When In His Eyes
WHEN IN HIS EYES
Watching Olline come undone around him had been the highlight of a very long and horrid century. She was an addiction he never wanted to come clean from. The heat of her skin as her pleasure mounted, the way she clenched around him as her climax hit, was exquisite. Even now, the memory had him growing hard as granite. He was a glutton for how she said his name. He wanted to drink her in until he burst with the taste of her. Yet, if Olline decided once he returned from his errand that they were, in fact, better as friends, he would gladly take that.
Well, not gladly .
Casimir would die inside if that happened. But he would take whatever little part of Olline she was willing to give, because even an infinitesimal amount of her was enough to banish the shadows shrouding his bloodied and battered soul.
Olline was saving him in more ways than one.
Casimir knew this was dangerous territory. That he should temper these feelings. He had only been free of Etzel for a scorching hot minute and falling head over ass for the first person who showed him an ounce of care, of tenderness, of simple decency, was perhaps not the healthiest thing for him to do.
All of that was beside the point. Casimir needed to get his shit together. He had to make sure he was worthy of Olline, had to make sure she wanted him, the man who needed to rediscover who he was now that his chip was inert. He hadn’t lied when he said no one—man, woman, or otherwise—was like her, and she deserved someone far less broken than he was. If Casimir had to spend the next century proving that to her? Well, he would relish the chance.
Casimir had seen enough shit, had dealt with it firsthand from people who didn’t know he was screaming on the inside, to know that Olline was, well, special felt too simple of a term. She was simply Olline, and she meant the world and all its hidden stars to Casimir. It was a fact.
He wasn’t “starting” to see what she could mean to him; it had already happened somewhere along the way. It defied logic and reason—on her part—but he wanted to get used to waking up in her bed every day, even if that meant his overwhelming joy had him getting up at the ass-crack of dawn to do something disgustingly mushy for her. Like get her real coffee.
It was such a simple pleasure, and so incredibly adorable, that Casimir would have traveled to the corners of Eerden to get her a cup of coffee just the way she liked it. Thankfully, he only had to go a bit deeper into Antal to procure his prize.
Casimir practically skipped back to her building, which was disgraceful, but he buried the urge. He tipped the coffee cup in salute to Olline’s doorman and gave the man a wink that left the poor fellow looking more dazed and blearier eyed than usual.
By the time Casimir neared her door, he was already taking deep, savory breaths, as if he could breathe in her cucumber and mint scent from the hallway. He stopped at her door and gave his head a little shake. This, whatever this was he was starting with Olline, was too new and it would help no one to have Casimir so obviously mooning over this woman when they still had a job to do.
Even if that woman was his precious little caster.
He lightly kicked against the door; his hands too full with their expensive coffee to knock. He took a step back, adopted a flirtatious smile, a serene look of triumph ready for when Olline opened the door, and waited.
Nothing happened. Not even the whisper of sound from the other side of the door.
His grin turned mischievous, thinking of how he left her and trying not to pat himself on the back too hard for being such a consummate lover. He kicked against the door again, a little harder this time, in case she had slept through the previous knock.
Again, there was no response.
His heart began racing, on the cusp of exploding, and he became hyper-sensitive to all sounds, or lack thereof. He kicked against the door again, not caring if he scuffed it or the neighbors complained, and the door opened.
No one was on the other side. It shouldn’t have opened on its own. He stepped inside and nearly tripped on a plant, its soil spilt and pot cracked, on the other side of the door. It was Olline’s lovely little purple and green plant. It had a name he couldn’t remember now, but in no universe would Olline ever have knocked the plant over, leaving it sad and trembling on the floor.
His hands shook as he put the cups down. On autopilot, he righted the little plant because, instinctively, he knew that’s what Olline would want him to do. Its fuzzy leaves brushed against his fingers in gratitude, but he was too distracted by the pain in his chest to truly note the gesture. The world stilled around him at what he saw. Or, rather, what he didn’t see.
Casimir turned on his heel and ran back the way he had come.
It wasn’t cowardice that made him flee. Casimir would not waste a precious second tearing through Olline’s apartment when he already knew what her unlocked door, her tipped over plant meant, and, more importantly, where she likely was. His lips pulled back, his teeth bared, as he raced away. The coffee stayed forgotten outside her door. His vision clouded as he tore from her building. His throat was dry from his rushed breathing, and an edgy, twitching feeling electrified his fingertips as they ached to curl around Etzel’s throat.
For who else could have gotten to Olline in the brief hour he had been gone but Etzel fucking Straub? Hadn’t he known her moral heart was going to be the death of them?
Except . . . he liked Olline precisely for that good heart of hers.
Which meant this was all Casimir’s fault; he had known better than to leave her alone. But he had wanted to do something nice for her, and now look where it got him. Funny though, through all the blame and rage and guilt he felt, never once did he question what he would do next, where he would go, or how far he would go, for that matter. Never once did he pause and consider this trap—for it absolutely was a trap of some kind—was one he could not disarm or walk away from. It didn’t matter.
Olline was in trouble and he would rip apart anyone who stood in his way, and utterly annihilate anyone who so much as bruised that perfect skin of hers. So, without hesitation, Casimir marched back to the one place he swore he would never willingly return to after his chip stopped working.
Casimir didn’t have to think about where he was going. His feet knew the way back to Etzel. They had returned him to Under Senator Straub countless times before. He stuck to the shadows, embracing the path he had slunk through too many times to count, but for the first time, he made the choice to go.
He lurked out of view of the nondescript warehouse district, his eyes fixed on one plain bunker in particular. One that he knew was a facade, one that stretched down farther than anyone but he and Etzel truly knew.
He counted the seconds, waiting for the flicker of light that meant someone was emerging out of the cloaked entrance on the far side. Minutes that felt like decades dribbled by. Each passing second tightened his chest and left him fidgeting with his mechanized stiletto, desperate to move, to do something, to get Olline out of there right now —
There!
He moved like lightning, zig-zagging across the concrete, slipping in and out of the hazy shadows too fast for the thrall to notice. With a swift strike to the back of the head, Casimir knocked the man out, and snatched his security credentials before he even hit the ground. Casimir made a point not to look too closely at who he struck.
Mercy was a luxury he couldn’t afford.
Getting down to where Etzel conducted his clandestine business was so second nature to Casimir that it was easy—too easy, if he thought too long about it. It didn’t matter, nothing would change his trajectory. It wasn’t until he got to the labs that Casimir ran into any kind of resistance. Which was stranger still. Casimir could count on one hand the number of times this building wasn’t crawling with personnel.
A small team of Etzel’s private mercenary group lined the hallways. There were four of them, each equipped with mostly non-lethal rounds in their pulse-pistols and magitech tasers. He knew from experience. But enough punishment from even non-lethal rounds could be fatal. Casimir eyed them for a moment, his eyes darting from one to another, assessing the situation, before he rounded the corner.
“Hello, gentlemen,” Casimir crooned, his hands in his pockets, expression nonchalant.
“Everhart?” One of the masked mercs said, their voice distorted through a filter for anonymity. “The boss’s been looking for you. You ready to come quiet like? Mr. Straub’s getting mighty tired of sending your friends after you, only for them to come back bloody. If they come back at all,” he added with a mean chuckle. The merc shifted, perking up a fraction. “Say, what did you do to that thing exactly?” He tapped the base of his skull, indicating Casimir’s chip. “Mr. Straub’s damn near killed a few engineers trying to figure it out.”
“Oh, I’m sure he has,” Casimir said lazily. He took a few casual steps forward, angling his body just so. The forced nonchalance was making him sweat when all he wanted to do was race by and find his precious caster. But even Casimir’s skills would be tested by the number of mercs facing him, and he would be no good to Olline if he had the audacity to get himself incapacitated so soon in the rescue attempt. “I’d be happy to explain, but it’s all rather technical. Better yet, shall I show you?”
The mercs exchanged wary glances, before the one that spoke shrugged and lowered his weapon. Once the others followed suit, relief momentarily made Casimir light headed. He forced himself to move casually, the slowness of it stabbing his freshly healing heart, forcing him to imagine what Etzel was doing to Olline. If she was already implanted, he would never be able to forgive himself. He would . . .
He shook himself slightly, bottling the despair to fuel his fury instead. Casimir turned his body ever so slightly and hoped the panic squeezing his chest didn’t show on his face. “I’m surprised Etzel didn’t want you to drag me to him dead after all the trouble I caused,” he said with a theatrical sigh, pretending to be disappointed.
The first merc’s eyes narrowed and Casimir was sure he was frowning, but it was impossible to see beneath his mask. “ Mr. Straub thinks you’re still too valuable to waste like that.”
Casimir flexed his fingers, unable to remain still a second longer as the mercs finally got closer, weapons held loose at their sides, ready to see what Casimir had to show them. “Actually,” he said, incapable of maintaining his bored drawl, his words nearly drowned out by the sound of his thrashing heartbeat. “Now that I think about it, an explanation or ‘going quiet like’ isn’t something I’m all that interested in. You, however, will be silent as a grave.”
The four mercenaries stiffened a fraction of a heartbeat too late, too lulled by Casimir’s congenial manner, too secure in their biotech body armor to react as fast as they needed to. Casimir spun, flipped his stiletto open, and jabbed it into the space between the body armor and helmet of the closest merc before any of them even lifted their weapons. The merc gurgled and Casimir twisted him forward, using his body as a shield to take the first shot of a taser.
With a primal yell decades in the making, Casimir pushed forward, using the dying merc as a shield until he got to the next guard. With the hilt of his blade, he gave three quick jabs to the guard’s face mask, denting it until it sparked. Casimir grabbed the merc’s pistol and shot up under his chin in rapid fire until those concussive shots finally became fatal.
Two down, two to go.
One mercenary grabbed at Casimir from behind, trying to wrench his arm back. Casimir merely flipped the blade to the other hand, then he threw it with all his strength into the mercs boot, impaling him through the toe. Before the man could even scream, Casimir punched him in the throat hard enough to fracture the cartilage in the merc’s larynx and trachea. He sputtered, air already escaping into his neck and chest. Which gave Casimir his next meat shield as the fourth and final mercenary finally got around his collapsed brethren in the narrow hallway and tried subduing Casimir with a club to the head.
Casimir jerked away almost too late. The club scraped against the side of his head as he pushed the choking guard into his “friend”. Casimir dropped, yanked his dagger free of the dying man’s boot, then slashed at the remaining guard’s tendons.
The last guard cursed, Casimir’s strikes only an irritant beneath his biotech armor. “Fuck taking you alive,” the mercenary sputtered, changing his load out to lethal rounds. Which was, ironically, his fatal mistake.
Casimir had only ever needed milliseconds to strike. It was one of the first things he had learned to do in order to survive in Etzel’s world. Casimir whipped his arm up. His blade curved in a graceful arc as he swung around. The guard leaned back, but not far enough. The sharp edge of Casimir’s stiletto slashed across his neck, and no matter how firmly the merc pressed down against his own throat, there was no stopping his blood from spilling free.
The guard slumped to the floor, gurgling and twisting. Casimir carefully stepped around him to where the merc with the crushed larynx and trachea was, and gave him a swift kick to the head. Once he was unconscious, Casimir knelt down and disarmed the mercenaries. He pulled out their pulse-pistols, tried to flip them on to change their load outs, but each one had a biometric code that only responded to the mercenaries. The pistols were no better than pretty paperweights in Casimir’s hands.
“We’ll just do this the old-fashioned way,” he grumbled, his words trembling with the worry he tried to bury. And yet, he not so secretly relished the idea of unloading his pain and fear on anyone who tried to get in his way. He sprinted deeper into the compound, where he prayed he would find Olline.
Before it was too late.