"Sunset cover image with Sunset logo and Alex on a dark city street holding a gun and wearing a sling on his other arm [https://64.media.tumblr.com/9a37a6b822827738536ee21624ab2090/21ae31eedf392c86-d9/s640x960/50eeb9d71a82286299579f6b7f120cfb85f39abf.pnj]
Las Vegas, NV.
He Reads that what has happened is called a 34. First, Alex feels the pain.
Deep in the Story, he lives the experience of Hannah’s head, lolling and heavy, on her neck. She feels blood dripping down her cheek from a gash in her right temple and a deep stabbing pain in her side. There is glass in it from the broken window. She is crying but doesn’t realize it, as her vision begins to tunnel.
There is something lodged in Gareth’s stomach. Metal, maybe, or some shard of thick plastic from the crumpled door. Alex feels it work its way deeper as Gareth moves, wrestling free of the crush. His body is emptying itself, blood soaking his shirt. Alex feels the pain of bruising already starting on Gareth’s face and chest. Gareth is dizzy and scared. He knows what has happened, but has lost his words.
Alex doesn’t want to relive the impact, his own shoulder hitting the door, ripping from its socket, but he does. He doesn’t have a choice. Just seconds before, he’d had his left arm thrown around the headrest, twisting to face the backseat, making some stupid sarcastic joke that made Hannah laugh. Now he flinches, knowing that arm is no longer held in place by anything but skin. It is at once searing and blunt. He watches as he cries out, but not because of his shoulder. He cries out because of Reeve.
There was only a small scattering of glass on the black pavement, spread like diamonds across a night sky. Alex eased himself into a squat, mindful of his arm sitting in the makeshift sling they’d crafted from the jacket Gareth had been wearing. He lightly dusted his fingers across the ground as the glass crackled beneath his sneakers. It was getting dark and the street was empty. All other evidence of what had happened had been hauled away by the time they got back to try to trace where they’d taken Reeve. He touched the pavement. There was still so much Story to sift through, but Alex pushed.
There is a man and his daughter walking back to their hotel. They are startled when a spray of glass hits them just enough to sting. Then they are sickened, and then terrified when they see the body, limp and dragging. In a few moments, they won’t know what they saw, all of it wiped from their minds by the man in the black face covering.
Alex sinks deeper. The man’s black mask is hot over his chin and mouth, sticking to his face as he concentrates on reading thoughts like grains of sand beneath his skin. He counts them, picking out the ones that need erasing and grinding them to nothing. Alex lives in his careful method, which he uses to ensure no one remembers anything that had just happened. He is not here for them. He is from the aftermath. Alex turns the page back.
Another man in black. This one from the car in front of them. The man’s name is Kyle. Alex can feel a familiar ache in Kyle’s neck, in his knees. He suffered the impact as well—they all had. There’s only so much one can do in a 34, even with all the preparation.
Alex feels the impact on the other two, also masked in black. Her back muscles seizing up, the scrape burning on her forehead. And the other over there. Alex threads through the stinging in that one’s neck that tells him he’ll soon be feeling the impact of whiplash. They do their job anyway. Alex doesn’t want to care about them, but he can feel their pain and the adrenaline pumping through their hearts. It’s shocking to him that they’re afraid, even if it’s just a little. You don’t think about Neptune agents ever feeling fear, but they do. For themselves, but much of it, surprisingly, for Alex. He isn’t supposed to be there. There was no approval for the shadow. Reeve had bent the rules.
This isn’t what he’s looking for.
Alex heaved a frustrated sigh, limbs heavy and aching as he explored the Story. He was light-headed from the painkillers Gareth had dug out of his go-bag, hastily snatched from the battered and bent car before the ensuing onslaught of police, ambulances, and apparently a Sol Cleanup team. They managed to get out of there in time, Gareth carrying Hannah while Alex limped behind, until they’d found a public restroom to duck into until she woke up. By now, Neptune would have erased all record of it ever having happened, so it didn’t much matter. That’s why it was okay that they were back there, searching. Gareth had done his best to patch Alex and Hannah up, but it was a small first-aid kit, and there was only so much he could do in the limited window of time they could spare.
The drugs made Alex’s knack harder to control than it usually would be. There were so many details rushing at him so fast, and he didn’t have time for this. He felt Hannah lightly touch his shoulder and faintly heard her voice saying, “Anything?” But he couldn’t answer her yet. He tried to shake his head or shrug or something, but he wasn’t sure if it worked. He delved in deeper, working hard to focus.
Reeve’s mind is silent, disconnected from his own for the first time in a while. It makes Alex realize just how deeply ingrained his presence is in his head, and as he tries to shake that feeling of emptiness from his shoulders, he can see Reeve’s limp form, lolling against the seat belt, head resting on the window of the driver’s side door which is spider-webbed with cracks. There, in the Story, Alex can also feel, somewhere in the deepest parts of himself, the blank darkness that is Reeve. His consciousness has slipped from him. He is suspended in that colorless space that happens just before sleep. Not quite black. Alex re-lives his own panic as he registers the blood pooling on Reeve’s once-crisp white collar, plastering his fine hair to his face.
He feels the car jostle as one of the Neptune agents—Kyle—jumps onto the hood. Alex can feel the ache in his knees as he does this. It’s woven into the Story. His own bones throb with the sudden jerking motion of the car and he grits his teeth, biting back tears. He relives the struggle of trying to free himself but the seatbelt is painfully clinging to a gash on his chest and he can’t seem to maneuver his way out. One of his arms is completely useless, a heavy weight holding him back.
Alex hears the bang and crash of metal on glass as Kyle’s crowbar shatters a hole through the windshield. Seeing it again, Alex feels his heart about to pound through his chest and he struggles for breath. Kyle rapidly widens the hole. His movements are efficient and practiced. Once it’s big enough, he reaches through to cut Reeve’s seatbelt and Reeve slumps over onto the steering wheel. The horn blares fitfully as Kyle drags his body out onto the hood of the car and down to the pavement. Alex watches, helpless, as Reeve is dragged across the jagged glass, a horrible sound against the metal of the hood. There is blood on the steering wheel which, only moments before, must have bruised Reeve’s ribs. He watches as Reeve is hauled away. He re-lives the moment that his vision went white with fear.
This is my fault, Alex thought to himself, as he took a step to the side, following the path Kyle had taken. Just one step and Alex has gone from inside the car to out, and in that transition, he feels the weight of Reeve’s body, heavy and limp, in Kyle’s grip. He calls out to his teammate, “Allie, get over here. He’s heavier than he looks!”
Alex is startled by the fear he can feel even in Kyle. 34s are a risky maneuver. One they only break out for dangerous targets like telepaths. Kyle is replaying the crash in his mind, lining up the timing. One car in front of the target, one car behind. Slam the brakes in the front and gun the car in the back to cause a pileup that pins the target in the middle, open to attack at an intersection. They’d done well. By the book. The Icarus was an easy hit in the driver’s seat, clear shot. Kyle replays in his mind the moment Allie floored her gas in their third car, ramming into the target’s side, forming a T, like an arrow hitting a bull’s eye. Three cars, and then four.
Alex flinches, stomach dropping like a stone in a lake, at someone referring to Reeve as an Icarus.
The woman comes running from the car that had t-boned them, and takes Reeve’s body from him, heaving him over her shoulder effortlessly, despite her tiny stature. Reeve is barely the weight of an empty knapsack to her. This is difficult for Alex, feeling Reeve’s weightlessness. Reeve is too important to be reduced to single-digit pounds. It sharpens his anger into a knife.
He sees Kyle slip a black hood over Reeve’s head and cuff his hands together. Then he sees Allie walk south, sees Reeve’s body bouncing, weightless, with every step she takes. Sees his blood drip onto the sidewalk. Sees the man with the whiplash, the one who’d rear-ended them scant moments before, follow. His name is Fitz. Alex feels him Reach with his own mind and breathe into the blood and footprints on the sidewalk and turn them to smoke, sublimate them into the air.
“…don’t know, he just started moving, so I’m following him.” Hannah’s voice barely poked through into Alex’s consciousness. “Yeah.” There was a pause. Then, “Well, down the street. A few blocks.” Pause for two or three beats. “Right, um. Hang on. Let me see.” She gripped Alex’s uninjured shoulder tightly, stopping him. He looked up at her through the haze, realizing she was cradling her cell phone in the crook of her neck. “Stop for a minute,” she said. It took Alex a moment to realize she was talking to him this time. “Just a minute.”
Hannah jogged a few feet to the end of the block, obviously working to hide the limp in her gait. Alex saw her look up at the street sign and say something into her phone as she walked back to where he stood. “Right,” she said into the phone. “Yep, by the Pharmacy on the corner. We’ll wait for you there.”
Alex shook his head no at her. But she had already hung up the phone.
“Listen,” Hannah said, “We can’t go wandering on our own before Gareth gets back. He’ll meet us in a moment.”
Alex hadn’t even realized they’d split up. He tried to shake the fog of painkillers and the Story from himself, slowly working his jaw until he could get his lips moving. When he did, they were heavy, slurring. “Can’t. They took him that way.” He pointed with his good arm. “There’s a fourth car. She’s heading to a car.”
Hannah nodded, “Yes, and that Memory will still be there in five minutes when Gareth gets back.”
“But Reeve might not be!” Alex said. A man in a green coat sitting on a park bench across the street looked over. He was loud and the two of them were a sight. “Shit.” He lowered his voice, “They have him in a car, and I don’t know where they’re taking him yet. They have a head start on us by who knows how long. What time is it? It’s probably been hours. We can’t spare five seconds, let alone five minutes.”
“Alex, I want to find Reeve as much as you do, but it’s almost 7:00; the sun has almost set. It’s been hours. We can’t catch up with them tonight. Not in this condition, not without a car, not without money. Wait for Gareth to catch up. He went to get us some cash, and some more first-aid supplies.” Alex recognized the tone in her voice. She was trying to make herself sound more confident and calm than she felt. She didn’t want to wait either. After a moment, she said, “We won’t let them kill him.”
“Unless they already have,” Alex said.
“Shut up. Don’t say that.” Hannah brushed her hair out of her face, and Alex could see that blood had soaked through the gauze bandage on her forehead. He was worried she was concussed. “He’s alive.”
Alex nodded. He wanted it to be true, but he was scared. “Fine.” He slumped down to sit on the curb, cradling his arm in the sling. “Five minutes.”
He heard Hannah carefully ease herself down next to him. She said, “We’ll find him. We’re good, and this is what you were built for.”
Alex didn’t answer that, just looked across the street. The man in the green coat had gone back to reading some sort of leaflet. Alex reached out to his Story, following the chain from the curb, which connected to the street, connected to the curb across the way, connected to the park bench, connected to the man. Alex reached the fingers of his mind into that History, shoulders tense, wondering if the man was there for them.
Hannah said, “It’s a pretty sunset at least.”
He ignored her, concentrating.
“Fine, nevermind,” she said.
The man in the green coat, Alex found out, was just a teacher who’d been startled by a raised voice while burning his tongue on his coffee. Nothing more. “Sorry. I thought maybe that guy was—"
“I know,” Hannah said, “It’s okay.” She picked at the yellow-painted curb. Alex let his eyes unfocus, taking in the neon lights of the city. At least in Vegas, no one gave a shit who you were if you weren't a high-roller in a casino. After a moment, Hannah said, “Is he?”
Alex shook his head no and Hannah let out a sigh of relief. He said, “I felt Reeve go out, you know? It’s in the Story. One minute, he was driving, and the next, he was blank. Just… blank.” He shuddered. “Why the fuck is Neptune bagging Reeve? It’s gotta be some kind of mistake.”
Hanna shrugged, shaking her head. Her long hair was barely tied back in a loose braid that had nearly come undone.
“No idea. But I’ll tell you one thing. Neptune doesn’t make mistakes.” Her eyes were red and wet, and the streetlights, having turned on at some point when Alex wasn’t paying attention, made her skin glow with yellow light. It cast a long shadow in front of them, pouring out onto the pavement like ink.
Alex took a breath to retort, anger flaring in his belly, but before he could say whatever it was he wasn’t sure how to say, Gareth’s voice interrupted from behind them. “And, you’re dead.” He laughed, but it wasn’t real. He was forcing it. “You guys are being lazy. Gotta be on your guard right now. Should have seen me coming.”
Hannah looked up at him, tilting her head back as far as she could. He was holding a plastic bag that said “Thank you” a bunch of times down the front in several different colors. It was weird, how cheery it looked. “Nah, I felt you coming a block away,” she told him.
Gareth was wearing a new black t-shirt with a colorful illustration of the strip and bold letters framing it that read, What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
She lowered her eyebrows at him. “Really?”
He shrugged. “Don’t worry, I got one for each of you too. You look like you’ve been in a car wreck.” He gestured to the bloody stain covering too much of her shirt.
Alex grunted as he struggled to get back on his feet. His body ached and sitting down had been a bad idea. Resting meant he lost his momentum. His shoulder was a ball of fire, his legs quivering. Once he steadied himself on his feet, he said, “Can we go now?”
Gareth eyed him. “I don’t know. You tell me. Can you move? You don’t look so good.”
“Fuck off. I’m going back under. You and Hannah can come with me or you can stay here and munch painkillers.”
Hannah raised her eyebrows from her seat on the ground. “Jesus, Alex. He’s just concerned about you.”
Alex ground his jaw. “I’m not the one we need to be concerned with.”
Hannah started to reply, but Gareth motioned for her not to. She bit it back. Gareth said, “It’s fine. You’re okay, then we’re okay. Let’s do this thing, but let’s do it right. You go under, we’ve got your back, and once you have our direction, we regroup and plan our next steps. It’s got to be a plan. We can’t just go rushing in.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Alex shot back.
“I think you know that plenty well, but I also think you’ve got a head full of painkillers and panic.” Gareth dug into his bag, pulling out a box of jumbo bandages and tossing them to Alex, who gave him a puzzled look. “You’re bleeding again,” Gareth said, pointing to his collarbone.
Alex looked down at his shirt. He remembered feeling the airbag go off and hit his chin, throwing his head back. There’d been a burning sensation against his chest and neck where the seatbelt pulled and the airbag hit. His hands fumbled with the box, but he couldn’t manage to get it open, his left hand useless as it was. “It’s fine,” he said, tossing the box to Hannah. “We’ll deal with it after.” The idea of trying to change into a new shirt with how his arm felt made him queasy.
Gareth shrugged. “Okay then. See you on the other side.”
Alex closed his eyes, dropping his consciousness deep into the Story again. He felt Hannah’s hands somewhere back in the present, gently bracing his back, and heard her whisper, “Be careful. I’ve got you,” and then he wasn’t there anymore.
There is a boy—small, maybe six years old—crying. He’s dropped his ice cream cone. It’s mid-day. His mother is chastising him. This isn’t the Memory he’s looking for. He shifts the layers around, turning them like so many pages.
“Fuck, Alex, don’t make it too easy on us over here!” Hannah said, as she barely managed to catch him from toppling over when he stumbled on the curb, wandering into the street. He didn’t notice.
He is in the passenger seat of a police car, along for the ride. The blare of the siren is piercing in his ears, and the flashing blue lights are overwhelming. One of them is talking into the receiver, telling them they’re responding to the crash just reported. Closer. Alex realizes that in the present, his body is walking with the trail of the police car, as though it is moving in slow-motion, but it’s going the wrong way. He doesn’t need to go back to the crash. He needs to move forward.
He feels Hannah guide him back to the sidewalk, hears a car move past them. He turns the page.
Allie is thinking to herself, Shit, I hope he isn’t dead, and Alex knows this is the one. His eyes adjust to this new moment in time, the ghosts becoming more solid, Allie and Reeve supplanting the cops that would turn down this street just a few minutes from now. She is strong, unnaturally so. It’s not that she made Reeve lighter, it’s that she’s Strong. It's her knack.
She is clear now, walking past where he stands. Reeve hangs over her slim shoulders, unconscious or worse. Alex bites through the nausea and runs to keep up with them. His shoulder throbs in its sling. He can vaguely feel Hannah’s presence behind him, trying to keep up. He barely notices the pain in his legs as he moves.
The hood obscuring Reeve’s face looks wet as it bounces with Allie’s steps. That dampness terrifies Alex. It’s eerie, like some alien thing has taken the place of Reeve’s head.
Alex reaches out with his good arm and takes hold of one of Reeve’s cuffed hands. He doesn’t often do this, interact with the Story, not because it makes a lick of difference—it doesn’t—but because it feels wrong. It feels cold and ghostly and like a magnet of the same polarity as himself. But this time, he can’t resist. He takes hold of Reeve’s hand briefly before passing through the image. He thinks to himself, please, please, please.
They walk for what feels like miles, but Alex knows this is only because the Memory is playing slowly for him, and perhaps because of the pain. Kyle and Fitz are a few steps behind. Those are the names of Reeve’s captors. Allie. Kyle. Fitz. Alex burns them into his memory. He is trying so, so hard to Reach into Reeve’s body’s Story, to see if he’s still alive, but he can’t. Maybe he’s too afraid. Perhaps if Allie knew for certain one way or the other but she doesn’t know. She is scared, too. She’s got a job to do.
They need him alive, though, and she wonders if she’d hit too hard. She hates 34s. Too much gas, and it’s all over. They need him alive, and that gives Alex some hope.
Alex’s feet ache. Or maybe Allie’s do. He can’t really tell anymore. He knows he’s getting in too deep but he has no choice. Just as it feels like he couldn’t take another step, they stop. There is a car waiting for them, a fourth team member in the driver’s seat. He’s a big man, with reddish hair and a thin nose. Allie stops as Fitz opens the trunk. He watches as she unceremoniously drops Reeve into the inevitable black bag in their trunk, zips it shut, and gets in the car with the others.
Hannah kept her hand on Alex’s back, following when he took a step back into the road, looking back at Gareth. “Watch the traffic,” she said.
Gareth nodded. “I’ll do what I can, but pull him back if you need to.”
He takes a step forward to get in the car with them. He sits in the middle seat in the back, watching and listening. Once in the car, Fitz takes off his balaclava and says, “He’s gonna need some tending. Looked like he took a good blow to the head from the impact.” Alex is surprised at what a kind face Fitz has. His boyish, curly hair a mousy brown.
The man in the driver’s seat—his name is Harvey, Alex Reads—says, “I’ll get to it when we get there. You guys okay?”
Kyle nods, saying, “I’ve felt better. I think we’re all going to need a bit of tending.” He makes no move to remove his mask.
Alex’s breath catches in his throat as he watches Harvey type coordinates into his phone. Strains to see what he’s typing, but Allie’s shoulder is in the way. She is shaking out her short black hair after peeling back her mask. Swearing under his breath, Alex shifts his position, works to get a hold of this Page and turn it back.
He tastes salt and realizes he is crying, wonders how long that’s been happening. His head is scrambled—the drugs are finally starting to wear off, but the pain is setting in now, eating into his ability to concentrate in a different way. The Page is almost within his grasp, but it wavers. He is struggling to stay in the Story, but he can hear the buzz of traffic around him, can hear Gareth re-directing it and the complaints of horns. He needs to hurry. He needs to ignore those sounds. He reaches out his fingers one last time, straining, crying, sweating, and they brush through the ghost of Kyle’s shoulder. This man who pulled Reeve from the car like a sack of rice. His anger flares, but he refuses to let it blind him. The Page turns back.
He is in the front seat with Allie now. “I’ve felt better. I think we’re all going to need a bit of tending,” Kyle says from the back, again. Alex looks to his left. Harvey is typing in coordinates. He can’t make sense of them. Allie doesn’t know the code. Shit. Try again. Don’t miss this time, Alex, he thinks to himself. Don’t fucking miss.
Hannah’s voice was a faint buzz in the back of his mind, saying, “We need to bring him back out. He’s too deep.” He starts to feel her tug at his arm. He is becoming too Aware, and he dives as deeply into the threads of this History as he can, maybe more deeply than he ever has before. His fear of getting stuck has been replaced by his fear of losing Reeve. He knows this might be a mistake, but he doesn’t care.
He struggles to move his arm away from Hannah while staying in the Weave. His head aches as he reaches tendrils of his mind and of his gut (which is as much a part of memory as anything) into the Story. He dissolves himself. This is new for him. He’s never been this far in. Alex is used to the Memory being filled with ghosts, but now he is the ghost. He looks down at his hands, but doesn’t see them and he knows now that he can do it one more time. Fast, faster than anything, which makes everything he’s watching run slower, and the light is different, like it’s suspended in thick gel. He blinks, slowly, so slowly. Time has stopped. He’s not breathing.
He turns back the Page.
“I think we’re all going to need a bit of tending.” The echo from behind him re-plays in Kyle’s deep voice. Alex is sitting in the driver’s seat, wearing Harvey’s Image like a skin. Like a ghost possessing a body. OH-4N and KK872. He knows what this means because Harvey knows what this means.
Alex closes his eyes. He is too tired to drag himself back out of those depths. He can feel the lightest touch, like the brush of still wind against warm skin. He is moving. He can tell because that History fades. Now, he is seeing the formation of rock and sediment, worms and earth of the land beneath him. It’s mesmerizing. Deeper and older than he’s ever explored. It feels like forever. A comfortable forever. He’s stopped crying.
---
Entropy Residential Housing. Paris, France.
“Hey, has anyone seen my dad?” Wyatt called down the nearly empty hallway of the apartment building they owned, but no one responded. It felt like a slightly childish thing to call for a sixteen-year-old, but if his dad wasn’t going to take his calls, what other option did he have? They were supposed to be getting breakfast together and if that didn’t happen, fine, but Wyatt wasn’t about to get blamed for missing it.
He tried knocking on his dad’s apartment door again, the largest penthouse suite, but there was no response. He frowned and started toward the stairwell. His dad liked to keep the top floor pretty empty, so he figured he’d have better luck on a lower level.
On the stairs Wyatt passed Eric, a wind manip with a wicked temper. “Have you seen my dad?” he asked, switching to English instead of French and slowing to a stop. Eric narrowed his eyes at him impatiently and he saw his lip twitch in what could have been a suppression of a sneer. Being the boss’ kid afforded Wyatt a level of protection other Entropy agents didn’t have, but not necessarily a high level of respect.
“No,” he muttered and kept moving.
Surrounded by people his father had elevated and chosen, Wyatt felt average at best. He even looked average, with short, dark brown hair and thick brows that looked heavy on his pale skin. Continuing on, Wyatt wandered down the halls of the fourth floor. There was a young woman living there that his dad would occasionally have up to his place. Sara smiled warmly at him when she opened the door, but hadn’t seen his dad in a couple of days. Wyatt sighed and figured he’d make his way toward the ground level and take himself to breakfast if their plans had been forgotten. It wouldn’t be the first time.
A group of several people he didn’t recognize walked by. A couple of them looked emaciated and wide-eyed, marking them as newly promoted to permanent, dedicated housing. They always had that look about them after the warehouses. It would fade. “Hey, anyone seen my dad?”
“Who’s your dad?” A man with a gregarious expression asked with a thick Balkan accent.
“Marcus Adler.”
At least one of the thin ones flinched at the name and Wyatt swallowed. He never got used to it.
“He was headed for the second floor,” the man answered, his face gone stern.
“Thanks.” It felt awkward, so he jogged down the stairs, hoping he could catch up with him. Wyatt couldn’t remember when that had really begun. His dad had only been in a minor leadership role when Wyatt was born and he remembered a wider, more sociable group of his father’s friends being around when Wyatt was nine or ten, but at some point, he’d vaulted up in the ranks and people who had never even met him were suddenly afraid of his name. It wasn’t like Wyatt didn’t know that there had always been reasons that Marcus Adler had made people afraid, but it wasn’t directed at him until a few years ago.
The second floor hallway was congested with people milling around, speaking in hushed tones. Wyatt followed their sideways glances to room 204. The door was left open and he went inside.
A deep charnel smell hit him, halting him in his tracks.
“Might as well come all the way in.” His dad’s voice was pitched to carry from some room out of sight. He followed it to the bedroom, taking as shallow breaths as possible.
The body on the bed was almost unrecognizable as human anymore and Wyatt fought not to gag. The skin and flesh had been eaten down to bone.
Adler was there, staring at it with an annoyed look on his face. They didn’t resemble each other all that much except for the thin shape of their noses and round chin. Beside his own darker coloring and messy bedhead, his father had sky blue eyes and his hair was wheat blonde, longer on top and combed back. Even their voices didn’t match. Wyatt’s accent held a hint of Adler’s strong British cadence, but he mostly had his mother’s French inflections and he’d spent more of his life in Paris than not.
His dad sighed and shoved his phone back into the pocket of his suit pants. “I don’t know why they can’t keep this shit to the hardwood floors or tile. I’ve told them enough times. That is never getting clean.”
“Who is it?” Wyatt croaked, taking a step back. Was it?
Adler scratched his head. “Well, it’s Ronnie’s room, so we’re just gonna have to assume it’s him until he shows up somewhere. I didn’t forget breakfast—”
Wyatt groaned and averted his eyes from the bed. “Can we not talk about food right now?”
“But,” his dad continued at a slightly raised tone that lifted the hair on Wyatt’s arms, “I have to head out instead. They need me at the Kyiv office.”
“Can I come?” He hadn’t been yet and was curious what it was like.
“No; while I’m gone, you’re in charge.”
Against his instincts, he looked back at Adler. “What do you mean? What do I do?”
Adler cocked his head with an unamused smile. “I can’t hold your hand forever.”
There was no worse-kept secret in Entropy than Adler’s disappointment in how his son had turned out. Wyatt was too soft, too squeamish, too timid, and Adler regarded his negation power as practically useless. Wyatt had heard it questioned, in hushed tones and not-so-hushed tones, if he was even Adler’s biological son at all. For his part, Adler didn’t tolerate that kind of conjecture, and not because of his boundless trust of Wyatt’s mom. Adler was a telepath, one of the strongest to ever live, some people said. It’s not as though his mother could have kept an affair from him.
“When are you leaving?” Wyatt asked, reaching deep for his resolve.
“Now. You can call me if you need anything, and if I don’t pick up, just wait until Gideon is awake and ask him.”
Wyatt swallowed. That wasn’t going to happen. Gideon was the one person in Entropy that Adler answered to and he was one of them, so calling him a “person” was on the generous side, even though Wyatt knew he wasn’t supposed to think like that.
Adler made his way over to him and squeezed his shoulder. “Just keep the wheels on the tracks. Worst case, just repeat the phrase, ‘Why are you making this my problem?’ That should kick people into gear.”
He nodded. The softer tone in his voice caught Wyatt off guard and made him want to lean into his father’s hand, even though he knew intellectually that it wouldn’t last. It was just another tool in Adler’s belt. Wyatt swallowed and guarded his thoughts. “Okay.”
“Good, I’ll be back in a week. Get this cleaned up.”
Wyatt followed him out of the apartment. “Why are you making this my problem?”
“Very funny,” his dad replied dryly. He pointed to a woman standing in one of the groups, Evelyn, an older Italian woman who wasn’t Wyatt’s biggest fan. “Her.”
Wyatt grit his teeth. Whining or arguing wouldn’t help him when his dad took that tone. Nothing would. He walked over to Evelyn and nodded back to the apartment. “I need you to clean that up.”
She chuckled at him and glanced at the people she was clustered up with before turning back to Wyatt. “Why don’t you do it?”
He held his ground. “Because I’ve told you to.”
The disdain dripped from her. “No.”
Being Adler’s kid afforded him some safety, but it wasn’t like anyone was about to kiss up to him. Adler didn’t care about Wyatt’s opinions of people anyway.
Wyatt, came his father’s warning in his head. He was taking too long.
“I could hurt you and no one would touch me,” Wyatt forced out. It sounded shakier than he wanted.
She raised her wrinkled brow at him. “Okay,” she nodded, full of condescension, and turned around to walk away.
Wyatt stood, mouth half open not sure of what to do.
Do it.
No, he thought back, she’s old.
Do it or I will make you, and it will be so much worse.
Wyatt felt his core begin to shake. It wouldn’t be the first time his father had used his telepathy to make him do something he didn’t want to do and it wouldn’t be the last, but still it hurt. Feeling ill, Wyatt marched up behind Evelyn and hooked her ankle, sending her flat on her face in front of a suddenly very silent hallway.
“Clean it,” he barked. His voice broke on the volume but he got the words out.
She was slow to push herself up and it took all his willpower not to help her. She was old. Finally, she stood and nodded to him, mouth a little bloody.
Good. You’re getting better.
Wyatt clenched his fists. It was the last thing he wanted—but that wasn’t true. He could have refused and faced whatever consequences Adler could think of. And that was the last thing he wanted.
Wyatt went back up to his apartment and didn’t leave for the rest of the day.
***