Page 84 of Gunpowder

Felix straightened and they all gave him their rapt attention. “We’ve got him.”

Spencer’s mouth was set in a hard line, eyes not visible behind his tinted glasses. Blair looked down at the hardwood. Surely they should be celebrating. Chanting. This was what they had been fighting for, right? To get a shot at Isaac, to put an end to all this.

And then what?

It wasn’t like everything went back to normal. He had a leg that still hurt when he ran too fast and Julian was probably fucking traumatized. Blair had fallen in love and then lost him all during the course of this war. He feared Felix’s mind may never fully come back from the strain it had been put under in the past weeks. They killed Isaac and Phantom disassembled, and then what? How do we ever come back from this?

“We go tonight.” Felix tapped a cigarette out of the pack. “I’ll burn that fucking city to the ground if anyone gets in my way.”

Spencer flipped open his Zippo, and Felix leaned into the flame. Smoke curled away from his cigarette and up to the ceiling. Blair looked at Julian, who had gone pale, sweat visibly beading on his forehead through his bangs. He had his hands clasped together over his knee. Too tightly. Hiding a tremor. Blair wanted to ask, felt for all the world like he was missing something but if Julian was holding something back it was probably from Felix, not him.

Blair was sure it was taking everything Julian had not to speak against Felix, to remind him not to involve innocent people in this fight. If even Julian was staying quiet then he probably knew the same thing Blair did—that Felix was beyond reason.

When Wren opened the door, Reymond took one look at him and asked, “What happened with Blair?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Reymond’s jaw clenched. “Wren. Not worrying about you would go against my entire constitution.”

“He left. Okay? That’s it.” Wren didn’t even know why he’d called Reymond. There was nothing the other man could do.

“Why?”

“He said he can’t be distracted from Incindious right now.”

Reymond looked like he wanted to open a couple new orifices in Blair’s body, but something in Wren’s voice must have stopped him from pushing the matter any further. “We can skip the graduation ceremonies if you aren’t feeling up to it, go and get some air instead,” he offered, resting a hand on Wren’s shoulder.

“I’ll catch up.” Wren shrugged his hand off and rubbed his eyes.

“Are you sure you don’t want to—”

Wren closed the door in his face. He went into his bedroom, then into the walk-in closet. He wrenched open the top drawer of his dresser and stared down at its contents.

Blair may have thought he was fooling Wren with the emotionless act, but Wren knew true emptiness. He knew numbness. That wasn’t what he’d seen in Blair’s eyes. Wren fastened the snaps around his wrists and pulled his sleeves down. He just had to get graduation over with, then he could deal with Blair.

Wren shouldn’t have come to his graduation.

The event hall was packed with people waiting to go into the auditorium where the actual ceremony would be held, and Wren was not doing well.

He pushed through the crowd of students—some of whom tried to speak to him, but he could only stumble past them as he tried to find somewhere the people and the walls and the noise wasn’t closing in on him. His chest ached with every breath. He caught Reymond’s eye as a group of students parted. Reymond started towards him immediately, carving a path with his tall, broad-shouldered body.

Someone bumped into Wren’s arm and it was like shards of glass under his skin. There was too much. Too much noise, too much pain overflowing inside, striking him with the irrational fear it would spill out and turn into bleeding abrasions on his flesh so everyone could see how weak he’d become.

“You were always weak, you’re only just now realizing it,” whispered his father in his ear. Wren looked around but he didn’t see the visage of Eli next to him; it wasn’t him, not the way it used to be. It was just the memory of a voice that had haunted Wren for so long that he could still hear its echo.

Wren couldn’t breathe.

He looked for an exit and tore away from the crowd as soon as he found it, reluctantly entering the teeming sea of people to reach the glowing red sign on the wall that promised him an escape.

Wren thought he heard Reymond calling after him, but it could have just been his imagination. Whether it was real or not, he didn’t slow down, he couldn’t. The hospital was hardly a calm or quiet place, and Wren thought in adjusting to it he had gotten past the panic attacks, but apparently not. He threw the door open and fought to stay on his feet as the fresh air hit his seizing lungs.

The alley he stood in was pinched between neighboring buildings. Cramped but blissfully silent save for distant road noise and the dulled hum of voices within. Wren unbuttoned his vest and hung it over his arm, then loosened the top button of his shirt. Breathing no longer felt like such an impossible task. He leaned back against the brick wall and closed his eyes. The door opened next to him, dragging him back out of the brief solace he’d found behind his eyelids. He looked over, expecting to see Reymond.

The person standing in the alley with him was not Reymond. They were easily over six foot, with long, purple hair. They looked at him with heavily lined eyes and a glossy smile. “Hello, Wren,” they said in a disturbingly pleasant, lilting voice with an accent that was too faint for Wren to identify

Every fiber of Wren’s being, every moment of training his father had put him through, and every instinct in Wren’s body screamed danger.

But the person before him struck as quickly and quietly as shadows falling. By the time Wren moved, there was already an arm clamped around his neck, compressing his arteries and plunging him into darkness.

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