Page 57 of Gunpowder

“I don’t give a shit if their little box there says we can come in,” Felix said, his red Tims dropping to the floor as he stood up from the couch. Cigarette smoke wafted around the bar as he came to join them. “We burn it down.”

“We can’t know for sure that Isaac is there. If he’s not, we’ll be burning down the only place that might have something to put us on his trail,” Spencer said.

Nolan, still on the couch with Adam, shook his head. “I’m with the boss. We’ve tried being patient and forming a strategy, and it hasn’t gotten us anywhere. We need to hit them before they move again.”

“It’s for naught if we don’t take Isaac down with them,” Spencer said, voice climbing. “Phantom’s resources are rooted in the Internet, we can wipe out as many members as we want and there will be plenty more to take their place. If we want to shut them down, we need to take out their leader.”

The argument more or less dissolved into chaos after that, with everyone shouting except Blair and Julian. Blair wanted to see if they even had a chance of getting into that warehouse before he voiced an opinion, and everyone already knew what Julian’s stance would be. Besides being Incindious’ resident pacifist, he was also a thief. His go-to would always be going in undetected and staying that way for as long as possible.

Blair dropped his forehead on the bar. He could see both sides. There was nothing that would satisfy him more than reducing that warehouse to a pile of ashes but if Isaac wasn’t there, they may never get another chance at catching him. It was a damn lucky break he found the warehouse at all. With how things had been going, he didn’t think for a minute they would be so fortunate a second time. The most ideal plan of action would be to get into the warehouse, either confirm that Isaac was there or search it for anything useful about where he might be, and then burn it down. Unfortunately that would require someone who could out-hack Phantom, and they didn’t have anyone like that.

Blair repeated the thought to himself and slowly raised his head from the bar.

Or did they?

15

GREED

“Maybe we could scout it and see if there’s another way in,” Marie suggested.

“No way in hell,” Nolan said. “We tried to scout Jinx’s apartment and look what happened.”

Adam frowned at being used as an example. Blair offered him a sympathetic smile from the other end of the bar, pointing down to his healing leg and mouthing, Welcome to the club.

Felix smashed his cigarette into the ashtray on the bar. “Which is why we take out that fucking warehouse. Best case we get Isaac, worst case we put a hurting on their numbers.”

Ricky gave Blair a look. It was weird to see big, boisterous Ricky at a loss for words with the rest of them. He usually had something to say even if it wasn’t helpful. It would have been nice to hear him pipe up, though, if for no other reason than making things feel normal again.

“Three days,” Spencer said, glaring over the top of his glasses.

Felix took out his cigarette pack, growled when he found it empty. “What?”

“Give it three days before we decide. Let me get through the damn reopening of my bar.”

“Let us have one good night before this goes down,” Julian added, swiveling on his stool to face Felix.

“Three days. Then if we can’t come to a better decision I’ll go drop the match my fucking self, and I’ll use anybody who tries to stop me as kindling. You got it?” There was a mumbling of acknowledgment throughout the bar, and Felix turned, his coat arcing out behind his boots. “Good. I’m goin’ to the corner store, I need a carton of cigarettes.”

Blair let out a breath that had been trapped in his throat. The boss usually just took one of Spencer’s cigarettes when he was out, so he assumed Felix just needed to get out of the bar before he changed his mind. The door slammed and the bell chimed all too cheerfully behind him.

Blair trusted Felix, and he admired him more than anyone else in the world, but sometimes he wondered if that raging temper caused as many problems as it solved. It had been infectious when Blair joined. He had wanted to litter the streets with blood and ashes just like the boss but now he was starting to fear it would be Felix’s ashes on the wind if he didn’t reign himself in. It’ll be okay. Blair was Incindious’ defender and if that meant protecting Felix from himself, he would do that, too. Or he’d at least try.

“Alright, everybody scram. I’m going to bed,” Spencer said.

Flushing nights weren’t quite as bright and alive as those in Manhattan, but the insomniatic murkiness of Blair’s city came as a comfort. One of the lights on Hao-Chi’s sign had been going out since he joined the gang, somehow still flickering and clinging to life. In the daylight or under one of the dim overheads in the alley, he knew he would find their emblem sprayed across the bricks. It wasn’t a luxurious place but it was his home and it was Incindious’ territory.

However, Incindious wasn’t Wren’s gang and Flushing wasn’t his city, and Blair was going to deliberately involve him in something dangerous anyway. No amount of excuses he could make to himself would change that.

He turned the shower on and stood under the spray that was just on the other side of warm, the water heater having never quite worked well enough to get it hot. There were times right after he was shot, when he still got chills, that it felt hot by comparison. It felt nice in the winter months. He didn’t care about the temperature that night, though. He wasn’t even making much of an effort to shower—he just stood with a hand against the wall, the water washing his hair down his lowered head, watching it run off longer strands that fell in front of his eyes.

Blinking the drops off his eyelashes, he wondered if Wren was awake. He wasn’t going to ask him tonight, not when Wren needed to focus on his classes in the morning. Blair just wanted to hear his voice. He selfishly wanted to say goodnight while things were still the same, as though he could take the fragile stability of their relationship and preserve it with such mundane words, in the tender hours that were neither night or morning that always seemed to bring the deepest sleep and the most thoughtless confessions.

He twisted the shower handle. The water had gone cold. Or maybe it was him that had gone cold from realizing how much of a contradiction it was, to be asking Wren to enter the line of fire when all he wanted was to keep him safe, be it from the war or his own habits, because Blair—

No. He pulled a towel over his head like it could block out those thoughts. His body dripped a puddle on the floor but he didn’t pay it any mind. His attention was seized by the divide between his loyalties and his feelings, where choosing either one seemed to inevitably lead to hurting either the gang he had sworn to protect or the person he… maybe cared about a lot.

Blair sat on the edge of the bed and sent a text before he could talk himself out of it.

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