Chapter 16 Asher #2
The private charter is small but comfortable, arranged through Song's network of contacts. No passenger manifest, no customs checks, no record that we were ever here. By the time Singapore authorities piece together what happened at the facility, we'll be long gone.
Jinx sits across from me, watching the clouds scroll past the window. He showered before we left, changed into clean clothes, tied his wet hair into a bun. He looks almost normal. Almost like he wasn't an angry murder machine a day ago.
But I can see the tension in his shoulders. The way his hands never quite settle. The violence is over for now, but his body hasn't gotten the message yet.
"Tell me about them," he says without looking away from the window. "The targets."
I pull out the tablet, scroll through the files. "Abernathy. Ministry of Enforcement. Currently in London, running operations out of a private security firm that's a front for Silent activities."
"I've met him. He works with my brothers. Or did. Before." Jinx's voice is flat. "He visited the Foundry when I was twelve. Watched me fight in the training pits. Told Helena I showed 'promising aggression patterns.'"
I nod and then keep reading. "James Oswald. Ministry of Acquisition. He's the one who sources the children. Works with traffickers, corrupt officials, anyone who can supply product." The word tastes foul in my mouth. "He's in Dubai, living in a penthouse overlooking the marina."
"Product." Jinx's jaw tightens. "Fuckers.”
"Webb. Ministry of Erasure. He’s dead.”
"Webb." Jinx finally looks at me, and his eyes are cold. "He signed the order that put me in the pits. Said I needed 'additional behavioral modification' after I broke a handler's arm."
"You were how old?"
"Fourteen." A ghost of a smile crosses his face, dark and humorless. "The handler deserved it. He'd been hurting one of the younger kids. I made sure he couldn't hurt anyone again."
"And they punished you for it."
"Three months in the pits. Fight every day until I learned my place." He turns back to the window. "I never learned. I kept fighting. They kept punishing. Eventually they gave up and sent me to a different facility."
I reach across the space between us, take his hand. His fingers are cold, but they curl around mine and hold on.
"They're all going to die," I say. "They don't get to keep breathing while the children they tortured have to live with what was done to them."
"I know." He squeezes my hand. "But it won't be enough. It's never enough."
"Then what will be?"
He's quiet for a long time. The plane hums around us, engines steady, cabin pressurized. Outside, the world is small and distant, a patchwork of greens and browns far below.
"Lily asked me something," he says finally. "When I was talking her down. She asked what changed. How I went from being like her to being someone who could help her."
"What did you tell her?"
"That I met people who showed me another way. That I learned the world wasn't pain and purpose." He looks at me, and his eyes are different now. Softer. More open than I've ever seen them. "I was talking about my brothers. About Jace and Jagger. But I was also talking about you."
"Me?"
"You changed me. From the moment you showed up at that farmhouse, refusing to back down, refusing to let me push you away. You made me want things I'd trained myself not to want." His thumb traces circles on the back of my hand. "A future. A home. Someone to come back to."
"You always had that in you. I didn't put it there."
"Maybe not. But you made me believe it was possible." He lifts my hand, presses his lips to my knuckles. "After this. After the Custodians. I want to build something. With you. With Lily. I want to build a real fucking home."
Home.
"Yeah." The word comes out rough. "I want that too."
"Good." He releases my hand, settles back in his seat. The tension in his shoulders has eased, replaced by something like calm. "Then let's go finish this. Let's release the cleansing fire and rebuild the world as it should have always been.”
We're quiet for a while after that. Not uncomfortable silence, but the kind that comes when there's nothing left to say. The kind that means understanding without words.
I watch him watch the clouds. The hard lines of his profile, the sharp jaw, the dark eyes that have seen too much. He looks tired. The weariness of a man who's been fighting his whole life and is finally allowed to consider what comes after.
"What are you thinking?" I ask.
"About the Custodian Board." He doesn't look away from the window. "Ten families. Ten seats. They've controlled the Silent for three centuries, making decisions about who lives and dies from behind closed doors. And we're about to walk in there and tell them it's over."
"Scared?"
"No." A pause. "Maybe. I've spent my whole life being their weapon. Following their orders. Killing who they told me to kill. Even when I rebelled, when I ran, I was still reacting to them. Still defined by what they made me."
"And now?"
"Now I'm going to define myself." He finally looks at me, and there's fire in his eyes.
The kind of fire that burns away everything it touches.
"They took my childhood. They took my brothers' childhoods.
They took Lily's childhood. And they've been doing it to thousands of children for generations, because no one ever stopped them. No one ever could."
"Until now."
"Until now." He reaches across the space between us, takes my hand again.
His grip is strong, steady. "I don't know what I am without them.
Without the Foundry, without the conditioning, without the rage that's been driving me since I was old enough to understand what they'd done. But I want to find out."
"You're Jinx Harrison." I lace my fingers through his.
"You're the most stubborn, violent, infuriating man I've ever met.
You're loyal to the point of stupidity and tender when you think no one's watching.
You're broken in ways that might never heal, but you're still here.
Still fighting. Still capable of love, even though they tried to beat it out of you. "
His breath catches. His hand tightens on mine.
"And in seventy-two hours," I continue, "you're going to walk into a room full of the most powerful people in the shadow world and tell them their reign is over.
You're going to claim your seat at their table and use it to tear down everything they've built.
You're going to be the thing they created, turned against them.
" I hold his gaze. "That's who you are without them.
That's who you've always been. They made a weapon, but you chose what to aim it at. "
Silent tears tracking down his cheeks, catching the light from the window. He doesn't wipe them away. Doesn't try to hide them.
"Fuck," he whispers. "How do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Make me cry. I’ve never cried, not even when they flogged me, but you..." He laughs, wet and broken. "Thirty years of conditioning, and you undo it with a few sentences."
"I didn't undo anything. I reminded you what was already there."
He leans across the space between our seats, cups my face in his hands, kisses me. Soft and desperate and full of things neither of us has the words for. I taste salt on his lips, feel the tremor in his fingers.
When he pulls back, his eyes are red but clear.
"Geneva," he says.
"Geneva."
"Let's go save some kids. Let's go take down an empire."
"Let's go home."
The word hangs between us. Home. Neither of us has had one in a long time. Maybe ever. But we’re going to build one.
That's as good a place to start as any.
The plane flies on. Geneva waits ahead. And somewhere below us, the last two living men who built an empire on children's suffering are on their last days.
They just don't know it…
Yet.