Page 5 of Not With the Eyes

Scones startled, his latest stone hitting the water and sinking. He turned to glower. "One would think you'd be happy to see me go off alone into mountain lion territory."

"A mountain lion would have to be really desperate to go after your scrawny ass," Oberon replied.

"Like you have room to talk at present. What do you want?"

"Well, I might hate your Lachapelle guts on principle, but I didn't mean to strike that much of a nerve. And though I'd rather go surrender myself to a mountain lion than cooperate with you, you're right in that since we do have to cooperate, we should get along. The mission won't succeed if I'm more interested in hating you than getting the job done, and I definitely want to get this job done."

Scones's eyes narrowed slightly. "Why is this one mission so vitally important?"

"Because mind your own business."

"Fine." Scones lifted his hands in surrender. "You really don't have anything to worry about with me. I'll tell you sob stories until you believe me, whatever it takes."

"What the hell do you even care?"

"Because mind your own business."

Oberon laughed, immediately hating himself for it, but undeniably amused all the same. "Your mother hasn't been missing you all this time?"

"My mother doesn't give a damn about me, not since I insisted on quitting. If I can't be her good little killer, then I'm best out of sight and mind. My handler takes care of it and sendsme packets every week or so about everything I need to keep up on. Otherwise, bots handle communications with her."

That was possibly the most depressing string of words Oberon had ever heard. Margaux Lachapelle was so fucking self-absorbed she didn't notice her communications with her own son were actually with a bot. Astounding. The bitch had been given a gift and treated it like a burden. How dare she—

Oberon forced himself to think about something else before he exploded from the rage. "If you're done sulking, I would like to go back inside."

Scones laughed. "I've seen the cases you've been involved in, all the people you've taken down. What in the world do you have to fear from the great outdoors?"

"It's outdoors, isn't that enough? Let's go." He didn't wait for an answer, simply turned and strode off, leaving Scones to follow or not.

A moment later, Scones caught up to him, easily keeping pace with Oberon's long, swift strides. The truth was probably that Scones had to slow down to keep pace. He was tall and gangly and pasty at first glance, one face in a thousand, but that body moved the way only a veteran soldier's could, and his mismatched eyes held the shadows of a killer.

Back when they'd rescued Ariadne and the children, Scones had appeared out of nowhere to help, and there'd been a minute display of his skills as he'd put a bullet right between the eyes of the Magnificent Sunrise, as though he were a toy rather than one of the most dangerous superheroes in the world.

They'd nearly reached the house when the back door banged open, and a frantic looking Greg nearly toppled down the steps in his rushing as he spotted them. "Get inside now!"

"What's wrong?" Scones ask, that too-serious demeanor of his, the calm of a sniper, falling over him. They hurried intothe house and followed Greg to Byron's control center—where every screen was filled with various photos of Scones.

"…Lachapelle, son of World Council Representative Margaux Lachapelle. He has been given the G.O.D. Classification Zero, and is considered armed and extremely dangerous. Anyone who sees him should get to a safe location and call the authorities immediately. Do not interact with him. I repeat, he is armed and extremely dangerous." A new picture flashed on the screen, one of his sniper photos, along with a list of stats that included his confirmed kill count.

Oberon whistled. "Wow, you were a busy boy."

"Yeah," Scones said, voice cold, but with an undercurrent of misery even Oberon couldn't miss, and he was trying desperately to ignore everything that might cause him to like the bastard. "Mostly other soldiers, rebels, but once I was moved to G.O.D. Black Ops… Well, there's a reason they won't make those numbers official. The count is actually 781, if you include all the Dogs I've put down."

Greg stared wide-eyed. "How do you…"

Scones laughed bitterly. "The first one is the hardest. After that, they just start turning into numbers. That's why I got out the moment I could, when even my mother couldn't find a way to make me stay in anymore. I'll take every last of those bastards out if that's what it takes to make up for all the murders I've committed." He sighed. "How did they finally figure me out?"

"Still working on that," Dixie said, "but I'm guessing from the way the news been talking, ain't too many folks in the world coulda made the shots you did."

"Well, I always knew this day would come. Wish I'd had more time to get a few things from my apartment. So it goes. Can you get in touch with my handler, make sure she's okay? I'm worried she hasn't tried to contact me about this."

Dixie nodded, his artificial eye flashing at rapid-fire rate as he interacted with the house's computer systems.

Nearby, Byron worked just as heatedly, keeping pace even though he wasn't a living computer like Dixie. Hard to beat a guy who'd been alive for more than three hundred years, and that was just his time on earth. Byron had never said how old he'd already been when they crashed.

Oberon always wondered what it must have been like to go from star-travel technology to medieval Europe, watching as superpowers crept into a society that was never to meant to have them, and technology slowly, very slowly, started to approach something vaguely resembling what he'd had before crashing.

It was mind-boggling. Terrifying. Even Oberon wasn't crass enough to ask that kind of question, and even if he was, Byron would probably—rightfully—tell him to fuck off. The only persons Byron seemed to wholly confide in were Ariadne, his fellow crash-lander, and Leland, his precious, snuggly, soft romance.

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