Static/Cling (Subparheroes)

Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

REUNITED

The world blinked.

Kassian blinked.

“The hell was that?”

He waited, but nothing else happened. His screen stared back at him, waiting, paused on the cusp of him setting the whole thing irrevocably in motion.

The cursor blinked incessantly and for a split second, he panicked that it would go out and never come back.

“Stop it,” he rumbled at himself, and for once, his inner muscle-head wasn’t griping at him, but soothing. “You know that’s not how this works. You got this. It’s your superpower, right?”

“Right. Thanks.”

Not that it was his superpower. His power, such that it was, was decidedly not super.

Grunting, he rolled his shoulders and absently went back to rhythmically tugging at the chains. The cadence helped him ease back into the steady flow of typing. He never would have thought he would miss the thumping of Roger’s bouncing ball, but here he was.

“Code’s not going to write itself,” his brain reminded him.

“It’s noisy. Something’s going on.”

“You let me worry about that. Type.”

Slowly, he managed to filter out the sounds slithering through the cracks of his prison. He stopped trying to place them as they ebbed and flowed on the other side of the door. If someone was on their way to rescue him, he had to get this done first. If they were coming to put a bullet in his head, at least he could manage the successful completion of this one mission before that happened.

He didn’t strain to hear a voice he might know. He’d rather not hear that. If he didn’t hear them coming for him, it might mean they were already away and safe. He could hope.

He had to hope.

He had to get to that last line of code, to the last set of “if/then” and hit Enter.

Which he did.

With conviction.

Pushing out a sigh, he sat back in his chair.

Even that simple movement made his hips scream and his ass bones grind painfully, but he didn’t care. It was done.

He’d barely taken a second breath when the door crashed back against the wall behind him. A body slammed into the back of his chair, which jerked forward a couple of inches.

The stretch of his groin muscles, after so long immobile, was excruciating and he nearly bit through his tongue holding back a scream.

“Ow,” a voice said, not even ironically.

Kassian’s heart stopped. “Leif.”

“You guys are seriously ridiculous,” Leif said. “I told you it was all in the cuffs. I got nothing else going for me.”

“Shut the hell up!” Whoever yelled at Leif sounded unhinged and Kassian wished he could turn enough to see who it was.

“Fine. Fine.” There was scuffling on the floor behind him, and Kassian imagined Leif was sitting up from being tossed down there.

“You okay?” Kassian asked.

“Peachy. You?”

Kassian grunted.

“Kinda gives a new meaning to being chained to your desk, huh?”

“You’re not funny,” someone else snarled.

“I thought it was funny.” He bumped Kassian’s chair gently. “Don’t you think it was funny, big guy?”

“Hilarious.”

“Go get George,” another voice said.

“We’re supposed to stay in pairs.”

“Are you fucking kidding me right now? Go!”

“But they’re?—”

“Who’s got the guns here? Us or them?”

“But they might?—”

“Bullet to the head trumps powers. I’ve yet to see anyone with a power fast enough to dodge a bullet.”

There was a pause in their conversation, and then footsteps hurried away down the now ominously quiet hallway.

Behind Kassian, feet clumped on concrete, there was a dull thud and Leif grunted.

“Fuck! What the hell was that for?” he complained.

“You’re annoying.”

Another thud.

“Kick a guy when he’s down much?” Leif baited, though his voice was noticeably quieter.

And predictably, he got kicked again, which made him swear and tell the guy doing it he was a pansy-assed jerkwad for kicking someone smaller who couldn’t defend himself.

“Really not helpful,” Kassian muttered at him.

“If he’s gonna shoot me in the head eventually, I’d rather he just get on with it.”

“And I’d rather not get your blood and brains all over me, if it’s all the same to you.”

“So you do care.”

“Fuck off.”

He imagined Leif grinned then, because he didn’t say anything, but there was another thud and he whimpered.

“Leave him alone,” Kassian said. Not that he expected to be listened to.

His chair jostled again, maybe because Leif was hauling himself off the floor with it. Cold, sticky fingers touched the small of his back under his sweatshirt and he had to grit his teeth to keep from swearing.

If Leif was bleeding enough for there to be blood on his hands, who knew how badly he was hurt.

Booted footsteps strolled around until he could see the muzzle of a rifle, then a fatigue-clad leg, and then a man, training the gun at Kassian’s temple. “How many more of you are there?” he asked.

Kassian curled a lip at him.

“Keep working,” gun-goon commanded, jerking his head at the computer.

“It’s done.”

Leif’s hand had warmed some, stealing just a bit of Kassian’s body heat, and he feared it might be the only thing he’d ever be able to do for the man.

He closed his eyes as the muzzle of the gun pressed to his temple.

He should use his power. Not that he could come up with a single idea of what he could do with it. Even knowing that whatever he attempted would inevitably go sideways, he should make the attempt.

Try for the gun? If he lunged, he’d get shot. If used his so-called power, he might just end up getting Leif killed by accident.

Leif’s fingers flexed on his skin and a shiver skittered up his spine. They trembled, whether from cold or fear or pain, Kassian had no clue, but the chill to them was terrifying, and it seeped into Kassian’s skin.

He wished he had some kind of reassurance to give him.

He wished he didn’t feel so utterly useless. He’d succeeded in what he’d come to do, and still, he felt hollow. Not because he was about to die for it. He’d known since he first saw Rufus that was the inevitable outcome.

But he regretted Leif. He regretted Bjorn. The big, dumb, sweet idiot would never get over losing Leif.

Footsteps clattered out in the hallway.

General George ordered someone to “find him”—whoever “he” was—then he stormed into the room.

“What did you do?” The question ground out of him as though speaking through the rage was a trial. He rounded the desk to where Kassian could see him.

So much for the human veneer the man had worn earlier. His eyes glowed, like the whites had some kind of green, luminescent property, and his face was mottled in patches of too white skin and a greyish-green scale.

“Wow,” Kassian blurted. “That’s—a lot.”

“What—” George grabbed his collar and half hauled him out of his chair. “Did. You. Do.”

Kassian grinned through the screaming pain in his hips , feeling, just for a second, like he was channeling Leif. “Did you really think I was going to let you have those names?”

“I’ll kill you.”

“Won’t change anything.”

Leif made a sad noise and Kassian sighed.

It wouldn’t change anything for George, that is.

Leif’s fingers scrabbled against his skin. “Do something!” they seemed to say.

But what could he do as George grabbed the gun from his henchman’s hand and pointed it so Kassian couldn’t help but look up the barrel and into his furious face.

It was fine. If George was focused on him, he wasn’t paying any attention to Leif. But even as he thought that, George smiled.

Instead of pulling the trigger in that last instant, he moved the gun, pointing it over Kassian’s shoulder and down, a mean, ugly sneer curling his perfect smile into a mask of cruelty.

“No!” Jerking his legs, Kassian surged forwards, as if he could lunge from the chair. He wouldn’t be able to, of course, and trying would probably rip a few tendons in his knees, but all he had to do was knock George hard enough to disrupt his aim. Hopefully enough to buy Leif some time. The door was still open. He didn’t seem to be bound. He could make a run for it while everyone was on this side of Kassian and distracted.

Leif’s hand plastered flat and freezing against Kassian’s spine and a rush of cold, hard will shot through him.

He could wrap his mind around the gun, shift it, just a little bit. He could save Leif. He barely moved his feet. He had so little strength left in his thighs. Not nearly enough to get free.

Still, the screws in the walls gave way, flying from their anchors, spinning in the air, rocketing towards George so fast he barely had time to register surprise before they were embedded in his eye sockets. Each three-inch spike buried itself to the head in his brain and disappeared. A couple reappeared a second later, out the back of his skull.

They clanked against the far wall and dropped to the floor, covered in gore.

The cold of Leif’s hand, and the frightening chill of that alien will, evaporated.

George crumpled. The gun bounced harmlessly off Kassian’s shoulder as Kassian’s momentum carried him forward, unexpectedly free, but on legs so weakened from the strain of his constant yanking at the chains he had no hope of staying upright.

He only just caught himself on the edge of the desk to keep from pitching face-first into the computer monitors.

The soldier, caught off guard, scrambled for the gun, got a hand on it, then gurgled and fell over Kassian’s back. They both sprawled across the desktop, sending the monitors crashing to the floor, Kassian pinned under two hundred pounds of literal dead weight.

A hot, wet slime dribbled across the back of Kassian’s neck and down his jaw to drip off his chin. He heaved up, disgust making his muscles do the work. “Get off!” he elbowed at the unresponsive body. “Off!”

“I got you,” Leif wheezed, dragging the body off him by the belt and letting it slide, boneless, to the floor. “I got you,” he whispered, mouth close to Kassian’s ear. “Come on. You’re free.”

“How?”

“No idea. Who cares?”

He let Leif haul him up to where he could wobble on numb legs and stare down at the carnage. “Take the gun,” he rasped, revolted by all the blood, but determined not to let that stop him getting the hell out of there.

“No.”

“No?”

Leif pulled at him so he had to stumble forward, towards the door, chains still attached and clanking behind him. He barely remembered to drag the laptop off the table and tuck it under one arm. “You heard him,” Kassian argued. “Bullets are faster than powers.”

“Are they, though?” Leif asked, voice so quiet Kassian barely heard him. “Who’s dead and who’s not?”

“I don’t—what happened?”

Leif didn’t get a chance to reply, though, because as they made it to the door, another soldier appeared, gun pointed at them.

“Are you kidding me?” Kassian muttered.

The soldier narrowed his eyes at him. “Sit the fuck down.”

“Your boss is dead,” Leif said, jerking a head at the mess on the floor behind them. “Maybe calm down and don’t be an asshat.”

“It’s the army, Leif,” Kassian said, the regret deep, because freedom had been so very close. “They don’t stop because you took out their commander.”

“It’s not, though,” Leif replied, gaze fixed on the soldier. “The army, I mean. This isn’t a military base at all, is it?”

The man’s face paled and his gaze darted between them. “What do you know?” he croaked.

“What do you know?” Kassian p a nned to look at Leif.

“I heard a couple of them talking. This isn’t a military facility. Or if it was, it’s not now. So George isn’t a military general. He’s—what?” he asked their new captor. “A mob boss?” Bitter humour poisoned his voice. “Supervillain? Because General George is a stupid villain name. Just sayin’.”

“He has a vision,” the man spat.

“Had, because—” Leif jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “He’s not seeing much at this point. Kind of short-sighted, if you ask me.”

“You need to not,” Kassian muttered, and Leif chuckled.

“Yeah, I do.”

And yes, he did. Because that’s how he righted himself, wasn’t it?

“So,” Leif said, “either shoot us, or get the fuck out of the way. Places to go, people to kill and all that.”

Kassian’s blood chilled at the dead, flat tone suddenly there in Leif’s voice. So much for righting himself.

The gun lifted to level at Leif’s head.

There was an echoing rat-tat-tat and Kassian jerked in shock.

Then the gun dropped to the floor and the man who’d been holding it toppled sideways.

“We’re not shot,” Kassian whispered.

“Not yet,” Leif agreed in his perfectly normal voice. His arm around Kassian’s waist tightened, warm and strangely comforting in its normalcy. “Can we go now?”

“How?”

“Move,” Leif ordered, and almost without his conscious decision, Kassian began to shuffle forward, more power in his trembling muscles than he would have thought possible.

“Shit,” Leif muttered. “I’m sorry.”

And like that, the will to walk was gone and Kassian would have fallen if not for Leif‘s shoulder wedged under his arm. Even still, he shot a hand out to grip the door frame for more support as the unexpected strength drained away.

“What the fuck?”

“It’s hard,” Leif said, voice straining. “To not…”

They stepped out into the hallway before Kassian could ask what was hard.

A few paces to their left, a soldier stopped in their tracks and pointed a gun towards them, but before they could pull the trigger, their gaze landed on Leif. The soldier’s eyes widened, horror twisting their face, and they dropped their gun, spun, and ran.

“What is going on?” Kassian tried to pull away from Leif, but he needed the support. When he looked at Leif, there was nothing but an exhausted, bruised Leif looking back.

Leif maneuvered him to shove him against the wall outside their cell so he could step away. “I’m not doing it on purpose!”

“Doing what?”

“I need out of here. I have to—Bjorn. Or Roger. I need?—”

“Leif!” Kassian managed to lean the laptop on the wall so he could take Leif’s face in both his hands. “Leif. Breathe.”

For a moment, he was caught in the crystal clarity of Leif’s gaze, like falling into the sky, endless and impossible.

“It’s too much,” Leif whispered.

“I know.” Though he didn’t know. He had no idea. Still. He pulled Leif against his chest and held him there. “But I’ve got you.” he promised. “It’s okay. I promise you’re okay.”

He knew he was right. Because whatever had been happening, Leif had done nothing wrong. Of that, Kassian was certain.

Leif’s trembling worried him. He was so cold to the touch and couldn’t seem to stop shaking.

Kassian rubbed his face against damp, blond hair and whispered again how it was going to be okay.

“We have to move,” he mumbled as well, but that wasn’t to Leif.

“Wait,” his other half whispered back.

“Anyone could come along.”

“Breathe,” his brain told him.

“This is stupid.”

“This is necessary.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“You know.” His arms tightened, like they had a mind of their own, and he recognized that, for once, his inner muscle-head was taking over, doing what was needed, and he didn’t get a say.

“I don’t like it.”

“Yeah, you do,” Leif whispered, and chuckled wetly against his chest as he pressed his chilled body closer to Kassian’s warmth.

Yeah. He did.

Gradually, the shaking subsided to occasional twitching shivers and Leif wrapped both his arms around Kassian’s waist. “If it matters, I like it too,” Leif said after a few more minutes.

“Hardly the place, though.”

“We’re safe for a little while longer.”

“How do you know?”

“Shh,” Leif said. “Your brainiac is really loud.”

Kassian snorted. “You would like the muscle-head better.”

“I like all of you, now stop arguing.”

“I’m not arguing with you, I?—”

“With yourself.”

“Oh.” He closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the wall, and let his body have its way while his brain spiralled down into silence.

Rufus found them still leaning on the wall, wrapped around each other, an oasis of calm in the middle of the chaos that, somehow, hadn’t found its way back down their hallway.

Yet.

“The hell?” Rufus barked. “What are you doing?”

“Resting,” Kassian said, head still back, eyes having drifted closed. He didn’t have the energy to deal with his brother right then. Leif needed his calm, and he was using all his reserves to stay that way.

“Well, break-time’s over. We have to leave before George figures out?—”

“George is dead.”

“What?”

Finally, Kassian lifted his head to look at Rufus. “He’s dead.” He jerked his head at the still-open door. “In there. Grab that laptop and let’s go.” Gently, he levered Leif off him and turned his attention there. “You ready?” he asked.

“No.”

“We do have to make tracks.”

“I know.” Leif sighed, laid his head back on Kassian’s chest and squeezed him with more strength than a man that size had any right to.

“There’s one more of us in the building,” Kassian told Rufus.

“I know.” Rufus stowed the computer in Leif’s pack, then slung the pack over his shoulder. “Your guy’s taking care of the—” The lights snapped out. “Servers.”

“Mission accomplish—” Gunfire cut Kassian off, and he jerked upright. “Shit.”

Before his thought process progressed any further, Leif had torn himself loose and dashed away, past Rufus and out of sight around the corner chanting “no, no, no, no” as he ran.

Earlier…

Bjorn ground his teeth. “Who wasn’t quick enough?”

“We have to move.” Was Rufus’s unhelpful reply.

“Who else is here?” Rufus asked.

“What?” Bjorn frowned.

“That was a building-wide event in a building that generates its own power, so it didn’t come from outside.” He moved to the door, cracked it open and peered into the hallway.

Bjorn began to shuffle around the carpeted room. Whatever happened next, he was going to need more power than he currently held. “Maybe it was your people. Sal said you had some kind of plan.”

“Not one so clumsy it would telegraph we were doing something before it was too late to stop it.” He let the door close, holding it so it didn’t bang, as he turned. “So, who else is in the building?

Bjorn clamped his mouth shut.

“For fuck sakes! If you have any hope of getting out of this alive, you need my help. Unless you want to sacrifice whoever it is, tell me.”

For what felt like forever, Bjorn stared him down. What if he was reading the guy all wrong? But what other choice did he have? He wasn’t getting out of this room unless either Rufus let him go, or he hurt the man. He wasn’t going to accomplish this mission or get his friends back unless he got out.

Kassian wouldn’t want his brother hurt. Of that, Bjorn was certain.

“Fine,” he growled. “But anything happens to him, I will find you.”

Rufus stared. “You’ll hurt me if I hurt him, but not if I try and hurt you.”

Bjorn shrugged. “I’m made a certain way, I guess.”

“I guess you are.”

And maybe it was going to be his downfall, but he sensed his time was getting shorter and shorter. “He’s on the top floor taking care of the backup servers.”

“That’s what the power blink was about.”

“Probably.”

“God damn it!” He headed for the door as he spoke into a walkie-talkie, giving instructions about Leif’s whereabouts.

“You fucker!” Bjorn reached for him, letting the electric charge surge to the surface, seeing red at the betrayal, but Rufus was ready, and stepped out of his reach again.

“They’ll bring him down here, asshole,” Rufus said, glaring at the sparks shooting from Bjorn’s fingertips. “Then we’ll all be on the same floor at least.” He took another, slower step away from the threat.

“Oh.” Bjorn clenched his fingers and lowered his outstretched arm.

“Yeah. Oh.” He peered out the door again. “Soon as these guys get moving out of the hallway, you go left. The servers are just around the corner in a glassed-in room. You can’t miss them.” He held out a swipe card. “You’ll need this to get in.”

Bjorn eyed it.

“What?”

For answer Bjorn moved. A few small sparks flew off his sweats. He didn’t dare try to release any on purpose. With his luck, he’d dissipate the whole lot and have to start over. “My charge might be enough to demagnetize it.” He shucked his shirt and wrapped it around his lower arm, leaving enough loose to grab the card, holding his breath as he did so.

Nothing happened.

“Maybe it’s good. Worked for the elevator card.”

“If not, maybe use the fire ax in the wall across the hall?”

“Sure. Plan H. Or whatever letter we’re at now. What are you going to do?”

“Be invisible until your friend arrives, then collect him and my brother and meet you there.” The gold band at his wrist was spinning furiously.

“What’s wrong?” Bjorn asked.

“What?”

Bjorn pointed the card at the spinning band. “What’s going on?”

For a moment Rufus watched it, and slowly, it spun down to stillness. He looked back at Bjorn. “This probably isn’t going to work. You realize that, right? It’s a stupid plan.”

“Most of our plans so far have been stupid. So what? The alternative can’t be to do nothing.”

Rufus nodded. “No, I know.”

“Do me a favour?”

“What?”

“If you run into your boss, stay calm. If I noticed that thing spinning when you’re nervous, and I’ve only known you for five minutes, he surely knows to look out for it.”

“Not like I do it on purpose.”

“Maybe the trick is to keep it still on purpose. The focus might also help your nerves.”

Rufus tilted his head. “What are you? Guru of broken powers?”

“I can control mine under two circumstances. When I’m really pissed off at the person I’m using them on, or when I’m fucking them.”

“Seriously?”

Bjorn shrugged. “My control isn’t as good when I’m pissed off, so maybe don’t get me there.”

“Whatever.” He peeked out again. “Coast is clear. Go fast.”

Pushing down his doubts, Bjorn nodded, glanced both ways down the hall like he was six years old crossing the street, then made a dash for the corner Rufus had indicated.

Because at the end of the day, the mission had to go forward. If any of them died trying to get it done, those deaths had to mean something. He was not going to be the guy who let people die and still didn’t at least try his best to achieve their goal.

The room, thankfully, was exactly where Rufus said it would be. The door to the room opened when he swiped the card. Excellent. Didn’t it just figure that the only things working in their eleventy-seven plans were the electronic bits of it.

He dropped the card and shirt just inside the door and headed for the nearest bank of servers, hoping the charge he held was enough to travel through the entire room because once he let it go, he had no way to build it back up quickly without going back to the carpeted room.

He doubted he would make it there, shuffle around enough like a complete fool to build it up again, and get back here without getting caught.

Static skittered under his skin, as though eager to jump from him to the humming machines. Hairs along his arms stood up. He shivered at the power of it spiralling up his spine. Even the build-up he’d acquired to fry Kassian’s computer had not been this strong.

“This is going to fucking hurt,” he muttered, and laid his hand on the server.

Hurt was not the word.

The heat seared his skin.

The sparks that flew made him close his eyes against the light, so he heard, rather than saw the crackle of electricity as it skittered away along the metal frames of the server racks, and through innards of the servers themselves.

The scent of ozone and burnt flesh churned his stomach.

“Don’t let go,” he muttered at himself through clenched teeth.

His tightly shut eyes meant he didn’t see the threat until the windows at his back shattered and the noise of gunfire deafened him.

He let go then, sprinting the length of the server room to dodge behind the banks of machines.

He should be dead, or at least riddled with holes, but whoever was shooting out the room was apparently a terrible shot. Around him, the servers snapped and sizzled, tiny fires springing up in their depths to melt plastic and fuse wires and fill the air with acrid smoke.

“Great. If I don’t get shot, I’ll burn to death. Or die from inhaling mercury or some stupid thing.”

He growled.

“This is bullshit.”

Leaning his head back against the heating metal stand, he pulled in a breath, choked a bit, then called out as loud as he could. “Hold your fire!”

The gunfire ceased.

“Really?” Carefully, he peeked up to see between a slit in the racks.

Leif stood in the hallway outside the room, breathing hard, hands and shirt bloody, murder in every line of his stance.

“Baby?” Bjorn whispered, unsure if he wanted to get the small, angry man’s attention.

Leif’s head turned slowly, as though he fought against his own body, and he peered towards Bjorn. No. Not towards him. At him. How he could see Bjorn behind the racks of servers, how he knew exactly where he was, Bjorn had no idea.

“It’s me, babe,” he called. “You okay?”

Leif continued to stare. Whoever—whatever—looked out at Bjorn from his lover’s pale, clear eyes, it was not Leif.

“Fuck my life,” Bjorn muttered.

Earlier…

A second after Leif ran, the lights flickered back on.

“Generators still work, then.” Rufus started after Leif. “Come on!”

“Better than stumbling around in the dark.” Kassian pushed himself off the wall, prepared to drag himself along on his own. He was useless in any kind of a fight right then. What good was super strength if he broke like a porcelain doll before he got a single hit in? The chains still attached to the leg irons weren’t helping.

He’d taken a single step when the gunfire ceased.

“That’s probably not good.” He tried to hurry his pace as Rufus looked back over his shoulder. “Help me.” Kassian held out an arm and his brother returned to shove a shoulder under it and all but drag him after Leif.

“Don’t suppose you have a key for these?”

Rufus grunted in the negative.

“Shame.”

They found Leif standing in the middle of the hallway, bloody to his elbows, a soldier crumpled at his feet.

Approaching down the hall, another soldier in a smarter uniform than the rest, took one slow step after another, gun trained on Leif, a manic grin on his face.

“Caught you at last, did we?” he whispered.

“Laurier,” Rufus barked. “The hell is going on?”

Kassian recognized the grinning man then, from outside George’s office—had it been only earlier that day?—as the overzealous soldier George had sent for coffee. “Ruf?” he asked.

“Wait.”

Laurier glanced past Leif to Rufus. “The Xeno Project.” He motioned his chin at Leif. “Finally.”

“What are you talking about? That died with the last one of George’s victims.”

Laurier’s grin widened, showing more teeth and more madness. “That what you call them, then? Victims?”

“It’s what they were.”

“It tells me whose side you’re on.”

Rufus growled in disgust. “There’s only the right side. George was never going to get away with his insanity. The people he hurt are mercifully beyond his reach now, but his was never a ‘side.’ It was madness. I would never wish death on anyone, but what he did to those men was evil, and dying was probably the best they could have hoped for, so I am glad they’re all dead.”

“He certainly wanted everyone to think they were dead. But the last one, the essence of it, never died. The trouble was recapturing it.”

“Recapturing? The man died, Laurier. Threw himself down how many flights of stairs? There was nothing left to capture.”

“I’ll grant it was difficult. Most of the vessels couldn’t hold it.”

“You are making no fucking sense.”

“Just because Experiment 41 tried to kill himself doesn’t mean the research was lost.”

“Experi—41.” Rufus snarled. “His name was Albert Lewis. He was a person.”

“Lewis?” Kassian asked. “As in Sal Lewis?”

Rufus didn’t answer.

“Whatever,” Laurier snapped. “He was an important power, and we almost managed to recreate it. It was unfortunate that the essence got away, but here we are, with it back.” He smiled, perhaps what he meant to be a kind smile, at Leif. “And we can help you now.” He reached out a hand.

From nowhere, a dark blur flashed across the hallway, resolving itself into a snarling, biting dog attaching itself to Laurier’s outstretched arm.

Laurier screamed.

Leif sprang, ignoring the dog who had dragged Laurier to the floor, and straddling the flailing man. He grabbed Laurier’s head in both hands and glared into his face.

The grin that crossed Leif’s face was cruel. Angry. Not his grin at all. “Al Lewis,” he snarled, in a voice also not his own. It was his, yes, issuing from his voice box, his lips, but the tone, the anger, the finality and coldness of it, was not him on any level. “You remember that name for the last second of your life, and know that your experiment is over. Understand me? Over. The lab is gone. The notes are gone. The men who worked on it are dead. You brought this on yourself.”

A quick jerk of his hands, and Laurier’s neck snapped with a loud, jarring crack .

Leif slumped, sitting on the man’s chest, head hung, shoulders shaking.

The dog whimpered, let go of the man’s arm, and nuzzled his way under Leif’s hand until Leif scratched behind his ears, and he laid his head against Leif’s chest.

No one else dared move.

Whining when Leif stopped petting him, the dog wiggled free to grip Leif’s sleeve and tug gently until Leif glanced up at him.

“Hey, Dash,” Leif whispered.

The dog kept pulling until it got Leif moving, crawling off the dead man and creaking to his feet.

Before Kassian could move or try to stumble forward for him, Bjorn was there, appearing from behind the smoking servers to gather Leif into his arms and squash him into a bear hug.

“I’ve got you,” Bjorn said into his hair. “I’ve got you, babe.”

Leif melted against him.

“We have to get out of here,” Rufus told Kassian.

“What is happening?” Kassian turned to him. “That had nothing to do with a list of people with powers.”

Rufus nodded. “Yes. It did. Tangentially. The list was of people like Leif. People with undiscovered or low-level mental abilities. People they could use to recapture an escaped…”

“Escaped what?”

“Soul? Ghost? I don’t know, exactly, but right now, we have to leave. You hear the noise?”

Kassian frowned, but then it came flooding back, all the sound he’d blocked out. Distant gunfire. People shouting. Crackling, groaning, whining, like the building itself was complaining about it all. “What’s happening?”

“If I had to guess? George’s people trying to escape our people, and the building is on the verge of burning down.”

“What do you mean, our people?”

“You think I was the only one in here trying to stop all this?”

“Sal said you had a plan.”

“Never mind. We can talk after.”

They rounded a corner as they were talking, and Rufus stopped at a steel door, reaching for the code panel. He’d only punched in a single number when the panel shorted and sparked and sent up a trail of black smoke.

“Shit.” He deposited Kassian against the wall and started to pry at the front of the panel. He’d gotten it free and hanging from a few wires when there was a loud, resonant thud against the door from the outside.

“The hell?”

Kassian grabbed his shoulder and hauled him back from the door just in time, as the heavy metal panel flew inwards to crash against the wall on the other side of the hall.

The dog streaked past them all and flung itself into Roger’s waiting arms.

Next to Roger, a gigantic man stood, gripping one elbow in his opposite hand, looking sheepish. Even slightly curled in on himself like that, he dwarfed Kassian and Rufus.

“Hey.” Roger grinned at them. “We got them, Sal.” To Kassian, he waved a hand. “Let’s jet. Bus is waiting.”

Kassian let Rufus drag him from the building, and checked to make sure Leif and Bjorn were still following.

They stopped at the threshold. Bjorn’s face was pale, drawn in lines of pain, and that’s when Kassian realized he was shoeless. A trail of bloody footprints trailed back along the hallway behind him.

“Dude,” Kassian said.

“I know. I’ll bring sneakers for the next time I have to ditch the boots,” Bjorn said. “Lesson learned.”

“It was the glass wall that asshole tried to shoot him through,” Leif said. He turned his face up to Bjorn. “Then like a dummy, you walked through broken glass.”

“To get to you.”

Leif shook his head. “I can’t carry you.”

“I can.” The huge man stepped forward, but glanced back questioningly at Roger.

“Yeah.” Roger smiled at him. “Of course, Tony. Thanks. You also.” He looked at the squirming dog. “You could have been hurt, dumbass. You were supposed to get the ball.”

“He got the baddie,” Leif said tiredly and scritched his ears. “Didn’t ya, buddy?”

The dog yipped as Roger let him back to the ground. He danced round them as Bjorn got situated in Antony’s arms for the trek around the building. A micro bus waited on the roadside just outside the tall gates where they had first entered.

The side door of the bus opened and a head popped out.

“Ger.” Kassian lurched from Rufus’s support to clench a fist around the front of his eldest brother’s shirt.

Gerome gripped Kassian’s chin, turning his face this way and that, lifting it to find out where the blood had come from.

Kassian pulled free. “Not mine.”

“Asshole,” Gerome whispered as he pulled him into a bear hug.

“Blame Rufus.”

“I fucking will. Get in.”

“You have to help.”

Gerome all but lifted him into the van and deposited him on the long bench seat at the back. Leif clambered in next, joining him, and then Bjorn, crawling across the floor of the van to haul himself onto the seat as well, sandwiching Leif between them.

The dog scrambled in, wedged himself between Leif’s legs and laid a head on his thigh.

“Hey.” Leif patted him. “Thanks, yeah. This is good.”

Roger and Antony took the seat directly in front of them, while Gerome took one behind the front passenger, and Rufus took the passenger seat, next to his mirror image.

“Hey,” Rufus said.

“Hey.” Randolph gripped the back of his neck and pulled him close, touching their foreheads together.

“I’m good,” Rufus told his twin.

Randolph pulled in a deep breath, nodded, and turned to his task, pulling the van away from what was now chaos behind the tall metal walls.