now, they were all paying the price.
“We won’t let them capture us,” his father said. There was something frantic in his voice now, something fervent. “We won’t let them.”
“Dad?” Jacob managed to say. In a world that was already so wrong, this wasn’t right. His father wasn’t supposed to sound so weak.
“This world is sick, boy. It used to be righteous, but humanity ruined the whole thing. It isn’t for people like us anymore. Good people. The godly. Maybe we could have taken it back at some point, but not anymore. Remember that, Jacob, if you remember anything at all.”
“I… I will, sir.”
As abruptly as it had begun, the radio let out a final burst of static and fell silent. The red light flickered off. He shook the device and kept pressing the button, trying to get it to turn back on. All their time in the bunker and the light had never gone out.
No response. The radio wasn’t broken. The connection had been cut from the other side.
Panic set in, a dull hysteria that slid between his ribs like a cold knife. Jacob tried to remember his father’s words, any of them, and ended up holding nothing. Less than nothing. Countless days in the bunker and he’d always had a voice to ground himself.
We’re going to get through this, Jill told him. I promise, Jacob.
1989
“Andrew, you don’t have to go.”
His sister was pulling on the sleeve of his jacket, trying to pull him back. Down into the seat or out of the stadium, he couldn’t tell.
It didn’t matter.
“Let the police handle this. That’s their job.”
Down on the field, where a game of baseball had been ongoing just a few minutes before, the grass had been turned into a bloodbath. Frenzied fans had swarmed over the railings, going at each other across the pitch. There were screams and choked yells. He could even see blood and, if he squinted, the white glint of a broken tooth flying through the air.
He hadn’t intended to go out tonight, but instinct had drawn him to putting the roughshod leather mask in his pocket. Every night, sneaking out under the cover of darkness to try and make a lick of difference in the world… it had worn on him. Carved something irrevocable into his bones, more inevitable than that diagnosis so long ago.
Before he’d become this, before he’d become more than a man, the doctors had given him a terminal prognosis. Cancer, untreatable except by the most toxic chemicals, and even those had promised him a slower, more painful end.
Better to go out on his own terms. To wake up every morning feeling a little more fatigued and know that it was his own body slowly killing him, rather than grasping desperately onto a futile attempt to live.
Andrew hadn’t even bothered to tell his sister. He had wanted her to remember him as he had been, full of life. Not a husk rotting in a hospital bed.
Maybe that was why the golden man had touched his hand. He had seen Andrew’s acceptance of his fate and decided to give him more time. Additional years and the power to do something with them.
Now, his body carried a different kind of fatigue. Duty weighed as heavy as cancer, even in the latter’s absence. He could run faster now, punch harder, jump higher. Every day saw his limits inch upward just a tiny bit, from the near human baseline of years ago to more.
The power scared him at times. It certainly scared the criminals in his path. Monster, he had heard. Demon. Unnatural.
Never human. Not anymore. What scared him more than anything else was the idea that he might one day forget it. It was why he had come to this baseball game with his sister, in order to remind himself of the simple joys of life.
Reality had chosen otherwise. Now, he had the power to intervene. The responsibility to answer.
Sparing one last apologetic glance towards his sister, Andrew pulled his sleeve back and jumped onto the pitch. By the time he landed on the ground, he had already done the mask and pulled up the hood of his jacket. The row had grown into a seething mob, a beast without an intelligent thought. There was no clear enemy to fight, so he chose the nearest brawl, barreling straight into their midst.
His first target was a tall man, broad and muscular, face red with drunkenness. Andrew grabbed his wrist and shoved him back, away from the shorter man he had been kicking. “Stop it.”
“Fuck off,” the drunk man snarled. He stepped forward and Andrew shoved him back again, harder this time. He could have done more, put far more strength into it, he knew. Adrenaline was clouding his judgement.
Only the cold glint in the man’s eyes sobered him. The burgeoning fear. That echoing cry of unnatural.
I don’t want to scare them.
“Please, stop!” He couldn’t think of anything else to do but yell. “Please! People are getting hurt!” He disarmed a man and broke his weapon over his knee, casting the useless shards to the ground. “You’re all better than this!”
“Bullshit,” a taller woman raged at him, her nose bloody. “Fuckin’ superhero-wannabe.”
“I’m Vikare,” he shouted, trying to project more confidence than he felt. Engendering a sense of calm. “Being a hero is what I’m supposed to be. What I can help you all try to be."
He could see his words getting through to people, cooler heads starting to prevail. Too few, however, too little against the anger crackling through the crowd like lightning.
And then it all came to a head in a thunderclap. A harrowing scream right behind him, high-pitched and vicious. He spun around to find a sallow man on his knees, clutching the stump of his right arm. Blood poured from the open wound onto his severed hand, which was still clutching a rusted iron pipe.
Ice ran down his spine. There was no bladed weapon nearby, no weapon that could have caused it. Others were seeing the display now, fear quenching the steel-hot anger of the mob like a bucket of cold water.
“Someone call 911!” Andrew called out. “Get an ambulance! Get to shelter!”
All the while, his mind was racing, putting the pieces together. It had to be a power just like his. One of the people in the mob?
Instinct alone drew his attention to her. A shadowy figure perched far up in the bleachers, her long hair blowing in the autumn breeze. The knife in her hands gleamed coldly under the stadium lights. She looked too calm, too self-possessed; nothing like everyone else.
She’s the one. He knew it in his bones, knew that her knife had made the cut, knew that she had a power just like his, and he was already moving. The responsibility weighing on his shoulders had transformed into action. One jump carried him from the pitch back into the bleachers and then he was taking the stairs four at time, seven, ten.
It doesn’t matter if you scare them now. You just need to stop her.
The attacker had already vacated her vantage point, kicking open a service entrance and vanishing into the bowels of the stadium. He followed the vanishing echo of her footsteps, their echo nearly lost amidst the tangle of concrete and pipes. Service workers screamed as he barreled past, vaulting down stairwells and punching through doors in his pursuit.
He caught up to her on the rooftops opposite the stadium, having already clambered up the fire escape in her flight. She had stopped opposite a large HVAC unit, her chest heaving as she struggled to regain her breath. Only her knife remained unwavering as she held it in front of her, warding him off.
“Jesus fuck,” she gasped, her voice lacking any hostile intent. “You’re much faster than I thought.”
Andrew took a step forward. This close, he could see that she was young, no older than thirteen or fourteen years old. Possibly younger, given how closely her skin stuck to her bones. Clearly malnourished. Nevertheless, there was an intelligent spark in her eyes, a hollowness that spoke of a girl who had grown up well before her time. “Who are you?”
“The girl who saved your life.” She rolled her eyes. “Duh.”
He inched closer, eyes glued to the knife. “Is that so?”
“You didn’t see it?” The girl made a cutting motion across her neck with her free hand. “That guy was gonna brain you.”
“And so you cut off his hand?” He was incredulous.
“He was gonna brain you,” the girl repeated, shrugging under his grip, as though the dismemberment meant little. Maybe for her, it did. “You’re alive. He’s… probably alive? It’ll work out.”
“We don’t do that,” Andrew said. “We’re supposed to be better.”
The girl spat on the ground in frustration. “What the fuck do you want from me, dude! Jesus, I tried一”
In that split second when she blinked, he launched himself forward. Her knife swung and pain exploded from his shoulder, but then he was inside the arc of the weapon. One hand grabbed the knife and tossed it from her grasp; the other latched onto her other arm and pinned it behind her back. In seconds, he had her pinned down on the ground, writhing desperately to escape.
“We’re supposed to be better,” he repeated softly.
The girl stilled for a moment before letting her body fall limp. “Yeah,” she whispered quietly, so soft that he could barely discern the words. Her eyes closed and she let out a weary, defeated sigh. “That’s it then, I guess. Take me in, chief.”
He studied her for a moment. The details that he had learned, the picture they painted… it wasn’t pretty. “Where are your parents?”
“Dead. Obviously.”
“No other relatives?”
She hesitated briefly, clearly confused. “None worth mentioning. It’s complicated.”
An orphan, most likely. Andrew was no scientist, but he had seen enough of others with powers to know that they didn’t come from anything good. That most of them seemed to come from moments of great crisis.
Looking at this girl, he wondered whether her crisis had ever truly ended.
He pulled her to her feet, still keeping her hands behind her back. “Come with me.”
“What? What’s going on?”
“We’re getting some food in you,” Andrew said. “And then I want to hear your story. All of it.”
Something told him that handing this girl off to the police wasn’t the right call. She wasn’t scared of him, and she certainly wouldn’t be scared of the cops. They wouldn’t be able to handle her anyway.
Perhaps, he hoped, he might be in a position to do more.
If only he knew how to explain this all to his sister.
1993
“Quiet down, everyone,” Hero said. The room quickly fell silent, save for the exaggerated salute given by Mouse Protector. “I’ve already spoken with some of you about this, but the timetable got moved up before we could announce it.”
He gestured towards the door. Walking in was a tall girl, stick thin, with her dark hair tied back in a rough ponytail and a long white scar tracing the underside of her jaw and neck. She sported a smile, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Everyone, meet your new teammate, Squire.”
“Kinda threadbare,” Mouse Protector blurted out. Hero made to respond, but the girl—Squire—spoke first.
“It’s a placeholder,” she shrugged, rolling her eyes. “Still better than the last one.”
“What was—“
“I’ll be expecting you all to welcome her with open arms,” Hero interjected. His eyes scanned over the crowd, eventually landing on him. Why? “I know that this is very sudden, but I ask that you give her a chance.”
Chevalier crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. An eleventh member of the team? It didn’t surprise him, but he’d expected more time to acquaint himself with the others, to find their footing before the first big shake up. A glance at others showed a wide range of opinions: some just as reserved as himself, others wary, and others still seeming to go with the flow.
Squire herself seemed unbothered by the attention, cracking her knuckles as she collapsed unceremoniously onto the couch by Phoenix. The air around her spoke of an entirely different picture, a pair of dark lights orbiting each other in a void, dividing over and over again.
It was chaos. Splitting, replicating, severing.
Communicating. Lost.
Squire was looking directly at him now, seeming to stare directly through the visor of his helmet.
“You’re Chevalier.”
He didn’t know what to say. “Yes.”
Her lips split into a smile, slightly too wide. “You do good work. I’m impressed.”
Had she seen the news stories, the ceremonies and the announcements? It didn’t feel like they had done something to celebrate, not yet. “Thanks.”
Mouse Protector abruptly leaned in, the ears on her helm blocking his view. “Oh. Do me next!”
“Give her some space,” Bookworm interjected, grabbing the other girl’s shoulder and dragging her back. She looked apologetically at Squire. “Apologies for her. She’s a lot.”
“Hey!”
“It’s fine,” Squire said. Her posture told an entirely different story, her spine ramrod straight. “This is just… different.”
“Have you not been a cape for very long?” Chevalier asked. He remembered first getting his powers what felt like a lifetime ago. It had been more than a little disorienting.
Squire tilted her head. “I guess. I’ve had my powers for a while, but things got complicated. Messy.”
“Which is why you all are here,” Hero said. “To support each other. To grow.”
“Were you a supervillain?” Mouse Protector asked. She looked excited. “You look like one.”
Unexpectedly, Squire giggled, a hysterical sort of amusement bubbling out of her throat.
“What?”
“No… no… it’s not you. Just you haven’t seen anything close to how I looked before.”
Hero shot Squire a look, so fast that Chevalier almost missed it.
“Oh yeah?” Mouse Protector challenged, unbothered. “Why’d you change it up?
Squire hummed thoughtfully, privy to some joke of which they were all unawares.
“Oh, you know. I just got really tired of the smell.”
2004
The shift happened suddenly, almost imperceptibly.
A stirring in the air. The faintest puff of a warm breeze across the surface of her skin. She inhaled and, for the first time in a long time, breathed in the scent of petrichor and gunpowder instead of bleach and blood.
Time had abandoned her long ago, down here in the warrens. No clock hung upon the walls, no sun by which to measure the days. Her tort一no, her mind rebelled at the word, bad一her handlers had removed her eyes a while back, after they had come to understand the nature of her change. The empty sockets throbbed, just like ankles and wrists where she knelt on cold concrete, chains holding her partially aloft.
There was no comfortable surface upon which to sit, much less sleep. Even when she tried to drift off, droplets of water fell steadily upon her head, her back, the fold of her limbs. It lacked force, but she never received any respite. Instead, the only distraction came from the boys, sometimes men, who occupied her cell at all hours, sharing their words of wisdom with her.
The final solution. The dangers of mixing bloodlines, the depravity of the modern age, the regression… clinging onto the edges of her brain like a festering mold, the only escape she had from the damnable aching tap of the water drops!
She couldn’t stop listening. She hated herself for giving in, for letting their words take root in her soul.
She found fewer reasons to resist with every passing day.
Weak. Worthless.
But something was different now. One of the boys, the Volk as they had named themselves with their damnably arrogant delight, stood watch in her room, reciting his lines with wary words like always, but the air had changed.
She tried not to react, but something must have shown on her face. “Are you distracted, sweet Dorothy?” Not her name. The boy strode forward and grasped her chin, the leer palpable in her voice. “How will we make a good housewife out of you with such stray thoughts?” He clicked his tongue in disapproval. “I know, I know, women are not made for men’s work. Neither the stomach or the mind. It’s a shame. We need more men of proper Aryan stock with a fire like yours.”
Despite herself, an exhausted mote of spite wormed out of her chest and she spat where she approximated his shiny booted feet to be. “Fuck you.”
Then her missing vision was white as her head snapped to the right, then to the left, hard. Two open-handed strikes. Pain exploded throughout her mouth, tasting of iron, her teeth biting down into her tongue.
“Please, Dorothy,” the boy leered, his tone belying any hint of courtesy. There was only fury with her defiance. “We are just trying to help you. How can you accept the only sacrament if you stain your blood with such barbarity?"
A faint click caught on her hearing, overshadowed by the rush of blood in her ears. All she felt now was anger, the rage that she had thought long dead, the spite that let her mouth form words despite her bleeding tongue. “Geh zum Teufel, you fucking cocksucker.”
A sharp inhale was all she received in response before it was cut off by a sudden choking gurgle. Even that ended quickly as a series of sharp clicks echoed through the room like scissors cutting paper. Her heart raced as she heard the boy slump to the ground with a wet thump.
“Good fucking riddance.”
A deeper voice with an American voice, speaking English. An unfamiliar woman.
She didn’t dare to hope regardless.
“Are you still alive, girl? Speak up if you are.” The footfall of heavy boots stopped right before her head, and hot breath disturbed her bangs. “What was it that he called you? Dorothy?”
One moment was all she needed. A flicker of her eyelids, a blink, and the change swept through her. Tentacles, limbs, eyes, teeth; her true form had all of them and none, an ever-shifting combination. Not so limited, not so mortal. The chains snapped like spiderwebs, the injuries and pain vanished, and she was free.
Now she could see the woman before her. Tall and broad-shouldered in a seamless combination of blackened metal armor and more flexible wear. A midnight leather jacket hung over a darkly iridescent set of chainmail and she wore neither helmet nor mask. Her attire resembled nothing of the parahumans that she knew, but the woman was undoubtedly one of them. Her sword screamed of danger, an implement of sharp ferocity that matched her eyes.
A blink took a moment. She was faster, she had to be faster, and yet this mockery of a knight moved faster too. In a flash, the woman ducked under the onslaught of tentacles and claws and swung upward in a wide arc, her eyes still closed! The flesh parted with ease, not just that which the sword touched, but everything beyond as well. Some sort of power that extended the blade?
She couldn’t bring herself to care. Her entire world was pain again, the bright blistering agony of her freedom being so utterly denied.
And then she was human again, the tip of a sword kissing the underside of her chin. The bitch of a knight was looking down the blade at her, smiling lazily even as the expression failed to reach her eyes.
“My apologies, girl. Truly. I shouldn’t have assumed.” The American woman made a show of looking contrite. “I assume the Nazi fuckers gave you that name?”
She couldn’t help but let her mouth fall agape.
The woman cursed and switched to German. “Ah. Sorry. Do you not speak English?”
“I do,” she managed to voice out, her throat raw.”
“Ah good. Your name then?”
This woman was insane. “I just tried to kill you.”
“And?” The woman shrugged as though this was an everyday occurrence. “If I got angry at every European that tried to kill me, the world would be a much emptier place. Most of you come around eventually.”
She wasn’t lying. “Most of us?”
The American woman snorted. “Most of you aren’t Gesselschaft.”
“Oh.”
“Did you think I was with them?” The woman looked genuinely offended for the first time, and… angry? Her shoulders slumped forward in disappointment. “I really would have thought that my reputation would precede me at this point.”
“Oh my god.” Realization swept away any sort of relief that she might have felt. “You’re The Enemy.”
The one that even she had heard about, trapped so deep in the cells. The transsexual, the deviant who had caused more harm to the Gesselschaft’s effort outside of Germany than any other organization. The Devil of every lecture given by the Volk, as evidence of the degradation of Western civilization.
“You cannot be here,” she said quickly, gripped by fear. “They have other capes here. Loyal ones.” Some (not all) that had been like her, she knew, until they had been broken. “They will kill you.”
“I’m afraid it’s a little too late for that,” the American woman said, and her smile was more than a little sad. “They’re dead.”
Impossible, a little voice was screaming inside her head, weak and pathetic and human. Impossible. They can’t be defeated.
“You lie,” she managed to say.
“I am many things, girl, but a liar isn’t one of them.”
“No.” She shook her head. “No, no, no. They aren’t so weak, they can’t be dead, that has to be a lie, this is just another trick.”
“Then see for yourself,” the woman gestured towards the entrance to her cell, drawing her sword away from her neck. “The door’s right there.”
Swallowing her fear, she took one tentative step towards the door, then another. Her bare feet were slick, at first from the blood of the dead Nazi in her room, then awash from the hallway outside. The corridor was painted crimson, cut and gouged. Bodies covered the tile floor like mulch, glistening beneath the harsh lights.
“They were monsters one and all,” she heard the Devil say. “But I’ve found that monsters die just as easily as most men.”
“Is that what you are?” she found herself asking her… her savior. This wasn’t fake. This was real. “Some sort of monster hunter?”
“I’m Jill,” the woman answered matter-of-factly. It was no name for a parahuman, but then again… what parahuman had ever helped her? “And you?”
Not Dorothy. The Gesselschaft had tried to force it upon her, and she had almost given in to it.
No more.
“Charlotte,” she said, that familiar name bubbling back up to the surface. A name with a family and a history and one girl kissing another in a dark classroom. One that had almost been beaten out of her. “My name is Charlotte.”
2006
Jazz music played over the radio.
Nothing special. A forgettable song by a forgettable face, yet his feet couldn’t stop tapping to the beat. Jack watched, unseen, as she stepped over to the refrigerator, opened the doors, grabbed an egg, cracked the shell, stepped away...
Step, step, twirl~
Maybe that made the song special in its own infuriatingly mundane way. Jack could certainly appreciate the… domesticity of it all.
Jill was trying to distract herself from the music as she whisked the egg yolk and threw it on the frying pan. One flick of her pinkie, one edge sharped just like he always did, and she was tossing diced peppers and onions into the mix as well. A little bit of salt, a little bit of pepper, stepping over to grab the salt, stepping one more time一
He flicked his wrist in a practiced slash.
She instinctively leaned backwards, pirouetting around the kitchen counter as a long gouge opened up in the wall where her head had been located. One hand caught the dirty bowl about to fall while the other slashed out with outstretched fingers. He was already moving, safely away as the attack gouged a long arc into the cheap floral wallpaper of the apartment.
He grinned. “Thank goodness it’s a rental, hmm?”
The radio continued to play its forgettable tune. Jill let out an exasperated groan and turned back to the stove, as though the most famous serial killer in the country hadn’t just tried to kill her. “Asshole.”
A fond laugh bubbled up and out of his chest. Oh, he had missed her. “Just as spry as ever, eh, sister?”
Jill didn’t look up from the stove. “We’re the same age, Jacob.”
“Ah.” He wagged his finger. “But you came out first.”
“By three minutes.”
“And?” He couldn’t keep his voice clear of cheeky enthusiasm, despite the years bleeding in. Time took its tool even on him, but right now, it was like they hadn’t even aged a day. “Every second counts, Jill. You know that.”
“This is Aunt Jill?” His little project, finally finding her voice.
Jill finally turned around. Her eyes quickly took him in before shifting to Bonesaw at his side, dressed up in her best little blue dress and bloodstained smock. When the gaze returned to him, her blank eyes danced with a dangerous light.
“Who is this?”
Jack pretended not to notice her murderous look, instead patting Bonesaw on the head. “Yes, Bonesaw, that’s correct,” he praised. “This is Aunt Jill. Jill, meet my newest protege.”
“Uncle Jack told me all about you,” Bonesaw chirped. “I was so excited to meet you!”
“Oh?” Jill’s face cycled through a complex series of emotions, too fast to follow. “And what did he tell you?”
Bonesaw frowned in concentration. “He said that you were retired. That you both killed King.”
“We did,” Jack said proudly.
“I…”
“How did you do it?” Bonesaw asked excitedly. “I have so many theories, but Jack said he’d wait until you told it! He said that you told the story better!”
“Maybe later,” Jill said. Jack pouted. “Run along now, check on the rest of your… family. Your uncle and I have a lot to discuss.” She smiled crookedly. “And please, grab a cookie from the jar. I don’t mind.”
His eyes lingered on the back of Jill’s head as she watched the girl run out of the room. She didn’t say anything though, not until Bonesaw’s footsteps had vanished.
“Jacob.”
“She’s marvelous, isn’t she?” Jack said proudly. “A real diamond in the rough. Still needs a little polish, but the best masterpieces always took time.”
“Is that all she is to you?” Jill said matter-of-factly. “An unfinished work of art?”
“Aren’t we all?”
“I’d like to think that people are much more interesting than art.”
“But of course,” Jack said, his shadow making a flourish against the wall. “There’s a reason I didn’t pick up a paintbrush after our shared career concluded. There were much more fascinating mediums to unravel.”
“Hmm.”
The radio continued to play. Beneath the static, he could almost hear the ticking of a clock, steadily counting down.
“The Protectorate will be arriving shortly,” Jill finally said. He frowned. So soon? “They have a new cape monitoring my house, new protocols in place.” She spared him a glance, her expression inscrutable. “I will be telling them everything.”
“Everything?”
“A new member. A girl. A wet worker with a penchant for charnel work.”
He laughed. The game couldn’t get too easy, could it! “Just as sharp as ever, sister. I didn't even mention that." He let out a theatrical sigh. "I'll catch you someday.”
“Is that what this was?” Jill asked, crossing her arms disapprovingly. Such a hero, his sister. “Trying to trip me up with a child?”
“Please,” Jacob scoffed. “Did you even need to ask the question?”
Jill didn’t respond as she turned back to the frying pan, scraping the scrambled eggs onto the plate. He took the hint and made to leave, knife twirling between his fingers and a whistle on his lips.
He did adore family visits.
2010
She had no weaknesses.
For some, such as Alexandria, it would have been an arrogant boast. The same couldn’t be said for her. She had no need for breath, for food, for water. Blades couldn’t pierce her skin, poisons couldn’t harm her, powers broke upon her inviolable form like rainwater upon the rocks.
And she was inviolable to whatever extent that she desired. In those first few months, when she had still been learning her strength, she had uncovered many truths. Her flesh was not truly flesh, but an exact mimicry. Physics only enacted itself upon it at her whim.
In many ways, this was a boon. In other ways, it made her existence incredibly involved. Her visual organs had to be rendered permeable to light so that she might see. The tissues in her ears needed to vibrate for hearing. All distinct processes and senses, but mentally stimulating nonetheless. It made her life much more intellectually stimulating than before.
Those same senses roared with inflamed passions as she cradled her prey tenderly in her claws. The hunt had been long, and the little mouse clever, but she could only run so far. Her mettle had been too weak to withstand the full attention of the Nine.
With a satisfied lick of her lips, she tore into the shoulder of the Mouse Protector. Her screams only fueled the ecstasy. The flesh always stayed the same, but the anguish was always so unique.
“Jack.” Shatterbird’s pompous lilt caught her attention. “We have company.”
She blinked slowly and roused herself from her fervor. The rest of the Nine were shifting nervously, no longer drunk on the slaughter. Not staring at Mouse Protector, but at the open doorway and the woman silhouetted there.
“Let her go, Jacob.”
The sister. The failure. Jill Kill as the tabloids called, ironic given her true nature. Too soft to understand what had to be done, yet Jack couldn’t see it, blinded by misplaced affection.
“Auntie Jill!” Little Bonesaw chirped. “It’s been too long!”
Jill barely spared her a glance, her expression cold. Why was she here? How was she here? Happenstance?
No. Her pupils dilated as she looked at their leader, his lips peeled back in a frenzied grin. “I see you got my message, sister mine.”
The rest of the Nine didn’t say anything. They tolerated no interlopers, but the girl was an exception. Jack’s prey, his favorite. They were watching, waiting to see the outcome.
The Siberian knew that it was on purpose. Pageantry orchestrated by Jack to reinforce his grip on their little band, to show them why he remained on top. She knew that, and yet inevitably, she couldn’t keep from being intrigued.
Jill stepped forward, passing through Hatchet Face’s aura without a hint of fear. She only had eyes for her brother. “No. I just knew you were up to some shit.”
Jack simply laughed, a full belly cackle. “Oh, you’re a riot. I really should throw you surprise parties more often.”
“A party?” She sounded more exasperated than disgusted. “Really?”
Jack made a mocking bow. “Of course it’s a party. I even brought you a gift.” He gestured at Mouse Protector, half-maimed in the Siberian’s grasp. “A genuine damsel in distress.”
Jill shot Jack a sharp look. He blinked innocently back, unrepentant.
“Only the best for my heroic little sister.”
“I thought that I was supposed to get Mouse Protector,” Bonesaw pouted. Jack didn’t even spare her a glance.
“I can multitask, Bonesaw.”
“No, you can’t,” Jill muttered, so close that only the Siberian could hear it. She had walked right up to her, their noses almost touching. With a nonchalance that seemed almost suicidal, she squatted down and pressed a hand to the hero’s bloody cheek. “Are you still alive, Mouse?”
Her prey mumbled something incomprehensible, and Jill muttered a terse reply. Unintelligible. Human niceties.
Then a pair of dark brown eyes, emotionless eyes, met her yellowed orbs. “I’ll be taking her back now.”
Her voice was flat. Too flat. Not emotionless, furious. If the Siberian had been anyone else, she would have been unable to tell.
“Well,” Jack said, clapping his hands together. His eyes were sparkling with fascination. “It’s your choice, Siberian.”
So that was his play. Wearing his unflinching faith in this girl on his sleeve, trying to get one over on her. She wasn’t insulted, she had expected nothing less after all. But Jack had given her permission, and his wayward sister had been afforded too many privileges already.
Slowly, she lifted a claw and caressed Jill’s cheek. The swordswoman tilted her head with the unyielding pressure, still unflinching. Temptation licked down the Siberian’s spine like a tongue a flame. Just a little more pressure and her spine would snap with ease.
“Is this how it happened?” Jill said quietly, so soft that it grated. “When she died?”
What?
The Siberian froze.
“Holding her face. Wiping away her tears as she breathed her last, black and white and blue.” She leaned in, her lips brushing over the Siberian’s ear. Cutting themselves on her razor sharp hair, but she didn’t seem to care. “You’ve always been good at separating your family from their loved ones, haven’t you, William?”
The impossibility of it was almost forgotten as she—as he directed her eyes towards—looked at Bonesaw, almost like they had been guided there. Her—his—adoptive daughter stock still, frozen.
No. No. She couldn’t know. How could she know, only they knew, his fingers dug wildly into rotting van seat leather and his mouth was pried open in a wordless scream of how how how he was going to slaughter her—
“Good night, Alan. Mimi. Riley.” A woman ruffling the head of a frozen little girl. A harsh glare as she glared at a tall man with a widow’s peak, former prey bleeding out in her arms. “You won’t do this again, Jacob.”
The Siberian was left unaddressed, pristine and bloody and raw. Jack Slash’s bemused chuckle clawed at her like nails on a chalkboard.
William Manton, weak pathetic William, howled.
2011
Not for the first time, Theo cursed his hands.
They were shaking, palms sweaty as he balled them into fists. Still pudgy, but covered in calluses and minor cuts where he had fallen to the dirty. Weaver had been throwing the Wards into drill after drill, preparing them for any possible scenario.
He wanted to hate her for it. He also understood her, perhaps better than any of the other Wards. She knew what they were going to face just as well as he did.
Now, the future had come to him, sitting on the other side of the door, and his hands were shaking.
Not from fear. Some indescribable emotion that left his throat bone-dry and his heart racing.
Theo swallowed and opened the door.
The room was small but open, an office with large windows overlooking downtown Chicago. A small bookshelf with anodyne titles sat in the corner next to a large leafy potted plant, while a low coffee table and two armchairs occupied the opposite corner near the window. A sheathed longsword leaned against one of the chairs, the leather grip weathered.
He didn’t have to look far to see its owner. She was standing in front of the window, dressed in loose khaki slacks and a white dress shirt. A dark leather jacket hung over her shoulders, partially obscuring an intricate black tattoo that crawled up the side of her neck. Eyes and feathers and impossible angles: some sort of biblical angel. Long black hair had been tied back into a rough ponytail.
She turned her head as he entered the room, razor sharp, and he had to repress the urge to flinch. The line of her jaw, the interested arch of her eyebrows, the unspoken confidence… she had his eyes. “You must be Golem.”
“Yes ma’am.”
She frowned. “I’m not my brother, you know.” With a sigh, she lounged back in one of the armchairs, gesturing at the other. “Sit, please.”
Theo remained standing. “I would rather not.”
“Oh?”
He swallowed bile. “I don’t know you, ma’am.” Some hitherto unrealized measure of courage bubbled up in his breast and he opened his mouth again. “I don’t trust you.”
“Because of my brother.”
The PRT had given him reassurances that her offer, whatever it might be, was genuine. He didn’t care. “Yes.”
She studied him for a long moment, frowning, before leaning back in her chair. “Good.”
“Good?”
“Good,” she repeated with a wry grin, clasping her hands together. None of that humor reached her eyes. “You have a good head on your shoulders. I can’t help you if you’re a fool.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No,” she mused. “You wouldn’t.” She rose back to her feet and began pacing back and forth in front of the window. Several times, her mouth opened, only to shut again. After a minute, she looked at Theo. “I can’t protect you.”
“I never asked.”
“Let me finish,” she said. “I can’t protect you. But I can offer you advice. Give you whatever tools you need to beat whatever wager my brother set against you. That’s why I reached out to the PRT.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why help me?” He didn’t bother hiding his hands, fists trembling. “I read about you. The files say that you try to be a hero, but you haven’t stopped him. Haven’t killed him when you had the chance. This only ends with one of us dead, and you have no fucking reason to care about me.”
The entire time, she hadn’t looked away from his gaze. Now, her cold eyes closed and she exhaled long and slow through her nose. “Your father. He was Kaiser, no?”
It didn’t surprise him that she knew. “He was.”
“Tell me then, Theo Anders,” she said, as though they were discussing the weather. “If your racist, Nazi father was standing in front of you now, if you knew that he would be responsible for the deaths of hundreds within the next year, if you knew that would continue to happen unless he died… would you end his life?” Her half-lidded eyes silently demanded an answer. “This isn’t a hypothetical.”
Theo broke their gaze first, his head dizzy. He got the point. “I don’t know.”
“If you did,” the woman said quietly, “you would be a better person than most.”
It took him a moment to pull his thoughts together. “You aren’t what I expected.”
“You expected my brother.” It wasn’t a question.
“I expected to want to kill you.” His heartbeat had steadied, his breath even. He felt worn out, strung thin, just like he had with Aster clutched to his chest all those months ago. “Like Jack.”
“And now?”
“I think that I can work with you.” There was nothing but approval in her eyes. “Use you.”
“Is that so?”
She was leading him somewhere, he knew. Trying to get an answer to a question that he barely understood. At some point, he had to make a leap of faith. “I think that you don’t care if your brother dies, as long as you aren’t the one that twists the knife.”
She stilled. “A bold claim.”
“Am I wrong?”
Instead of answering, she turned away from him and stepped over to the window. He could scarcely make out her expression in the reflection. “You’re good with people, Golem.”
He steeled himself and walked forward, stopping short just a few feet away. “Jack said that as well.”
“About himself?”
Theo nodded.
“He’s wrong, you know.” She turned to look at him. “He talks out of his ass half the time. Uses nonsense metaphors like that keystone crap. I’m guessing he mentioned that at least once.”
Theo remained silent.
“Jack… he hates people. More than anything else in the world. He looks out at the teeming masses of humanity and sees tools. Toys with set inputs and outputs. He will find your people and employ them against you because he sees them as nothing more than leverage. Do you understand this?”
“I think so.”
“Do you?” She scrutinized his expression. “When my brother placed that wager against you, he wasn’t placing it against you. He sees you as just another piece on the board, your loss preordained.”
Theo frowned. “So… what? He just sees this all as a game?”
“One large game and he’s the only player,” she said. “So don’t play.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will,” she said cryptically. “Now, I’ll ask you only once, Golem. Do you want my help?”
“That boy is the only reason you and your daughter are alive right now. He’ll explain. Train him. Make him strong, make him vicious. Let him take whatever path he needs to take. You and your daughter owe him that.”
He could turn her down. He understood that instinctively, that she wouldn’t take offense from it. Right here, right now, so unlike back then, he had a choice.
Maybe that tipped the scales.
“Less than two years,” he said, reaching out to shake her outstretched hand. “Will that be enough time?”
“Enough time?” She laughed, so alike to Jack. “By the time I’m done with you, Theo Anders, you’re going to be a legend.”
2012
She could have killed him at any time.
That’s what everyone said about the original, at least. The grieving mothers, the angry brothers, the Protectorate veterans who were still trying to recuperate their losses when Jill Kill rolled into town half a decade after her twin brother. Whenever she make the mistake of revealing her identity and shifted from Jill Black to Jack Slash’s transvestite sister.
Deviant in their eyes, in more ways than one. They couldn’t understand how Jill stood it unless she was equally a monster. Something had to be broken, to be wrong.
And they weren’t. Wrong, that is. She was broken when she got reborn into the world for a second time, shattered in that bunker when her mind brushed against something greater, pieced together like carrion kintsugi when King got his hands on them.
She didn’t feel… things... about the right things. Felt all too much about others.
The memory came to the clone like a piece of paper caught in the wind. Six months ago, Jill had killed twenty-three parahumans in Cambodia, and twice that number of normals. Human traffickers, yes, utter monsters in every way, but still people. That was an average month for her, numbers-wise, when she left the country to get away from Jack (the true reason, the one that no other living person knew). No more masks, no more pressure. The killing calming that unending buzz beneath her skin, just for a bit. Not satisfying, but a relief, that atavistic response to knowing that King wouldn’t lash out for failing to meet his bullshit serial killer cult standards.
King was dead. She and Jacob and Kurt made sure of that, buried the fucker deeper than sin. In other ways, he stuck around in the monsters that he made. All the original’s years combined, older than King was in body and spirit, and she still feared him.
Pathetic.
She looked at her faint reflection in the glass. She could imagine an older face, so foreign, so familiar. Bearded perhaps.
At least she could admit it.
Maybe that’s why she never could kill him. Because everyone else wasn’t wrong, just like they weren’t wrong about Jill Kill being the fragmented shell of a person. She could prevaricate about the rest of the Slaughterhouse Nine or their shared power or the passengers or a thousand itty-bitty qualifying details, but it didn’t matter.
At the end of the day, if she had really tried hard enough, if she had sacrificed everything that she held dear… she could kill Jack Slash.
If.
But then she thought about the difference between them. Jill Kill and Jack Slash. Hero and monster. The fears that they both refused to face.
She remembered, as the original remembered, the bunker, hunched over the frail body of her twin brother, giving him her share of the rations, forcing him to eat.
That day, alone in the dark, when she had promised to keep him safe because she was his older sister and he was just a little boy.
She had promised him. And she never broke a promise, not willingly. Not if she could help it, not yet.
And yet, and yet, and yet…
Down the drain went her thoughts, spiraling and twisting.
None of that inner turmoil manifested on her face. It was all to easy to wear a mask, even though her face was bare. The little girl besides her, creator and maybe-friend, understood that intimately. After all, she did the same.
“So, this is it? Just this button and he… ends?”
Riley nodded, the smile stretched wide on her face like plastic. The clone wasn’t supposed to be awake, not in Dodge’s pocket dimension while the rest of the Nine slept, not until the games began one year from now. Adding onto that what the original represented, that Jill Kill was her “auntie,” that Jacob never truly trusted Bonesaw with her, because they all knew that the original would take Bonesaw away from the Nine in a heartbeat if she could...
Well. The clone considered herself fortunate that she had inherited the original’s silver tongue.
“Yeah,” Riley said, swallowing. “Redundant design. Just in case, y’know?”
She did know. Because floating in the tube in front of her was Jacob Black, Jack Slash, her little brother by fucked up clone genealogy, insensate and unaware, powerless.
The button indicated by Riley loomed in her vision. She stared at it for a long, long time.
2013
Mouse Protector kissed her.
Jill’s heart was racing. Mouse Protector bit down on her lip just to hear that desperate huff of breath. She wrapped her arms around her waist so tight, as though Jill might vanish. She tried to say with touch all the words that her mile-a-minute mouth could never say—
Jill wasn’t responding. No pulling away, but no reciprocation either. Frozen like a statue.
“Jill?” Mouse pulled away, fear running pitter-patter through her skull.
Her thoughts made no sense. Her expression made no sense.
Jill didn’t feel fear. She never had terror well up in her eyes, dark and empty. Not even when she had rescued her from the Siberian.
And yet, when Mouse looked at her lips, she didn’t see that comforting, kiss swollen grin. Just Jill’s open mouth, drowning on air.
“Jill?” She didn’t respond. She didn’t, she wouldn’t— “Jill? C’mon, please?”
She was begging now, this wasn’t how this was supposed to go. She’d seen how Jill looked at her when she thought she wasn’t looking, the same look that Mouse Protector sent her way, she knew Jill liked girls, why wasn’t this working?
Didn’t she want this too?
“I—I can’t. A slight hitch in her voice. Practically choking in Jill-speak. It was all wrong, so wrong. “Scottie, I can’t… you deserve—“
Whatever Jill said next, she doesn’t hear it. She’s already one marker away, two, three, chaining teleports, running.
Stupid. Stupid. Her eyes burned, her lungs struggling for every scalding, ragged breath.
She never should have hoped in the first place.
2013
It was time.
All the pieces had been laid out on the board. His enemies arrayed against him. His own army, the current members and the failed predecessors.
Jack couldn’t deny the thrill that shot through him at the thought. Everything he had done over the past three decades all came down to this moment. No more stalling, no more rote ideas.
Either the heroes would manage to slay him or the world would end. No matter the outcome, it would be over. People would remember, for as long as they remained alive to do so.
Jack Slash. The man who ended the world.
It had a nice ring to it.
His army was doing its final preparations. They had their orders, their ideas. The apocalypse reduced to a grocery list of pit stops. The one he needed had to be among them if the precognitive had been right.
Nilbog. Eidolon. Kurt. J—
“Jacob?”
He stilled. Only one person ever got to call him that name without losing their tongue.
His chosen bedroom in the pocket dimension was expansive and utilitarian, undecorated save for the dried stains left by Dodge’s blood. No wasted space, efficient—he could appreciate such a thing. But when she stepped into the room, it all felt impossibly small, like he had been cornered by a predator. His heartbeat quickened with excitement.
His sister was there. Not his sister. The copy that he had ordered Bonesaw to make, leaning against the doorway, idly spinning a knife between her fingers.
Just like I taught her back then.
“No respect for a man’s privacy,” he drawled, hand over his heart in mock offense. “I’m wounded, sister dearest. Truly.”
She quirked an eyebrow, clearly amused despite the frown that otherwise marred her face. “You always said that she could pop in whenever.”
Of course. She, not I. It was their escape from the bunker all over again. She wasn’t her, no matter how much the resemblance beckoned to him. Much younger, less weathered, a memory. But…
“Bonesaw does good work,” he mused, pleased with himself. “To think that you would remember even that conversation from all those years ago.”
“Drips and drabs,” Jill said. “More every day.” She paused, conflicted, so Jill. “She loves you.”
He couldn’t help it. He laughed, loud and braying. An ugly thing. “This isn’t a movie, little sister. Are you trying to dissuade me?”
The cold lights overheard glinted off her knife. His grin widened, all teeth.
“Are you here to kill me?”
Jill had tried, so many times, as had he. But they’d never really been trying, neither of them, because when had they ever failed to follow through? Even King hadn’t escaped.
Jill didn’t answer, her footsteps light as she walked up to him. She was gangly, awkward, only halfway through a stunted clone puberty and not even close to her full height. He didn’t move as her free hand splayed out against his chest.
Couldn’t even breathe as the point of her knife kissed his throat.
“You’d let me do it, wouldn’t you?” It was a whisper, an underground promise, bunker walls and radio static. “You’d welcome me back with open arms.”
She knew exactly what they were, because Jill knew exactly what they were, just like he did. Monsters.
His arms wrapped around her thin shoulders and shaggy black hair like jaws snapping shut. “I always had space for you,” he murmured, the words quiet like the blood dripping from his neck. “With the Nine. With me. All you had to do was ask.”
You didn’t have to leave me.
He kept those words to himself.
I love you.
He couldn’t say it back.
“It’s because I she loved you,” Jill the clone said, “that I she never asked.”
His expression darkened.
“I can’t be her,” the clone said suddenly. “I—I can’t do this.”
“Of course you will,” Jack sneered. “You don’t have a choice.”
You never had a choice. Because you aren’t her.
He felt disgusted with himself suddenly, all jagged edges and slime. He pushed the clone away.
“Get out, girl.”
“Jacob—“
He sighed theatrically and flashed his knife. To her credit, she didn’t scream, but her face bled crimson all the same. Just as easily as everyone else.
Not as satisfying as he hoped. Dark, gnawing.
He paid her no more mind as she fled from the room. His thoughts churned.
Useless.
2013
I didn’t know how I expected to feel when it happened. Anger, perhaps, or shock. Disappointment in myself for failing to prevent it.
Instead, I just felt numb. Hollowed out, defined only by the anxious itch that crawled along my skin.
In the distance, I could hear the fires burning, the muffled sound of screaming. Not in pain, but out of horror. It was drowned out seconds later by the thunderous crack that rolled across the sky. It triggered a faint memory from years ago: a family visit. Chuckles.
Sonic boom.
But all the Chuckles were dead, and they couldn’t manage something this large.
I could guess who could.
Scion would have to wait though. I didn’t have time to spare for him, not yet. Instead, I started walking down the street. Bodies lined the sidewalk: the Slaughterhouse, civilians, Dragon’s Teeth.
My focus wasn’t on them though.
I found her slumped down behind a pharmacy county. The cabinets had been smashed open and she was curled up into a ball. Beneath the long curtain of her hair, I could make out the tiny movements of needle and thread, silver stabbing through crimson as she pulled another gash shut.
She froze as I stepped through the doorway. We stared at each other for a minute, her eyes flinching as she looked between me and the bloody sword by her side.
“Guess I should’ve expected this,” my clone croaked through grimy lips. She was young, no older than thirteen or fourteen. “Kinda poetic, isn’t it?”
“I’m not here to kill you.”
My clone spat a glob of blood on the ground. “Why else would you be here? Why else would they let me live? One of us is already bad enough in their eyes.” Her shoulders shook silently, and I realized she was laughing. “They’re all gonna know soon enough. Jack’s power. Our power.”
“It was inevitable,” I said quietly. My sword weighed heavily in my hands. “This couldn’t last forever.”
“Ha. No.” Her hand drifted down to her knife, grabbing it by the blade. She didn’t seem to care as her hands bled. “I guess it couldn’t.”
Oh.
I knelt down in front of her, placing my hands on the ground. Vulnerable. “Jill.” Her head snapped up at that, eyes wild. “It’s not your fault.”
“Not my fault?!” In a flash, she was holding her blade properly, the point wavering. “I fucking killed innocent people! I gave up on him! Again! I broke our fucking promise! Don’t you remember?”
I turned away from my brother.
“It’s over, Jacob. I’m done with all of this. The Slaughterhouse. This…this fucking pointless crap.”
“Is that a promise, sister?” There was a hint of something in his voice. Desperation? Menace? It reminded me far too much of King. Too much of the boy he used to be. “You’re just like me.”
“Are you going to stop me, Jacob?”
“I do,” I said faintly, only for her. “I don’t care.”
She searched my face for something, some clue. I didn’t know what. All I could see was a young girl crumpling without support, oh so familiar.
She—no, not she, Jill, she deserved the name just as much as me—didn’t resist as I took her up in my arms. She barely weighed anything at all, just skin and bones and spite.
Stepping out of the pharmacy with my clone held to my chest, I spared one final glance towards the gray bubble shrouded in containment foam. Towards the man at the center.
All that time spent training the Anders boy and it hadn’t meant a damn thing. Not in any way that mattered. Not to me.
You win, Jack.
I turned and walked away for the last time.
1987
“Listen,” Jacob said. “Do you hear that?”
His face twisted in the moonlight coming through the window, lurid and pale. An unreadable expression, satisfied and desperate and perversely hopeful. Still a boy’s face, for all that his purposefully untrimmed beard hairs and a months-long starvation diet tried to mask his youth. Blood stained his cheeks in long streaks, a cheshire cat smile.
I listened, and when I couldn’t quite hear, I looked. One hand remained in the pocket of his jeans, corpse-stained fabric clenched with white knuckles. The other reached out and dragged me down to the floor, tracing the handle of the knife jammed through a man’s throat.
A businessman. Older now, gray haired, probably in his fifties. A patrician just getting over his youth, all buttoned up dress shirts and loosely worn ties. I could hear it now, a rattling gasp clinging to his booze-soaked breath, in and out, jaw clicking and squelching as it struggled to pry itself open.
“You get me the nicest things, Jacob,” I said. It was just us here. I could afford a little kindness.
Jacob grinned, still marked by the blood of the man at our feet. “He’ll scream like this someday. Finally croak it.”
“He will,” I agreed. “But not today.”
“Not yet.”
The anger in Jack’s voice could form a knife all on its own. Between the two of us, he’d never had much in the way of patience. It was a fragile thing between us, this barely spoken promise, simple in a way that everything else isn’t. Two fools spiraling towards destruction. It had to be beautiful to share such a purpose. A person could dream, at least.
Bile clung to the back of my throat. I swallowed it with practiced effort.
“Someday,” I murmured.
I gripped the knife by the handle and tore out the businessman’s throat.