Chapter 16 Asher
Chapter Sixteen: Asher
Jinx sleeps like the dead.
Not the restless thrashing I've gotten used to over the past weeks, the nightmares that make him twitch and mutter and sweat. This is different. Deep and still, his chest rising and falling in a slow rhythm, his face slack with something I've never seen on him before.
Peace.
The Singapore safe house is quiet in the early morning light.
Gray dawn filtering through grimy windows, the hum of the old air conditioning unit, the distant sounds of a city waking up.
We're on a narrow cot that wasn't built for two grown men, tangled together in a way that should be uncomfortable but isn't.
His head is on my chest. His arm is draped across my stomach. His long black hair spills over both of us, tangled and unwashed, smelling like sweat and sex and death. The blood is gone, scrubbed away in a shower that lasted an hour, but I can still see the shadows of it in the lines of his face.
Helena Cross is dead. All of the Custodians involved are dead…
We wiped the darkest parts of corruption off the face of the Earth.
I watched him walk out of that office with blood on his hands and nothing in his eyes.
I held him while he fell apart afterward, while thirty years of pain came pouring out in ugly sobs that shook his whole body.
I fucked him slow and tender because he needed to feel something other than violence, and then I held him while he cried some more.
Now he's sleeping. Actually sleeping. And I don't want to move, don't want to breathe too loud, don't want to do anything that might shatter this fragile moment.
The burner phone on the floor buzzes. I reach for it slowly, carefully, trying not to jostle him.
Jagger's name on the screen.
I answer, keep my voice low. "Yeah."
"Children landed safely. Elliot has them settled. Medical team is doing initial assessments." Jagger's voice is clipped, efficient, but I can hear the relief underneath. "Lily's been asking for Jinx."
"Lily?"
"The girl from cell twelve. She chose a name. Wouldn't answer to Twelve anymore, said that was a number, not a name." A pause. "She said Jinx told her she could choose."
Something warm blooms in my chest. The girl who held a knife to a hostage's throat, who'd been conditioned to kill without hesitation, who looked at Jinx with empty eyes and recited mantras about pain and purpose. She chose a name. She's starting to become a person again.
"How is she?"
"Attached. Won't let Elliot out of her sight, but she keeps asking when Jinx is coming. When the man who saved her will be there." Another pause, longer this time. "There's something else."
"Tell me."
"Song delivered. Everything she promised and more.
" Jagger's voice drops, goes hard. "Full documentation on Project Omega.
Financial records, authorization signatures, internal memos.
We have names, Asher. Every Custodian who funded the program, every Ministry head who approved the protocols, every piece of shit who signed off on torturing children for profit. "
I go still. "Who?"
"Abernathy. Oswald. Webb. All the Ministry directors, all complicit from the beginning.
They've been running the Foundry as a joint venture for forty years, rotating children through facilities around the world, selling the finished products to the highest bidder.
" Jagger's disgust is palpable even through the phone.
"Helena Cross was the architect, but she had plenty of builders. "
"Fuck, I thought we got them all. And the Custodian Board?"
"Emergency session. Seventy-two hours from now. They're convening to address 'the Singapore incident' and determine how to respond to the security breach." A cold smile enters his voice. "They don't know we have Song's intel. They don't know we're coming."
"What's the play?"
"We finish this. All of it. The Ministry directors die, and then we walk into that Board meeting and tell the survivors there's a new order." Jagger pauses. "Can you get Jinx on a plane in four hours? We need everyone in Geneva."
I look down at the man sleeping on my chest. The man who killed his tormentor last night and cried in my arms afterward. The man who's finally, for the first time in his life, getting real rest.
"Yeah," I say. "I'll get him there."
"Good. Flight details incoming. And Asher?"
"What?"
"Tell him it's almost over. Tell him we're going to burn it all down and salt the fucking earth."
The line goes dead.
I set the phone aside and lie there, processing. Two more targets. Two more deaths. And then a confrontation with the most powerful shadow organization in the world.
No big D.
Jinx stirs against my chest. His breathing changes, the rhythm shifting from deep sleep to wakefulness. His arm tightens around my stomach.
"Who was that?" His voice is rough with sleep, gravelly and low.
"Jagger. Children are safe. Elliot has everything under control."
"And?"
He knows there's more. Of course he knows. He's spent his whole life reading situations, calculating threats, preparing for the next fight. Even half-asleep, he's sharper than most people fully awake.
"Song delivered. We have names. Abernathy, Oswald, Webb. They all funded Project Omega. They all signed off on what Helena did."
Jinx goes still. His head lifts from my chest, dark eyes finding mine in the gray morning light. The peace is gone from his face, replaced by something colder. Something focused.
"When?"
"Custodian Board meets in seventy-two hours. Jagger wants to hit the Ministry directors simultaneously, then crash the meeting."
"End all of it. Every bastard who had a hand in the Foundry."
"That's the plan."
He's quiet. Then his expression shifts, softens, and he settles back against my chest.
"Four hours?"
"That's what Jagger said."
"Then we have time." His hand slides up my chest, fingers tracing idle patterns on my skin. "I don't want to think about killing for a few hours. I spent all night doing it."
"What do you want to think about?"
"Nothing." He tilts his head up, presses a kiss to the underside of my jaw. "I want to lie here with you and not think about anything. Can we do that?"
"Yeah." I wrap my arms around him, pull him closer. "We can do that."
The safe house is quiet around us. The city hums beyond the walls, indifferent to the violence we've done and the violence still to come. But here, in this moment, there's nothing but the two of us and the warmth of skin against skin.
He doesn't fall back asleep. Neither do I. We lie there in comfortable silence, breathing together, existing together. His fingers keep tracing patterns on my chest. My hand moves through his hair, working out the tangles, smoothing the dark strands.
"Lily," he says after a while.
"You heard that, huh? That's what she chose."
"I’m always listening. Good name choice." His voice is soft, thoughtful. "Better than a number."
"Jagger said she's been asking for you. Wants to know when you're coming."
He doesn't respond right away. His hand stills on my chest, palm flat over my heart.
"I broke her conditioning," he says finally. "Reached through whatever Helena did to her and found the person buried inside. She looked at me like I was the first real human she'd ever seen."
"You were. For her, you probably were."
"I don't know how to be that. Someone a kid looks to. Someone who's supposed to protect instead of destroy." His voice cracks, splits open. "What if I fuck it up? What if I'm too broken to help her?"
"You won't."
"You don't know that."
"I do." I cup his face, lift it so he's looking at me.
His eyes are wet, wide and terrified. "I watched you drop your weapon and walk toward a child with a knife.
I watched you talk her down with nothing but words and understanding.
You reached her, Jinx. You saved her. That's not the action of someone too broken to help. "
"She's going to need more than one moment of connection. She's going to need years of patience and care and someone who doesn't flinch when her conditioning kicks in."
"Then give her that. We'll give her that." I hold his gaze, let him see the certainty in my eyes.
He stares at me. "You mean that."
"I mean everything I say to you. Haven't you figured that out yet?"
"I'm a slow learner." But he's almost smiling now. "After. When all this is over. When the Custodians are dealt with and the Foundry is ashes."
"After."
"I want to take her. Lily. I want to give her what I never had." His voice steadies, gains conviction. "A home. A family. Parents. People who understand what she's been through because they've been through it too."
"Okay."
"Okay?" He blinks. "That's it? I tell you I want to adopt a traumatized child soldier, and you say okay?"
"What did you expect me to say?"
"I don't know. Something about how we barely know her. How we're not ready. How taking on a kid like Lily is a massive fucking commitment that we haven't discussed."
"We can discuss it on the plane." I pull him down, press my forehead against his. "But my answer's going to be the same. If you want her, we take her. If you need this, we do this. That's what partners means."
His breath catches. His eyes are bright, too bright, and I realize he's fighting tears again.
"I don't deserve you."
"Bullshit. You deserve everything. You've earned it." I kiss him, soft and slow, tasting the salt of his tears. "Now stop arguing and let me hold you. We've got three hours before we have to move."
He doesn't argue. Settles against me, tucks his head under my chin, wraps around me like he's afraid I'll disappear.
The morning light grows brighter. The city wakes up around us. Somewhere across the world, the people who destroyed Jinx's childhood are going about their lives, unaware that their time is running out.
Seventy-two hours.
Three more targets.
And then the reckoning.