Page 92 of Gunpowder

“But—” Blair said, weakly clutching Felix’s coat.

“Go!” Felix snapped. Blue and red lights poured in through the windows. “There’s another exit if you go out the back of this room. Spence, get them out of here.”

“Felix,” Reymond said, eyes glistening behind his glasses.

Blair heard the doors to the lobby crash open. Wren pulled at his arm. “Blair, come on. We have to go.”

Spencer grasped Felix’s shoulder for a long moment, and then pulled him into a brief, tight hug. Felix nodded to him and Spencer started yelling for everyone to follow him. Blair tried to speak as Wren dragged him towards the door at the back of the room, to say anything, but all he could do was twist his head to look back and cling to Felix’s coat with one hand and Wren with the other. Only Reymond stayed behind.

“Dr. Garrett,” Felix said as the police flooded the room, hauling Reymond towards him. “It’s been a pleasure.”

Felix kissed him, and the last thing Blair saw was the two of them being pulled apart by a flood of police, Felix straining against the handcuffs being placed around his wrists to keep contact just a little longer. Then the door swung shut and Blair limped towards the exit alongside Wren. They stumbled outside behind Spencer and Julian, and Marie awaited them on the other side of the alley, having just come down from the neighboring building with her rifle.

“Where’s Felix?” Marie asked. When no one answered she shook her head wildly, flinging tears from her eyes. “No,” she said, reaching for the doors they’d just come out of. “No,” she sobbed as Spencer caught her and held her back. “They can’t take him away!”

“We have to get out of here,” Spencer said, stroking her hair as he dragged her away from the doors.

Blair looked back at the building. “What about Doc?”

“He’ll be alright,” Spencer said. “We’ll get him in worse trouble by making it look like we associate. Come on, guys. We gotta move.”

Julian stood in the middle of the alley a few paces away from them. He looked so small and so broken, dyed red in the lights of the ambulance parked at the other end of the alleyway.

“Jules, come on,” Blair said.

Julian slowly sunk to his knees. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Blair looked to Spencer for some kind of help but he was even more shaken to see the man’s face wiped of emotion. One of Spencer’s best friends was being arrested and his other one was falling apart in front of him but he didn’t speak for several long moments. When he did, Blair’s head snapped towards him in shock.

“Julian, you know the punishment for betrayal in our organization is death,” Spencer said heavily, as though fighting tears of his own.

“Spence, please, I thought—”

“You were wrong.”

Blair had wondered, when he’d seen the way Jinx responded to Julian, but he hadn’t wanted to believe it.

Marie was the first to speak and she sounded like someone had pulled her heart right out of her chest. “Julian planted the wire. Didn’t you?”

The tears began streaming anew, and Julian’s narrow shoulders quaked. “Phantom contacted me after Adam got hit. They said if I helped them, no one else would get hurt.”

Even hearing him say it, Blair wasn’t ready to accept it. “No… you would have never betrayed us like that. Never betrayed Felix like that. Tell me,” Blair said, his voice trembling. “Tell me you didn’t.”

“I’m so sorry,” Julian repeated, body heaving with his sobs.

“Get them out of here,” Spencer said, putting a hand on Marie’s back to push her toward Blair.

Blair draped Felix’s coat over his shoulder and took Marie’s hand. “What about you? What about...” he trailed off as he looked at Julian, collapsed on his knees on the pavement.

Spencer gave Blair his keys. “If it isn’t crawling with cops tomorrow, we’ll meet at the bar in the morning. Now go.” Blair stared at him, eyes swimming, and Spencer shoved him. “Go!”

Blair went. He went without a word, because he no longer knew what to say. He didn’t know if he could put this much pain into words. He didn’t know how to say goodbye. Not to Felix, or to Julian. He kept expecting a rush of footsteps and demands for him to put his hands up, but they never came. A small mercy in a cruel world that didn’t make sense anymore. They went the long way to reach the Lexus to avoid the cops. When they did, Blair laid Wren across the back seat, who seemed to be slipping out of consciousness again.

Marie joined him up front and Blair laid his head on the steering wheel.

“I’m gonna take you home,” Blair said, his voice trembling with exhaustion and grief. “Then I’ve gotta get Wren to a hospital.”

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