* * *

For once, Pegasus didn’t know how to reply to that. Robyn had been wishing someone else could take on the burden of killing her sister. Was Robyn that much of a coward?

Could she truly have looked the other way while someone killed Sarah as if it had nothing to do with her? If it were the Robyn he knew, would she?

Oddly, it also made him angry. If you were going to kill someone for your higher cause, the least you could do was have the guts to do it yourself.

But then, if the girl weren’t a coward, would Sarah still be alive?

There was a metallic tapping onto the com. “You’re suddenly very quiet, not up to something, are you?”

“Don’t mind me, I’m being philosophical,” Pegasus answered. “Maybe you can help me. Are you an impostor or should I call you a traitor?”

“Do my orders come from the same place as my intel, is that what you’re asking? It doesn’t matter as long as it’s the right thing to do.”

“You have to do better than that.” What was right and what was wrong changed in everyone’s eyes. “You know what I realized? Some things can be fake and still be real.”

“Yeah, yeah. The best lies are the ones that have a shell of truth.”

“That’s what Sarah is, your truth. You can’t make me believe you don’t care about her or her parents. You can’t convince me those tears were fake. And neither are the ones you’re crying now.”

“That doesn’t matter. The mission is everything. You of all people should understand.”

Scorpion scoffed.

Pegasus gave her a warning look. “Really? Is that what you know me as? Mission above all else?”

He muted the connection. “What did Griffon say?”

Scorpion checked her weapon for the umpteenth time. “We hold back.”

“You were gonna kill me? Just like that?” Sarah asked.

She sounded closer, as if she were moving towards the door.

“Nothing simple about it,” Robyn said. “It’s not easy to choose between someone you love, even if a shadow of that someone, and everyone else.”

Pegasus tapped his fingers on the table.

Scorpion placed a hand on his to still the movement. “If you wanna go, we go.”

He glanced up at her. “You shouldn’t be going anywhere.”

“I’m not an invalid, but if you’d prefer having IT as backup, by all means. I think Sierra finally managed to shoot a gun without popping the clip out.”

Pegasus would be lying if he said he didn’t want to go, but getting through to Robyn was better than bursting in, guns blazing.

“What if you don’t have to choose?” Sarah asked.

Was she even closer now?

“I wish I didn’t have to,” Robyn said. “You can’t possibly know how hard this is. I keep telling myself you’re not my sister, but my heart doesn’t want to listen. So here we are, delaying the inevitable.”

Pegasus tensed, finger reaching for the com automatically. “Robyn?”

“I wanted to pretend for a little longer,” Robyn said, ignoring him. “But I can’t even do that.”

Pegasus jumped to his feet. He heard it in her voice. She’d made up her mind.

“Robyn! Don’t do anything hasty!” They’d already lost one sister, he was going to be damned if he was going to lose the other.

There was a strange sound and then the com was dead.

* * *

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Sarah came to a startled stop halfway across the room when Robyn shot the intercom. The lifeline to the outside was gone. It was just the two of them. And the gun.

Something had gone out of Robyn’s eyes. All that remained was defeat.

“It’ll be okay once you’re gone.” Robyn redirected her aim towards Sarah. “They’ll leave us alone. And our parents won’t have to die over and over again.”

Sarah clenched her fists, bunching up the towel in her hands. “Robyn, please… You don’t have to do this.”

“Remember what I said was my greatest flaw?”

Robyn’s breathing evened out. Her hand steadied. There were no more tears.

Everything slowed in Sarah’s mind.

In that frozen moment, she realized she was about to die.

As if it had already happened, and she was only now catching on.

Sarah took another step forward, adjusting her footing. “Robyn, please, don’t…”

Robyn exhaled loudly, closing her eyes for a second.

Sarah threw the bunched up towel at Robyn’s face. She lunged towards the door, pulling it open with enough force that she felt she would’ve ripped it from the wall had it not opened of its own accord. The shot hit the door instead of her.

Good thing Robyn wasn’t left-handed, her frazzled brain interjected as she stepped outside… and onto the blood.

Sarah almost tripped over the dead man right outside her door, slipping on the pool of his blood when she tried to change course.

Her fall split into a thousand thoughts screaming at her simultaneously in that one second. Gibberish, all of it, about death and betrayal and having nowhere to run. She crashed onto the mess of body and blood, neither of which she wanted to be touching.

She glanced back as she slipped when trying to get back onto her feet. Robyn standing in the doorway, gun pointed right at her head.

The air went out of her, and she turned herself over into an awkward position to face Robyn. She was practically lying in the pool of blood, a leg still sprawled over the body, blood soaking through her clothes, sliding under her hands and feet.

A gun was lying there, an island in a sea of red, probably the dead man’s attempt at defending himself.

Her eyes locked on Robyn, widening as the air was suddenly not enough to breathe. The wall was red with blood—except it wasn’t.

Robyn was crying, gun still in hand and aimed at her.

Sarah forced herself to not look away. A strange calm settled in her thoughts. As if it weren’t her lying on the ground under aim. “You don’t have to do this.”

Her hands slid through the crimson liquid slowly as she adjusted her position, her eyes fighting the urge to close. She didn’t dare look down, but she remembered where the gun was.

“A life for a world.” Robyn lingered in the doorway, hand trembling as if she’d never held a gun before. As if she hadn’t just shot and killed a man. “The price shouldn’t seem so high.”

“Robyn!” Pegasus shouted from the end of the hall.

Robyn fired a couple of shots in his general direction to ward him off as she pulled back a step, removing herself completely from his sight.

Sarah finally moved, hand sliding along the lukewarm liquid.

Robyn’s eyes widened when they once again met Sarah’s gaze.

Sarah ignored her own tears. Blood dripped from her hands and the gun she now held aimed at her sister. “Please.”

“You don’t have it in you,” Robyn said. “You said it yourself.”

Pegasus was shouting something from down the hall, but Sarah couldn’t hear anything above the pounding of her heart and her own ragged breaths.

The scene detached itself from her—or maybe it was the other way around—and she saw Robyn shoot her.

Sarah pulled the trigger.

Her eyes never closed, never looked away, drawn to the horror of it all. Not even as the shot came, the unexpected impact, and the pain she hadn’t been prepared for.

Sarah collapsed, unable to do anything else. She might’ve blacked out for a second or the world chose to darken around her, but she blinked and suddenly Pegasus was there.

He cursed as he tried to drag her away from the blood, but she was covered in it.

Pegasus kept talking, but she couldn’t understand a word. His voice seemed to be coming from the other side of a bubble.

Sarah sensed movement around her. It was hard enough focusing on Pegasus, and he was right there, kneeling beside her. His hands were wrapped around hers, wrapped around the gun, trying to pry it away from her grasp.

She hadn’t registered that she was still holding it. Her fingers refused to obey when she tried to let go.

Why was she holding a gun?

She gave Pegasus a questioning look, but he ignored her, finally managing to tear the gun away from her and set it aside.

He looked so worried, and she couldn’t understand why. When he pressed his hands against her chest, the bubble burst in a sharp pain. The world came crashing into clarity around her.

A faintly familiar voice was saying someone had been shot and asking if the doctor was out of surgery yet.

Sarah wondered why a doctor would be having surgery—it was very counterproductive.

Pain pierced through her flesh, down to her core.

Oh, she’d been the one to get shot.

Sarah tried to rise, but the pain interfered. With Pegasus supporting part of her weight, she was able to sit up.

Scorpion was kneeling next to where Robyn was lying on the floor. Sarah watched as she closed her eyes with a pained expression and her heart constricted.

Sarah shook her head, trying to deny the image. It had to be a dream.

No, a nightmare. “No… Don’t… Don’t die…”

She struggled against Pegasus’ hold.

Her sister wasn’t moving.

Was it real?

She tried reaching Robyn, but Pegasus held her back. She fought him, screaming inside her head.

“You’re bleeding,” Pegasus said.

Maybe he thought she didn’t know. She didn’t care, there was a difference.

Robyn was dead.

And if this was real, there was no waking up this time.

“We need to get her to the infirmary,” an unfamiliar voice said.

Pegasus held her steady. “She wasn’t really your sister.”

Did that even matter? She couldn’t not see her sister lying there.

Sarah struggled, trying to reach Robyn.

The world tumbled into a blur and she couldn’t breathe. Voices joined the maelstrom that threatened to swallow her. Sarah released herself into its darkening chaos, letting herself fall.

Pegasus squeezed her tighter. “Sarah? Stay with me.”

She didn’t think she could. It was hard to focus on anything anymore. Her gaze found its way to the walls. She couldn’t bring herself to look away.

The wall was red with blood.

Except it wasn’t… because the blood on the wall, she realized numbly, it was supposed to be hers.