Chapter Text
The hum of the engine was the only sound that broke the dead silence aboard the vulture.
Nobody was talking, maybe not even breathing, because the silence somehow seemed to be a safe boundary between the agents.
"You were supposed to watch the flank."
Viper's voice cut through the barrier like a knife's edge, and the safe cocoons of silence each of them had created broke.
It was surreal, but you could compare it to a glass dropped on the floor, where it shatters to thousand of pieces.
She didn't look at anyone, her eyes were fixed on the floor, but Phoenix knew she was talking to him anyway. He rolled his eyes, leaning against the side of the helicopter. The engines whirred, lifting them thousands of feet off the ground, but at the same time the agents couldn't shake the feeling that Callas's tone pinned them to the ground.
Everyone felt the tension. Raze suddenly became interested in the view through the glass, Jett began playing with the corner of her vest while Skye used her powers on to heal Sunwoo's bullet wound.
"Raze asked for help," Phoenix finally replied, though neither he nor Viper looked at each other for a second. The conversation was going on somewhere in the space between the two of them. "It was three against one, what was I supposed-..."
"You were supposed to stick to the plan."
The man huffed.
"So I should let her die?" His tone was almost mocking, as if he couldn't believe what he had just heard. Because he probably couldn't. "She didn't stand a goddamn chance against them."
Sabine didn't even flinch, just brushed off the crumb of ash that remained on her knee.
"We were on our way. She'd hold them off, drag them to one spot when we outnumbered them from behind," she said. Her tone was sure.
"Or she would be shot in the head because we wouldn't have made it in time."
"Jett was left alone with defusing the spike."
"And Raze with three morons on her back."
There was a heavy silence. If you hung a knife in the air, it would stay still.
Sabine looked up, her lips drawn into a tight line, but didn't speak until she met Phoenix's gaze on her way. She wanted to be sure that he would look her in the eye.
"The plan exists for everyone to stick to it," she said, emphasizing each word so strongly that each syllable echoed through the vulture like darts cutting through metal. "I can't lead a team that doesn't follow orders. So next time think about it before you decide to fucking freestyle and someone loses their life."
She nodded her head at Jett, who curled up in her seat. Skye also did not look up from the wound, which was slowly turning into a scar.
"I'm not going to blindly follow something that could change at any moment," Phoenix hissed. His eyes flashed warningly, but the chemist seemed to either not see it or ignore it completely.
"Then why don't you just admit that you didn't even look at those papers instead of playing the hero? Because if you read the damn plan, you'd know that there are at least fifteen different variants of it." Her voice didn't even tremble. "But you didn't do that, did you?"
Silence fell.
Phoenix went quiet.
And Viper knew she was right.
"Next time before someone tries to negate the effectiveness of my orders, I will personally shoot your heads."
No one dared to say a word as the woman left those words behind her and sat down in the co-pilot's seat with her back facing the others.
Reyna, in the pilot's seat, also said nothing, holding the steers as she was doing before, remaining passive throughout the situation.
The silence from the beginning of the journey returned, but this time it seemed to ring in the team's ears. It wasn't interrupted until the end of the flight, but Sabine liked it that way.
***
Viper in terms of making coffee has remained unchanged for years. She had her own ritual, the patterns of which she could recite when she woke up in the middle of the night.
This was the case this time as well, when she poured two teaspoons of brewed coffee into her favorite mug, while the water in the kettle was slowly boiling.
Both, the kitchen and the living room she could see, were empty. The agents went back to their rooms, mission-weary, tired and aching, but she... She was making coffee. Maybe she was hoping it would calm her down, maybe she just needed a shot of caffeine and a hint of her daily routine.
"You didn't have to be so arrogant."
Viper acknowledged Sage's presence by giving her a half-second look. But she did nothing more than watch the kettle tremble.
"I wasn't being arrogant," she announced, tapping her fingernails on the surface of the counter, impatient with the fact that she couldn't take her coffee and retreat into the shadows like she always did.
Sage folded her arms over her chest.
"Next time before someone tries to negate the effectiveness of my orders, I will personally shoot your heads," she quoted. "Don't you think that's too harsh?"
"I said what I thought. Since when is honesty bad?"
"Since when a leader doesn't accept the unexpected changes and errors."
Sabine didn't seem affected by this. When the kettle clicked, she automatically poured boiling water to her mug filled with coffee.
"Agents have to be a team," she announced. "You can't blame me for trying to keep them in line."
"By threatening them?"
"Who told you?" she asked, stirring the coffee as if nothing had happened. "Reyna?"
The healer sighed.
"What does it matter?"
Sabine nodded.
"So it was Reyna."
"Don't change the subject."
The spoon rattled against the rim of the cup as the chemist dropped it suddenly and raised her hands ostentatiously in defense.
"Oh, sorry, I'm going back to it right now." She finally placed her hands on her hips when she decided the gesture was eloquent enough. "Then why don't you stop acting like their mother and accept that everyone here is a grown adult and needs to learn to face the consequences of their actions?"
"They have a right to make mistakes," Sage protested, but Viper just snorted.
"Mistakes? Come on, Jett would have been dead long ago if I hadn't fired at the last minute, and our pretty boy says it's not his fault at all. Are you going to let him know we almost lost an agent, or are you going to pat him on the shoulder as usual and say that 'it can happen to anyone'?"
"But she's not dead."
Viper smiled almost mockingly.
"I'm not going to thank for that someone, who thinks he's a fucking comic book hero because radianite allowed him to smoke a cigarette without using a lighter."
"If it wasn't for that radianite, many missions would be over before they even started," Sage stated. "You can't say Phoenix is useless only because he made a mistake."
"Yeah, here we go again." She nodded. "Indulge everyone, because nothing happened."
"I'm not indulging anyone," Sage objected. There was an anger in her eyes that Sabine wasn't afraid of at all. In fact, she got a strange satisfaction from it. "I just think you were too harsh and you should give them some time."
"Oh, please." Viper took a sip of her coffee, her tone not changing a bit, not a hint of irritation creeping into her voice. She sounded like she was having a casual conversation over the morning paper. "We live in a world where our own clones want to kill us and turn our land to dust in the process, and you want to wait until your birds learn to fly?"
"They gain experience."
"Not if they can get away with anything," Viper cut short, taking another sip of coffee. "And I'm not going to let you soften them up with your comforting and patting their heads in reassurance, because in case you haven't noticed, we're at war."
"Which we won't win with only the help of ordinary people."
Sabine pursed her lips. Anger burned in her eyes, but she didn't say a word.
She had never been jealous of not being exposed to radianite and not being able to acquire supernatural abilities. She believed in her intellect and extensive knowledge, but... But sometimes she had the impression that for others she was only human. Just like any other that could be replaced.
"Viper, listen..."
Sage was silenced with a hand gesture. The mask of indifference on Viper's face seemed to slip momentarily, but it lasted less than a second, as it always did when it hit a sensitive spot.
Which Sage knew all too well.
"You are needed-..."
"But I can't fly or electrocute or heal incurable wounds," she stated. "And that makes me a bad leader."
"I didn't say anything like that."
"But you thought so." Silence again. "Brimstone mostly sits in the office, so he doesn't bother you. And I'm not perfect like you, am I?"
She tightened her fingers on the handle of her cup and walked past Sage down the corridor into without even waiting for an answer. She didn't need it.
She went down the stairs, slid open the glass door, and entered a room she could call her own. She felt safe here, away from others, with only herself, the hum of air-conditioning, hundreds of test vials and stacks of notes marked with round stains of dried coffee.
She didn't want to listen to anyone else. She felt tired from today's interactions, her muscles ached and she was damn sleepy, but she could be just like that in the lab.
She put her mug on the nearest table, put a white coat over her green turtleneck, and found her glasses under a pile of papers.
She laid out the plans, then disappeared into the back room to fetch everything she needed. Her backpack needed a few upgrades, and that was what she was going to focus on for the day.
And she did, quite well, until the evening, when she had to turn on the office lamp, because the daylight coming from the large windows was no longer enough. She was welding two wires together, and the latest toxin prototype bubbling somewhere nearby when a series of footsteps broke the silence.
"I'm telling you, the air could be cut."
Viper looked up from her notes. She recognized Raze's voice, and telling by the fact that her workshop was located next to the lab, she was probably accompanied by Killjoy.
She sighed. Todays incident will probably follow her to her grave. She felt as if even the walls were gossiping about her.
It didn't annoy her so much as... it bored her. She was aware that she was often the topic of conversation for agents who didn't know her... Actually at all.
Because she worked on it herself. She moved into the shadows whenever she could, functioning mostly at night, out of everyone's line of sight.
She was a shadow in HQ and she knew it. Her only regret was that the rest of the agents hadn't do it as well. It would be much easier.
The no-fraternization rule was beginning to fade more and more, and it was starting to annoy Sabine more and more. Not so much sticking to protocol as the fact that it was her rule.
Hers, not Sage's.
That's why it was starting to be ignored.
"What is she like?" Sabine didn't want to, but she heard the question, probably directed at Killjoy. "You know, when you two mess around with robots and stuff."
"She's specific." Klara's voice was muffled but still clear enough to hear through the open door. Apparently, they were unaware of the presence of the chemist. "In a good way."
"What does it mean?"
The clang of falling metal echoed. Probably a screwdriver.
She could imagine Killjoy shrugging.
"She is direct. And honest, sometimes too much. She can praise, although she is not... Effusive."
Sabine agreed with Klara. She tried to focus back on the notes, but for some reason they suddenly became unintelligible gibberish, and her gaze landed each time on the door, where she could still see the elongated shadows of two silhouettes.
"Is she nice?"
Callas tightened her fingers on the pen. The grip only loosened when she felt the familiar numbness. With her other hand, she began to massage the stiff muscles in her wrist.
"She's neutral. Sometimes I don't even know what she means until she says it."
There was silence for a moment.
"Today I thought he was going to murder Phoenix."
Sigh.
"Yeah, I heard. But he wasn't without fault either."
"Killjoy?"
"Hmm?"
"Are you afraid of her?"
Sabine's pen rolled off the counter and landed on the floor. She cursed under her breath, but picked it up quickly and dashed to the glass door, slamming it shut enough to fake her own entrance to the lab.
Because she hadn't heard the whole conversation, had she?
Or she didn't want to hear the answer to that last question at all. Even if she didn't want to admit it.
Had she really seen fear in their eyes as they flew the vulture? Or was it only now that autosuggestion had worked that she was imagining something that had never happened?
She tried to remember Raze's face, but couldn't make out more than her silhouette turned towards the window.
She pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose, feeling the familiar ache rise in her temples.
She only shook herself when her phone vibrated in her pocket and the sound of an incoming text message carried through the lab.
It was from Brimstone, direct one. He asked her to come to the office.
She didn't feel like doing it at all, because she knew what she was going to hear, but of the two things, she seemed to prefer that instead of avoiding Raze for the rest of the day and pretending she didn't care about what Killjoy replied.
***
"If you want to relate to what everyone else is going to relate to today, then you can let it go."
Her words echoed as soon as she crossed the threshold. Brimstone turned from the cork board, to which he was pinning some papers and photos, held together with a knife red thread. From a distance, this pattern always reminded Callas of a spider's web.
The man sighed, because in fact, he was going to do what the woman said.
"Okay, you're right." Sabine laughed without a hint of joy. "But the difference is that I'm on your side."
"If you agree with Sage, then I don't think you are." She placed her fingers on her temple, which gave more and more of itself. "Anyway, say what you have to say and let's get it over with."
Liam leaned on the base of a desk littered with various papers. Callas looked there with the corner of her eye and saw the printed forms of mission report.
"I'm not saying that what Phoenix did was good. In fact, I'd scold him myself for what he did."
"But Sage told you to be nice because he's an inexperienced kid and he's still learning?" She sighed. "If you're going to give me reprimands, then go ahead and do just that."
Brimstone sighed and collapsed heavily into an armchair.
"Can you just apologize to them?"
Viper walked over to the desk, casually sliding over a few papers with her fingertips. Her green eyes followed the planned next mission and strings of red thread.
"And can you not make me play good cop and bad cop?" she asked. "If it wasn't for the fact that Sage allows everything and constantly softens something that should leave a lasting mark in their memory, maybe they wouldn't make such mistakes."
"So you're going to teach them a lesson in the form of threats?"
"For the love of God, it's not-..." She trailed off. She blew air out of her mouth. "I'm not going to write out cause of death report, only because someone didn't read the damn plan."
"You are their commander. They respect you anyway, although they may not show it."
"Or they're afraid of me."
The ex-soldier folded his hands under his chin, watching the woman, who looked around the room for a moment, as if gathering her thoughts. The man raised one eyebrow in surprise at this sudden confession, but Viper just shrugged.
"It's okay. Someone has to be the bad guy."
"That's not true."
"Maybe it's true, maybe not." She sighed. This conversation was tiring her, and as if that wasn't enough, the dull light wasn't helping her migraine one bit. "Anyway, they won't hear an apology. Not from me."
"Viper..."
"No, Brimstone. They had one job – to stick to the plan. They didn't, so I'm not going to apologize to them for doing my duty as a commander. I don't know how you or Sage run these missions, but I don't allow myself to fuck around with this job, because the squad doesn't give a shit about my orders." She headed for the exit, but before grabbing the handle, she stopped in front of the door. "I don't care what they think of me. I don't even ask for the apology I deserve. So why don't we just get this over with and go our ways, shall we?"
She didn't wait for an answer and left.
Maybe the chain of irritating events would have ended, if a pair of violet eyes hadn't caught Viper's attention in the darkness of the corridor leading to her quarters.
Reyna's silhouette showed up soon after, revealing that she was holding an empty tea cup and stopped mid-step for a moment, as if aware that Viper would not pass her by without a word.
And that's how it happened.
"Thanks for a fun-filled day," Sabine's tone was mockingly high, her smile so exaggerated it was dripping with sarcasm. But then it fell off within a second. "Especially since I was doing my fucking duties."
Callas walked by Mondragón, squeezing between her and the wall, as if she wanted to avoid even the slightest touch of their shoulders.