Arelia ran over. She already knew, but she couldn’t stop herself. Please, somehow… please. She didn’t know what she was asking, who she was asking it of. It simply didn’t seem real. Seconds ago, they were chatting peacefully. Now… they’d never speak again.

Two men, broad-shouldered and bulky, cut from the same cloth. White suits stained with crimson. Blank eyes. Pallid skin, unnatural, almost waxy. Iron and salt, and something fetid, almost rotten. Her eyes dropped to the gash at their throats, and bile rushed up in hers. She backed away a few steps, then rushed around the corner to vomit.

Emotionless blue eyes stared after her. After a moment, Sasha scoffed quietly.

Arelia heard the sound over her retching and vomited again, disgusted with herself, with him, with the unnaturalness of it all. This isn’t right. This shouldn’t be happening. But it was. She’d helped set it off, but there was nothing she could do to stop it.

When Arelia tottered back around the corner, pale-faced and unsteady, Sasha was ripping into a bin. He glanced up, then went back to it, dredging up the food inside the bin to throw it randomly around the alley.

She leaned against the wall, catching her breath. At last, she forced herself to face the bodies again. Slowly, she knelt, getting a closer look. I’ll be the boss of the Regis Group in the future. No one will respect me if I can’t even look at dead bodies.

Once again, the bloody scent filled her nostrils. This time, she refused to look at their necks. Instead, she focused on the faces. The one on the left looked a little familiar. She stared, and the memory flowed back.

“Daddy?” She wandered a street, eyes wide, little hands clenched in her skirt. All around her, men and women in suits bustled by, but none of them were right. None of them were her father. She started to shiver. Her nose burned, and big, fat tears welled up in her eyes. Arelia blinked them back, desperately, but she couldn’t stop them from falling. Father had abandoned her. He never looked at her, he never took care of her, and now, he’d finally left her behind.

A hand wrapped around hers, big and warm. She looked up, expecting to see her father, but instead saw one of his bodyguards. The man smiled down at her and led her gently down the street. “Are you hungry? Let’s go get some ice cream.”

“Daddy,” she mumbled, barely coherent through her tears.

“He’ll be back before you know it.” The man bent down and wiped her tears.

She blinked up at him, eyes clearing. He smiled back, and carefully led her away. The loneliness was banished from her heart, replaced by conviction.

Even now, she remembered that belief. Father’s men care about me. They want me to be safe. They love me, so Father must love me too. Now, her cheeks burned. How could I have ever been so naïve?

But in the moment, it had been true. That thought had become her lifeline, the single proof that her father cared about her, all thanks to this man.

This man, who laid lifeless on the ground before her.

Arelia gulped and dragged her eyes away. “Don’t kill them.”

“I didn’t this time, didn’t I?” Sasha replied. He gestured at the three on the floor, unconscious.

“But these two—”

“I couldn’t reach them in time. Should I have let them shoot me?” he mocked.

Arelia bit her lip. Her eyebrows knitted together. “We—we’re the good guys. We can’t kill.”

Sasha laughed like she’d just told a joke.

“What?” Arelia demanded.

“We’re the good guys? There’s not a man or woman back at that camp who doesn’t have blood on their hands.”

“June—”

“Is the Sole Survivor, or whatever you call her. Whatever that means.”

“She’s not.”

Sasha scoffed. “Did she deny it?”

Arelia shook her head. “She can’t be. She doesn’t act like it.”

Sasha smiled coldly. “How are killers supposed to act?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Cold. Creepy. Inhuman. But Sasha was a killer. He could be weird, but he didn’t feel like a murderer. Compared to the serial killers in movies, he was downright personable. June even more so. She frowned.

“Good, bad, they’re just labels people put on things after they happen. What’s good to me is evil to you. What’s evil today is good tomorrow. If you’re only doing this because you think you’re in the right, give up. There’s no such thing.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Are you saying Laredo has the right to destroy the Block, then?” Arelia asked disbelievingly. He had the right to destroy everyone’s homes, kill whoever he wanted?

Sasha frowned. “He isn’t right. But neither are you. What you want and what he wants, neither one is ‘good.’ They’re both your selfish desires. Once blood is spilled, it’s all the same.”

“I—” Arelia wanted to protest, but she didn’t know what to say. In the end, she was here to take over the Regis Group. Her intentions weren’t pure. She forced herself to look at the bodies and took a deep breath. Is it worth it? Am I willing to kill for this?

“You can go back. I won’t stop you.” Sasha bent and yanked the blades out of the men’s throats. The bodies sagged, limp. He wiped them on the men’s shirts mechanically, motions practiced, and tucked them back in his sling.

This is war. There will be casualties. Arelia gulped. She thought she’d understood. She’d thought—but she hadn’t understood a thing. Casualties weren’t nameless. They were her friends. The people she knew, who she’d gotten close to. No one was excepted.

She shook her head, then slapped her cheeks. No! I’ve come this far. Even if I’m not ‘good,’ I’m better than Father. “I’m not turning back.”

Sasha pursed his lips and shrugged. Casually, he turned to the supplies. He flicked his hand, and a dagger appeared. Arelia hesitated one more moment, then followed him. Between the two of them, they managed to destroy or dirty most of the supplies. The fuel was tipped out, water spilled, food thrown into the mess.

Sasha pried open a big wooden box in the corner and tossed out a few loaves of bread. Suddenly, he grinned, eyes lit up like a kid on their birthday. Slightly apprehensive, Arelia hurried over. Guns, ammo, and grenades laid on a bed of foam, carefully packed into the box. Sasha grabbed one of the grenades and started to jog away, gesturing for Arelia to follow him.

“Wait. I need a weapon.”

“Do you know how to shoot?” Sasha asked, unable to hide the mockery in his voice. He lowered his hand and tossed the grenade from one hand to the other, bored.

“No, but I can throw.” She grabbed a bag out of the ruined supplies and put a few grenades inside.

Sasha hesitated, then shrugged. He caught the grenade and toyed with the pin, then pushed her ahead of him. She walked ahead, turning back every few steps. Sasha dragged the unconscious men around the corner in the opposite direction, toward the battle, then hurried after her. As he jogged, he turned back and tossed something at the supplies. A small metal object pinged to the ground. Sasha danced backward, then spun and sprinted away.

Arelia glanced back and caught a glimpse of a dark green oval falling toward the boxes. Her eyes went wide, and she ran.

Louder than thunder, an explosion blew through her body, so loud she could feel it. The blast lifted her off her feet and threw her forward while heat scorched over her back. She stumbled into a run and kept going, half-ducked.

A second later, a dozen explosions rang out, one after another. The sound rattled off the walls and magnified into a constant roar. Force bashed against Arelia, pushing her away and onward. The heat only grew, burning from the alley, so hot she could feel it from this far, even through her armor. The buildings around them rattled and shook, and the one nearest to the crate shuddered, then began to collapse. Dust flew into the air. Bricks rained down, thunderous.

Sasha sprinted faster than ever. Panting, weighed down by her heavy armor, Arelia reached out after him. Slow down! she wanted to shout, but there wasn’t enough air to speak.

The dust caught up and swallowed them. Larger debris slammed into Arelia’s armor from behind, hard enough to bruise. Arelia couldn’t see her hand in front of her, let alone the floor. Thick air caught in her lungs, too heavy to breathe. She stumbled over cracks and lumps in the asphalt, buffeted by blows from the explosion behind them. “Sasha, I can’t—”

A small hand closed around hers. Sasha drew her through the dust. Arelia followed, blindly, each step a guess. The air filter in her helmet kicked on with a buzz. Under her feet, the cracked asphalt suddenly became smooth. Every step landed firmly. She chased after Sasha, barely able to keep up.

They burst out of the dust. Arelia gasped on instinct, despite the air filter. Ahead of her, Sasha had gone from black and pale to a brownish white. He turned back to look at her and laughed, mouth cracking open to reveal the only color on his face aside from his eyes, a startling red. “You look ridiculous.”

“You don’t look any better,” Arelia returned. She let go of his hand and brushed off her face and chest. The dust smeared over the armor plates, stickier than she expected.

Sasha shook himself like a dog. Dust sprayed in all directions. Within seconds, his clothes, skin, and hair were as pristine as before the dust cloud.

Arelia shook herself, too, but the dust stuck to her armor no matter how she tried to shake it off. Frustrated, she put her hands on her hips. “That’s not fair.”

He smirked.

They stood in the shadow of the tower, barely a block away. Sasha leaned around the corner, watching. It was surprisingly quiet. The building stood, unmoving, streets around it empty. The sun’s first rays warmed the top floors, glowing off the golden letters. Peaceful and quiet. If it wasn’t for the faint booms rattling down the road, Arelia might have mistaken it for an ordinary morning.

Sasha crept forward. He gestured for Arelia to follow him.

Engines roared. A fleet of cars burst out from the rear of the building and surged toward the battle. Sasha plastered himself against the wall. Arelia copied him. Her armor clanged against the wall. Sasha glared at her.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t do that inside the tower,” Sasha snapped.

She grimaced.

“How are we getting in?”

Arelia’s eyes lit up. “There’s a balcony near father’s office. I could fly us there.”

Sasha shook his head. “Too obvious.”

“The roof. There’s a roof access door no one ever remembers to lock.”

“We still fly past every window in the tower. Rejected.”

Arelia frowned, annoyed. “Picky.”

“If you want to die, don’t let me stop you,” Sasha returned.

She bit her lip. “I guess there’s the parking garage. It’s either that or the front door.”

“Parking garage?”

“The back half of the first six levels are parking garage. No one works there. I could fly you up to the sixth floor, but from there it’s up to you. The doors are all locked, and you need a key card to get in.”

Sasha nodded. “Let’s do it.”

“Father’s office is on the thirtieth floor. It’ll be a bit of a hike,” Arelia warned.

“Aren’t there elevators?”

“With cameras. Keycard-activated. Oh, and the cards only unlock the floors the card-owner has access to.”

Sasha paused. “Stairwell it is.”

Arelia grabbed him under the armpits. Her airfoils flared, and her jet fired up. “Alright. Hold on tight.”

Sasha reached up and held onto her arms, and they flew toward the tower.