25. GOODBYE
25
GOODBYE
The commotion had already ended when Blair found the source of the sound. He did a quick sweep of the room with his guns raised before he determined that no one was there. The first thing he saw was a computer desk that seemed to have been split down the middle by force, and there was blood both pooled and streaked on the floor in the aftermath below. Beyond that was a plain wooden chair with broken zip ties lying around it. There was blood in front of the chair, as well.
Blair’s head pounded. If this was where Wren had been kept, and this was his blood—
Blair plucked a piece of fabric from the broken desk. It was bloody, most likely ripped off its owner’s body by the splintered wood and raking some flesh in the process.
He stood up to examine it in the light and his stomach plummeted even further.
The white cloth was soft and high quality. From a dress shirt, most likely. It could have been anyone’s, but Blair knew whose shirt it belonged to. He had just seen it not that long ago, white cloth against white skin, blue eyes widening in confusion as he said goodbye.
Blair balled the scrap of fabric up in his fist and realized he was shaking, but not with fear. He checked his guns and made sure they were both full. Something had come over him when he found out Wren was taken, something dark and ugly that roared even louder at the sight of Wren’s blood. It was something Blair had only ever seen before from a distance, in gold eyes reflecting the dancing flame of a lighter, in the twisting ink of a red dragon on a scarred back.
He pocketed the torn piece of Wren’s shirt and ran from the room. More blood, leading him to the stairway at the end of the hall. It continued up the stairs and he followed, not only as fast as his leg would allow but faster, as he no longer felt the pain there. Then he heard a muffled crash above him. It must have been two floors higher, maybe three. It sounded like a door being forced open before colliding with something on the other side. He began taking stairs two at a time. It didn’t matter if he pushed his body past its limits, he only had to last until everyone was safe and then he didn’t care how long it took for him to recover.
Wren, I’m so sorry. I left you to protect you but all I did was leave you alone against them.
Just make it a little longer. You have to. He reached the floor where he had heard the door open and thanked all the stars in the sky that it came open without resistance. He threw it open and stepped out onto the roof. He had tried to prepare himself for anything he might find, but nothing could have kept his throat from closing and his heart stopping at the sight of Jinx holding Wren up by the throat, Wren’s feet barely touching the edge of the roof.
“Wren!”
Blair trained both guns on Jinx, with one aimed at the assassin’s head and the other at their chest. Jinx looked back at him with little more than curiosity as the wind blew their long hair around their bloodied face.
“You realize if you shoot me that he’ll die with me, don’t you?” Jinx asked.
Blair’s eyes went to Wren, who hung limp from Jinx’s grasp, eyes half lidded and dazed. Blair doubted he was even coherent.
“Jinx, stop!”
Blair looked over to see Julian mantling the edge of the building and pulling himself onto the roof. He quickly turned his attention back to Jinx, surprised to see the way they regarded Julian so calmly, and then spoke to him with something almost like familiarity.
“Hmph. Why should I? Look what he did to my face.”
Julian extended a trembling, pleading hand. “There’s no need for him to die. Please, Jinx. He’s not part of this.”
Blair looked between them before landing his narrowed eyes on Jinx again. “What the fuck is going on? And if you don’t put Wren down right now, I’m going blow your fucking head off, and if you don’t think I can make it to him in time then you Phantom bastards have no idea idea who you’ve been dealing with,” he ground out with a clenched jaw.
“Felix has already gone to Isaac,” Julian said, tears welling in his eyes. “It’s over, Jinx. Let him go.”
“What’s over?” Blair demanded. Wasn’t Isaac supposed to be on the top floor? Right below them?
Julian’s eyes were glued to his feet, and it was Jinx who spoke, sounding almost solemn. “The war.” Before Blair could ask for clarification, Jinx added, “Which means I guess you can have this back.”
By the time Blair processed those words, their fingers had already slid from Wren’s neck and they had stepped away. Blair thought he heard a cry. It might have been his own but he didn’t know. He honed all his senses to his body, to driving his legs forward. He holstered his guns at his back as he ran. The sight of Wren swaying on the edge of the roof cut through the haze of anger and confusion and gave him a single driving purpose. Wren’s eyes fluttered from his throat being released but he was probably too weak, too disoriented to have any chance of standing on his own.
Wren fell backward and Blair thought he saw his lips move, but he could hear nothing except the wind and his own desperate call of Wren’s name.
Blair went over the edge without hesitation. He didn’t care if he fell, he didn’t care if he had to wrap himself around Wren’s body to try to shield him from the impact of the ground below, he just had to get to him.
His fingers closed around Wren’s wrist and he continued moving, horrifically fast until the small lip around the edge of the roof caught his belt and kept the lower half of his body on the roof. Even still, he could feel gravity breaking that connection, pulling him down.
“Wren, please,” he cried out as Wren’s cool, tacky skin began sliding from his grasp. “You have to hold on.”
Wren looked up at him with a fading sunset behind him and twelve stories below him. His lips curled up slightly. “No.”
“Why? If you hate me you can beat the shit out of me when you get up here but Wren— please . If you let go you’ll die,” Blair said, voice cracking as tears stung his eyes from the wind and his heart shattering in his chest.
Wren’s fingers remained limp, refusing. “And if I hold on, we’ll both die.”
“I don’t care!” Blair slid off the edge almost all the way to his knees, and he was starting to fall faster now that more of their weight was pulling him down. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take, I just need you to hold on.”
Wren glared up at him, eyes glazed like it took all his effort just to hold them open. “Why would you be that stupid?”
“Because I love you!”
Blair’s knees hooked on the edge of the roof and he knew he was done once he lost that point of contact. Wren’s eyes widened by a fraction and then everything happened at once. Fingers wrapped around Blair’s hand, strong and desperate like maybe, just maybe Wren was willing to place his trust in him, one last time. Then Blair’s knees slid forward and he plummeted forward even faster than he expected.
Wren’s panicked voice rang out over the air rushing past his ears. “Blair!”
I don’t care. I have this whole drop to figure out how to save you.
Blair heard another voice call his name, and he thought he had imagined it until he suddenly realized they were no longer falling. Someone was holding his ankles and pulling, and shouting. He finally recognized a soft voice he had never heard raised until that moment. “Julian?”
Julian pulled and Blair held onto Wren for dear life, and Wren held onto him. It was slow, the impossible feat of hauling them both up, but Julian stubbornly pulled until Blair’s upper body was back on the roof. As soon as Blair could plant his knees under himself he threw himself backward, bringing Wren with him, almost crying when he felt the roof under his back and Wren’s body land on top of him. Jinx was nowhere to be seen.
Blair pushed himself onto one elbow and brushed Wren’s hair away from his face, frantically trying to assess his condition. “Wren, baby, are you okay? Please wake up.” Blair grasped his face. “Talk to me, Sunshine.”
He heard Julian sit down heavily behind him. “Blair, he passed out. Leave him be, it looks like he’s lost a lot of blood.”
That was exactly what Blair was afraid of—he had no idea how serious Wren’s injuries were, if it was even safe to not keep him awake. Blair forced himself to sit up, cradling Wren’s head in his lap as he looked over at Julian. “What did you mean when you said it was over?”
Julian gave him the saddest smile Blair had ever seen. “I don’t have time to explain. Come on, we’ll take the elevator down.”
Blair wanted to point out that an elevator ride gave Julian plenty of time to talk, but surely Julian knew that. It was like Julian didn’t want to explain. Blair got to his feet, pulling Wren up with him and looping Wren’s arm over his shoulders. Julian reached out to take Wren but Blair shook his head. His leg was screaming at him, but he’d just gotten Wren back. He wasn’t letting him go.
On the elevator, Blair started checking Wren’s injuries. An inch-wide wound on his upper arm slowly oozed blood; not fast enough to be life threatening, Blair didn’t think, but the sight of it still made him sick. “I’m so sorry,” Blair murmured, picking up one of Wren’s bloodstained hands. Something black protruded from the edge of Wren’s sleeve. Blair furrowed his brow, pushing Wren’s sleeve up, and found a small throwing knife holstered on Wren’s wrist.
Did Wren go to graduation thinking he was in danger?
Blair’s first and horribly irrational thought was, Why didn’t he call me?
Then he felt like a fucking idiot, because yeah, of course Wren didn’t call him. Blair had just broken up with him and said their relationship was a mistake. Blair swallowed back the knot of emotion trying to form in his throat; he wasn’t going to make this about himself. He could wallow in self loathing all he wanted once Wren was safe.
The elevator doors opened to the ground floor and Blair followed Julian out. He couldn’t imagine it was doing Wren any favors to be dragged along at Blair’s side like he was, so Blair paused in the empty lobby to gather Wren into his arms. Julian kept walking at the same steady, eerie pace, like a puppet on strings.
“Spencer!” Blair called out when he saw their strategist emerge from the stairwell.
Spencer’s steps echoed on the tile floor as he hurried towards them. “Isaac isn’t on the top floor, I checked the roof and didn’t see you so I came down to regroup with Felix. Is Wren okay?”
“I don’t know,” Blair said, the words feeling like shards of glass in his mouth.
“Isaac is down here,” Julian said. He started walking again. “This way.”
Spencer lengthened his strides to fall in step with Julian, and when he looked over at Julian, Blair could see the confusion on Spencer’s face. And the suspicion. Blair hadn’t wanted to think it, and he knew Spencer would find such a thing even more unfathomable, but Spencer was a master at deducing the facts from the evidence before him and even Blair knew something wasn’t right. Julian could have found out where Isaac was while they were split up, but the hollowness in his voice, the way he refused to look anyone in the eye… something was off .
A gunshot rang out.
Julian flinched, but he didn’t look surprised. Spencer ran towards the sound and Blair followed as fast as he could while carrying Wren, who stirred at the noise.
“Wren?” Blair cried, stumbling to a halt.
Wren blinked, eyes staring upward and unfocused for a long moment before finally drifting over to look at him. “Put me down,” he said hoarsely.
Blair did, but he kept an arm around Wren to stabilize him. Wren leaned into him heavily, and Blair wanted to think it was by choice, but he doubted it. “I’ve got to go see what just happened, you should wait here,” Blair said, guiding him towards the wall.
“I’m going with you,” Wren said.
The wail of sirens was getting closer. Against his better judgment, Blair didn’t argue with him. They walked as quickly as they could down the hallway, with Blair’s limp and Wren’s various injuries, to where a pair of double doors stood open at the end of the hallway. Spencer stood just inside them.
Blair saw it as soon as they entered the room. Blood, pooling under Felix’s boots. Isaac was slumped in his wheelchair with a grisly red hole gaping open on his forehead. Reymond was there, too, and Blair couldn’t spare the attention to wonder when he’d even shown up.
One wall of the pristine office was made up of computer monitors, displaying everything from the Phantom app interface to countless security camera feeds. The wealth of information and technology over which Isaac had reigned.
“He was inside,” Felix said, lowering his gun. “Isaac was inside the building I burned down back then. He was the kid whose legs were crushed by the support beams collapsing. When I got out of prison and went back to crime, he decided I needed to be taken down.” He shrugged out of his coat. “He gave me a choice: kill him and go back to prison where I can’t hurt anyone else, knowing an order for Phantom to disband would be sent out upon his death, or leave him alive, and he would never stop until all of Incindious had paid for my sins.
“I asked why he didn’t just keep trying to kill me after Adrian failed, but he said Adrian acted on his own. Adrian was too attached, thought he could keep Isaac from getting himself hurt if he took me out himself. But Isaac thought prison was a more fitting punishment than death.”
Blair stared at Isaac’s body. “But you don’t have to go back to prison, we can still get out of here.”
Julian stood in silence next to Spencer, tears gleaming in wet tracks down his face.
Felix stepped forward and pushed his coat into Blair’s hand. “They’re already here. Somebody probably heard all the gunshots. Go, all of you. The cops around here have been dying to arrest me for years—that should buy you guys some time.”
“But—” Blair said, weakly clutching Felix’s coat.
“Go!” Felix snapped. Blue and red lights poured in through the windows. “There’s another exit if you go out the back of this room. Spence, get them out of here.”
“Felix,” Reymond said, eyes glistening behind his glasses.
Blair heard the doors to the lobby crash open. Wren pulled at his arm. “Blair, come on. We have to go.”
Spencer grasped Felix’s shoulder for a long moment, and then pulled him into a brief, tight hug. Felix nodded to him and Spencer started yelling for everyone to follow him. Blair tried to speak as Wren dragged him towards the door at the back of the room, to say anything, but all he could do was twist his head to look back and cling to Felix’s coat with one hand and Wren with the other. Only Reymond stayed behind.
“Dr. Garrett,” Felix said as the police flooded the room, hauling Reymond towards him. “It’s been a pleasure.”
Felix kissed him, and the last thing Blair saw was the two of them being pulled apart by a flood of police, Felix straining against the handcuffs being placed around his wrists to keep contact just a little longer. Then the door swung shut and Blair limped towards the exit alongside Wren. They stumbled outside behind Spencer and Julian, and Marie awaited them on the other side of the alley, having just come down from the neighboring building with her rifle.
“Where’s Felix?” Marie asked. When no one answered she shook her head wildly, flinging tears from her eyes. “No,” she said, reaching for the doors they’d just come out of. “No,” she sobbed as Spencer caught her and held her back. “They can’t take him away!”
“We have to get out of here,” Spencer said, stroking her hair as he dragged her away from the doors.
Blair looked back at the building. “What about Doc?”
“He’ll be alright,” Spencer said. “We’ll get him in worse trouble by making it look like we associate. Come on, guys. We gotta move.”
Julian stood in the middle of the alley a few paces away from them. He looked so small and so broken, dyed red in the lights of the ambulance parked at the other end of the alleyway.
“Jules, come on,” Blair said.
Julian slowly sunk to his knees. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Blair looked to Spencer for some kind of help but he was even more shaken to see the man’s face wiped of emotion. One of Spencer’s best friends was being arrested and his other one was falling apart in front of him but he didn’t speak for several long moments. When he did, Blair’s head snapped towards him in shock.
“Julian, you know the punishment for betrayal in our organization is death,” Spencer said heavily, as though fighting tears of his own.
“Spence, please, I thought—”
“You were wrong.”
Blair had wondered, when he’d seen the way Jinx responded to Julian, but he hadn’t wanted to believe it.
Marie was the first to speak and she sounded like someone had pulled her heart right out of her chest. “Julian planted the wire. Didn’t you?”
The tears began streaming anew, and Julian’s narrow shoulders quaked. “Phantom contacted me after Adam got hit. They said if I helped them, no one else would get hurt.”
Even hearing him say it, Blair wasn’t ready to accept it. “No… you would have never betrayed us like that. Never betrayed Felix like that. Tell me,” Blair said, his voice trembling. “Tell me you didn’t.”
“I’m so sorry,” Julian repeated, body heaving with his sobs.
“Get them out of here,” Spencer said, putting a hand on Marie’s back to push her toward Blair.
Blair draped Felix’s coat over his shoulder and took Marie’s hand. “What about you? What about...” he trailed off as he looked at Julian, collapsed on his knees on the pavement.
Spencer gave Blair his keys. “If it isn’t crawling with cops tomorrow, we’ll meet at the bar in the morning. Now go.” Blair stared at him, eyes swimming, and Spencer shoved him. “Go!”
Blair went. He went without a word, because he no longer knew what to say. He didn’t know if he could put this much pain into words. He didn’t know how to say goodbye. Not to Felix, or to Julian. He kept expecting a rush of footsteps and demands for him to put his hands up, but they never came. A small mercy in a cruel world that didn’t make sense anymore. They went the long way to reach the Lexus to avoid the cops. When they did, Blair laid Wren across the back seat, who seemed to be slipping out of consciousness again.
Marie joined him up front and Blair laid his head on the steering wheel.
“I’m gonna take you home,” Blair said, his voice trembling with exhaustion and grief. “Then I’ve gotta get Wren to a hospital.”