Page 124 of Darling Wildfire
“Yeah but—”
“Preacher, leave it alone,” I snapped.
Now, I could see Atlas staring at me from across the lawn and knew he was going to come to me next. I’d just finished a run around the path and was fighting to catch my breath. I’d been pushing myself hard lately—mostly to get out of my head. It was my only escape these days.
Sure enough, Atlas came over and ran a hand through his hair, retying his bun.
“I know why you’re doing this,” he said.
I opened my mouth to feed him the normal fuck off speech but that was not what I’d been expecting him to say so I shut my mouth and waited forhim to go on.
“You’re doing this because you think you deserve the punishment,” he continued. “And look, I get it. I feel like I deserve to rot in the deepest pits of hell for how badly I failed my family but you don’t deserve this. No one does.”
“He chose me, Atlas,” I said. “And I do deserve every second of this punishment.”
“I know he chose you. He has some fucked up crush on you and I know fighting will only make it worse for all of us, so I’m not going to tell you anything else but this: when you need us, when all of this becomes too much, we’ll be here. I don’t care if it’s tomorrow or years from now.”
He put both hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye. “If you won’t let us stand by you now and suffer with you, let us be there when you can’t go on anymore.”
I cleared my throat at the emotions shifting just beneath the surface. He was right. I was doing this because I deserved the pain and felt it was my punishment for my failures. I didn’t know when it would become too much but I nodded and grabbed onto his arm, gripping him hard.
“Thank you.”
He gave a curt nod and dropped his hands.
“You told us not to hide, T. I’m holding you to that same directive.”
61
ATLAS
THIRTY THREE MONTHS CAPTIVE
Usually I could turn off the outside world when I was on a mission, but today, every time I looked through my scope, all I saw were apparitions of Vetticus in all the targets I landed on.
I knew what Nyx meant; he was under my skin, trying to consume every part of me.
The map was another huge spread out environmental, so the hope of putting the escape plan into place was dashed the minute we stepped outside the doors. North had told us Vetticus knew we’d try to escape. He hadn’t seemed phased when he mentioned it—I guess it’s pretty obvious that people being held prisoner would think about those kinds of plans but it still didn’t make me feel good to know he was expecting us to make an attempt every time we shot out a camera.
North was having us do that more frequently now to throw him off. We’d throw a whole grid into darkness and then pop back into visibility as soon as we heard the drones coming. It was in part to practice, to see what his response time was, but also we did it just to piss him off.
“Atlas, sniper on the roof, second building in,” North barked. “Vance and Casper—go with Kane to clear that building ahead.”
Somehow we’d managed to keep a team of seven for the last two games. We’d won the last one with minimal injuries and a successful execution. If we thought that was going to stop Vetticus from having his fun with North, we were wrong. He’d decided North was his and continued to pull him in every few days.
I didn’t know how North was managing. I was barely keeping it together, and I didn’t know how much longer I could do this. We were all sinking deeper into our heads, even Kane, who until recently hadn’t seemed phased by much. But lately even he’d been moody.
I found the sniper and dialed in, then pulled the trigger.
Miss. Fuck.
I gritted my teeth, adjusted and the second shot took him out.
“Sniper down,” I growled.
“Copy, meet up with Nyx. Preacher, with me,” North ordered.
I made my way quickly down from the hide I’d been in and found Nyx guarding the alley between buildings. I tapped him on the shoulder and we carefully made our way towards the edge of the small cluster of buildings. We turned a corner and Preacher and North were waiting for us. I looked out over the view and saw a massive ruin sitting in the middle of a field. The only cover besides the ruin itself was the forest far to the east and the buildings we were currently taking cover in.
