Static/Cling (Subparheroes)

Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

THE HARD PART

“We can’t stay here forever,” Leif said, even as he snuggled harder against Bjorn’s chest.

“You have to get up first so I can make sure the cabinet doesn’t fall and bring people running.”

“Working on it.”

“Work harder, yeah?”

“You’re warm.”

Bjorn kissed the top of Leif’s head. “I do tend to run hot.”

Leif snickered.

“You’re an asshole.”

“You love my asshole.”

Bjorn’s arms tightened. “And the rest of you.” He held his breath, waiting.

Leif understood. Because it was one thing to say they were more than best friends. Quite another to invest that much truth in it, and he couldn’t leave Bjorn wondering if it was just him.

“Mmmm.” Leif snuck an arm around Bjorn’s waist and tightened it. “Same.” He breathed deep, recognizing the scent of Bjorn’s slightly electrified sweat, the familiar warmth of him, and did what he never, ever did. He sank into Bjorn. Not just physically, but mentally, acknowledging the safe, calm space that he usually only brushed against after sex, when he knew he wouldn’t encounter anything other than Bjorn’s tired satisfaction.

There was a lot going on in the bigger man’s head. Worry over Roger, and the dog, of all things. Anxiety mixed with curiosity about Kassian. Fear for their situation, even. But all of it overlaid with a kind of faith that took Leif’s breath away, because that faith, all of it, belong unequivocally, to Leif. He knew it like he knew Kassian didn’t like chipotle and Sal never left their office.

He knew it in his bones but didn’t quite know what to do with it.

“B?”

Bjorn shifted enough to get a hand under Leif’s chin, and despite the soft crackle of electric heat, the touch was reassuring. “Whatever you’re doing,” Bjorn whispered, “it’s kind of making my vibe spike.” He bent and kissed Leif then, deep and literally, electric in a way that made Leif’s heartrate skyrocket and his lips tingle.

When he pulled away, Bjorn’s eyes had a glow to them that lit up the small space between them. “I like it, but now might not be the time.”

“Your eyes.” Leif touched his cheekbone getting a sharp zap for his trouble.

Bjorn’s grin made him shiver, then the light faded, and Leif’s fingertips brushed against skin and stubble and honesty that made his chest hurt.

“So, um, guys?” Sal said.

“Yeah, yeah.” Leif shook himself. Their connection didn’t exactly go away but became more background noise and less immediately distracting. He forced heavy limbs to do his bidding and propped himself in a more upright lean on Bjorn’s chest.

Bjorn didn’t release his hold, which was nice because Leif wasn’t quite ready to give up the warmth. Periodic shivering still trickled through him, but at this point more because his clothes were damp with fear-sweat than from the residual effect of whatever that had been in the stairwell.

“Just that I’ve had Kassian’s earpiece off for quite a while now. I’m worried.”

“I thought his brother was there,” Bjorn said as Leif finally hauled himself out of Bjorn’s lap and onto his feet. They were on a mission, after all.

“I wish I could say that was a good thing.”

“Isn’t it?” Leif asked, alarm finally pushing back the fog and lassitude.

“I don’t know.”

“But you enlisted his help to get us in here,” Leif reminded them. “And now you’re saying he might not be on our side?”

“On the side of neutralizing this file, yes.”

“But maybe not on the side of doing that without sacrificing whoever he has to use to do it.”

Sal sighed, miserable. “Maybe not.”

Roger made a wounded sound.

“Don’t panic,” Leif said sternly. “Rog, how’s your big friend? Okay?”

There was a pause, and then Roger cleared his throat.

“Good deal. Sit tight. We will be back for you, yeah?”

Another little cough.

“You okay, little dude?” Antony asked in the background of Roger’s device.

“Yeah, Tony. I’m good. Ow. Dude. What the hell?”

“Sorry.”

“Rog?” Sal asked, fear spiking their voice.

“You’re a bit stronger than you think, yeah?” Roger asked, and Antony laughed.

“Maybe don’t squeeze quite so hard.”

“Maybe, yeah.”

“That’s better.” Roger actually sighed. “That’s nice.”

Bjorn so wanted to know what, exactly, was going on in that guard booth.

“So hey,” Roger said after a moment. “Do you think they found my dog yet?”

Antony didn’t answer, and Leif turned his attention back to more immediate matters.

“Where to next, Sal?”

“This building is divided into a back block and a front block with the elevators in the middle between them.”

“Okay.”

“Obviously, you’re in the back block.”

“Okay.”

“So up here, not many people use that back block.”

“Because of the haunted stairs.”

“I would guess so.”

“So, and I’m just guessing here, but we have to get to the front block, right?”

“You have to get to the middle.”

“The elevators.”

“That’s where Kassian is?”

“He’s in a sub-basement.”

Bjorn groaned. “I hate underground.”

“Well.” Sal drew in a breath. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to go down there.”

“Why?”

“Because the only way to get in or out is the elevator. And so…”

“Well, that’s a stupid building design.”

“There is an exit at ground level, but there was never a way to get to it from the outside without being caught. This is the only possible way to get down there and get to him.”

“Great,” Leif muttered. “Guess I’m up.”

“We aren’t sending Leif down there alone,” Bjorn said. He glanced in the general direction of the stairs, dreading the idea of going back down them, and worried Leif might not be able to do that, either.

Still, they could go down a different stairwell and out and try the other entrance.

“Babe, it’s fine,” Leif said. “I’m small. Hardly noticeable.”

“That isn’t how that works,” Bjorn growled. “You’re small, not invisible.”

“Let’s just get a feel for what we have to do, then decide who’s going where to do what. Sal?”

“We’re getting Kassian back from the sub-basement,” Sal said.

“But also, neutralizing this file.”

Sal sniffed, but said after half a heartbeat, “Yeah. That too.”

“And what about Rufus?”

Sal remained quiet too long.

“Sal?” Leif’s gut twisted. “What?”

“We may have jumped the gun.”

“Meaning?”

“Rufus had a plan I don’t think he was ready to put into action.”

Leif exchanged a glance with Bjorn, whose scowl was epic.

“Explain,” Bjorn snapped, so out of character it sizzled along their new connection and caught Leif off guard. He almost stepped back, but Bjorn, seeming to sense his surprise, took his hand and squeezed.

“He may need extraction,” Sal said. “Especially if his original plan is discovered, or if he tries to execute it too soon and it fails.”

Bjorn growled. The effect on Leif was electric. It should have been off-putting, as negative feelings from others often were. But this stirred him, and as soon as Bjorn spoke, he understood why. “You put this in motion too soon. You sent Kassian down there knowing it, and you put him and his brother in danger without warning them.”

“I had to. These people, Bjorn. The government can’t get to them.”

“And if anything happened to Rufus, Kassian will be devastated, and he doesn’t even know how much danger his brother is in. How badly this could come down on him. He’ll think it’s his fault.”

“Babe.” Leif reached for Bjorn, thought better of it, given his current mood, and let his hand drop.

Bjorn frowned at him, but instead of accepting the distance, he squared his shoulders and laid a hand on the back of Leif’s neck.

The sizzle of electricity was sharp over his skin, but fast, there and gone, then Bjorn kneaded his nape, sending a much more pleasant shiver through Leif at the powerless contact of skin-on-skin.

“File first,” Bjorn said, taking control of the conversation. “Am I right in thinking that there is no physical copy?”

“From what little I overheard before I had to turn off his device, they haven’t been able to decipher it yet, which means so far, it’s all digital, yes.”

“So what are our options?”

“Kassian,” Sal said. “He either takes it out with him, or destroys it. Though I doubt at this point, that he can do either without George noticing and getting very, very angry about it.”

Bjorn grinned such an evil grin Leif shuddered. “What?” he asked.

Bjorn lifted a hand. A shower of sparks danced from his fingertips and bounced off the poorly stacked furniture. The sheer quantity of pinpoint lights, and the crackle of his earpiece, meant Bjorn had somehow built up a good deal of power, yet he’d touched Leif without discharging much at all. That was a level of control Bjorn usually only had in the throes of sex.

Which he had to not think about right now, because hello. Mission Impossible commencing.

“Bjorn,” Sal said sharply.

“I’m just sayin’.”

“At the very least, you would have to destroy every computer in that building.”

“Point me to a server, a few wall plugs, and anything with a wire attached to it is toast.”

“That’d take a lot of power,” Leif pointed out, feeling a little queasy at the thought. The amount Bjorn had needed to fry one computer had been difficult for him to dissipate after. What would this amount of electric build-up do to him?

“And there is no guarantee the computer with the actual file on it isn’t air gapped,” Sal added.

“Even still.” Bjorn smoothed a hand down his shirt. “It doesn’t hurt to be thorough. And we hope that either Kassian or Rufus has the presence of mind and ability to trash whatever machine he’s working on, if it is air gapped, or whatever.”

“Okay.” Sal took a breath. “You’re right. We have to leave that to them. Nothing we can do about it right now, other than keep it in mind, should the opportunity present itself. So. There are two servers in the building. The main one is in the sub-basement, where Kassian is. The backup is on the floor where you are now, on the west wall, in the center of the front block.”

“Perfect. We take out the backup first, then go get Kassian and the main server,” Bjorn said.

“You won’t be able to fry even the backup server without that being noticed,” Sal said.

“And if we do that, the building goes on lock-down, and we can’t get to Kassian,” Leif guessed. “But if we go down for him and the main server first, we won’t be able to get back up here to this one.”

“This is what I’m saying.”

“There’s no point in not taking out both servers,” Bjorn said. “We leave one, we stand a good chance of also leaving this file behind, and all this is for nothing.”

“If we could do both at the same time,” Sal mused.

“But we can’t alert Kassian. If you turn his earpiece back on, it’ll set off an alarm, right?”

“Probably. If it works at all. He may be in a shielded area.”

“An alarm will be a dead giveaway he didn’t come in here on a whim, by himself, like he said.”

“And they’ll come looking for you.”

“We can’t be in two places at once,” Leif said, frustration making his limbs shake. He clenched his fingers, trying to stop, trying to not show Bjorn how much the stairwell encounter had taken out of him.

He should have known better. Bjorn frowned at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Leif—”

“I’m fine.”

Well, that was a blatant lie. As if Leif thought Bjorn didn’t know him well enough to pick up on it. He pulled himself up taller, his face implacable. “You’re not. You’re exhausted.”

“We have work to do.” His pale lips and the lines cutting in around his mouth, the way his scar stood out pink against the whiteness of his skin, all suggested he was still recovering from whatever power had accosted him in the stairwell.

“Yeah. We do.” Bjorn rummaged in the backpack with his clothes and pulled out the cuffs. “These are supposed to hold the charge, right? Then release it under some kind of control?”

“That’s the idea.”

Bjorn nodded. “Here’s what we do.” He sat on a nearby chair to unlace his boots.

“What are you doing?”

“I can’t get a good build-up with these on.” He kicked them off, pulled on his flannel and snapped the cuffs around his wrists. It took only a moment to see where the cuffs connected to the wires protruding from the shirt cuffs, so he hooked them up, then proceeded to shuffle over the carpeted floor in his socks.

It was the oddest sensation. Normally, the electricity seemed to settle, just under his skin, lifting the hairs along his arms, making his scalp feel all tingly, making his muscles twitch when it got very bad.

With the cuffs on, it all felt like it was travelling down his arms, but it never made it to his hands. He couldn’t begin to understand how they actually worked, but it seemed like they were, in fact, gathering the static electricity he was producing and keeping it contained.

He continued his electric shuffle, as he called it, which Leif hated, until the cuffs began to spark.

“Now what?” Leif asked.

Carefully, Bjorn unlocked one of the cuffs. He wasn’t sure what to expect. Maybe the charge would flash out of it, spread through the room, stop both their hearts, maybe burn his fingers. He wasn’t sure.

It did nothing.

“Hand,” Bjorn ordered, holding his out to Leif.

Leif didn’t even question it. He held out an arm, and Bjorn clasped the cuff around his wrist.

“What are you?—”

“I think that button there releases it,” Bjorn said, pointing to a red button with the word “ouch written on it in black Sharpie.

“You’d think he would have given you a lesson in how they worked,” Leif muttered. “Or labelled the buttons clearly.”

“I think he would have if I hadn’t been such an asshole to him.” He felt bad about that now, and hoped wherever he was, Kassian knew he didn’t feel that way anymore.

“Why are you giving these to me?” Leif asked, doing what he always did, and keeping Bjorn’s brain on task.

“Because I can discharge it myself. I don’t need them. You do.”

“What?”

“You need them to use the charge to fry the servers. I can do it without them, remember?” He trailed his fingers along Leif’s jaw, feeling the raised skin of his scar. Since he used the hand with the bare wrist, he had the tiniest bit of charge to release over Leif’s skin.

“So what?” Leif asked, tone belligerent, showing he already knew what Bjorn planned and didn’t like it, but that Bjorn’s touch was just distracting enough to keep him from losing his mind over it.

“So you can get your tiny, practically invisible self down the hall to the backup servers while I go down to the sub-basement for Kassian and the main servers.”

“No. Absolutely not by yourself. No.”

“Leif, there is no other way. We have to hit them at the same time, and you and I are it. You up here, me down there. It might give us enough time to actually get out before they close in on us.”

“You’re going to go in the sub-basement alone? Fat chance.”

“Now you’re just being mean.”

“I’m just reminding you that you don’t like enclosed spaces. Or the dark. Or spiders. Remember when we did the mine tour in second year? You almost passed out.”

“I’ll be fine. You don’t have the energy to make it all the way down and then out, possibly at a run. You’re beat.”

“And how do I get out of here?”

“They’ll be so busy with us, they won’t realize right away what you did. You just take the elevator down to the main floor and walk out the front door. Collect Roger on your way out. And his little dog, too.”

“But you’ll be by yourself.”

Bjorn tapped the side of his head, near his ear, but not on it, having learned that lesson from Roger. “I’ve got Sal.”

“It’s not the worst plan,” Sal said quietly.

“It’s not the best one.”

“Maybe it is, with what we have, and what we know.”

“Guys?”

Bjorn jumped at the sound of Roger’s voice.

“Oh! Sweetie.” Sal sounded so relieved Bjorn’s heart hurt. “Are you out?”

“No.”

Sal’s breath caught audibly.

“But it’s okay,” Roger went on. “I think I can help.”

“How?”

“If you go out the same way Kassian went in, we can make sure you have a clear shot from the storehouse to the small gate. Our transpo will be waiting when we get there.”

“We?” Bjorn asked at the same time Sal said no and Leif asked how.

“Yes,” Roger said gently to Sal. “I’m not a child, or a puppy you have to rescue, Sal. I’m an actual member of this team, and I’ll be okay.”

Sal made a distressed noise, but didn’t argue further.

“Me and Antony,” he told Bjorn.

“Oh.” Bjorn grinned. “Okay, then. That’s good.”

Leif shot him a withering look.

“What? He’d know if this guy was a baddie.”

“How?”

Bjorn shrugged. He didn’t want to say “because of the dogs, obviously.” Especially so soon after Roger had just reminded his keeper that he wasn’t a lost puppy to be rescued. But however he talked to the dogs, that was clearly not the only trait he shared with the animals, so Bjorn was confident in his character assessment.

“As for how,” Roger said, “that’s easy. I have an Antony.”

“I didn’t call the transpo, though,” Sal said, in possibly the lamest attempt at an excuse ever.

“I did,” Roger told them.

“I would have heard you.”

“I turned off my unit.”

“How?” Sal and Leif asked together.

“Well, I did watch you turn them all on, didn’t I?” he said. And for the first time, Bjorn heard something in his voice other than complacence or worry.

“But I would have noticed it going offline.”

“Not if I only turned off the voice transmitter.”

“You can do that?” Bjorn asked.

“I didn’t know he knew how to,” Sal grumbled.

Roger snorted. “Anyway. I’m back now. I’ve called for evac, so you two go set off your fireworks and get Kassian back. Ping me when you’re ready to launch so Antony and I can go berserk out here.”

“Rog,” Sal said.

“What?” Bjorn hadn’t thought it possible for him to sound irritated with Sal.

“Be careful.”

“Always.” His tone softened instantly.

Sal pulled in a deep breath and Bjorn found himself emulating them.

“We all ready, then?” he asked.

“I don’t like it,” Leif said, but he also motioned for the other cuff, so Bjorn figured that was the extent of his protest. He fastened the second cuff on Leif’s wrist, then tipped his face up to kiss him.

“Be careful,” Bjorn whispered.

“You too.”

Bjorn nodded. “And don’t go farther than you have to. You’re not in top form.”

“I’m fine.”

Bjorn huffed, yanked him in close, and for a brief moment, was able to enjoy an embrace completely free of the static that usually snapped between them. And without all the bother of having to fuck it all out first.

“Kiss me again,” Leif prompted. “I like it without the zing, too.”

Bjorn grinned and did as asked. “Same.”

“Now go get our guy back.”

“Going.”

He didn’t look back as he snuck out into the hallway and hurried towards the elevators. He might not have been able to leave Leif behind if he had.

Sal directed him along the deserted hallways to the freight elevator on the east wall of the inner front block of offices, and the stairwell next to it. “Take the stairs down,” they instructed. “Safer than the elevator.”

“Is this because Leif mentioned I don’t like small spaces?”

“It’s because I don’t know for sure if they have that lift monitored. We might set off an alarm or something if we try to use it. It requires a swipe card, which we don’t have, so I’m going to have to override that, and it might set something off. I’d rather you were closer to your destination if that happens.”

“Right. So why did you send us up here in the first place?”

“I hoped we wouldn’t need you. I had hoped Rufus could deal with it and that floor was the best place to keep you out of sight.”

“But Rufus only placed his brother in danger instead of trying to get him out of it.”

“I don’t know what’s going on with him. He’s gone dark on me, so we do it ourselves.”

“Okay. But I’m having a word with this guy about not being an asshole to the family he’s lucky enough to have.”

“Later.”

“It’s on my list,” he said.

“You ever go anywhere without a plan?”

“No.”

“Fair enough.”

“So stairs to the basement, then elevator.”

“Yes. Nice it works out that you don’t have to get into it until the basement. Less time to get stressed out.”

“That is true.”

“Be really careful, yeah?” Sal said. “The elevator is the only way to get into the sub-basement other than the outdoor tunnel. If you short it out trying to get on, we’re screwed.”

“Shit.”

“Get down there, first. One bridge at a time.”

“Right.”

The stairwell he took was empty for the first few flights, and there was no sinister creepy-crawly air to skitter over his skin, like there had been in the back stairwell.

At the main floor, he heard voices on the other side of the door and had to scramble back up to the landing above where he held his breath and prayed the two people who entered were going down and not up.

They did neither. They hurried up half a flight, forcing Bjorn to retreat further, while also being grateful he hadn’t put his boots back on, since his socked feet were silent on the concrete steps.

“What’s going on?” Sal asked.

Bjorn eased his head over the railing to peer down.

One of the people had their back against the wall, bracing them as their legs were raised and wrapped around the other’s waist. Both of them were naked from the waist down.

“Really?” Bjorn muttered, nearly silent. Not that the two people fucking each other’s brains out below would have heard him, with all the panting and grunting they were doing.

“B?” Leif asked.

“Wait,” he whispered.

“Waiting. But why?”

He didn’t dare talk anymore. The last thing he needed was to be overheard, and he didn’t expect the scene down there was going to be a long one.

He was right.

The muffled, guttural groans that drifted up to him a few minutes later, followed by the shuffling of clothing and the heavy breathing told him this wasn’t a tryst between two people in love, intent on lingering over the act.

Finally, the door below clanged open and the two people left.

“I’m moving again,” Bjorn said.

“What happened?”

Bjorn snorted. “Quickie in the stairwell.”

“Sweet Baby Jesus,” Sal muttered.

“Indeed.” Bjorn snuck down, careful to be sure they had both gone. When he reached the main floor again, he spotted a swipe card on the floor, with a snapped alligator clip lying nearby.

“Looky here.” He bent to pick it up, thought better of it, and instead slipped off the lined flannel shirt and used the tail of it to pick up the card.

“Ears, not eyes over here,” Leif said.

“It’s a swipe card. The sexy-times pulled it free of one of their lanyards, I’m thinking.” He turned it over, then grinned at the image of two arrows, one pointing up and one down. “And it’s an elevator card.”

“Horseshoe,” Leif muttered.

“It won’t take them long to miss it. Get moving,” Sal said.

“Moving.”

He dashed down the last flight to the basement and crouched under the window of the door there. It was a bigger window than any of the other floors, and he peered through it. “There are a lot of people out there.”

“Doing what?” Sal asked.

“Not sure? Milling around, but mostly looking nervous. Hang on. They aren’t all army.”

“What do you mean?”

Bjorn narrowed his eyes, squinting through the wavy glass and security wire. “They’re not all in uniform. Some are really young-looking. I think—oh! Shit!”

“What?” They all spoke at the same time, and he winced.

“A guy just… I think he turned into a…” He squinted harder. “Sloth? The hell?”

A figure in a miliary uniform strode up to the sloth and prodded it with something that made the animal curl a lip and lean away. A minute later, the human form was back, and being instructed to put their clothes back on.

“Okay, that was weird. But they’re filing onto the elevator now.”

“Up or down?” Sal asked, voice tight.

“Up.”

They breathed out a sigh of relief. “They’re letting them go. Probably through the front gate. No use giving away your secret back entrance to a bunch of rejects. Roger?”

“Yeah. I’m on it.”

“On what?”

“They’re probably all people with powers, but not ones strong or impressive enough for the army to use,” Sal said. “So they’re sending them home. Rog is going to watch and make sure they get out.”

“I thought they didn’t have that list of names,” Leif said.

“You’d be surprised how many people volunteer,” Roger said darkly.

“Or are just accidentally found,” Sal added. “Or dropped off by parents who are just assholes.”

There was a story Bjorn thought he’d want to ask about later, but right that moment, he saw his chance to slip out, straggle at the back of the clump of bodies, then slip into the freight elevator under cover of the crowd.

“Moving,” he said again, and eased his fingers around the crash bar. A massive electrical wave surged through him, zapping and cracking against the door, stinging his hand, sending the burning sensation up to the roots of his hair.

The lights beyond the door flickered and he froze, breath held.

They didn’t go out, though, and in the chaos of people trying to figure out what had happened, he ducked out and around the corner to the freight elevator.

“Building hates us,” he whispered.

Leif snorted because no doubt he remembered other times Bjorn had mentioned feeling something similar. Some buildings just didn’t dump as much static on him as others, and some places zapped him so hard his heart skipped beats. He could never explain why with science, so what other explanation could there possibly be other than that some buildings liked him, and some did not.

When he swiped the card, which he still held in the shirt, it thankfully worked.

“Remind me to thank Kassian for this stuff,” he whispered. “It really works.”

The doors opened immediately, allowing him to slip on without having to wait. They closed most of the way, hesitated, making his breath catch, but then shut with a metallic clang.

The freight elevator was at least a larger than average square box, the walls covered in moving blankets, and the floor inset with carpet tiles. Bjorn busied himself as it jolted into motion by shuffling in a small circle, rubbing his socks over the carpet.

The bigger charge he worked up, before he got to where he was going, the better. If he managed to melt down the entire building, he wouldn’t be sad about it.

A sharp, static buzz in Leif’s ear almost prompted him to yank the earpiece out, but it quickly passed, leaving behind a faint itch.

“Sal? What was that?”

Sal was silent a moment, then they sighed. “I didn’t realize the sub-basement was shielded. It makes sense, but… I should have known.”

“Kassian’s piece didn’t do that.”

“Because I turned his off before he got there.”

“Can you get him back? Either of them?”

“I’m trying.”

“I’m going after him.”

“The hell you are,” Sal said, and their voice startled him, because there was none of the usual gentleness in it. It froze him in his tracks for just a split second, and he nearly panicked before they spoke again.

“We have a plan,” Sal said. This time, though, their voice was back to the same, soft, quiet cadence he’d come to know, and his tensed muscles released instantly. “With Bjorn out of contact, it’s even more important that we to stick to the plan. You have to be exactly where he expects you to be when he expects you to be there, otherwise this all goes to shit.”

“Newsflash. It’s gone to shit already.”

“It’s salvageable. Stick to the plan.”

“They’re right,” Roger spoke up. “All we can do now is stay on target.”

Leif huffed, missing Bjorn’s presence, and his knee-jerk Star Wars quote he would have made, echoing those words. “Roger that, Gold Five,” he said, resigned.

Roger chuckled. “We’re getting all our people back, Leif.”

“Yeah.”

“And BTW, I’m keeping that code name.”

That shouldn’t have made Leif grin, under the circumstances, but he was suddenly very thankful for Roger.

“You have to move now,” Sal broke in. “We’re going to have to try and time this on the assumption he doesn’t run into any more roadblocks.”

“Right.” Tip-toeing to the door, Leif eased it open and peered down the hallway. It was deserted. “Doesn’t anyone work here?” he asked.

“I think they had high hopes of a lot of recruits they never got,” Sal said.

“What? They didn’t have a ton of people signing up for espionage and intrigue far from home?”

“The army doesn’t do espionage. That would require subtlety, and they are about as subtle as a sledgehammer.”

“True.”

“Not everyone with powers wants to be told what to do and when to do it every second of the day. The vast majority of people would make lousy soldiers.”

He couldn’t argue with that. He didn’t see either Sal or Roger being a good fit for the military. “So why did they let all those people go, if they’re hurting for recruits?”

“Probably because they don’t have useful powers.”

“But one guy cold shape-shift.”

“Into a sloth,” Roger pointed out. “If that’s all he can do, maybe not so useful.”

“Maybe not. ’Kay, I’m heading down the hall.”

It made him wonder, though. If they were willing to let people go because their powers were not great, what could Sal and Roger do that they’d had to be rescued?

Once out in the hallway, he shivered and glanced to his right. A cold blast wafted from the closed door at the top of the stairwell, and he shivered.

Hoarfrost still covered the window, making a beautiful display of shimmering white and blue patterns nearly impossible to see through. The window’s frame was also covered in a layer of frost, like someone had covered it in white fuzz. The door handle and hinges were silver with a thin layer of the stuff.

When he peered through the tiny slits between frost ferns, there was still nothing to see in the empty stairwell.

“Leif!” Sal’s voice was sharp again, like they had been trying to get his attention.

He blinked. His fingers were chilled to the bone, and he realized he was gripping the handle to the door to the stairs. “Shit.”

“What’s happening?” Roger asked.

“N-nothing. I’m good.” He glanced out the window again.

This close, he could feel the frigid air emanating from the space despite the closed door. No wonder people avoided the back block of offices. The feeling of dread didn’t stop because the door was closed. It was probably the most effective security system the building could have. It came with a lot of pressure and noise that got behind his eyes and left him foggy-brained.

The clamour in his head was deafening. Confusing. Worse than it had been on the way up, because then, he’d had Bjorn with him, with his big, warm, comforting presence, and the utter calm he projected. He didn’t get excited or panicked. He was always so easy-going. So simple. So very plain and easy to be around.

This was unbearable. Without Bjorn, there was only all this indecipherable noise. A constant barrage of sound that never made any sense, not even because, as he’d figured out at a very young age, he was the only one who could hear it, but because there was never any one thread he could follow to sort it all out.

Here it was worse. Maybe because there was no concrete form to hold all those chaotic thoughts. They fluttered in the air looking for a shell to inhabit and causing the space around them to spread too thin, too cold.

If he could just grip one slippery end of one thing…

He shivered.

How was this building so fucking cold?

He had to wrap his arms around his waist to try and keep some of his own body heat close. Closing his eyes, he tried hard to find a single coherent thing in the chaos.

And there it was. It wasn’t a sound among many, it was… an image?

A hazy idea of walking down a hallway, opening a door. Pushing a button.

“Rog?” a faint voice asked in his head.

“Just…” That voice. Roger’s voice, he knew. “There it is,” Roger said softly. “That’s good.”

The image returned, a little clearer, and he opened his eyes.

“Jesus fuck!” His toes hung over the edge of the stairwell. “How the hell did I get in here?”

“Focus,” Roger said his voice quiet, calm, but cutting through the noise despite that. The image this time was of himself again, backing up, backing up, backing until his ass fetched up against the crash bar on the door.

He did what the image suggested, and a few backwards steps brought him to the door. He pushed, the metal of the bar stinging his palms, and continued to back up until he was outside the door again.

Stumbling, he made it back into the storeroom and almost collapsed onto the floor.

“No,” Roger whispered.

Leif focused, glaring at Bjorn’s boots, still lying on their sides in the middle of the room. He couldn’t leave them there. Bjorn was an idiot, leaving them behind. Was he wandering the building in his sock feet?

“Leif,” Roger said, his tone firm, and Leif blinked.

The boots were in his hand, now. He’d lost anther second or two in thought. It was weird, going blank like that. Bjorn kept him in the moment. Only his recent bouts with the weird, untethered thoughts and memories on the stairwell had him off balance, and Bjorn wasn’t there to sort any of it out.

“Pay attention, now,” Roger said, and he blinked, because he was back out in the hall, standing there, plain as day, unsheltered, completely out in the open, with no conscious idea how that had happened.

Another image pushed his thoughts into the corners. It showed him running, down the hall towards the far corner of the building, around it, and out of sight.

“Go,” Roger demanded. “Now!”

He turned and fled.

Rounding the corner, he could hear footsteps behind him, but they weren’t chasing. They made their way down the hall, stopping at each door, opening them, and he realized this was the same procedure as had happened earlier.

“The door must be alarmed,” he panted.

“Probably,” Sal agreed. “On the off chance anyone makes it to the top.”

“They’ll look harder this time, won’t they? Since it’s happened twice in one day?”

“Doubt it. They’ll probably assume there’s something wrong with the alarm.”

“Keep moving,” Roger said. He sounded tired.

“Rog—”

“Just get away from that nightmare.”

“Thank you,” Leif said.

“I didn’t do anything.”

But he had, and Leif knew he had. He smiled, though it would be invisible to his two companions. “Talks to dogs my ass.”

Roger grunted. “Dogs are easy. People are difficult. Whatever is going on in your head is… impenetrable.”

“Not quite, apparently.”

“I have to rest. Go do your part.”

Since there was no more chatter in his ear, he figured Sal had turned him off so they could talk to Roger in privacy. That was fair. Roger sounded like Leif often felt when he hadn’t slept for a few days because the chatter in his head got to be too much.

It was always a low hum in the back of his head. Had been as long as he could remember. When he’d met Bjorn, it had been easier to ignore if he focused on his friend and let the simplicity of that relationship wrap him up. After the accident, it almost got to the point he barely noticed it. He suspected the low-grade electric field Bjorn emanated had something to do with that. Maybe it disrupted his brain waves, and possibly, that should be alarming.

To him, it had been a massive relief. He’d been so relieved, in fact, that he’d relaxed too much, and one moment of inattention, one second of Bjorn releasing an accidental surge of angry electricity, and the easy path they’d been headed down had closed off.

Bjorn had held back after that.

Leif, if he was honest, had too.

Yes, sex still helped. It helped Bjorn control his power, but it also helped Leif control the chaotic maelstrom in his head. It even, sometimes, gave him a moment of clarity. Like knowing, without realizing he’d known, or how he knew, that Kassian didn’t like chipotle.

He’d always hoped they could get back to how they had been at the beginning, but Bjorn was scared to hurt him. He knew that. And he’d eventually figured out that one moment of frustrated, uncontrolled anger hadn’t been directed at him. It wasn’t even who Bjorn was. Unfortunately it had unleashed Leif’s power in a backlash that, though he’d never said so, had hurt Bjorn and torn a ragged gash in their relationship they’d been careful to avoid ever since.

Until today.

Until Bjorn had unexpectedly said, without saying, the love word, then kissed Leif with all the things he’d wanted to say.

Maybe that was Kassian’s influence, reminding Bjorn not everyone had scary psychic powers, and maybe, that even people who did weren’t scary all the time.

If Kassian was going to bring that out in Bjorn, Leif was fully on board.

“Focus,” Roger said again, kindly.

“It’s hard. So much noise.”

He had a flood of images, then. Bjorn striding down a concrete hallway, Kassian hunched over a computer. Sal at their desk. Roger slumped in an uncomfortable-looking chair with a behemoth of a man watching over him. He understood the difference of what was real and what was imagined by the clarity of the images. Roger and Antony were crystal clear. The others, more like images seen through a fogged-over window.

“Stop doing that,” Leif told him.

“It’s fine if it helps,” Roger said.

“I’m turning right, Sal,” Leif said. “I’m between the office blocks now.”

“Good. At the end of that hall, you’re going to turn left. The servers are in the centre of the block on the west wall.”

“Got it.”

“Be careful,” Roger put in. “Those two soldiers are still around somewhere. Don’t run into them because you forgot about them.”

“Yeah. Now stop with the soothing montage. You’ll need your energy for your Antony, won’t you?”

Roger sighed. “Yeah.” He sounded so tired.

Leif hoped he hadn’t caused so much strain on him he wouldn’t be able to control his berserker when he finally let him loose. The last thing they needed was indiscriminate bloodshed. No. The last thing they needed was for Roger to be too wrung out to keep him calm, and still be stuck in that tiny booth with him.

“Fuck my life,” he muttered, and picked up his pace.

Earlier…

The sharp spark of pain and the loud crackling told Bjorn his earpiece was, if not fried, at least out of commission. That was confirmed when he spoke, and no one answered. Either he had finally managed to short it out, or passing from the basement to the level below it had done the job.

Whatever caused it didn’t matter. He would have no more help coming from that direction. He thought about removing it, but decided against that, just in case it might come back to life if he made it out of the underground bunker.

If they had a communication filter in place, then yeah. He could see it interfering with his device. It would be nice to know if it had set off an alarm, and if so, who would show up to investigate.

“Stay on target,” he advised his brain. All he had to do was figure out where the servers were, and where they were keeping Kassian, fry the former, rescue the latter, and do it before anyone found him.

“No problem,” he muttered, as the elevator bumped to a stop and the doors opened.

For a split second, he was elated. There was Kassian, just standing there, as if waiting for him.

Then he realized it wasn’t Kassian.

The man outside the elevator scowled at him, looking first confused, then surprised, then hella annoyed.

“Who the hell are you?” he barked.

“I—Rufus? Are you Rufus?”

The man grabbed his arm and yanked him out of the elevator, hauling him at a quick pace down the hall towards the back of the building. Only the fact Bjorn had slipped his shirt back on saved Rufus from being zapped by the static Bjorn had deliberately built up on the way down.

The guy couldn’t know what might happen, but it still pissed Bjorn off to be manhandled like that. The danger to him, the fact he could accidentally hurt someone Kassian cared about, put him further on edge because it wouldn’t have been his fault, even though it happened because of him.

He tried to pull free, but the grip was unbreakable.

The man was huge, and while he looked like Kassian, his features were harder, his frown lines more developed, and his shoulders even wider than Kassian’s.

When they reached a room with a windowless door, he pushed it open, shoved Bjorn inside and followed closely. The door closed with an ominous click behind them.

“Who are you?” he whispered in a loud, angry buzz.

“Why are you here?” Bjorn countered, instead of answering.

“I work here.”

Bjorn stared hard at him.

“You’re here for my brother,” he said at last.

“So you are Rufus?”

“Are you here for my little brother?” he asked again.

“Little?” Bjorn snorted.

“Are you?”

Bjorn crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you?”

Rufus pursed his lips, studying Bjorn. His decision, when he finally made it, narrowed his eyes and made his frown deeper, but he sighed. “The longer I can hold the ruse, the better.”

“What ruse?”

“As long as the general thinks I’m on his side, I have access to Kassian. The minute he knows I’m not, at the very least, I won’t be able to help him. More likely, I’ll be dead.”

“Shit.” It made sense. He had a million questions about why Rufus had joined the military if he wasn’t on the general’s— and presumably, therefore, the army’s—side, but they would have to wait. “So we have to get you out too.”

“What?” That seemed to take Rufus off guard and he backed out of Bjorn’s space.

“I have no idea, at this point, what side you’re on, or what plan you may have had, or if we screwed it up. I don’t have the time to care right now. But if you think Kassian’s going to just let you die, then his brains obviously don’t run in the family.”

Rufus shook his head. “You don’t know him.”

But Leif had said Kassian was okay. Better than okay, and he would know. Bjorn had faith in his instincts, so it was probably Rufus who didn’t know his brother. Right now, however, was not the time to educate him. “Where is he?” he asked instead.

Rufus shook his head. “You won’t get to him.” He started to pace. A gold chain on his wrist began a slow spin, as if on its own, and Bjorn wondered if Rufus knew he was doing it.

“I have to,” he said. “I’m not leaving him behind.”

“You’re one person. What makes you think you can get him out alone?”

It didn’t seem wise to tell him everything. Not until he was sure they were on the same side, so he shrugged. “The power of positive thinking.”

“That isn’t a power.”

Bjorn squinted at him. “Are you high right now?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I was being—you know what, never mind.”

“Oh.” Rufus’s cheeks turned slightly pink. “That’s— For fuck sakes. Just because you think you can doesn’t mean you can.”

“I’m a little fucking engine.”

Rufus stopped, arms crossed over his chest, face set in a dark scowl. It was probably meant to be scary, but Bjorn had seen an identical one on Kassian’s face so many times it had lost all power over him.

“Look,” he said, “either you’re going to help me, or I will run right over you.”

“My god.” He threw his hands up. “Are all his friends idiots?”

“And pretty. You can ask him. He said so himself.” Bjorn lifted his chin, arms still crossed, mirroring Rufus’s earlier pose, though he suspected he was much less intimidating when he did it.

Although it may have helped that a bit of a crackle filled the air as he moved, because Rufus took another small step back and the chain began to spin again.

“He wouldn’t think you’re pretty.” Rufus scowled. “He likes his guys much”—he waved a hand in the air—“smaller. Compliant.”

Bjorn smirked.

“I fucking hate this.”

“Not exactly a day in the park for me, either. Are we helping each other, or is this the part where we duke it out?”

Rufus flicked a gaze over him, head to toe. “I would take you apart.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Wait.” He dropped his arms, balling his hands into a fist as he realized what was actually going on. “You’re stalling. Why are you stalling?”

“You know it would be better for you if you were truly an idiot.”

“I can’t wait forever. The longer I’m here, the more chance I get caught.”

“News flash,” Rufus muttered.

“By someone on the other team, I mean.”

“Because this is a sporting event.”

Bjorn clenched his fists harder and more sparks snapped and sprang out, dropping to the floor to bounce, tiny balls of light, away from them before vanishing.

This was taking too long. He had to get past this guy, get to Kassian, get to the server, but he didn’t actually want to hurt Kassian’s brother. Not if he didn’t have to. “Look, I just want my friend back. I hope you just want your brother out of here. Whatever reason you have for helping these people, that’s your business, and I don’t care. I just want Kassian.”

“You have to wait.”

“For what? Your boss to stroll by so you can introduce us?”

“Kassian’s… doing something for me.”

“You couldn’t have had him over for Sunday dinner like a normal family?”

“I wish. Even if I asked, he wouldn’t come.”

“So not the actual point. And again, not my problem.” Though it hurt his heart a little bit to know Kassian was estranged from his family while he still cared enough about them to want to protect them.

“He’s the only one who could do this thing. And it had to be done here. I’m sorry. But it’s important.”

“I swear?—”

“If I could have done it myself, I would have, trust me.” He started to pace the confines of the tiny room. “But he’s the one with the brains. He’s the one with the right skill set. It had to be him. And he had to know he could get into the system uninvited to believe he could do this. He needed the confidence boost. Needed to feel the threat, but also to know he could outwit it.” He’d dropped into the peculiar tone Kassian often used when he was talking to himself. It made Bjorn wonder who Rufus was trying to convince.

“If he hadn’t been able to find the decoy, trace it, he wouldn’t think he could destroy it.”

“Wait. Decoy? Are you saying you lured him here? You dangled this file, or whatever, in front of him to get him here?”

“The file is real, believe me.”

“But the one he’s been so obsessed with all this time, that wasn’t even the real thing?”

“I couldn’t risk the real thing being out in the world, drawing attention, finding yet another person who wanted it for their own ends.”

“You tricked him.”

“I had to. I needed his help, but he never would have come if I’d asked. It had to be his idea.” He scowled again, deepening the lines around his eyes and mouth, carving a few more details of sadness into his handsome face. “It always has to be his idea, because he’s an arrogant, stubborn?—”

“Family issues aside,” Bjorn cut in. “If he hasn’t been chasing the real file, working so hard to make it invisible, then where is the actual file?”

“General Sherman George has it. And trust me, he’s made sure he’s the only one who does. That’s the only way it has any worth, either as a bargaining chip, or as a resource. Whichever gets him what he wants.”

“Which is what?”

“Who cares? All I want is for him not to have the power to destroy a bunch of innocent people. It can’t stay in the general’s hands.”

“You do know computers have a delete function, right?”

“It isn’t that simple.” Now he stopped, stance rigid, on the other side of the room. “We have to be absolutely sure it’s gone. Every trace. Completely destroyed with no chance of recovery.”

And there it was, Bjorn realized. Whatever Rufus felt for his brother, right now, Kassian was the tool he could use to get what he wanted. It sounded like what he wanted was what they were all after. So all Bjorn had to do was present Rufus with a different tool. A better tool.

“Whatever you’re having Kassian do with his coding, I can do it faster.”

Rufus frowned. “I doubt it. If I couldn’t, the only other option is Kassian. He’s a genius coder.”

“I’m not talking about computer codes. I’m talking about the hardware. Let me at the hardware, and nobody will be retrieving any files from it, like, ever.”

“You do know you can’t just smash it up. The server room is a room. An entire room. You wouldn’t get halfway through before you were swarmed by soldiers.”

“And there’s a backup on the top floor. Yes. I’m aware. But that isn’t the plan.”

“Then what is?”

“Take me to the server room, and I’ll show you.”

“And Kassian? You forget about him? I thought he was your main goal.”

“He is. But once there’s nothing left to retrieve, why keep him?”

“Why let him go? George isn’t just going to release him if he loses this file. He’s going to?—”

“Kill him.”

Rufus pursed his lips. His jaw muscles jumped.

“And you knew this. You asked him to do something to the file that’s going to get him killed.”

“I gave him the opportunity.”

“You lured him here knowing he was dead either way. If he refused, dead. If he succeeds, dead. What kind of fucked-up family are you people?”

“I’ll get him out if I can, obviously.”

“But this first. This before family. Before your own brother.”

“He came.”

“Because he wasn’t about to let a bunch of innocent people get hurt!”

Rufus clenched his jaw again. “He came,” he said again, taking a step forward. “He didn’t have to take the bait.”

“But you knew he would.”

Rufus sagged. “I had no other play. I wasn’t going to let that list get out, either. This was all I could think of. All there was. And I’ve already almost lost one brother to this madness.”

“So what? Kassian’s the expendable one?”

“You’re judging something you don’t understand.”

“And you’ve given in to hopelessness,” Bjorn spat. “You’ve decided sacrificing something as important as a brother, as family, is the only way. You stopped looking for a better way out.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know Kassian didn’t want to get you involved. He didn’t want to risk you getting in trouble. But I guess that was before he found you’re willing to risk his actual life.”

“I’m not—that isn’t—” But he never got a chance to explain what he may or may not have been willing to risk, because the lights flickered and a second later, boots clattered along the floor, and voices called out.

“I’m out of time,” Bjorn said, at the same time Rufus muttered, “He wasn’t quick enough.”

Earlier…

Leif flattened himself against a wall and peered back around towards the haunted stairwell.

Two figures were striding towards that last storage room door. He glanced down at the boots he still carried, relieved he’d accidentally gone back in and found them.

“I think there’s more frost than earlier,” one of them said, bringing his attention back around to them.

In the eerie silence of the abandoned floor, their voices carried surprisingly far.

“Relax. It comes and goes.”

“That much, though?”

“Who cares? I’m not opening it to find out.”

“Jesus fuck, please don’t open it,” Leif whispered.

“Twice in one day, though.”

“Be my guest, if you want, but wait until I’m at the other end of the building. Trust me. You don’t want to know what’s down there.”

“What is it?”

“Honestly, no one knows for sure, and I’m not interested in being the SOB who finds out.”

“You don’t follow a lot of orders, do you?”

The voices were getting closer now, so Leif eased away from the corner and flattened himself into the shallow alcove of a door, staying close enough to hear them, still.

“What orders? We don’t have orders. We have instructions. Make sure no one comes out of that door. Not like this is the army or something.”

“What did they just say?” Sal asked, voice frigid.

“Shh,” Roger warned. “Stay quiet, Leif.”

Like he needed the reminder, but still. He clamped his teeth shut and pursed his lips, to make Roger happy, even though he couldn’t see it.

Finally, the two people passed by and after another minute, a door at that end of the building opened and closed.

“They’re back in their guard booth,” Sal said. “Go fast, while they re still getting settled. The door you want is on the west wall.”

“You already said,” Leif whispered.

“Sorry. Just?—”

“Shh. I’m going.”

He stayed close to the wall as he hurried down the passage. The lock on the server room door was, thankfully, electronic, and Leif made a mental note to make sure next time they went on this kind of adventure, it was one of the things they remembered to check before hand. He would have been screwed standing in the hallways, plain as day, trying to pick a mechanical lock.

As it was, just getting the super-charged cuff close to the card-swipe was enough to make it buzz and click, and he could easily swing the door open.

“Now hurry,” Sal warned. “That has probably set off an alarm of some sort, and they aren’t that far away.”

“Right.”

Leif glanced around, decided on the nearest block of servers, laid his palm flat over the face of it, then pushed the “ouch” button.

“Fuck. My. Life.” He ground the words out through gritted teeth. Because “ouch” was a massive understatement. It felt like the skin around his wrist was on fire.

“That’s gonna leave a mark.”

But watching the way static charge raced through the machines like tiny blue flickers of lightning was as satisfying as it was painful.

“It’s not going to make it to the very end of the room,” Sal warned.

“I got this,” Leif told them, and hurried to the far end to use the other cuff.

Knowing what was coming this time didn’t help a lot. How Bjorn managed to do this on almost a daily basis, he had no idea. His lover’s heart had to be made of strong stuff. Leif could feel his literally fluttering in his chest.

When there was no more charge left in either cuff, he sagged against a wall to breathe.

“Now what?” he asked.

And got no answer. Nothing. Not even static.

“Again,” he muttered, “fuck my life.”

Which was when the door to the little room flew open and the two soldiers appeared, guns pointed at him.

“Hi?” He lifted both hands to where they could see them, next to his head, and waved with the fingers of one of them.

“I told you!” one of them said. “Someone was up here.”

“Shut up.”

“Yes,” Leif agreed. “The question isn’t who was right, but what do you do now?”

They glared.

“You should take me to the computer guy,” he suggested.

“Why would we do that?” one of them asked.

Leif waved around the room. “Computers? He’ll know what to do about this.”

They glanced at each other.

“You don’t want to bring me to George. Not until you can tell him about this.”

“Tell him what?”

“That’s why you want to bring me to the computer guy.”

They both nodded. “Right. Come on.” One of them waved their gun, and Leif moved to comply. It wasn’t ideal. His logic made no sense, but so far, they hadn’t noticed, and he wasn’t dead yet. So maybe he could keep them off balance just long enough to get to Kassian.

Then, well… Then he’d figure out what came next.