Chapter Text
When they brought him in, he walked like a tiger chained: unbowed, unbroken, ferocity in his eyes and a deadly promise in the flash of white teeth.
Temporary, that look said. This is temporary. One wrong step, and we’ll see who’s top of the food chain.
When they locked him in his room (solitary, as was fitting for a wild animal in human guise), he spent the first hour pacing, running hands along cracks and digging fingers into unyielding corners. The second hour found much of the same, but a touch more frantic. The third broke his silence: he turned his eyes to where a camera watched out from out of reach and snarled, growled, cursed. He spit vitriol and promised hell. He was creative with his insults for someone so new. He was unbowed, unbroken, and absolutely out of his element.
For a day, they left him to cool off. Eventually he did, shoving himself in a corner atop the bare mattress in his room. A drain, a water tap, a mattress and a camera: those were the amenities for wild animals, and what they gave him. For a day, those and his thoughts were all to keep him company.
On the second day, he didn’t pace, curse or scream (he’d never screamed). He watched the slot under the metal door, arms loose over drawn up knees. He moved only for the drain and water, and retreated quickly from either to continue his silent vigil on the door.
By the third day, he appeared more rabbit than tiger. He looked to the camera and asked, “Can you hear me?”
Through a grainy feed in the security room, one could see his throat work. His voice, when he spoke, was level, restrained, nervous, but still, untamed.
Temporary, he’d said with furious, terrified eyes. This is temporary. They wouldn’t forget that so soon. Their memories went farther than that: they remembered the boy’s father, and a promising offer dashed because of a foolish mother’s panic.
“I need food,” he told the camera. “You’re just going to let me starve? Talk about a waste in resources to bring me here.”
It wasn’t what they needed to hear. It wasn’t enough.
He waited in silence through the third day, his room and its lights unchanging. He paced, but mostly, he slept.
By the end of the forth, he slouched next to the water tap and didn’t, couldn’t, move. He slept or he stared at the walls. He had yet to throw a tantrum or scream or screech since his arrival, but they weren’t fooled. They’d done this before.
He put a trembling hand to his face and, in the tone of someone making a concession, not someone begging, asked: “Please. I’m starving.”
It was not enough. They waited.
What’s taking so long? Another man, tall, broad-shouldered, the number on his cheek labeling him the second. His anxiety manifested in curt demands and an absolute lack of patience (a flaw he’d suffered before the panic). Why can’t I see him?
Be patient, a technician told him next to the water cooler. The man wasn’t allowed to see the tapes, screens or the one they’d brought in. Though he’d been the one to identify their run-away and pull in an investment they had waited thirteen years for, it would ruin the entire process if he made proper contact so soon. A little longer. Just a little longer.
The man’s hands curled and his jaw gained a stubborn set, his nostrils flaring. The technician wondered if he could smell the run-away from here, but no, that was surely impossible. If the man could hear him, she was positive no reinforced doors would keep them apart.
On the fifth day, the one curled on his side in the cell whispered, their mics straining to pick up the words, “Please. Something. Anything. Do you want me to die?”
They didn’t.
Moreover, it was pride beginning to break. A tiger sleeping no matter the creature that approached; a rabbit with a calm heart no matter what reached for it.
It’s a start, Tetsuji Moriyama told the technician. Food, then lights. Another week, and have Day bring him to basic. I don’t want them separated for a second after Nathaniel leaves solitary.
Food: soup, an ounce of bread. After five days, he’d have to be worked back to anything heavier. He set upon the tray they slid in like a-- well, like a starving man. He didn’t throw any of it up, though it left him nauseous. That was fine; again, they’d done this before.
Light: from ten to five, in time with everyone else’s schedule, the fixtures above dimmed and the white walls greyed. The first time, he shoved his face into the mattress and, by the tension across narrow shoulders, came close to tears.
Seven days, and he was back to pacing. Seven days, and the five before those was a not-so-distant memory. Left to his thoughts and nothing else, he made noise with finger snapping and knuckle-rapping against the walls, but still, he buried non-essential words and screams in his chest and refused to allow them out. It was an incredible show of willpower. It wouldn’t do him any favors.
When the slot opened and a request for him to extend his wrists behind his back came, he duly obeyed. One man cuffed him, and one man told him they were going to where he’d be staying, and one man opened the door and began to lead him down a non-descript hallway full of doors just like his. He kept his eyes up but his head down; the only thing he said was, “Remember me now?”
His redder roots had begun to show, and he’d had no solution to save his brown contacts with. His voice was quiet, rusty from disuse.
Kevin spared him a glance, and then couldn’t seem to stop sparing him a glance. He looked like he wanted to grimace, but couldn’t quite manage it right. Maybe he would’ve - and had - felt remorse over prompting the Moriyamas to drag a stranger in off the street. But Nathaniel Wesninski was someone who should’ve been by his side for thirteen years, as promised by his father at the beginning stages for Project Sentinel. A civilian had no place being forced into their ranks, but a boy who wasn’t even legally alive hardly counted as an average citizen.
By Nathaniel’s testimony when they’d brought him in, it had been his mother’s plan. A child wasn’t responsible for his mother’s decisions, but he’d continued running even after her death-- which, also claimed by him, had happened a full year ago. Now he was twenty-three. The plea of ignorance based on innocence stretched only so far.
“You couldn’t hide forever,” Kevin finally said. Nathaniel reeked of encroaching illness, his heels dragging in a manner that couldn’t be accounted for by the cuffs. Without concentrating, he could hear the rapid beat of heart. Even before solitary, when Kevin had found him in a community center practicing Exy (three doors down from their top suspect for the recent homicide case), Nathaniel had been a bony, skittish thing, everything except his mind teetering on a precipice. He’d ran and fought like a wild animal when he’d caught sight of Kevin, but Kevin was, of course, faster and stronger. “It was impressive how long you managed, but eventually, the Masters were bound to find you.”
“Masters?” He muttered, scornful. “Really? They have you calling them that?”
A bit of irritation, easily checked. “It’s protocol.”
He didn’t want to admit that if not for the coincidental misfortune of Nathaniel choosing to practice Exy in that center on that night, he probably wouldn’t have been found. It wasn’t, after all, a problem for Kevin: here was his potential companion, his soon-to-be partner. The years of incompetent guides failing him at critical moments or uncertain counselors tittering nervously about relaxation techniques were in the past. Nathaniel could think what he wanted, but Kevin took pride in his job: he was one of best even without a companion. With one, he’d be better. He’d keep up with Riko and Jean on and off the field. The Moriyamas would trust him with more back-to-back missions, he’d get a pay raise, he’d submit a request for a flat off the premise, he’d-- shit, the possibilities were endless. Nathaniel’s misplaced pride would not jeopardize that future.
His to-be partner loitered at the threshold after he punched in the keycode and opened their room’s door. It was a new location, same style: before he’d roomed with Andrew, and now he’d room with Nathaniel. Easy. Moving up would be so easy with a companion, he couldn’t scarcely believe it.
In the tense silence (he wasn’t sure how to break it; Nathaniel didn’t want to) between them, he made a mental note to edit the dietary regimen Master Tetsuji provided for whatever preferences of the other’s he could fit in. That seemed polite. He’d been planning on setting up his blender tonight, anyway.
“You have a roommate?” His to-be partner asked, his voice more openly curious at the harmless sight of unpacked boxes, a stainless steel kitchenette, and a standard fold-out table with two plastic chairs. The bedroom was out of sight, but it would be smaller, with two beds that could be bunked.
He waited until Nathaniel realized he wouldn’t move until he was inside and stepped in. The door locked behind them, another keycode on the inside - the only exit, given small ventilation shafts and an utter lack of windows. It wasn’t typical, but then, neither was Nathan Wesninski’s son.
By then, he didn’t need to answer the question. Nathaniel held himself so still and relaxed, Kevin didn’t need to listen to how his heart’s rapid beat kicked up faster to know the answer dawned on him, and he absolutely despised it.
It’d be better, Kevin thought, once they got those cuffs off him. He had the key in his pocket to manage just that. Right then, though, no matter how soundly Kevin had beaten him during their first meeting (and he was in significantly worse shape since then), Nathaniel looked willing to try for a round two if he stepped too close.
Proud and foolhardy.
Not the best traits for a companion. Not the best traits for anyone under the Masters’ thumb. It’d take work.
Barely restraining a sigh, Kevin simply said, “I’ll show you around.”
Life in Evermore Laboratories went like this: if you weren’t preparing for tests, you were taking tests. If you weren’t taking tests, you were on a job. If you weren’t on a job, you were preparing for tests.
Reports and de-briefing counted as on the clock. Sleep and meals were mandatory test preparation. Jobs ranged from aiding forensics to aiding SWAT, with the occasional foreign deployment for stable pairs. Anything and everything that fell in between, Kevin knew, could be slotted into two basic categories: preparation and work.
(Once upon a time, he’d eked out time between preparation and work for something close to relaxation: he’d managed only because the other involved was a sentinel named Thea that rain roughly the same hours as him. He’d contacted her a few times over email since she’d been transferred across divisions, but as they’d expected, being monitored made relaxation difficult.)
(Stolen time, he reminded himself.)
(He and Thea, they’d stolen time.)
For the week after Nathaniel moved in (he took off the cuffs within an hour; they remained, untouched, at the bottom of a sleek, black-and-red gym bag), they prepared for a test Kevin had never taken in a manner Kevin hadn’t done since he signed the dotted line for the sentinel procedure.
That was to say: they were confined to their apartment, the private exercise room next to it, and the hallway they needed to reach those two points. Their food and toiletries were delivered. They were to follow the exercise, diet and sleep regimens, and nothing else. They were left more alone than Kevin had been in years. Nathaniel was told to relax, which meant Kevin was also supposed to relax, but Kevin hadn’t relaxed since Thea and Nathaniel, once commanded, endeavored to do the opposite.
In summary: it was very long, very unrelaxing week.
“Nathaniel!” It was the third day. Only the third day, his unsympathetic mind told him, and he tried, with thin patience running even thinner, to push it down. “Where’d you put the kale?”
From the other room, probably on his bed (he rarely left it if he could help it, Kevin had noticed), he lightly replied, “If you make another awful smoothie, I’m dumping it down the drain.”
Kevin grit his teeth, hands clenching on the open and kale-less kitchen cabinets. The wood creaked. “It’s good for you. You need it. You’ve two weeks to make up for.”
“Not the drain. I’ll flush it down the toilet,” Nathaniel muttered. It wasn’t a volume Kevin could have heard if he hadn’t been enhanced -- he wasn’t stupid, he had a fair idea of the difference.
And because he wasn’t stupid, he knew Nathaniel meant for him to hear it. The words were a test. The words were part of a series of tests. The tests came about without warning.
After Kevin had explained the Sentinel Project’s aims and successes, including the scientific measurements behind his sensorary limitations, Nathaniel had decided he wanted to judge for himself just how enhanced Kevin meant. He’d tap on every surface he could, soft to loud in a blink; he’d scratch strange, nonsensical patterns into the walls’ corners, too light for the human eye to see; honestly, Kevin thought it was only a matter of time until he somehow tinkered with the water system and changed the shower’s temperature degree by slow degree to listen to how Kevin would react. He always played at ignorance, too, refusing to answer when Kevin (patiently!) asked what he thought he was doing.
Because he knew what he was doing. He was testing his boundaries. Kevin knew what he was doing, too, and it was infuriating.
It may have only been the third day, but he wouldn’t go on for a week like this. Closing the cabinet doors harder than he meant to, the doors bouncing open before whispering shut, Kevin squared his shoulders, swallowed his annoyance, and moved to their shared bedroom’s doorway.
As he’d thought, Nathaniel sat tucked into the corner of his bed, his eyes bruised with sleeplessness and skin an unhealthy pallor. With his back against the wall and skin-muscle-and-bone legs drawn up, his body swimming in his standard issue clothes, he made some deep, new, inexplicable part of Kevin want to shove a sandwich down his throat and take him out for a run under the sun.
He had his elbows on his knees and body slouched in an open, loose-limbed pose that told Kevin to do what you like, I won’t talk.
It was a bit like Andrew during his down swings.
Riko wouldn’t have allowed it to go this far. Jean would have picked up on his duties. Andrew definitely wouldn’t put up with it.
Kevin’s patience snapped.
He told him, voice harsh, “We’re going to be a matched pair. We’re going to work together.”
“Says you,” Nathaniel threw back, the twist to his mouth positively sardonic.
“I didn’t even know who you were when I saw you--”
“That was the point.”
“-- And if I had any choice in it, I would’ve picked a dozen others before settling for someone like you.”
That wasn’t entirely true. Nathaniel had a sharp mind and sharper eye - by how he threw himself into physical training despite his state, single-minded and determined, Kevin knew very well why the Masters had wanted him as a sentinel. Really, he would work well as a companion, too: capable and quick, he’d have no issue keeping up with Kevin on the field. He’d steady him when he needed it and take care of the finer details that he, body too rough to be delicate, couldn’t. Rather than yet another unmatched sentinel, to have Kevin and him working as a pair was a boon beyond compare.
But looking at the unimpressed, unhappy sprawl on his bland, standard bed, not a single advantage came to mind. After all, none of them mattered if Nathaniel wouldn’t work with him.
From those words alone, he could hear Nathaniel’s breathing constrict. God. He always acted like Kevin was one step from hitting him, which was ridiculous. He hadn’t made a single move against him no matter how much time he spent insulting Kevin’s very way of life.
Thk-thk, thk-thk, went Nathaniel’s heart.
“Then do it,” Nathaniel was saying when Kevin refocused. “Pick somebody else. Let me out of here. Give me back to the Moriyamas to try their experiments on. I really don’t care, but quit trying to shove your delusions about a happy buddy cop tag-team down my throat.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Kevin told him for the hundredth time. “I don’t choose who I match with.”
“Oh, no, you just know,” he sneered, throat swallowing convulsively as Kevin took another step into the room, heart picking up, thk-thk-thk, thk-thk, thk-thk-thk, “can’t argue with a bullshit argument like that. Poke it too hard and it might break and make a mess.”
He stopped his forward advance to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I told you. They’re working on figuring out why. Once they do, they’ll learn how to transfer it to something more convenient.”
“Right. Because after you dragged me off the street and left me to rot in solitary, I’m the inconvenience.”
Another angle, then. It was no use, he thought - they’d been through this conversation twice before. “You’re too old for the serum to take. Statistically, if you did leave companion training for the Masters’ experiments, it’s more likely that you’d be in far worse shape than you are now.”
“If I was even alive, you mean?”
Thk-thk-thk-thk.
“There’s--”
“Yeah, I know. Things far worse than death. For example: listening to you prattle on about the Moriyamas’ all-encompassing megalomania.”
“What,” Kevin snarled, “is it going to take to convince you that this doesn’t have to be painful?”
Nathaniel’s teeth clicked as he snapped his mouth shut. Bathed in the standard, too-bright fluorescent lighting, his eyes flashed and his shoulders pressed against the off-white wall.
“Sorry if I’m not leaping at the opportunity to be your on-demand teddy bear,” his blood was up, the whites of his eyes spreading, fear coating the room, “doling out help whenever you snap your fingers. Sorry if I’d thought I might have a chance at being my own person.”
Amidst the panic curled anger, red-hot and purely Kevin’s. “I’m not asking you to be someone else!”
“You believe that tripe? That sentinels and companions stand on equal ground?” He laughed, too loud and so, so scared. He scooted forward to put his feet on the ground, his body held too still to be anything but practiced. “Just from your brainwashed speeches, I know that’s a load of crock. They don’t care about your opinion, and they definitely won’t care about mine.”
“They don’t need to,” Kevin pressed, taking another four steps into the room. He felt like -- he felt like Nathaniel wanted to run, wanted to get away, and he knew, he just knew, he couldn’t let that happen. “We’re not administration. Of course we don’t have a say in-- in, whatever you’re so concerned about, our jobs, our deployment, any of that. That’s how being a soldier works.”
“You think you’re a soldier? Please. You’re their gun, Kevin; I’d just be the oil that kept you running smoothly.”
Riko would never have this issue. Jean would never make this an issue.
-- Kevin thought that, remembered how Jean wouldn’t respond to anyone but Riko after a bad test or a bad job or a bad day, his shoulders eerily straight and head bowed, and immediately took it back. Riko and Jean worked in their own way. They were Evermore’s best because they worked as they did. With Nathaniel and him, it couldn’t go like that. They had to find their own way.
Before he knew it, his long stride taking five steps into the room, he stood toe-to-toe with the target of his frustrations. That was a touch surprising: for all his back talk, he had yet to make a physical stand for himself.
Well. Now he had.
“I won’t,” Nathaniel said, each syllable clipped, “be yours, or anyone else’s, dog.”
For a moment, they regarded each other: two immovable forces, one in body and one in mind.
Slowly, Nathaniel’s heart settled and his breathing slowed. This defiant act, of all things, calmed him down. Or maybe, maybe, it was Kevin’s lack of a violent response.
Did he really think Kevin would be like that?
“I’m not asking you to be.” His reply came both in certainty and with deliberate care, because he couldn’t and wouldn’t speak for the Masters, but he knew what he wanted, he knew what he imagined, and it was him-and-Nathaniel, sentinel-and-companion, body-and-mind, the second wave after Riko’s first. “I’m only asking for you to give us a chance.”
Another moment passed between them, Nathaniel’s measured inhale-exhale overpowering the overhead light’s buzzing. No, it wasn’t overpowering: it simply was, a steady, solid sound Kevin’s brain didn’t mind focusing on, the tiny din of everyday noise falling out of view but not out of reach. If he wanted, he could pluck out what information he needed; if he didn’t want to, he could listen to Nathaniel and only Nathaniel.
Whatever caused it, it was as close to relaxation as Kevin had been in years.
Kevin’s next breath took longer than normal to climb out of his lungs.
Nathaniel broke the quiet with a low, “I hate the name Nathaniel.”
A beat.
Comprehension.
-- Okay, but what the hell sort of hang-up was that?
Exasperated, Kevin huffed, “So? I have to call you something.”
“Neil.” He said. “Call me Neil.”
“Neil,” Kevin stated, opened his mouth, caught Nathaniel’s blank look and how he held his breath, used his brain, and swallowed the words back down.
After a pause, he amended what he had been about to say - a nasty comment on Nathaniel’s bad naming skills - into a slow, “Alright. Neil.” A beat. Then, “The Masters might not approve.”
“I thought this was about us, not them?”
Kevin didn’t have a snappy retort for that.
Against everything he’d done whenever they weren’t in the weight room, Nathaniel didn’t sit back on his bed. He watched Kevin for another moment, his blue - not brown, as Kevin remembered from the first day - eyes roving Kevin’s face and barely lingering on the number inked onto his cheekbone.
Whatever he found must have satisfied him. He shouldered past Kevin to the kitchen, scraped a chair out, and sat at the table.
It was… a pass.
That had been a test, and despite having no preparation, Kevin had passed.
It was an unusual feeling, passing without even knowing what the exchange had been about.
Remembering what had started it all, Kevin followed and again asked, “Where’s the kale?”
“Sniff it out,” Neil told him, and for the first time on his own, pulled out Evermore’s documents on the functions and aims behind Project Sentinel from the files at the table’s corner.
Kevin grit his teeth, but went back into the bedroom to do just that.
(He found the packet stuffed in his gym bag, wrapped up in the still-damp bath towel he’d used that morning.)
(That was a much clearer test.)
(As he’d obviously passed, he made them both green smoothies and pushed Neil back to the table when he got up to dump it out. Fair’s fair, he said, stiffly. Working together means a give-and-take.)
(Surprisingly - though he made an awful face - Neil went with it.)
Scientists and technicians came and went throughout the week, hidden from Nathaniel behind double-sided mirrors in the exercise room. Kevin couldn’t smell them, but for the first time in a week, their chatter and pen-scribble on paper through the glass pulled his concentration from spotting for Neil at the bench-press and, in short order, made a complete mess of it. Neil hadn’t been doing as well as he had previously; it was day seven, and he’d woken up feverish, his throat swelled and skin slick with sweat. If they were anyone else, he would’ve stayed in bed, but Kevin hadn’t been allowed to when he’d been in training for the serum and Jean wasn’t, ever, so he simply took Neil by the shoulder when he lagged behind and pulled him toward the weight room. In a small concession to how washed-up the illness made him look, he lowered the bar’s weight before he let Neil at it. Amazingly, Neil didn’t complain.
One moment it was things as normal. Neil was slower and struggling more, and that was frustrating, but ultimately understandable.
The next moment, it was the technician’s halting laugh and the scientist’s unamusing jokes, his ears straining to pick up their underlying breath and heartbeat. He heard practically a pigsty and I know! and Friday? and look and working, and he heard a lot more besides, but he couldn’t process any of it, his thoughts wouldn’t budge, he had no mind, he wasn’t even a body, he was all human noise, blood and breath and a churning stomach and squeezing intestines and, “Kevin?”
Piece by piece, his body returned. First, his eyes - he blinked. Then, his fingers - a twitch. Finally, his head - he glanced from the window down to Neil, who watched him with hazy eyes and a face so red it couldn’t be healthy.
Obviously it couldn’t be healthy, his thoughts returned with. He’s sick.
“What just happened?” Neil asked. His voice was tight. He hid it well, but Kevin could catch the twitch of muscle at the corner of his eye that betrayed pain at speaking through a swollen throat. “You froze up.”
Zoning, the Masters called it. An unintended side-effect of the serum. The whole reason sentinels needed companions.
The only thing holding us back, Riko often groused. Kevin agreed.
“I got lost in…” Something. Voices. His auditory sense, then. He frowned when he realized he’d trailed off, gave himself a mental shake, and sharpened his gaze on Neil. “Didn’t you read about the serum’s side-effects?”
“That was the next chapter,” Neil coughed out, his expression sugarine-sweet innocence. Chest heaving, face red, hair stuck to his forehead, he looked ragged.
It would’ve been better if he’d stayed behind to heal faster.
“For today,” Kevin decided right then and there, because it was something Neil needed to learn before they joined the main group tomorrow and, therefore, the scientists couldn’t find fault with him calling them in early, “let’s skip the weights and review Project Sentinel’s functionality and purpose.”
“Great,” Neil sighed.He took a moment - Kevin turned away to give his weakness some privacy - to gather himself, and then pushed off the bench to follow Kevin out the door.
Once back in their kitchen, Neil nearly nodded off as Kevin walked him through the reasons for their training once more. A sentinel was a highly versatile, highly skilled operative with a chemically enhanced body, including their five senses. A disadvantageous side-effect manifested in zoning, whereupon the sentinel’s body overwhelmed their brain and they couldn’t think or act beyond one heightened sense. Zoning happened most in stressful situations. That was obviously an issue, as most of the operative’s field missions were high pressure. A companion served as the rock for an overwhelmed sentinel to cling to; if they were well-matched, a companion could keep their sentinel focused in the most chaotic circumstances.
Kevin hadn’t zoned like that since Nathaniel-- or, Neil- arrived (and a while before that, truthfully: after ten years, he was fairly good at heading it off). He hadn’t come down so gently from one before, either, but that definitely had to do with Neil. The initial slip up probably, he reasoned, had to do with Neil’s illness.
When Neil failed to do more than mumble half-answers to his questions and the clock ticked to late enough for a reasonable hour to stop, Kevin said, “If you can barely keep your eyes open, you’re not retaining anything I say. Get to bed.”
Neil protested, his eyes cracked open. Kevin had none of it; he put away the files, took his and Neil’s milk-ringed glasses to the sink, and told him he couldn’t continue the lesson as he’d be taking a shower. Neil couldn’t protest that.
When he got out, he found him curled up under his sheets, his breath thin and catching through his throat. Stepping closer to the bed, he held a hand over Neil’s forehead: even with a half-foot of distance, he could feel the fever burning hotter.
Tomorrow couldn’t be his introduction to the others. If he was at anything less than full capacity, they’d eat him alive.
Unaware to Kevin’s disconcernation, Neil slumbered on.
Wrapped up in cataloguing what was wrong with him, Kevin didn’t catch the footsteps outside their apartment until the keypad beeped and the door creaked open. The person moved in without further preamble, their steps unusually light and quiet.
A visitor was not usual, and not protocol for any scientist or technician.
Kevin put himself in the bedroom’s doorway in two seconds flat, his hand reaching around for the frying pan on the stove just in case
“That’s not going to put a dent on me,” the intruder drawled, and Kevin scowled at him.
Before he let himself demand what in the world Andrew thought he was doing sneaking into restricted wards, he turned to close the bedroom door and grant Neil a little privacy. Andrew, unchanged since the last time they’d seen each other, stepped forward in one fluid motion and stopped him, the other sentinel’s hand snapping tight on the door.
“Now, now, what’ve you got in there?”
“I told you,” Kevin hissed, voice higher than it needed to be, his hackles up, “they pulled in my companion.”
“And I told you, that’s an interesting choice of words.” Andrew met and held his eyes, the shorter man’s face shifting from vague curiousity to boredom as Kevin refused to give ground. Between their hands, fake wood creaked and, slowly, warped. “You ran off on me for a week, and now you won’t even let me see what you ran toward?”
“Who,” Kevin corrected him, “and he’s currently sick.”
“Strange thing,” as Andrew finally broke their stare to look pointedly around the small apartment’s kitchen and then, less pointedly, at Kevin himself, “getting sick without anyone else around. That is how it goes, isn’t it? A week-long honeymoon with your future security blanket.”
Kevin bristled.
He had a point with the illness (not the security blanket). Kevin hadn’t let himself think too much about it. Why would the Masters sabotage his companion?
The door creaked again, its frame shuddering once.
Andrew said, too soft for human ears, “Kevin.”
Fully understanding Andrew was something Kevin had given up on long ago, but he thought there was something like a demand that went beyond simply wanting Kevin’s compliance in that whisper of a word. Something that echoed his you ran off on me and what is it? -- like this had been eating at him all week, something he’d been wondering and maybe, even, worrying over.
Now, Kevin struggled to understand Andrew, but he wasn’t that bad at it. No, it wasn’t worry.
It was simply, he thought, that Andrew didn’t like his singular friend - if you could call what they had friendship, which Riko certainly didn’t - out of his eye-sight for so long. In truth, Kevin didn’t much like leaving him either; he was used to constant companionship from before Riko met Jean, and how easily Riko moved up from him and on to better jobs had stung. Moreover, as both Andrew and he lacked companions, they watched each other’s back on the few runs they were allowed on.
As proven by how they both were standing here, it had worked well enough.
Kevin let go of the door with an equally inaudible, “Don’t wake him. I need him better by tomorrow.”
Waving a dismissive hand, Andrew stepped into the darkened bedroom. He didn’t bother with the light switch as he moved forward, almost silent to Kevin’s ears and most definitely silent to Neil’s sleeping ones.
Once Andrew reached Neil’s side, he stilled, his head cocked. Outlined from the kitchen’s light, he took an unusually long time to contemplate Neil’s unconscious form; Kevin shifted his weight in the doorway, an unpleasant and unfamiliar feeling rolling in his gut over how intensely Andrew watched his companion. It lasted so long Kevin almost thought he’d zoned, but his opening his mouth and taking a breath for a comment broke Andrew out of whatever trance he’d fallen into. He pulled himself away, face as unruffled as ever, and slinked past Kevin to the kitchen table.
With one last glance to Neil - the unpleasant feeling smoothed easily - Kevin finally shut the door.
“He’s fine,” Kevin murmured, once more only a few octaves over audible. It was how they’d talked in their shared room, gym, cafeteria, training field and wherever else, and it was natural here, with a human - companion or not - in the other room. “He needs a lot of work.”
Hip propped against the kitchen table and shoulders rolled back to work out whatever muscles locked up in that momentary freeze-up over Neil, the look Andrew had on his face told him he wasn’t impressed with Kevin or his future partner. “Why were they sneaking him around? That wasn’t usual.”
It hadn’t been. The two weeks they told him to wait while they straightened Nathaniel out had been a new, agonizing type of pain. Knowing his chance for advancement was holed up somewhere and he wasn’t allowed to visit had been ridiculous, absurd, and dangerously distracting. Hell, he’d spent almost every slight disagreement with Riko fighting back a zoning episode.
When it came to telling Andrew what he was obviously after, it was true that the Masters hadn’t told him not to share Wesninski’s backstory. But some rules didn’t need to be said to be known.
Except Andrew’s eyes seemed to know, and -- they’d shared a few secrets over the years. None yet made it back to Riko or his relatives. Of course, they were usually about mistakes made on missions, or extra materials used to clean up their trail, not a warped web of family dynamics.
Then again, he knew about Jean’s purchase and the Masters’ general story. That wasn’t common knowledge even among the dozen successful sentinels.
Andrew also said, “I’ve twenty-three minutes, Day. Make it fast if you want me to hear it from you.”
So Kevin made it fast.
Nathaniel had been intended for Project Sentinel in its fledgling years. His father, Nathan, had promised his heir to the first round of official testing. His mother got cold feet, as it was said, took her son, a briefcase worth half a billion, and ran. It’d shaken the trust between the Moriyama and Wesninski families for years, which wrecked havoc on Wesninski’s east coast empire.
That branch wasn’t of concern to Kevin, so he didn’t know much more, only that Neil’s mother was undoubtedly dead and Neil had been living under a false name and playing recreational Exy for who-knew-how-long before Kevin found him.
(He left out the Butcher and his son’s introduction to Kevin and Riko thirteen years ago. It wasn’t relevant.)
Andrew’s mouth twitched at Exy, but at the end, his question was simply, “Neil?”
“He hates Nathaniel, apparently.”
“Picky.”
Neil was. In Evermore, he wouldn’t be forever. But, then, it wasn’t his worst trait.
Kevin shrugged one shoulder.
Then he looked, properly looked, Andrew over. He wasn’t expecting injuries-- the others were too terrified of him to do that, and he couldn’t have gotten a job started and finished in a week- but his makeshift field partner had a bad habit of an awful diet when not monitored, and aside from Kevin, hardly anyone monitored Andrew more than the tests necessitated.
When he caught him looking, Andrew quietly snorted. “You’re the one that disappeared. I was enjoying a room all to myself.”
As his search failed to turn up any significant weight loss or new iron-deficient-caused bruises, Kevin accepted Andrew’s answer. That he’d (most likely) hot-wired the cameras and swipe the keycode spoke of concern for Kevin, but it was also pragmatic: Andrew didn’t like surprises. Of course he’d want to know Neil’s reveal before everyone else.
Not a second after he’d glanced away from his roommate to the microwave’s clock, Andrew stepped up to him with a quick tap on his shoulder. “The staff finally took out Smalls’ personal effects and changed the bedding. The roster has me, you and your new toy in one room.”
A muscle he hadn’t even known was tense uncurled. Breath felt like it shuddered from him, but no human would’ve picked up on the shift.
“His name’s Neil,” Kevin reminded him to stave off the relief, but Andrew quirked one and? eyebrow at him before turning for the door. A short wave, no glance back as he typed the keycode, a breath’s worth of time for the lock to unclick, and he slipped back out.
Behind him, Kevin stood ramrod straight and, out of practicality and learned habit, replayed the exchange.
Would Andrew and Neil together jeopardize his overall performance? That couldn’t be established without the two interacting with both parties conscious.
But by how Andrew hadn’t done more than toss around a few insulting nicknames, the answer was: no.
Really, Andrew’s sense of order would be good against Neil’s chaos. Maybe it’d rub off on him.
Though ideally he would gain the calm, steadfast part of Andrew, not the uninterested, unmotivated part.
That was when he had to admit that those who roomed with them, Kevin and Andrew, didn’t often last long. Neil, by necessity, would have to be an exception.
Hopefully, Kevin concluded as he let the kitchen’s low buzzing and stagnate air wash over him, the faster pace won’t break all of Neil’s spine.
Neil was not better by the morrow.
Master Tetsuji and three escorts, one of them a sentinel, arrived just as they finished their breakfast. Kevin had him gulp down two fever reducer pills with his orange juice; unfortunately, they hadn't made the slightest difference by the time Master Tetsuji came calling, and there was no way they'd keep him waiting.
The Master asked him if Neil required binding. Kevin said, "I don't believe so, sir."
Dark eyes took in the figure standing rigid and sweaty behind Kevin. He didn't have to glance back to know Neil didn't bow his head or do anything but meet those eyes and glare. Kevin had told him how to act. Kevin had been clear. Neil, of course, would not heed what was best for him.
It wasn't a surprise when the Master had Kevin cuff his hands.
"Jump when he says jump, huh?" Neil breathed at him, too low to be discernible but too loud to be missed by the enhanced. Kevin didn't acknowledge it as he snapped metal around his wrists, Neil's hands bound before him. At the end Neil whispered, "Good boy," so pointed and sarcastic despite the croaking quality of his voice that Kevin couldn't stem his frown.
When he turned back around to the Master's unimpressed face, he dutifully repeated what Neil had said.
It wasn't a surprise when the baton drove into both their stomachs.
Neil gasped something after that, but it was choked enough that Kevin pretended he hadn't understood.
The way back to the Nest was much more familiar than the original journey to the restricted ward. It also inspired much less anticipation, and absolutely no excitement. Introductions had to be made -- it wasn't every day a match was made. The Nest's mess hall, with its stage at one end and mandatory attendance hours no matter what jobs or tests or preparations personnel had to do, worked perfectly. A woman announced them before they walked on. The hall was, as always at this hour, full.
For one absurd moment, Kevin entertained asking to do this another day when his companion wasn't so obviously ill.
But there had to be a reason for it. The absurd moment passed, Kevin unlocked Neil’s cuffs and ignored the unhealthy heat radiating from his skin and, after, the way Neil rubbed at his wrists. The woman gesturing for them to walk on, and Kevin understood quite well what was at work here. The cuffs that anyone who had passed them had seen, the sickness: it was all make clear who was in charge, what they could do, and where exactly Neil stood. It was embarrassing for Kevin, too, but then, it was partially his fault. If he had worked harder at teaching Neil proper manners, it wouldn't have been necessary. He shouldn't take it more personally than that. He tried not to.
If he hadn't liked Andrew looking at Neil, an entire room was abhorrent.
(But that, too, was a lesson as much as a test.)
The woman - she preferred Kathy, not Dr. Ferdinand - spoke for them. To a hall of interested and amused employees, she introduced Nathaniel Wesninski, the son of Project Sentinel’s key backer and generous philanthropist, Nathan Wesninski. He’d been thought to be dead after his mother abducted him, but in actuality, he’d been forced to live on the run with his abusive and controlling kidnapper. Sickness at last did Mary Hatford in and he’d, after thirteen years, finally returned to his father to join their cause. As it just so happened, his age wasn’t an issue: Kevin and he matched for sentinel and companion collaboration.
(Kevin did not move. A few technicians and scientists murmured approvingly, but his fellow soldiers remained similarly statuesque).
(At his side, Nathaniel’s jaw clenched so tight Kevin could hear his teeth grind.)
But thirteen years with abuse can’t be easily undone, she cautioned. Nathaniel was still rough around the edges. They could expect sudden, vicious aggression and compulsive lying.
It wasn’t his fault his mother had made him into this. Nevertheless, if they would do their best to teach him what life at the structured and organized Evermore Laboratories could be, he was expected to be a successful and talented addition to their team.
Kevin had his rehearsed lines to say, to the effect of promising his own skill and prowess to the nation’s betterment. Neil should have echoed it, but when he didn’t, no one looked surprised.
Kathy was one of their biochemical scientists, but as she’d grown older, she more enjoyed the comfortable position of being their public face. She was good at her job -- as evidenced here, she was convincing.
The introduction finished on her closing word, Kevin and Nathaniel ushered off to shake the science team’s hands and meet their allocated medical staff. They’d have first priority to any rooms or check-ups on the slightest issue; they were, after all, officially worth well over several million in investments alone.
Their assigned practitioner, David Wymack, had a slight smile on his face as he congratulated Kevin on finding his match. They hadn’t the best relations (they both knew he was, technically, Kevin’s father; as Kevin hadn’t met him or known that until he was close to twenty, he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that information). As opposed to the others, he also fearlessly stuck and kept his hand out for Nathaniel to shake.
Dr. Wymack was a decent man. He didn’t let many boss him around, or tell him how to think. He was incredible at his job, which was how he kept it despite those flaws.
“That’s a nasty cough you have.” The doctor asked in the uncomfortable silence to follow when Nathaniel refused to take his hand.
It was the slightest shift in weight, the slightest loss of balance, but Kevin caught Nathaniel’s sway and grimace as he swallowed. By Dr. Wymack’s frown, he did, too.
Finally Nathaniel asked, “You have something for it?”
“I’m here to make sure you can keep fighting,” he replied, perfectly level. His hand finally dropped back to his side, but he didn’t look less invested. “After you finish mingling, visit my office. You’ve time today, don’t you, Kevin?”
“Today’s purely orientation and rounds, sir.”
So. Yes. They had time.
“Good. I expect to see you before I close shop.” He gave Nathaniel one more serious look-over, his frown deepening and something dark passing behind his eyes, but then he nodded to Kevin and nodded again to Nathaniel and took his leave with their main nurse, Abby Winfield.
After that, it was all combat personnel.
Within four minutes, Kevin learned that Riko and Jean were still on their overseas mission. So that was why he hadn’t heard anything from his oldest friend-- it was absolutely understandable.
Within five minutes, Andrew appeared to stare the helicopter operator that had told him about Riko and Jean into making a hasty excuse about cold lunches and leave.
Kevin barely restrained a sigh. “He was just keeping me updated, Andrew.”
“No. He was hoping you’d slip up.”
“Who are you?” Nathaniel asked, which wasn’t the first thing he’d said but was the first conversation he initiated. He’d apparently realized that being silent the whole way through wouldn’t do him any favors. Kevin could only hope that realization would carry on into their tour of the place.
“You don’t remember?” A bored look but mean twist to his lips. “You must have been more out of it than we thought.”
A rational person would have been unsettled by that. Through the fog of his illness, Nathaniel just looked irritated.
This time, Kevin didn’t restrain a sigh.
“Andrew Minyard,” he supplied. “Our roommate.”
Nathaniel cut a sidelong look at him. “Thought they’d want to keep us… cozy.”
Awkward. That was an awkward trail off. Even Kevin picked up on it: the awkwardness, and the underlying worry.
Andrew, to Kevin’s eye, looked unimpressed. He, at least, knew Kevin wasn’t the sort to randomly beat people in the night (or, anything worse). “There aren’t many rooms capable of containing a sentinel in an emergency lockdown. All the sound-proofing and delicate wiring, never mind the re-enforced steel, costs a pretty penny.”
“Lockdowns happen often?”
“By the grace of our Masters,” too deadpan to be anything but sarcastic, Andrew seriously needed to watch his mouth, “no.”
Neil looked suspicious. To be fair, as far as the mess hall meeting went, if he didn’t look ill, he looked suspicious.
Andrew’s reputation for sharp words and quicker violence didn’t deter other troops from approaching him and Nathaniel, but it did shorten the amount of time they were willing to attempt to make small talk. Most of the combat operatives Kevin had served with before understood well enough what Andrew was like, and knew also that as long as they kept out of arm’s reach, there wasn’t any real threat in discussing how this would shift up future missions. More than a few lamented the likelihood that they’d never serve with Kevin again; he could always be trusted to stay on task, and he wasn’t near as volatile as some of the other sentinels.
When they said this, Nathaniel guffawed and coughed out something about narrow-minded arrogance. Andrew, on Kevin’s other side, did nothing to berate him while Kevin continued to pave their reputation’s road.
(Maybe Kevin should’ve put in for a room transfer.)
In any case, Kevin found himself doing the bulk of the talking.
He really shouldn’t have been surprised by that.
(He just wished… sometimes, he wished.)
“Our first mission can’t be expected for a while,” he told Laila, the third and final paired sentinel within their department, “he was a civilian only a month ago.”
“Life on the run doesn’t sound like a typical civilian,” she returned, and peered at Nathaniel. Alvarez, her companion, crossed her arms at her side.
Some believed Kathy’s story. Those people didn’t have any reason to care. Of the more skeptical, they weren’t allowed to care enough. In any case: it had nothing to do with their operations, so it really didn’t matter.
“We did our best, all considered,” Nathaniel replied, dry enough to peel wallpaper.
Luckily, Laila didn’t take his indifference personally. The two women were relatively new additions to their department - in fact, they and another sentinel, Knox, been swapped in for Thea, another unmatched sentinel and a full medical team - and, in preparation for their missions, Kevin planned to pull as much information and advice from Laila and Alveraz as possible.
Mingling accomplished as well as it could be with one silent and one sarcastic shadow, Kevin deemed Nathaniel ready to move on to the tour of the facilities open to them.
There weren’t many. The gym, the showers, the test chambers, the silent study room, the library, and, finally, the medical ward. There were other treasures like a gun range and multiple obstacle courses hidden in Evermore’s labyrinthine hallways, but Nathaniel wouldn’t have access to those until he was given security clearance.
Unfortunately, that meant those areas were off-limits to Kevin as well.
As they walked to his office twenty-five minutes later than Kevin had hoped, the time wasted ticking in his head, Kevin said, “We’ve already lost too much time from this illness. After Dr. Wymack prescribes what you need to get back on your feet, every waking moment will be put toward getting you in shape.”
“Why are you still here?” Nathaniel, completely ignoring Kevin, asked Andrew, who also completely ignored Kevin.
Kevin, ignored, grit his teeth.
“I’m going to be here as long as I need to be.” One light eyebrow arched. “Is that a problem for you?”
“Didn’t you hear? I’m Kevin’s new babysitter. He’s big enough not to need two.”
“Cute as your fretful yapping is, naivety grows old fast. Open your eyes, Nathaniel. You don’t know anything about this world.”
“I’ve seen enough,” he growled back. “I know I won’t be here long.”
Andrew’s eyes made a slow trek from the ceiling’s camera and back to a bristling Nathaniel. “You won’t? No one trusts a liar. Everyone around you is stronger and better trained than you. So, you’ll need to coordinate. But with who? Who’s going to help a poor victim that doesn’t even know what’s good for him?”
“Running from here won’t be the hardest thing I’ve done.”
“Your mother’s dead.” Nathaniel, quick enough for a human to miss but a bright red flag for Kevin and Andrew, held back a flinch. “You’ve nowhere to run to. Recklessness like that is why they’ve already backed you into a corner.”
Teeth bared and eyes bright, Nathaniel drew himself up for a retort--
And Kevin placed one hand on his shoulder to lightly shove him into the office, belatedly knocking on the door-frame after. “Dr. Wymack? Apologies for the delay.”
“What delay?” Wymack returned, seated at a desk piled high with files. Abby tsked from her own paper-filled workstation, but when Kevin glanced to her, she had a smile on her face. They were decent people, Kevin again thought; skilled and respected in their respective fields, he’d never once heard of a problem arising from those under David and Abby’s care. The same could not be said for others.
For example: Andrew’s former and Riko’s present doctor, Dr. Proust.
Abby was the one to ask, “Andrew? Are you alright with waiting? We asked, since we know you and Kevin continue to act as a unit, but Dr. Dobson refused to transfer you to us.”
Andrew leaned against the doorway and replied, aloof as ever, “I’ll wait.”
It turned out Wymack wanted to do more than diagnose Nathaniel’s illness and prescribe some medication. He needed new data from Kevin to compare any differences before and after his locating a companion, and an entire physical for Nathaniel. The latter could wait until after the illness cleared and, in Wymack’s words, you quit looking like you’re about to keel over, kid, but they needed to get the former out of the way as soon as possible.
Good thing for Abby, or the silence between Wymack’s stilted questions and Kevin’s stiff answers would have been bothersome.
It turned out Neil had strep, and absolutely no reason for moving as much as he was. Kevin hadn’t been allowed in the room while they checked his companion over, but the walls were thin, and his ears were better than good. He didn’t need to see what was happening to know Wymack, after the diagnosis was made, had to take a long pause to pinch -- his nose, probably, or temples. Abby’s sympathetic murmur of, “Nothing to be done for it but to put you on the road to recovery,” was, for a moment, the only sound beyond Neil’s pained breathing and occasional cough to come from the room.
When the door opened, Wymack was gruffer than usual. Abby explained what had to be done, wrote the prescription for Wymack to sign, told them the antibiotics would arrive by the morning, and sent them on their way.
It wasn’t a busy day, if you asked Kevin, but it had been… long.
When Neil clued in to their moving for the dormitory, he notably flagged, his feet dragging and head bowed. Offering help or commenting on it seemed like the last thing he’d want, so Kevin kept himself quiet.
The room was bigger than the ‘honeymoon suite’ they’d shared. Much like Andrew, it hadn’t changed: clean, minimalist and well-organized, it felt exactly as Neil had said. Cozy.
This time around, Neil didn’t argue about being sent to bed.
Left in the kitchen, the lighting the perfect brightness and wiring hardly humming, Kevin sank onto one of their (newly replaced, after the incident with Smalls) plastic-cushioned chair.
He didn’t want to beat around the bush. He looked at Andrew and asked, voice too low to be caught by the microphones they both suspected to be in the walls (they knew there were cameras), “Is he going to be an issue?”
“For me?”Andrew asked, paused. Shrugged. Then, “For himself? Yes.”
Kevin clicked his tongue. “I knew that.”
“Finally find someone too stubborn to be wooed by your questionable charms, Day?”
“He’ the second I’ve found matching that unfortunate description. You still haven’t scheduled a time for the new simulation.”
“New doesn’t necessarily mean better. And anyway, I’ve been busy.”
“How? Don’t say you put all your time toward sneaking into visiting me.”
“Oh, no, that was a one day excursion. I’ve been negotiating with the suppliers on upping our cigarette rations.”
“You need to practice.” Kevin hissed, a little too loud. He struggled to bring his voice down, taking a moment to breathe long and deep. The day had been long. His stomach didn’t hurt from the morning’s strike - it hadn’t hurt three minutes after, really - but the memory was there. If Neil turned out to be another Andrew in terms of work ethic, Kevin wasn’t sure how long he’d remain sane.
Andrew’s chin raised, just a centimeter. “Worried I won’t live up to your expectations?”
“You can. If you put in an ounce of effort, you would, in a heartbeat. You’ll see how rewarding it can be - you’ll find your enjoyment.”
Another blank look. “This is a dead horse, and I’m bored of beating it. Change the subject.”
Kevin racked his brain for one, and found: there was too much. About the illness, about Nathaniel’s treatment, about the up-coming shift in dynamic, about Wymack. About Riko, too, and what was going to happen when he returned.
It so much, not a single thing agreed to be given word.
Andrew looked at him, just took him in, silent and assessing. He then said, steadying in a way Neil managed only for his senses: “Go to bed. ”
He didn’t argue. He went.
Seven days went quickly. The antibiotics worked fast, and orientation soared by.
“I don’t actually snore,” Kevin whispered at Andrew on their first night back. The blond looked worn out in a manner that could only be contributed to sleeplessness. He also looked close to strangling anything for making even the slightest sound.
“Nathaniel,” Andrew replied, loud enough for all dorm occupants to hear, “wouldn’t quite coughing.”
As if on cue, Neil coughed louder. He added a glare for good measure.
(His roots began to really show, too, black giving way to tired brown and, eventually, auburn.)
The seven days after those went equally quickly. They had a routine, a series of goals - training in self-defense, gear and strategy for Neil, training in working with Neil for Kevin - and they met them, one by one. It was gloriously, beautifully familiar for Kevin, and to-the-point and rigorous for Neil, which gave him little time to complain.
Their little room remained the same amidst all the change, up to and including its new resident: to Kevin’s utmost surprise, Neil began to almost relax whenever they returned to the dorm, oftentimes quietly going for his library loaned books and settling down easily for mechanical and medicinal related studies.
“He’s adapting,” Kevin once whispered to Andrew during their late night talks. Sentinels didn’t require as much sleep as unenhanced folk-- Kevin knew that, but suddenly being attached to the hip with a pure human made him realize just how much time humans wasted being unconscious.
Andrew’s finger tapped once on the table. He wasn’t as convinced about Neil’s slow progress toward integration.
But it didn’t matter what he thought. Neil cleared the basic qualification tests and began classes in armed self-defense training and firearm maintenance. Kevin received personal congratulations for his work with bringing a former civilian up to speed.
Andrew saw Kevin believe what they told him: it was all falling into place. Soon enough, they’d be back on the field.
Andrew also saw how carefully Neil watched anything there was to watch about how Evermore operated. He wasn’t a complete fool, Andrew would give him that; he hid it well. You wouldn’t know unless you were looking for it, and not blinded by future possibilities.
(Officially, he should have reported what he noticed.)
(Unofficially, he didn’t give a shit. It was, for once in this monotonous life, interesting.)
They had one day off a week -- or, rather, one day where they were required to stay within the library, study room or their dormitory. It was usually the day that did in their roommates, whoever they were; with Neil, of course, things were different. Despite what he thought, he wasn’t going anywhere. Not with how he was. Andrew was sure of that.
Kevin being who he was thought it best they use the day to study, which meant Andrew tipped his chair back and contemplated the off-white ceiling while Neil digressed from engine repair to what models of car were easiest to hot-wire. Andrew joined in at that, throwing out what objects he knew could fit inside a glove compartment (ranging from weaponry to a small pot of petunias). They digressed further into horticulture and gardening, all purely theoretical.
It took Kevin a while to realize Neil didn’t know the first thing about car manufacturers, and even longer after that to catch on to what both Andrew and Neil conspired toward: that was, pissing Kevin Day off.
“Have you ever even seen a bonsai?” Kevin demanded. For the first time since they’d met and the first time, Andrew was willing to bet, since arriving at Evermore, the corners of Neil's mouth twitched up. It was an almost smile.
“I’ve seen a whole bonsai plantation,” Neil replied, otherwise straight-faced.
“The one in South America?” Andrew prompted.
Neil nodded. Kevin sputtered, “There’s no bonsai plantations in South America. How many places have you actually been?”
A beat, the easy atmosphere wavering. “A few.”
With a crack that made Kevin glare and Neil pretend he hadn’t jumped, Andrew let his chair legs hit the ground. The easy atmosphere broke. Neil hunched his shoulders and stared at him.
(Riling Kevin up was one thing. Omissions and lies were another. They weren’t interesting, they were everyday.)
After another pause, he begrudgingly admitted, “Only Europe, Canada and America.”
“Where in Europe?”
“Why?”
Andrew didn’t speak French, but anyone could recognize what Kevin asked with français in the sentence.
Across the table and over forgotten books, Neil’s face shuttered. When it opened again, he was all defensiveness. He loftily gave an affirmative in French, and a few words besides.
Andrew rolled his eyes.
Catching it, Neil snapped, “You don’t, obviously.”
“For someone without anything left to lose, you sure are cagey.”
“If I had nothing left, you wouldn’t have any questions.”
“We should get back to studying,” Kevin edged in, his shoulders tense. Perhaps he thought this was the beginning of their peaceful calm breaking.
If it wasn’t about his assignments, Kevin Day was a blind fool at the best of times.
That was part of why he needed watching by more than a companion poised to run at the closest opportunity.
For a stretched out minute, Andrew and Neil stared one another down. Andrew took his time in memorizing the look, rare as it was in these halls: defiance, pure and wrathful, with an anxiety-ridden break-down pending for the near future. If their calm was going to break, it wouldn’t be between Andrew and Neil. It would be all Neil. How he’d be after that--- wasn’t Andrew’s concern.
It would be a shame, if it went completely wrong and the handlers decided Neil was better brain dead or, less likely, terminated. It would be a real shame - he thought he understood what Kevin meant by the boon of a companion, of at least belonging to one’s body after years of the world being too much.
But ultimately, that wasn’t Andrew’s problem.
(Make no mistake: Nathaniel Wesninski, or Neil Wesninski, or whoever he wanted to be, was a problem.)
“Fine,” Neil at last said, and broke the staring contest to look back to his textbook.
Knowing he had nothing left to do here, Andrew stood.
“Where are you going?” Kevin asked him, once more in a tizzy. That was good. Kevin needed a goal to function. Without one, he might just stall out. Andrew gave him a glance, but spoke with his feet: he went for the bedroom to fetch socks and boots, and then, after lacing up, headed for the door.
Neil watched because he always watched. Kevin, because he wasn’t as much of a fool as he could have been, understood, and snapped his fingers in front of Neil’s face to refocus his attention on mechanics.
They’d be fine for an hour and a half. Kevin wouldn’t let Neil leave the table until he could answer every chapter question, and Neil had too much restlessness building in him to manage it today.
Bee kept her office open from morning to curfew on days off. She was a physician, not a therapist, but she had a way with words, and sworn confidentiality besides. She also had the only bowl of hard candy to found in the entire godforsaken complex.
Her nurse - usually out on the off days, but someone Andrew could, if he needed to, ask about - was of interest to him, too. Last he heard, the nurse wanted funding to return to school and switch professions to family practitioner. It wasn’t likely to happen any time soon, not with a greater need for nurses than doctors in Evermore, but he wanted to keep an eye on him nonetheless.
The peace, the too-good equilibrium between Kevin-Neil-and-him, crawled under his skin as an itch he hadn’t felt in years.
“Andrew?”
Patient and quiet, Bee had been saying that for a while. He didn’t recall it, of course, but he knew it.
He supplied an answer to the question to stave off the burning in his brain. Grape lingered on his tongue; it wasn’t the best jolly rancher flavor, but getting sweets into Evermore was more a case of beggar than chooser. “Taste.”
“When was the last time you zoned?”
A beat.
“Fourteen days.”
“That’s impressive. Amazing, in fact. According to my estimate, your last record was seventy-five hours.”
He thought of their room’s new addition, and didn’t reply.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Bee. He just he didn’t trust the walls.
The thought had occurred, but it wasn’t until then that he began to remember what it was like not to plan for absolute powerlessness.
It was --- addicting.
As was the way of life, once calm set in, it broke.
The day after - there was a weekday attached, but they never saw the sun or a calender beyond the date section on mission reports, so Andrew didn’t bother keeping conscious track - Riko Moriyama and his companion returned from overseas.
A typical day began at five hundred hours, with lunch at twelve hundred hours. Curfew was twenty-one-hundred hours sharp. Most people turned in within the hour before that, exhausted and numb and dreaming of nothing but a warm dinner and sleep. Kevin, of course, refused to call it quits before absolutely necessary (and even then, on days that weren’t purely physical and left Neil’s eyes more than half-open, brought out texts to be studied). Since Kevin refused to turn in, Andrew’s days also stretched closer to sixteen hours than they otherwise would have.
It was routine. They pushed themselves to their body’s limits in training, but they still never dragged as much as Neil seemed to when he tried to keep up with them (in activities, not bench weight).
No one but security details - largely robotic, or, failing that, no one with a day job in Evermore - were permitted in the halls after curfew.
So, they returned to their dorm right on the minute mark.
Three minutes after that, four sharp knocks echoed through their room.
Let that last point be amended: no one but security details and Moriyamas walked the halls after curfew.
Even without a whiff or noise from beyond the doors, Andrew had an inkling who it might be. Neil froze on his blurry-eyed and sore trek from bathroom to bedroom, while Kevin’s neck cracked at how quickly he looked over.
He took a few steps, his face vaguely hopeful, but Andrew beat him to it.
The first thing Riko said to him in two months was, “You’re still here?”
Affecting shock, Andrew asked, “You’re still alive?”
And then he made to shut the door in the man’s face.
“Riko!”
That was the only reason the door didn’t click shut.
Kevin was at his side in an instant, foot stuck out and a pleased, quietly arrogant look on his face. He was flattered to be visited, as if he hadn’t been certain his supposed friend of an age and a half would. “Welcome back. Oh, Jean -- you too. Both of you, come in. Andrew, come on, knock it off.”
(Outside of his assignments, Kevin Day was a blind fool.)
It wasn’t surprising to note Neil had disappeared as much as he could, the bedroom door open but inside dark. It was more surprising they hadn’t woken up to him hiding under the bed and biting any hand that reached for him, Andrew had once remarked to Kevin; he’d gotten a sharp look for it, but only because Kevin knew it to be true.
“I heard they found your companion,” Riko was saying. Andrew listened to him with half an ear, paying mind to his tone more than the words. Currently, the majority of his efforts were funneled into staring Jean Moreau down across the table they sat around.
It was tradition at this point. Jean, his death wish growing every year, rarely looked away.
“You can probably hear him,” Kevin joked, or as close to joking as he came.
Riko could. He could also undoubtedly smell him in every inch of the apartment: the dull, worn scent of a person running on fear and fumes. Sometimes Kevin mused on what Neil might smell like when he relaxed. Most times, he didn’t even register there was an alternative. Everyone in Evermore Laboratories smelled of some variety of chemicals and fear.
Everyone except Riko Moriyama and his uncle, that was. “Nathaniel Wesninski. Really, I can’t believe it. It’s been years.”
“-- Nathaniel!” Kevin called. Andrew wondered if he even noticed how he conformed to Riko’s standards. Probably not. “We have guests. Bring another chair and say hi.”
From the dark bedroom: nothing.
Jean Moreau’s eyebrow twitched. Andrew’s lip curled.
Kevin frowned. Riko, slowly, sat back.
“Is he shy?” Riko asked his long-time friend and former, unofficial companion. He sounded mocking.
Andrew once more analyzed the cost-benefits of permanently disfiguring Tetsuji’s nephew.
As he still didn’t know where Aaron slept and how long it would take to reach him, he supposed he’d wait a bit longer.
“He prefers to avoid headaches as much as he can,” Andrew finally threw out, if only to see Kevin grimace in embarrassment. Really, he didn’t know what Kevin expected. Outside of the two of them and possibly Dr. Wymack, Neil had no positive experiences with Evermore personnel, let alone one with the last name Moriyama.
That was, Andrew believed, partially by design. But that was a thought for another time.
Chair legs scraping on tile, Kevin stood to fetch him. Of course, that was when Neil appeared at the hallway’s opening to the kitchen.
“Riko Moriyama?” Neil asked.
Smiling benevolently, Riko gestured to the open end of their table.
“I’ll stay here, thanks,” Neil said.
Jean’s eyebrow twitched again. Under his breath, Andrew snorted.
Instantly, Riko flipped to aloof and condescending. Remaining seated, he looked Neil over and found him lacking. “You gave up your right to any authority the moment your mother and you fled like cowards. Kevin,” black eyes turned in his direction, “haven’t you trained your dog how to sit?”
Yet standing, Kevin looked as if Riko had pulled the rug from under his feet, set it aflame, and threw it out a window.
Behind them, crisp anger mingled with waves of fear.
“He’s still working on the housebreaking,” Neil drawled with an incredible impression of someone whose heart wasn’t picking up, “one step at a time, you know how it goes.”
“I understand you’re used to running wild, but they say it’s been over a month since you’ve arrived. It didn’t take Jean that long to learn the ropes.”
Jean didn’t add his two cents. He wasn’t expected to.
Andrew didn’t have to look back to know that in the silence to follow, Neil was doing his best to eye Jean without looking too concerned.
“He’s your sentinel?”
“He’s my companion.”
“I didn’t ask you,” Neil replied, and Kevin at last snapped back into the present to tell Neil to mind his tone, “I asked him.”
“He is,” Jean finally spoke, “and we’ve the most successful record of any national operative. If you weren’t so full of yourself, maybe Kevin would stop wasting his talents babysitting you.”
With a hand clutched to his chest and doleful look at Kevin, Neil gasped, “I’m arrogant? Why didn’t you tell me? I’d love to stop holding you back.”
“Neil,” Kevin growled, mouth snapping shut on the word to follow. It wasn’t spoken, but it was there, a sentiment often demanded but rarely directly voiced, the command poisoning the air between them: behave.
“Neil?” Latching on and echoing it, Riko stood. “Is that some sort of cute nickname?”
“It’s a choice,” Neil threw back. “Something you obviously abhor. You ever wonder if you gave anyone half a chance, you’d be locked up and left to rot? The moment someone surpasses your record might give them the opportunity. Given your attitude, I’m sure there are plenty of people who wouldn’t ever fight forgetting you ever existed.”
Though not made of surprise, a breath ghosted from Andrew’s lungs.
Across the table, Jean held very, very still.
“Seven days,” Riko said, his smile pretty as a snake in the grass. “No. Five. Give me five days, and I’ll have him better trained than a month with you, Kevin.”
Whatever dream he’d have of Riko and him working side by side was, Andrew saw, crumbling apart. He’d pick up the pieces and delude himself into thinking it possible once Riko left, as he always did, but for right then, for that very moment, his world had narrowed into making sure Riko didn’t leave with too awful of an impression. It was an ugly look for him. Even if he couldn’t act on the impulses, Andrew wondered -- would he go for Riko’s hands, or face?
Face, he decided. Anything to get that arrogant one off his cheek.
“Today was a bad day,” Kevin tried arguing. “You caught him at a bad time.”
“There are no bad days,” Jean said.
“Exactly,” Riko reaffirmed. “Five days. Five nights, even. It won’t interrupt your schedules at all -- in fact, I’ll speak with my uncle now.”
With a toothy smile for Neil and a faux sympathetic look for Kevin (and no look for Andrew), he turned for the door. Without a single gesture or word, Jean rose to follow.
A chaired overturned onto the floor. Andrew didn’t care. Neil would not be sleeping anywhere but with them, in their small cut of the world; of that he’d decided, and so it would be.
As it turned out, he needn’t have ruined the furniture. Someone beat him to Riko.
That person was Kevin, six-odd feet and two-hundred-and-fifty-plus pounds of tensed muscle, one dark hand fisted in Riko’s shirt collar and, in one smooth motion, shoving him back to the table.
Riko went. Riko went not from choice, but pure, unadulterated shock, stumbling back down into his chair.
Looking as if he wasn’t sure what he’d done and a little fearful of it himself, Kevin rocked back on his heels, lowered trembling hands to his sides, licked his lips, and, carefully, said, “That’s not necessary, Riko.”
It sounded as if he were feeling out the words. It sounded as if he didn’t like them, but didn’t have another option, and so gave in, reluctant but set.
Andrew, as a rule, did not like surprises. But every rule had an exception, and in this incident, he might have found one.
Barely a whisper for the unenhanced, but perfectly conversational for the rest, Riko asked, “What did you just say?”
Yes, this was very much an exception.
Under Riko’s gaze, however, Kevin lost his nerve: he took a small step back, and worked over in his mind how to apologize.
In the same voice Riko had used, Andrew derailed Kevin’s thought to say, “It’s well past curfew, Riko. You and Jean should be on your way.”
Riko’s eyes didn’t waver from Kevin’s, but the line of his shoulders stiffened. All at once, he seemed to become very aware that it was two against one, two well-rested and well-fed sentinels against one fresh from a long mission.
(They hadn’t even discussed the mission. That was a first.)
(Honestly, Andrew could get used to it. A pity he wasn’t one for hope.)
“He’s wasting your potential. All this is wasting your potential. I thought this would mean we’d fight together again.” Riko told Kevin.
A muscle in his clenched jaw jumped, but Kevin, for once, neither looked away nor replied.
After a moment to confirm he wouldn’t receive a response, he said, “Apparently not,” and again, he stood.
It felt like the start of something.
There hadn’t been a start of something in so, so long.
Jean gave Neil an appraising look out of the corner of his eye, safely behind and out of Riko’s. He was the only one to look back.
The one to cause the silence interrupted it, his anxiety thick but determination stronger.
He said: “We need to leave.”
“Stop saying that.” Kevin replied at once, tired and worn, swaying once on spot before taking a few steps and dropping into the chair Riko had abandoned. “Stop thinking it. Stop acting like it, stop constantly-- Neil, fuck, you’re exhausting.”
“I’m serious. We should leave. We could leave. You’re two of the strongest people here.” Ignoring him, Andrew made his way to their cabinets. The goods within were disappointingly bland and bare: healthy cereal with dried fruit, whole wheat bread, a pile of red potatoes. A jar of pre-made tomato sauce. A bottle of teriyaki sauce. Behind him, Neil continued pushing his revolution. “How can you bring someone like that into your home and not think something has to change?”
“That someone’s going to make your life a living hell,” Andrew said as he tried the fridge. On having no better luck amidst a carton of eggs and a few packages of raw meat, he went for the whole milk.
“That someone has been my confidante for over thirteen years,” Kevin said, by which he really meant, my best friend and brother. “And you spit in his face over one little comment. Of course he was angry.”
“Is he ever not like that?”
“Never.”
“Maybe if you also didn’t antagonize him, Andrew,” Kevin snapped, a brief flare of fire before the night’s rocky happenings smothered them out. Slumping further, he sighed and dropped his face into his broad hands. Muffled, he said, “You picked a worthless fight here, Neil. This isn’t the hill you want to die on.”
“As far as I could tell, he wanted to drag me off for a torture session,” Neil muttered, his shoulder pressed hard against the hallway wall. “I’m fine with fighting against that. Is that what he did to his companion? Torture until he forgot he was a person?”
“Re-education,” Andrew corrected. “Not torture. Not on paper.”
“Same difference.”
“It wouldn’t have happened,” Kevin said. “You’re passing the tests. You’re learning. Your attitude’s the only issue. The Master wouldn’t jeopardize the rest for that.”
Silence. In it: they’ve done worse for less, from one first-hand witness and one cynic.
Kevin’s green eyes peeked between his fingers. He hissed, “Stop. Both of you.”
“I’m going to bed,” Neil declared, turning sharply on a heel and disappearing again into the bedroom. This time, the lights clicked on before the door shut.
Finishing the milk straight from the carton, Andrew ignored Kevin’s pining look toward the closed door as well as the fact that both of them paused for a moment to track Neil’s progress from threshold to dresser.
Andrew broke it purposefully by tossing the milk carton and making his way to the shower.
Kevin would have to figure it out for himself where he stood. In the meantime, Andre was positive they’d need to work double-time to keep Neil in one piece.
Nothing happened the following day, though Jean’s hours in the weight room coincided with theirs.
He didn’t speak to them and he didn’t look their way. They extended the same courtesy, mostly; Neil wouldn’t stop stealing glances in between reps, but really, telling him to stop would have been absolutely counter-productive.
That night he asked, “Did he have a limp? Is it permanent?”
“Moreau always has something wrong with him,” Andrew replied. “On mission or off.”
“Not usually on mission,” Kevin amended for him, eyes averted. “But otherwise. Yes.”
Neil chewed his tongue and dropped it.
They were an elite fighting force. They were top of the line. Their skillsets were worth thousands, the serum in their blood worth millions. They ran themselves ragged to train, day and day out, and though they rarely heard it, their betters expected much of them. The American nation at large might not know their specific designation or backgrounds, but they served it well from the shadows. They were rewarded in incredible benefits for them and any immediate family, as well as a sizable retirement pension and, as Kathy was happy to say, an amazing experience with a variety of people in a wide number of locations.
(They pulled most of their recruitment from the military. Kathy didn’t often say that.)
They were a mysterious force fighting for what the papers swore to be right.
They took jobs from highest bidders - they weren’t really government, not at the core, though their ties ran deep - but never, they swore, at the expense of their own or the innocent.
A discovery he made himself and, in truth, one of the most important notes to add was: they were not morning people.
At least, not the one Neil had been lucky enough to be chained to.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to need as much sleep. And yelling isn’t working,” he groaned to Andrew, who was watching with a bowl of blueberry yogurt in hand as Neil attempted to wake Kevin. “Aren’t your ears super sensitive?”
“Mine are. In that state,” Andrew said, spoon waggled in Neil’s direction with a distinct lack of care (probably because his ears were bothered by Neil’s yelling, and also because it wasn’t his turn to clean the carpets come their next free day), “he’s a rock. Rocks haven’t any ears.”
“Thanks for the geology lesson.”
“Anytime. We’re very concerned with your education here, after all.”
Impatience built into a tapping foot, Neil contemplated the snoozing sentinel.
This wasn’t the first morning he’d needed to rouse Kevin. It wasn’t close to the thirtieth time Andrew had probably needed to rouse him, either, but Andrew made it clear in the first three days that waking Kevin up was now Neil’s job. They were on a schedule. They didn’t have time for this. Worst of all, Kevin never failed to complain to Neil afterward as if it was his fault for not waking him up sooner.
He had an alarm clock! It woke Andrew up! Why not Kevin?
Fed up with shoulder-shakes and prods, Neil latched onto the edge of Kevin’s pillow, pulled it from under his head, and smacked it down onto his face.
Kevin, at last, woke, sputtering and protesting. Neil huffed at him to get up, backed off, realized his protests were turning quieter and quieter and sleepier and sleepier, and returned to give him another thwap to the face.
Rinse, repeat, until Kevin was at last up and - as Neil thought - cursing Neil for letting him sleep in so much.
“This is ridiculous,” Neil grumbled as they waited near the door for Kevin to get dressed and double-check his bag. “They should give me a dog whistle. Bet that’d wake him up.”
“I’d kill you,” Andrew promised him.
“Sure,” Neil agreed, amiable to the idea of Andrew over Riko.
When Kevin emerged with his bag over his back and his hair stuck up funny on one side, neither of them informed him. Five minutes past five, which was late enough to sink Kevin into unhappy silence but not late enough for anything to truly be affected, they left.
First was cardio. Second was weights. With two long days between their last meeting, Neil finagled their work-out routine to bring him and Kevin next to Jean. Although the other companion remained stiff and unfriendly, he didn’t hesitate to answer what harmless questions Neil had-- especially, it turned out, when all three of them spoke in French.
Neil tried to turn the conversation to Jean’s experience as a companion, but every answer was textbook perfect. It frustrated him enough that Kevin called their weight training early (citing their late start), collected Andrew, and moved them out of the gym.
Third was the obstacle course and gun range. Until noon, Kevin and Neil coordinated runs and drills while Andrew squared off in the ring with another unmatched sentinel, Jeremy Knox.
Then lunch.
During lunch, Kevin searched for and found Riko. He was given the cold shoulder when he attempted to merge their groups, and, after Neil realized who Kevin intended to interrupt their usual seating arrangement for, guffawed, turned and left for Laila and Alvarez’s table. Eventually, as if on a string, Kevin and Andrew followed.
“The hell put a twist in his knickers?” Alvarez asked Neil. They didn’t typically talk during lunch: for one, Laila and Alvarez didn’t seem to care for anyone in Evermore aside from each other and the other transfer from their old department, Knox. For two, when Knox sat with them (which he usually did, though he seemed to have friends in every branch), he facilitated discussion enough with Kevin that the rest didn’t have to say anything. For three, all five sat at the same table more by virtue of no one else wanting to mingle with the paired sentinels - or Andrew - out of jealousy, contempt or some mix of the two.
Laila once told him in her absent-minded voice that Kevin Day had been the darling of the Laboratories’ faculty, right up there next to Riko. Ever since Riko found his companion and Kevin’s performance was found lacking in comparison, however, he’d fallen step by step to the wayside.
She didn’t think he took it well. She concluded by telling Neil that he must have represented Kevin’s ticket back to the top of the ladder.
Neil didn’t need to be told that to know it.
It took Neil a moment to follow the jerk of her chin to where Riko sat, relaxed and unconcerned. He didn’t seem to suffer from the paired sentinel issue. Maybe it really was more a product of Andrew’s presence than anything else.
(He still hadn’t gotten the full story on what made people shoot Andrew looks of mingled fear and disgust.)
“He’s not usually like that?” Neil finally asked in reply.
“Aw, hell no,” Alvarez said. She was gruff and full of bristling personality. It made her approachable in Neil’s mind, but also as stand-out as a sore thumb in Evermore. Knox and Laila, truthfully, weren’t so different. “Him and Kevin are usually real buddy-buddy whenever they’re both at headquarters. This is real new.” She paused. “This is connected to you, huh.”
“Guess so,” Neil offered, neutral.
She eyed him.
“Listen, kid,” she said, which was a bit insulting - they were definitely not far off in age. Five years, max. She was so casual with herself, too - like Jean, she’d been part of the common infantry before Laila had found her, and as far as he knew, had a well-adjusted and proud family back home. “If you pissed off Riko Moriyama enough that he’s not talking with Kevin, you’re going to want to watch your back.”
That was infinitely more annoying than the nickname.
At his side, he saw Andrew’s nostrils flare and his eyes move to Neil. It was a creepy thing to notice, but it wasn’t even close to the first time - him and Kevin constantly redirected their attention to him at the slightest change. Neil told himself he was growing used to it, but really, he just needed to figure out how to use it.
He said, unimpressed, “I’ve been told.”
“By who?”
She had him there. “Riko,” he admitted.
Her eyebrows shot up and she whistled, low and revenant. Laila, on her side, also looked over, though she masked it as an excuse to nab a carrot off her plate.
“You’re screwed, kid,” she told him.
He shrugged one shoulder and refocused on his meal. He’d been fucked since Kevin ran him down.
(Mostly, he missed the sky.)
Test after test after test, he passed. Test after test after test, Kevin’s cracks began to show.
Always harsh, he managed to be an even greater critic of Neil and Andrew’s forms. He had no time for himself or Neil to chat with Jean or Alveraz or even Knox; he was a bundle of nerves, a jug of gasoline waiting for a spark, and he wound himself tighter and tighter as absolutely nothing but their daily routine happened.
Riko continued to ignore them.
Five days after the talk with Alvarez, hoping to shove something down his gullet before passing out, Neil opened the fridge, squinted in and then straightened to ask Andrew, directly, “Have you been eating all the yogurts again?”
“Yes,” he answered, no shame or guilt or attempt at redemption.
“Are you serious?” Kevin cut in, sudden and too loud. Neil startled, his knuckles whitening on the fridge door. Andrew, meanwhile, didn’t so much as look at him. “Andrew, the supplier’s office only opens on day three. We’re going to have to start buying calcium tablets if you keep eating the dairy.”
“The tablets are disgusting,” Andrew finally said, the slide of his words somehow threatening.
That wasn’t new.
No, it was. It was new. It just hadn’t ever, in Neil’s experience, been directed at Kevin. Medical staff, their teachers who preferred to teach a pair over a trio and attempted to passive aggressively shuffle them into agreement, other troops -- Andrew exuded hostility toward them in the manner any large predator set its natural prey’s hackles up. Even if he never showed teeth, the knowledge of possibility was there.
It was, frankly, amazing he hadn’t been curbed before. But then, rather like Neil, he passed all his tests; unlike Neil, he didn’t give attitude to those who didn’t step out of line to receive it.
Tension hadn’t been there fifteen seconds before, but within a blink and a breath and Neil closing the fridge door, it crashed like a wave through the room, electric and intangible and positively terrible.
“There’s three of us here,” Kevin was saying, voice still too loud. “You need to think of the group.”
“I think we’ll survive,” Andrew replied. “It’s just yogurt.”
The urge to leave, to stretch his legs and run, returned full-force. Because he couldn’t -- too many days, too many to keep track of, too much time flying by without anything to count it but how many times his head hit the pillow - he did the next best thing, and made for the empty bedroom.
“Stop,” lashed out to halt his progress. It made him want to run farther, set fire ants under his skin and restlessness in his lungs, brought to mind other men who said the same, but --- he stopped. Behind him, Kevin stood, his hands flat on the table and tension rippling through his body, so scared even Neil could see it. “Quit hiding. We aren’t going to hurt you, for fuck’s sake.”
Not intentionally, he thought, and a few things more.
He didn’t move or reply.
“Sit down, Kevin,” Andrew said, cool and collected and definitely, definitely warning.
“You can’t tell me it doesn’t get to you,” he snarled. “He finds his backbone at the worst times. He still won’t change with us in the room or stand within reach-- don’t think I didn’t notice.” Like that, he turned his gaze and a jabbed finger in Neil’s direction. “Soon, there’s going to be a series of underwater puzzles you’ll need to solve. We need to practice at the pool. You can’t wear a full-bodied suit in the pool.”
Now cold, Andrew replied, “I won’t repeat myself.”
A little wild-eyed, Kevin stared at Andrew.
Then he turned and drove his fist into a wall. It, as it was designed to, held up. The lack of change agitated Kevin further, though he had to shake out his fist after. Pin prick eyes roved around the kitchen, skipping over Andrew and Neil as if they weren’t even there, finding - probably - enemies and monsters in every nook and cranny.
When he went after the chair for being breakable and accessible, Neil slipped into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. It wouldn’t really keep them out, and that knowledge kept him from truly calming his heart, but it was better than another second stuck in close quarters.
And, for this particular night, he much, much prefered it to watching as well as listening to Andrew forcibly containing Kevin’s outburst.
As far as he knew, neither of the sentinels made it to bed. As far as he knew, they never discussed a single thing. Watching the door in panic and paranoia kept him up a while longer even after the crashing and breaking glass ceased, but eventually, Neil fell unconscious.
When he woke, the morning proved that while the walls were super strength proof, everything within it in was not.
(Aside from livid bruises along Kevin’s right arm and Andrew’s swelling eye, however, they managed to keep in one piece.)
(The same could not be said for the fruit bowl, the table, or attempting any conversation during waking hours.)
Somehow, Neil ended up being the one to make a request for a new table, new chairs, maintenance for cracked cabinets, and a new fridge.
After he told her for what room, the woman didn’t seem as surprised as he’d have expected. She made a comment about how remarkable it was his normal self wasn’t dead or missing a limb, which he took in silence.
“You’re an unfriendly one, aren’t you?” She clicked her tongue at him after accepting back the forms.
A lot crowded in his mouth to be said to that. He decided on: “I didn’t get much sleep.”
The evening proved that Evermore’s employees weren’t as large in number as they appeared, and as with all closed communities, gossip traveled fast.
Paperwork for new items submitted promptly in the morning-- Kevin couldn’t have slept, at least, given his being awake when Neil finally stepped out-, they’d finished much of their schedule far ahead of time without any talk or acknowledged tension getting in the way. Thirty-four minutes before curfew, they headed as a trio back to their apartment. If there would’ve been a possibility for anything close to a breather once they reached it, Neil would’ve been happier. As it stood, though the supplier said they’d have the broken furniture cleaned out by that night and the new installed by the next, it was bound to be as exhaustingly tense as the day.
One of the unmatched sentinels - the same one that had been with Tetsuji - and five of his bulkier friends trundled past them in the narrow hallway.
One clipped Neil in the shoulder, an accident for all intents and purposes.
“Oi,” that one called, spinning around and looming, a textbook study in intimidation that Neil didn’t slow for but Andrew and Kevin glanced back at, “watch where you’re walking, brat.” Then, when he continued to be ignored, he took a step forward, reached for Neil’s shoulder, and -- snarled, his wrist caught by a much shorter blond.
“Are you sure you want to press your luck?” Andrew asked, voice sugar sweet.
Neil finally stopped to look back.
Everyone knew the sentinels in the building. By the frozen anger on the man’s face, he recognized Andrew, and he wasn’t entirely sure he did want to press his luck.
The other sentinel did.
“Lay off, Minyard, fuck. It was an accident.” He measured up to Kevin’s height but doubled in bulk, and he planted his feet as if he were ready to step in for his buddy in a moment. Most likely, he was just raring for a fight. “Day, call off the attack dog and get your bitch to apologize, and we’ll be on our way.”
In a voice Neil recognized as one Kevin directed at him but ramped to a thousand degrees, equal parts disbelieving and an affronted you’re being unprofessional, “Excuse me?”
The man with the caught wrist found strength in his numbers, and yanked for his hand back with a growled, “Let go, psycho.”
As with the night before, matters escalated quickly from there.
The sentinel said, “You heard me, Day.”
His friends fanned out behind him, one’s hand edging toward a sheath on his side.
One sickening crunch, and the man in Andrew’s grasp screamed.
The hall erupted into chaos. The sentinel drew back a fist and went for Andrew; Kevin intercepted him, knee driving into the man’s gut; Andrew dropped the one he had for the one with the knife and three more besides; Neil backed up from the violence, feet begging him to run but unwilling to leave before seeing this out.
It was just as well: the way he would’ve ran filled with calls for the brawlers to stop, uniformed security breaking into the squabble with electrified batons and shouted orders to stand down! Now, boys!
One of them assumed by proximity that Neil was involved, and body-checked him into a wall, rough fingers pulling his arms up and grinding his wrists together. That woman’s head turned from Neil (who forcibly kept himself still, tense but compliant, always tense but compliant, always biding his time, he wanted to run) to check on her fellows, a few more commands and orders given -- but then she, against all logical reason, choked.
Grip loosened on Neil, she stumbled away with her hand pressed to her side. In her place came Andrew, his hand and borrowed knife coated in red, body unharmed aside from the healing bruise Kevin had given him the day before.
“They’re going to try to make me regret that,” he told Neil as he looked him over.
“You probably will,” Neil answered, or whispered, voice dropping to a pitch just for Andrew to catch.
The grin he received was all unfriendly teeth. “Doubt it. I never do.” A quick step forward and low murmur of, “You need to watch Kevin for me.”
A response didn’t immediately pop into Neil’s head-- and then even if one had, his chance for it was gone.
The time taken for the exchange cost him his own freedom, a baton struck between his shoulders and, with a charge that left the stench of burned cloth so thick it curled in the back of Neil’s throat, made him stumble. He turned with the knife brandished, the grin even less smile than before -- and was jumped from behind by another guard, another jolt singing into the air. The knife shook free from his hand, and he stumbled to his knees.
Anything less than a sentinel, Neil was sure, would have been dead.
Though Andrew was out of commission to defend himself and the other sentinel snarled over him whenever Kevin attempted to speak, justice was dealt then and there: the blame lay with the one who brought a knife to a fist fight, and even more, on the one who apparently was so unstable he’d harmed his roommate and fucked up their apartment. Maybe he was jealous over the companion. It wouldn’t be unexpected. Fucking ticking time bomb, Andrew Minyard.
No, Kevin insisted, grasping straws to keep his cool and coveted rationality, avoiding blurting his own guilt by a hair, no, that isn’t relevant. That’s completely unrelated, ma’am, he didn’t --
Give him time to cool off, the other sentinel said, louder and abruptly reasonable. See how well he behaves then. He’s got a record, doesn’t he? How many strikes is this?
It didn’t escape Neil’s notice how Kevin paled.
Or how he neatly broke down once they started dragging Andrew away. The calm broke; for the second time in as many days, Kevin lost his cool, sagging in the guard’s arms and looking for all the world like a dog abandoned in a vicious thunderstorm.
“Relax, Day,” the woman who Andrew had stabbed said, her hand pressed hard against her side but eyes clear, “he’ll be back before you know it. They wouldn’t scrap him after all the effort they put in, whether or not we’d all be better off with him gone. -- Men, move them along. All of you are on lockdown for the next twenty four hours. There’s nothing else left to do here.”
They didn’t talk about it.
Kevin spent the day off buried in his bed, unresponsive to anything Neil tried. It didn’t seem healthy. It didn’t seem like coping.
Then again, he probably didn’t think of it as a day off.
In any case, after he’d stooped to offering to make Kevin one of his god-awful green smoothies and still received no response, he’d grown fed up with the man’s silence and left him alone in the dark bedroom.
Foolish as it felt, Neil spent his time pacing in the empty kitchen. The ruined furniture was gone, but they had yet to replace any of it it. As time slowed to a crawl, Neil admitted to himself that they were going to wait another day to do it.
Pacing grew maddening. He stopped. He did as many exercises as he could in a small, enclosed area with absolutely no equipment.
Eventually his arms refused to push him up one more time, and then he had to stop that, too.
Fuck.
They’d taken their books along with the furniture. He wasn’t sure if that was from a mess-up on the movers’ end or intentional on the guards’ part.
The microwave’s clock told him it’d been nine hours since he woke. Two P.M.
He reviewed what he knew of the base. He reviewed what happened the day before, and the day before that. He scratched a rough layout of Evermore’s halls into the wall with a butterknife.
Another glance at the clock. Four-twenty-seven P.M.
The bedroom door opened, and the bathroom door shut. Three minutes later, the process reversed.
The butterknife rattled on the tile as he dropped it and stood.
“Where’s Andrew?” He asked the immobile lump of blanket and day-old clothing.
Nothing.
“Kevin.”
Nothing.
“The guards were unusually close.” Nothing. “Theobald’s group was surprisingly well-armed. And persistent.”
Nothing. Still, nothing.
“Whose fault was that?”
“Mine,” whispered out of the fabric. Neil frowned at it. “And yours.”
Neil more than frowned - he opened his mouth, took a breath ---
“For denying Riko what he wanted,” Kevin continued with. Out of respect for the fact that he’d go insane if he had to last another second pacing the kitchen in silence, Neil gave him the floor. “We’re lucky he hasn’t decided to do something more permanent. Andrew will be back before long.”
“From where?” Neil asked again, repressing the dread.
The blankets shifted. Black hair peeked out first, followed by tired eyes. For someone who’d spent the whole day in bed, he didn’t look rested at all.
“Solitary, probably,” he said, voice detached. “Re-education, maybe.”
Oh. Of course.
Neil stood there a while longer, fingers curled into Kevin’s metal bed frame. He had the top bunk to Neil’s bottom - it wasn’t anything more fancy than what could have been found in a million superstores across the nation, but at least it was still standing.
When fingers edged out from the unpleasantly green colored blanket to rest over his knuckles, Neil didn’t jump, but he did tense. Kevin didn’t move beyond that, however, and one silent minute stretched into another that bordered companionable (or: equally miserable). He relaxed, piece by piece.
“Andrew wasn’t supposed to be part of this project,” Kevin murmured to him, his eyes closed and fingers warmed. “His brother was the one they’d cleared; Andrew was declared mentally unfit. But they’re identical twins. No one knew he’d taken Aaron’s place until it was too late to halt the procedure. He wasn’t supposed to survive it.”
Neil asked, “Aaron, or Andrew?”
Green cracked open, a sliver of dark emerald. “Either.”
Oh.
Neil kept quiet, turning that over for all it could mean. Combined with how Andrew acted around Kevin and him, how quick he’d been with the knife despite knowing the repercussions -- it gave him something new to think about.
It was obvious Andrew didn’t have any affection for Evermore Laboratories, but it his loyalties ran that shallow, that was better news than Neil could have imagined.
As he drew back out of his head, he found Kevin watching him. For once, he didn’t tell Neil to stop thinking it.
When he finally drew back to give his legs a break, hand sliding out from under Kevin’s, Kevin sighed and retreated back into his covers.
“Sir, he’s my patient. If an evaluation needs to be conducted, his primary doctor should be the one to do it.”
“Dr. Dobson, your expertise in this matter is a little… wanting.”
“Dr. Proust, with all due respect, our qualifications are the same.”
“It’s a matter of experience.”
“Dr. Proust did support him through his rougher years.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t the years that were rough so much as his care, sir.”
“What might you be implying, Dr. Dobson?”
A pause.
“I only ask I see him immediately after release. Otherwise, my records will contain an unsightly gap.”
“A perfectly reasonable request. In the meantime, Dr. Proust, please. We had high hopes for Minyard. It’d be good to see them returned.”
A few days prior, Neil had been cleared for solo firearm operation. No longer did Kevin have to hover over his shoulder as he practiced his aim; now, Kevin took up his own weapon a booth over. Their instructor loitered mostly with Kevin, who was in general a much more attentive and easy to get along with learner.
Though he wouldn’t have struggled to hit the broadside of a barn and had some experience, Neil was no natural-born sharpshooter. Through hours, he kept the bullets mostly on target at close range; through more hours, he hit medium range; this day, they set up long range and swapped his gun for something of a bit higher caliber. It wasn’t familiar in his hands, but it wasn’t difficult to know you were supposed to point and shoot.
There wasn’t a scope, so he closed one eye, braced his arm for recoil, lined up as best he could, and curled his finger on the trigger.
The target didn’t so much as wobble in a breeze.
The gun kicked too hard. No bullet left its muzzle. Neil had a moment to feel more than think that’s not right, and then his palm felt as if someone had stabbed a hot iron through it.
Even with his headset to muffle noise, the gun’s barrel ripping itself apart cracked through him; he sprung back with a curse as hot metal dented the booth’s walls and tore through the thin tin ceiling. Smoke rose from the rifle’s chamber, and he ran shaky hands down his shirtfront, staring in confusion as liquid glistened in regulation black.
The booth was locked. The booth became unlocked just as he tore off his headset, Kevin crowding into the doorway instantly, the instructor visibly concerned over his shoulder.
Almost too soft to be heard, Kevin swore as he gently took Neil’s hand and turned it over to survey the damage. It didn’t hurt, yet. It was full of too much blood to see what was all wrong.
“It must’ve been jammed,” the instructor said, far away and, to Neil, utterly unimportant.
He hadn’t fired the gun. It should have been cleaned since its last use.
There was no way a bullet lodged in its chamber was anything but intentional.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Kevin said, louder and icily stable, “I’m afraid the lesson will have to be cut short. We need to report to the medical ward.”
The instructor balked. Changes in schedule were not common or dealt well with in Evermore. “Surely he can find his own way.”
Kevin didn’t deign that with a response. He took Neil by the shoulder, straightened to his full height, and made for the exit.
Beyond the token protest and question about rescheduling, the instructor didn’t get in his way.
This time around, Dr. Wymack couldn’t convince Kevin to wait outside the room. He barely bothered to, especially when Neil didn’t back him up with his own voice.
Kevin spent the entire operation standing at perfect attention at the door, worried eyes trained on Neil as they laid him back and stuffed him full of painkillers. They weren’t equipped for an immediate operation as delicate as one with the hand, but as Abby cleaned the hole and Dr. Wymack examined it, it was declared tentatively stable after four stitches. As long as he didn’t use the hand for the next two weeks, it might even hold.
“We don’t have weeks,” Kevin said. It was the first thing he’d said since they’d arrived.
“You’re going to have to make weeks,” Dr. Wymack replied. “I’ll write to your instructors. I’ll write to Master Moriyama himself. If he doesn’t rest his hand, there’s a possibility he’ll lose motor function. Wouldn’t you rather have two weeks off than a lifetime?”
Kevin didn’t reply.
Neil said, into the quiet, “What can I do?”
“Clean it daily. Watch for inflammation. Any pus, visit my office. Come back in a week for a check-up, and then again to see if we can get the stitches out.”
After a moment, Neil nodded.
“Jammed gun at the range?” Abby reaffirmed with Kevin. He nodded without hesitation. Her lips thinned, but at the end, she only marked it in Neil’s thin chart.
“I’ll send a commendation on your reaction time, too, Kevin,” Dr. Wymack said as they stood to go. “And crisis management. Sentinels have a track record of overreacting to their companions’ slightest injuries; your behavior here was impressive.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Kevin replied, short and curt. He didn’t say anything else as he waited for Neil to join him at the door and, finally, led the way out.
A bum hand limited Neil to everything but cardio, untimed maintenance drills and textbooks. As Dr. Wymack promised, his tests were postponed, though his instructors gave Kevin grief for it.
Andrew continued to be missing. They asked no one about his whereabouts. It wouldn’t help, Kevin said.
Kevin continued to stand (or just plain exist) closer and closer, until his arm or shoulder or hip brushed against Neil everywhere they went. Neil really couldn’t tell if it was for his protection or Kevin’s comfort -- either way, it wasn’t as maddening as it might have been. They began to move in tandem, a grim unit determined to make their way through Evermore’s impersonal halls.
Ever gracious, Riko came to collect them at lunch the day after the gun incident.
Kevin glanced his way, but just as quickly ducked his head and stared at his tray.
When that didn’t discourage him from talking about how much better Kevin looked without his rabid hanger-on, Neil, who hadn’t even acknowledged him, looked up and behind Riko to Jean.
“Does he ever pull his head out of his ass? Or does he always spew shit from his mouth?”
Jean’s eyebrows jumped to his hairline.
Alvarez laughed so hard she choked on her milk. Laila, at her side, smiled and tsked, “That’s an unfortunately vivid image. Now I can’t unsee it.”
Kevin’s head shot up and, stumbling, he backtracked with, “Riko, he didn’t--”
“-- I did mean that,” Neil cut in, eyes not once wavering from Riko’s. “The only thing worthwhile about you, Riko, is the pricey serum in your blood. I’d ask what you thought you were doing, but Kevin and my progress must be making your tiny brain feel threatened. What will happen when you’re not the best? I’m sure that thought must keep you up at night.
“And just so you know?” He added, head cocked and voice aloof. “He will pass you up. No matter what you do, he’ll always be better than you.”
Eyes darting between the four at the table, Riko’s lip curled, his cheeks colored pink.
“You’ll regret that,” he said.
“I doubt it,” Neil replied, for himself and Andrew.
One more sharp look at Kevin, who only stared back, and he turned on a heel and stormed away. Behind his back and before scrambling to catch up, Jean shot Neil a quick almost-smile.
After they were gone back across the cafeteria, Kevin set his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands.
Again, he didn’t ask Neil to cut it out. Neil considered that a step in the right direction.
“Holy shit,” Alvarez whispered as she wiped milk from her nose. “You’re a scrawny piece of shit, kid, but you’ve got balls. Babe, can you believe that?”
“I’m impressed,” Laila said, mostly to Kevin. “A boring guy like you matched with a firecracker.”
“Hey,” Neil piped in, “I’m better than a firecracker.”
Kevin made a low, unhappy, not entirely disagreeing noise into his hands.
“I’ll say,” Alvarez said, not without appreciation.
Ten minutes later when Knox finally made his way to their table, three out of four were still happy enough for him to ask, “Oh, er. What’d I miss? I caught Jean walking a bounce in his step, too, and Riko looking angrier than a hornet in a can - is that related?”
Reminded of the incident all over again, Alvarez tossed her head back and cackled.
At the end of the table, Neil caught Kevin’s mutter of, “I miss alcohol.”
It was the first time he’d heard Kevin admit to being less than pleased with Evermore’s strict regulations. Barbed as it was, Neil counted that as a victory, too.
That night wasn’t as fun as that noon.
When Kevin refused to so much as look at him and stormed to the bathroom, Neil sighed loud and noisily through his nose and didn’t bother hiding how unimpressed he was as he dressed for bed. Communal showers and no choice given after exercise meant everyone in their morning class had seen him without a shirt, but that didn’t mean he liked it. And, really, even if the identity his mother had worked so hard to keep secret was blown wide open, old habits died hard.
As such, when knuckles rapped on the bedroom door and Kevin’s voice drifted in to say, “Neil. Cleaning,” he jerked what counted as his sleep shirt down fast.
Kevin still avoided his eyes, his jaw clenched shut, but he kept his touch light around Neil’s injured hand. Technically, Neil could easily run it under water and apply disinfectant himself, but for whatever reason, Kevin demanded he saw to it. He probably didn’t think Neil would do a good enough job. He seemed happy to think that of everything else.
At the end of this night’s ritual, however, he didn’t immediately let go.
Old nervousness prickled at Neil’s arms, but he shoved it down and waited Kevin out.
“I barely remember the last time I zoned,” Kevin muttered. He always spoke so much quieter in the apartment - Neil had yet to figure out why, theorized that it had to do with what counted as typical volume for Neil must have been a shout for Kevin, only that a low volume usually corresponded to a more honest Kevin. “It was auditory. When you were sick.”
Unfortunately, his honesty wasn’t always the best. Neil made an ugly noise. “I’d rather go to bed, Kevin. Leave work for tomorrow.”
He still cradled his (stinging, the wound unhappy with the treatment) hand.
He looked-- like he wanted more. Neil’s nerves returned, a little different from before but no less uncomfortable.
One deep breath in and slow breath out later, and the look passed.
“We could be the best,” Kevin whispered.
Neil didn’t reply.
Even quieter, he looked up to Neil and swore, “We will be.”
Neil’s plans didn’t have him in Evermore long enough to be commended for anything, let alone to be ranked at the top.
But for Kevin’s resolve -- for the steps it took him to reach that, for the gain it signified, for what it meant for a sadist and a company that had done its best at stamping out whatever individuality Kevin Day had been born with - he let his mouth curve into a smile.
When Neil thought he didn’t want to be commended for anything, he supposed Dr. Wymack could be an exception.
Apparently his admiration for Kevin’s control reached someone important, as within days of having his stitches pulled, a courier came to their door post-curfew and informed them of their first field mission.
It wasn’t anything grand by Evermore standards, Kevin told him. Barely three days long, the city was close, and it truly amounted to nothing more than a forensics run. Newly commissioned sentinels would be able to work jobs like this.
Neil didn’t care about the work.
Neil cared about the big, bold DEPLOYMENT TO BOSTON stamped on the front, and the fact they were leaving.
Kevin worried.
About a lot of things. To his disgust and disquiet, he found he was becoming a fairly anxious person.
He worried about Riko every day. He worried about Andrew every night. He worried about Neil, always.
Acknowledging it was supposed to be the first step to controlling it, but then Riko watched him every lunch period, Andrew wasn’t back, and Neil was trying not to look like he was planning to make a break for it while most definitely planning just that.
He worried, too, about his reputation and recognition and pure skill, but -- as he allocated quite a bit of worry to the individuals in his life, his free time to worry about his career became compromised.
In order to compensate for this gross negligence, he attempted to police Neil’s progress better and ran himself harder. It sort of worked. Well.
They were deployed, anyway.
The mission wasn’t anything: they’d found the main base for a drug ring the local authorities had been attempting to root out for years, but it’d been emptied of people and possessions and they were once again at their rope’s end. They’d paid the Masters a pretty penny to bring in their most expensive sniffer dogs, thus why Kevin and Neil were sent out.
They were given their living arrangements (a spare bedroom in the police chief’s house, as it turned out), two packs with barely enough clothes, money or food to last three days in Boston, no emergency ammunition or firearms, and the barest bones of kevlar and armor that Kevin had seen since his days as an inductee.
They also clapped Neil’s ankle in a tracking bracelet before they left. If it lost contact with a heat source that matched Neil’s, it would explode and take off whatever limb closest to it. If it went outside the range - a very narrow, very long strip of land that included the police chief’s house and extended no farther than a block from the uncovered headquarters - it would pulse with electricity until Neil’s vitals registered as unconscious.
At least, that was what they told them.
It didn’t have the capabilities to explode, Kevin was fairly sure. The electricity was more likely.
He didn’t tell Neil that. It would only make him worry more.
Besides. Tracer or not, this was good for Neil.
Incredible, even. Career-wise and heart-wise. They took a helicopter from the Laboratories that were situated in the southern Appalachians (to this day, Kevin wasn’t entirely surely where; to be fair, he didn’t try hard to figure it out) to Boston with a team of two well-armored but similarly disarmed women. Helicopters were typically nightmares of cacophonous noise and too much visual input after weeks or months underground, but for the first time in years, Kevin thought he had an idea of what it was like to rely on one’s body to keep functioning no matter the circumstances.
Better than that, even. Better than anything his memory could recall. By design, he was all power; with Neil as the focus, the world was at their fingertips.
No wonder Riko had gotten ahead of himself when he’d found Jean. This was -- at the risk of being repetitive -- incredible.
For the hour and a half they spent in the air, Neil plastered himself to the window, and Kevin narrowly resisted plastering himself against Neil.
Their boots lined up. That would have to be enough.
They arrived before nine in the morning. Immediately, they were escorted by vehicle to the investigation site, and immediately, Kevin set to work.
(He caught Neil murmur, it’s July, swallow, and add, seventh, a little reverent and little broken but then he was silent as stone under the officer’s curious gazes.)
Officially Neil didn’t need to do much more than exist (and he did that very well) for the purpose of this mission, but Kevin kept him moving through the abandoned apartment complex, instructing him to take notes or hold that or hold this or-- please, sir, if you wouldn’t mind stepping back, words from Kevin’s mouth because he saw how Neil shut down the moment police arrived and puzzled out neatly that sending him to talk with their more incompetent officers was a bad idea.
“Why’s he got a tracking bracelet?” That officer asked not ten minutes later, still loitering inconveniently next to a pile of shredded cardboard. Neil didn’t look up from the grate he was taking apart.
The boxes had traces of cocaine on them. Any test would have proved that. What a test couldn’t prove was a fair approximation of what had done the shredding from its tear pattern and any excess filaments, and, combined with other details around the complex, track how the cocaine went from here to wherever.
Since Neil didn’t respond - he really hated cops, didn’t he? - Kevin took it upon himself to look at her.
The officer quelled, hands up and palms out. “Just asking. Jeez. Didn’t think we hired a criminal, is all.”
“I need a pair of steel tweezers,” Kevin told him. “And five plastic tubs.”
“Aren’t those a pair of steel tweezers?” The officer asked him, gesturing at the pair in Kevin’s hand.
“I need another,” he stated, evenly.
“Go on, Smith,” another more competent officer threw in from the vague area of the bare-bones kitchen. “Go fetch the man some tweezers. There’s a convenience store down the block; check there.”
Smith left.
Kevin caught Neil’s amused snort just as he finished dismantling the grate. Since he’d finished his job, he didn’t snap at him to refocus.
“Sorry about her,” the officer from the kitchen called. Kevin sent a frown his way. He hadn’t finished his job. “She’s always been a ditz. Not sure how she got through the academy.”
“It’s fine, sir.”
He laughed. “Please, my first name’s fine. You’re staying at my house. My wife would have a fit if a guest called me ‘sir’ at the dinner table.”
Kevin mulled over a polite way to decline. In the silence, the officer stuck his head around the corner and smiled again.
“Okay. If not that, how about Higgins?”
He was a kind man, Kevin thought. The smile suited him. The contract with the Moriyamas did not.
In any case, Kevin assented.
Maybe Neil’s anxiety was the source of Kevin’s anxiety.
They finished all they could on the first day, though they missed Higgins’ wife’s dinner by five hours and didn’t take the ride to the police chief’s house until well after midnight. By then, it was sheer force of will keeping Neil upright: though the day wasn’t as rigorous as usual, he hadn’t slept well the night before from anticipation and nerves, and -- in truth -- the sheer jump in stimulus had to wear him out. Evermore was the pinnacle of order, in life and breath and deed. Not twenty-four hours out, and Kevin (though he’d deny it entirely) missed it.
The world was… messy. People were messy. Life was messy, but as Evermore proved, it didn’t have to be.
Preparation, regulation, mission objective. There didn’t have to be anything more complicated than that.
Neil didn’t think so. Though exhausted, he was the most relaxed Kevin had seen: half-lidded eyes tracked everything they passed, and he was - even taking out the intentional silences toward police - less prone to sarcasm or simmering anger. Evermore’s sterility clung to his armor and skin, but beneath that was something like…
Something like what.
Kevin didn’t know. But it was new. It was healthy.
The wife, who’d apparently stayed up despite her husband’s warnings that they’d be late, reheated them the leftover pasta and meatballs and, the moment they were done, sent them through the quiet house to their room.
She mentioned the bed was a queen size, but there was only one. One of them could take her son’s old room, if they’d like.
Kevin declined for them.
The bed was big enough not to be an issue, anyway. Neil hesitated a moment, a brief burst of nerves, but exhaustion tampered it down and, barely taking the time to brush his teeth, pull off socks and a belt, he collapsed face-first onto his side.
“We’ll be done by mid-afternoon tomorrow,” Kevin informed him. “Once the results from today’s findings return, I’m positive we’ll have a hot trail to send the police down. We’ll most likely be able to return early.”
He didn’t get an immediate reply. That was alright. He took time in brushing, flossing and dressing properly for bed.
“What if more evidence appeared?” Neil asked, head turned just enough for his voice not to be entirely muffled by a pillow.
The corners of Kevin’s mouth tugged down, his eyebrows pinched. “None will. We were thorough.”
“What if,” Neil insisted, quieter, “the tests were inconclusive?”
“Then we’d have to wait another day for them to be done again. It’d be a waste of time.”
No longer on the edge of sleep, Neil watched him. The room had a lovely lace curtain that did nothing to keep out the streetlight; caught in its glow, Neil’s eyes gleamed.
Rather, they accused.
Kevin, slowly, sank down on his side of the bed. He didn’t know what to say. They couldn’t-- botch their results. That’d be sabotaging their own work. If they returned early with a job well done, that’d be a positive mark in their records. Whichever Master assigned the next mission would see it and, perhaps, bump them up in the queue.
Neil, of course, suffered no similar issue of speechlessness. He turned his head away from Kevin and murmured, “Hope there’s more to be found tomorrow.”
Kevin woke with Neil’s hair tickling his chin and his hands half-curled into the back of Neil’s shirt.
Mercifully, Neil was still out cold. As he had about as much control over what he did when asleep as he did over Neil, he shelved the pleasant, languid wake up for later analysis and moved off for the bathroom.
When he returned, Neil was awake and stretching.
It struck Kevin then: he really had come far. Not six months prior, Neil had been malnourished and bone-thin, his stamina low, his lungs poor, skin sickly, nails cracked and hair brittle from dye and lack of nutrition. Now he was lean muscle and, if sun-deprived, not in any way malnourished. His shirt rode up, and the rough edge of a knife wound peeked out. Beside that was the dip of his spine, a smooth groove that could be easily traced up his back.
No. He was definitely not malnourished.
“When are we expected?” Neil asked, and Kevin quickly blinked up to his eyes.
“As soon as we’re ready,” he answered, face straight at Neil’s vague frown. “No later than eight.”
Neil glanced at the clock. It said: five-thirty-three.
(They hadn’t even needed an alarm. Kevin was a bit impressed with himself. Then again: the birds outside were obnoxious, companion or not.)
“Twenty minutes to drive there,” Neil mused aloud. He then abruptly stopped his stretching (Kevin did not frown) to flop down in the rectangle of sunlight cast by the window, bare arms thrown over his eyes and legs kicked out.
Kevin let himself frown, then. “What are you doing?”
“I haven’t felt this in what seems like years,” Neil told him. “Piss off, Kevin; I’m enjoying it.”
“We should--”
“You’ll have to drag me,” Neil happily interrupted him. “You want me to leave this room before then? Fine. But it won’t be willingly.”
Kevin considered his options in partially fuming silence. The wife would undoubtedly have something to feed them. He was unclear on when Higgins would wake, but he was a good officer: it would probably be soon.
Finally, in compromise (he could just hear Andrew’s sarcastic praise for his learning useless skills), he pointed out: “It’d be an hour’s run.”
Silence.
He held all of Neil’s attention. The air sang with it.
“Probably,” he replied. “Wouldn’t have to deal with traffic.”
“It’d be… a deviation from the expected norm,” Kevin hedged, “but we wouldn’t leave parameters and taking an alternative form of transportation, with Higgins’ approval, isn’t expressly against the rules.”
A beat.
“Is that an offer?” Neil asked, voice -- not healthy. Brittle. Not in a way someone who hadn’t spent every waking moment with him could catch, Kevin thought. He was a good liar, the Masters hadn’t made that up, but what they’d left out was that Neil was just as vulnerable to a liar’s dashed hope as anyone else.
“Yes,” Kevin said, a bit impatient. If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t have made it.
“Alright.” Another pause. Less brittle. Then, arm dropped from his eyes, the blue squinting in Kevin’s direction against the harsh sunlight. “After breakfast.”
A reasonable addendum. “You’re going to have to get ready.”
“Alright,” he said again, as if it was ever that easy to tell him what to do. Then again, maybe with the right tools, it was.
Kevin didn’t truly believe it, but the smell of city life mingled with Neil’s lack of tension (that something else) put him close to cloud nine.
The tests, it turned out, weren’t complete.
They found enough missing links to last three days in Boston.
It rankled, but when he woke up the second morning with Neil curled toward him and morning sunlight softening everything in the room, he supposed the missed positive mark was acceptable. Ideally, they’d instead have a mark for a job thoroughly conducted.
In any case, they’d have more chances to make up for it. They did their job decently. Higgins seemed approving, and likely to put in a glowing review.
On their drive back to the helicopter, Neil’s heart-rate kicked up and his fingers found the top edge of his tracking bracelet.
Kevin sat rigid and still next to him, nothing but his eyes following the movement.
The something fizzled and burned out. It must have been relaxation or joy, Kevin decided; every emotion came as a result of a biochemical combination, and it was all a matter of matching up what smell went with what to figure out how a person felt. In Neil’s case, a familiar, sharp scent replaced the newer one.
Fear. The break, however small, made it taste all the worse.
But Neil hesitated before he tried anything, and then they were at the helicopter pad, and then they were loaded in, and then whatever remote signal monitored the bracelet clicked off because they were a thousand feet into the air and Neil had nowhere left to run.
They returned home from their debriefing to the sound of rotten laughter.
The new fridge and dining furniture differed from their predecessors not one lick. The Andrew Minyard perched on the edge of the table with a steak knife in hand, however, resembled memory in blond hair and pale skin alone. Head cocked, pupils blown to nothing but white-ringed black, the smile on his face five degrees left of sane and fifty paces into violent, he looked a caricature of whom he had been.
They froze in the doorway, the sentinels locking eyes. Edging his way in and around Kevin, Neil quietly let the door behind them click shut.
Black handle flipped in one twist of the wrist - Kevin stepped neatly in front of Neil, shoulders back - and Andrew jabbed the blade into their new tabletop, letting it wobble under one amused and two uncertain pairs of eyes.
“Won’t be needing that after all,” Andrew sing-songed. “I was told I’d be getting new roommates. Wanted to make a good first impression. But no, same old, same old -- still stuck with you two obsessive morons.”
How long had he been sitting there? Curfew wasn’t for three hours.
That wasn’t the question worth asking, Neil felt.
“Andrew,” Kevin started. Andrew hummed an acknowledgment. Out of habit - Andrew had never been one to waste his time, let alone noise - Kevin waited for its end before continuing with, “Are you still medicated?”
His incisors joined in being bared, the grin beastly. “Just like old times. Give it six hours, and I’ll puking my guts out.” He found this funny; his laugh said he found it funny; his audience did not find it funny, and did not join in. Neil’s eyes flitted to Kevin’s in silent question, leaning a bit around him to catch his gaze, but Andrew had his full attention.
Contrary to which sentinel he aimed for, the movement snagged Andrew’s. For someone that seemed to struggle to focus on anything, his attention was sharper than the blade in the table.
Hand raised, palm up and one finger crooked, he beckoned, “You. Rabbit. Come here.”
Kevin tensed, arm stuck out despite the fact Neil hadn’t moved. “That’s--”
“I’m not going to hurt him,” Andrew sighed, as if he wasn’t dripping in latent mania. “You can come too, Kevin, if you’re so set on being a mother hen.” A beat. When neither of them moved, he shook his head with a disbelieving chuckle. “Rabbit?”
“You look insane,” Neil told him.
“They say I’m inclined to violent psychosis. The drugs help regulate that.”
He curled his hand, a little more impatient.
With Kevin a step behind, Neil went.
In a whisper meant to sound more secretive than it was, Andrew said, “Stop,” and, “Stay still,” and, “You too, Kevin. Back off,” the moment Neil came within arm’s reach. He slid off the table, leaving the knife; he looked Neil over much the same as he had at the night of the brawl. Dilated pupils contracted at the bandage on his hand; before Neil could blink, he had his wrist seized and pulled to Andrew’s eye-level.
“What happened?” He asked, voice surprisingly level considering the way he turned Neil’s hand this way and that and felt, very keenly, on the edge of what his drugs were supposed to suppress.
“Gun jammed,” Neil answered, rigid but for what Andrew wanted of his hand, “barrel exploded.”
“You’re too dedicated to self-preservation to keep firing a jammed gun.”
Accidents happened. But, for the truth: “Whoever had it last didn’t clean it properly.”
The fingers on his wrist stilled. Andrew looked up and over Neil’s head.
In the room’s engineered silence, what followed sounded like little more than an oddly long sigh.
Even before Kevin looked away, Neil became keenly aware a conversation about him was happening right over him. It didn’t feel right, and he meant to interrupt it, but then Andrew’s lips were an inch from his ear and he sweetly promised, words barely a breath, “I’ll kill him.”
Recoiling, Neil jerked his hand back and backpedaled the step it took to bump into Kevin’s chest. Andrew let him go, smoothly sitting back on his hands.
“Injury aside,” he said, “you smell good. A little more sunny. The wild, wild world suits you, Mr. Cotton-Tail.”
Kevin’s hand was on his elbow. Andrew’s eyes dropped to the contact, head again tilting.
Oblivious or uncaring of the scrutiny and far happier to leave the subject of Riko behind, Kevin asked, “Did they give you a prescription to follow?”
“Bee didn’t think it necessary,” Andrew said, “so, in seven hours, after I finish dry heaving, you’ll need to keep me from breaking our new fridge. Hmm, these quarters are cramped. Neil, you’d best stay in the bedroom.”
“Why did she put you on them in the first place?”
“She didn’t.” Andrew’s head tipped back, his eyes roving on the ceiling. He didn’t, Neil thought, actually see a thing. “Proust did.”
Neil jumped and clenched his teeth around a curse. The fingers on his elbow had tightened enough to bruise - in a flash, Kevin let go to step back, and Andrew’s head snapped back to Neil.
“Watch it,” Andrew murmured. “I spent the past however long maintaining I wasn’t a danger to my roommates.”
“Twenty-one days.” Kevin supplied. Tension Neil hadn’t even realized ran along Andrew’s shoulders relaxed. “That’s all.”
“You’ve kept busy,” he replied, rather than say what he and Neil both must have thought: twenty-one days was, without change or a breath of fresh air, a lifetime. “First mission?”
Kevin hesitated, his eyebrows furrowed at Andrew. Something was at work there - maybe, for once, something beyond their jobs within Evermore.
But then the moment passed, and Kevin gave in to routine. He nudged Neil’s shoulder to take a seat; after Neil had and Andrew finally slid off the table (taking the knife with him), he took his own, and together, they ran through a second debriefing. No matter how Kevin tried to keep on topic, Andrew asked more about what sort of shops they’d passed and if there was anything of interest in Boston. Neil humored him. Soon enough they’d digressed to discussing marine biology rather than anything relevant; though Kevin huffed and grumbled, and something occasionally set Andrew off into dark laughing fits (things Neil didn’t want to know the stories behind, like their having to share a bed or how the wife waited up for them), violence and tension alike seeped out of the room.
Andrew’s dosage was timed perfectly to wreck havoc in the middle of their best sleep cycles.
He fought his own way to the bathroom, but thirty minutes of listening to his induced nausea forcefully emptying his stomach was more than enough. Neil stuck his head under his pillow and left Kevin to deal with it.
A good thing, too. As Andrew predicted, the second half of the night was a haven for violence: the drugs leaving his system left him shaking with unmitigated cravings, vulnerable in an overwhelming need to find more. Andrew did not, ever, deal well with powerlessness, to others, his body or his mind. To make matters worse, he - someone already averse to touch - seemed to take extreme issue with it that night.
But he told Kevin not to let him break the fridge.
And he refused to enter the bedroom.
And they still couldn’t leave the apartment.
By the morning, one chair and all the fruit suffered as collateral. Andrew had left marks on Kevin, but - by some virtue, perhaps one ingrained by what he’d experienced in the last twenty-one days - all of them were easily concealed under clothing, and none of them went deeper than what one might receive from a particularly intense bout the sparring ring.
(They had nowhere but each other to put the pent-up energy. At least when it’s between us, Kevin later said, we know how far we can go.)
(It’s disgusting, Neil replied, that this is what you’re reduced to. I thought you said you were prized soldiers. They’re fine with risking one of you killing the other.)
(Again, Kevin didn’t reply.)
Andrew wouldn’t sit next to Kevin for the next five days. Neil wasn’t sure if it was residual anger from whatever tricks Kevin pulled to get a delirious and strung-out Andrew to calm down, or a dash of self-punishment for letting himself hurt Kevin bad enough that they had to hide it.
“He’d been on them before?” Neil asked Kevin as Andrew visited Dr. Dobson for a check-in.
The sentinels donated (involuntarily) blood and tissue samples every seven days. Neil had once done the calculations in his head, and two vials they filled every week should have laid their subjects up for at least a day after, if not further consequences from the consistencies of their donations. Andrew had mocked his surprise, quoting the scientists in explaining they healed fast, so they had a lot to give.
Side lined against Neil’s, Kevin nodded. “Before he was transferred to Dr. Dobson. He had too many outbursts on his record. The Masters decided something needed to be done, and Dr. Proust was happy to step up to the plate.”
He paused, but not like he’d finished speaking.
Finally, he continued with, “They also hadn’t dabbled far into drug application before. Because of him, they found an anesthesia that works on sentinels. And… a few things besides.” A grimace, light but present. “It wasn’t pleasant. I only really hung around him toward the end, but the improved models had their fair share of mess-ups, too.”
If the drugs were the only way Neil would hear Andrew laugh, then it would be too soon if he never heard the noise again.
“Do you regret it?” He had to know. He had to. For his own future’s sanity, he needed to know.
Andrew didn’t so much as glance up from his strawberry yogurt.
“I hate repeating myself.”
Neil breathed easier.
He then pointed out, “You just did.”
That got him a flat look.
The edge of Neil’s mouth quirked up in cheeky reply.
They received their second assignment within two weeks, with one night’s heads-up.
“Fast,” Andrew murmured from his chair in the kitchen’s corner, back pressed to the wall. In front of him sat Neil, while Kevin attempted to busy himself with a stir-fry. It half-worked. They’d rediscovered an equilibrium since Andrew’s return and the lack of another attempt on Neil’s health, but the overall dynamic had changed.
It felt more cohesive. It felt more broken. It felt like something needed to be said, but there was nothing left to tell.
They all whispered now. Andrew had informed him of the cameras in their apartment’s walls during cardio, the treadmill’s whirr nearly drowning out his voice; it wasn’t difficult to make the leap to the microphones. Neil had almost asked if that was the case, why they hadn’t seen Kevin start the first fight and know Andrew was, by and large, no threat to them -- but, then, it really didn’t bare asking.
At first it’d felt a little silly, but at the same time, it fought against the crawling in his skin with the knowledge that, yes, every portion of their life was monitored.
(He’d known on some level. He’d denied it for the sake of his sanity.)
“The last job was nothing,” Kevin replied from the stove. He’d just bought their kitchen’s first bottle of canola oil, and he treated it like it’d gone out of its way to personally vouch for his character in front of Tetsuji Moriyama. “It was far below our skillset. But it helped our rating.”
“Hm,” Andrew said.
He had his foot hooked under Neil’s chair leg, limbs relaxed but body opened only toward Neil.
Two weeks in, the causal proximity was no longer new. At first it had been: at first he’d stiffened and often stepped away, but Andrew never stopped him or commented on it, and by and by, it reached the same level as Kevin’s absent-minded touchiness. That was: it didn’t register at all. Compared to the world around them, Kevin and Andrew were the least threatening things in Neil’s life.
But it did make Neil wonder: Kevin’s obsession made sense. It was chemically wired into him. Andrew’s, from the protectiveness taken a step too far too quickly to the attentiveness to how he fretted over Neil’s state in his own prickly, blunt manner, did not. From a certain angle, Andrew orbited Neil far more than he did Kevin. Neil had thought that was just how he was with Kevin, that he was the interloper, but -- maybe not. It didn’t have to be one or the other.
(In Neil’s defense, he made it a point to never think like them.)
(But when he took a moment and tried, he met the end of his wondering.)
Neil caught Andrew’s eye with a question.
In response, Andrew raised one eyebrow.
The question shifted to realization.
“About time,” Andrew said, his expression shuttered. “Don’t worry. I still think you’re a loose cannon that’s more trouble than it’s worth.”
“What?” Kevin asked, bemused over sizzling cucumbers.
Unlike Kevin--
“You wouldn’t stop me,” Neil said, a little awed despite himself. It was fact the moment it hit the air: it had been fact since they’d met. Andrew had always watched him too closely; he’d always been possessive, whether it was Kevin or Neil; he’d long feared Andrew would put his weight behind the ball and chain on his foot, but ultimately, when it counted, he understood that he wouldn’t. If I ran, you wouldn’t stop me.
No matter what he was to Andrew, he would give the space Neil needed. This didn’t change it.
The realization could have driven a wedge between them. Instead, it threw open the doors.
“It isn’t anything personal. A story’s always more interesting when choice is involved,” Andrew said. He was saying-- something. Offering something. Neil scrabbled to grasp it, feeling the edges just out of reach. “Besides, I don’t think I need to say how I don’t like to share.”
Neil glanced to Kevin. Kevin blinked back at him, frowning and utterly lost.
(In his defense, he had a one-track mind. In his defense, these details didn’t matter: Kevin was, at heart, a simple man.)
Andrew snorted, drawing Neil’s attention back as he tipped his head against the wall. “He’s been mine for years. It isn’t sharing if it’s with yourself.”
“Does he know that?”
“He chose it.”
“Would someone fill me in what we’re talking about?” Kevin demanded, impatient and not a little rankled. The stir-fry steamed from the inattention, impatient itself to punish Kevin for leaving it to cook.
Andrew held Neil’s gaze for a moment longer, a challenge and an offer and nothing at all.
In the end, Neil whispered, “Got it.”
Andrew didn’t smile, but with eyes lidded, he murmured back, “When you spring, rabbit, make it count.”
They left as early in the morning as they had the first time, with the same bare-bones packs and three-day limit. They weren’t told their destination, only that it was in upstate Vermont. They took a plane. They received the bulk of their orientation from a black suited woman, her broach red and face blank as she laid out their instructions.
It was a manhunt, she said. For a sentinel named Renee Walker. She was unmatched and had gone AWOL from their Chicago branch two months previous. It’d taken ages, but they were fairly certain they had her next stop narrowed to the countryside surrounding Swanton. A plan to detain her was in place; Kevin and Neil were simply the back-up muscle. If all went without a hitch, they would only be needed to escort her home.
They’d prefer her alive, but she’d left her handlers dead on her escape, and was presumed to be hostile. They were permitted to use the necessary force to ensure their team returned home.
This time, Neil was not given a tracer.
Kevin murmured, “This is too big of a jump,” once the woman had retreated to the front cabin and left them to digest the new information. He glanced at his companion-- in truth, aside from Walker being a sentinel, it wasn’t so peculiar a job. It was simply… pointed. Personal. Intentional. If Kevin didn’t know better, he’d say it felt like a job Riko should have had but which Riko insisted to give to the new pair.
(Because he did know better, he knew it was just that.)
(He worried.)
Neil picked at leather armrests, thoughts turned inward and eyes unwavering from the white clouds outside their small window.
The first day was dedicated to meeting the team - sizable, composed of twenty men and women, all geared to the gills with charged weaponry and flash grenades - and patrolling the unbeaten paths they laid their wires along. Renee wasn’t expected in town until the next day; they were told to keep their cover, but not to worry too much.
“Our intel’s spot-on,” the commanding officer chuckled with a friendly clap to Kevin’s shoulder. Kevin smiled his perfectly sociable smile, but did not return it. “I know, I know, we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves, but really, we’ve got this one in the bag. The only toss-up is whether or not the bitch’ll choose to make that a body bag.”
The woods outside Swanton were lush, overgrown and clumped between groves of berry bushes. The summer heat wasn’t much compared to the southern states, but three days wasn’t enough time for Neil or Kevin to feel completely comfortable outside of perfectly regulated temperatures. Kevin insisted they walk the trail twice and re-check their team’s triggers. Though he followed obediently, Neil grew quieter, and quieter, and quieter.
Kevin knew he wasn’t the best at reading people, but he wasn’t that dense. The warning signs were all there: the way Neil looked more around them than at their stakes, the intentness with which he studied the town map they were handed, and then the state map thumbnailed in the corner. He might as well have told Kevin himself he planned to make a break for it as soon as the night fell.
But -- for whatever reason, something in him held his tongue.
(If he didn’t say it aloud, then he didn’t know. Plausible deniability.)
(If he didn’t say it aloud, then maybe Neil wouldn’t.)
(If he didn’t say it aloud, he didn’t have to acknowledge which he hoped more for.)
They were put up in a cheap motel, more for lack of anything better than anything else. This time around, they got the bed count right: two queens, clean and impersonal.
When Kevin dropped his bag on one and then joined Neil on the other, Neil didn’t protest. When he lined himself along Neil’s back, Neil didn’t protest. When he slipped hands up a thin cotton shirt to trace the outlines of what he’d only seen, Neil’s muscles tensed but no fear joined the high-strung anticipation in the air, and still, he didn’t protest. When he dragged nails across Neil’s chest, when he tugged Neil’s ear with his teeth, when he palmed Neil through his shorts, when he rocked into hips pressed back against him and heady arousal filled the room, when Neil arched his spine and tangled his fingers over Kevin’s and hooked a foot behind his knee to urge him closer and burned hot with high, breathy noises tumbling from his throat, all rhythm lost the moment Kevin bit and sucked and pulled a bruise high on his neck in a shuddering moan, muscles seizing and toes curling-- he didn’t protest.
When Kevin shifted him to lie on his stomach, when he covered him like he could keep him forever and snarled possession and remembrance into his newly bruise-peppered shoulder, he agreed. Fingers interlaced with Kevin’s and forehead shoved into a pillow, he said he wouldn’t forget, he said he wouldn’t leave, he said he was his, he said Kevin’s name and thought you were supposed to be super-sensitive, what’s the hold up?
He was a liar.
Quiet, Kevin returned with no heat or command, not my fault you’ve no stamina, all hidden gratitude and buried adoration. To the sound of Neil’s breathless laugh, he ground down and came, rode the pleasure out with teeth buried too hard into Neil’s shoulder and hands fumbling fast for less delicate wrists to tighten around.
Later Neil would complain about the ache in his wrists and lower back, and the purple marks on his shoulders (especially, he’d say, the one no collar was high enough to hide). Later he’d remark he was down to one pair of shorts for the rest of the trip, and that was plain awful.
But later was later. Right after, Kevin gentled and Neil let himself be held. He protested only because, according to him, Kevin’s bulky chest gave him no room to breathe. Once he’d wiggled and squirmed and generally made a nuisance of himself into finding just how he wanted to be - head tucked under Kevin’s chin and the rest of him a lazy crescent that fit neatly in the border Kevin’s legs made, one of Kevin’s arms under his head and the other over his side - he sighed and, finally, relaxed.
Before they fell asleep, Kevin dipped his head (Neil protested sleepily) to catch a kiss. It was a bit backwards, all that before their first kiss, but neither protested. There were far worse ways than a warm, chaste kiss to end a night.
Neil was still in his arms come morning. Kevin, it turned out, was something like an octopus in his sleep.
He didn’t have a problem with it. Neil had a problem with the drool in his hair, but after sleeping in damp shorts, that was the least of his concerns.
They took turns with the shower (it wasn’t, they felt, that sort of morning, and they weren’t, moreover, at that point) and turns with dressing. If self-satisfied pleasure thrummed through Kevin’s chest at the hickey peeking out of Neil’s black collar, well-- Neil caught the look and mocked him for it, so it wasn’t bad in the least.
Over breakfast in the lobby and the trek to the base, they didn’t talk about anything but the detainment plan and, in their own way, each other.
Kevin learned Neil had a preference for fruits.
“Why didn’t you say so?” He demanded, somewhat offended.
“Don’t pull that on me now,” Neil grumbled.
He didn’t seem to grasp how much easier he’d made Kevin’s life. As the main cook and the only one in their trio invested in their dietary plans, he pressed, “There’s so many options with fruits. There’s fruit for your digestion, for your heart, for your cholesterol. There’s fruit salad.”
Neil stared at him, and then, startled, huffed a laugh. “You’re something else, Kevin.”
(Right behind the kiss, that -- that was definitely something Kevin wanted to remember.)
The commanding officer had to do a double-take at Kevin’s unashamed morning glow and Neil’s hickey, but she was graceful enough to keep her mouth shut. If Kevin hadn’t thought she wouldn’t mention it, he-- well, he would’ve curbed his satisfaction a bit. Maybe not all the way.
Just so long as Riko didn’t find out, it was fine.
A few men of the team muttered about the perversion inherent to a whatever the fuck went on between a sentinel and companion. They didn’t react until Kevin caught a word about him of course getting a leg up on a pretty-boy like that, who wouldn’t want a face like that sucking your cock; then he stopped dead, sought the speaker out with a cool glance (it wasn't hard - the man straightened up with indignation on being spotted), and strode over to him.
At first glance, Kevin easily had seven inches and fifty pounds on him.
(Behind him, Neil raised an eyebrow.)
Kevin looked the man over, from his rankings to his unpolished boots. "You're a Sargent?" His eyes narrowed. "How?"
The man sneered. "More qualified than you, fucking fa--"
For the first time in-- ever, Kevin took a page from Andrew’s book and forcibly shut the man's mouth with an expertly thrown fist.
(Neil's second eyebrow joined the first.)
He had to be taken to the hospital for a potentially broken jaw. It left a slight gap in their guard rotation. The commanding officer chastised Kevin and threatened to make a mark on his final report, but he was too valuable to be removed from the operation and their time had abruptly shortened.
Base set in the borrowed basement of a community center that sat downwind from her projected path, they had infrared wires set across three miles of forest and farmland. The tech team monitored the alarms for absolutely any movement - more than once they caught a wind-blown branch or wild animal, but they barely took time to breathe, let alone curse about how sensitive the system was.
She was due on foot somewhere in the three miles. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the closest they’d gotten in two months. For the Masters and millions of dollars in the form of a medium-sized Asian woman, that was a lot of time.
The day, too, took a lot of time. It passed minute by agonizing minute. It passed not at all. Evening came, dusk settled, and still, nothing.
“C-4 is hot,” one technician reported, voice terse. “Definitely human shaped. Weight and heat signature matches our records. She’s not alone.”
And then: time packed its things and disappeared.
Most of them were located downwind, but they’d set trucks at three other locations. Those trucks revved their engines and crashed through hunter’s trails and through fields left fallow.
Three miles became one rapidly moving dot and her two friends.
“Day,” the commanding officer snapped, tension all along her back (her career rode on the success of this mission), “get out there. I want you at C-1 with tranquilizers.”
Neil, for the first time, spoke up. “She’s in B block.”
The commander didn’t waste time in telling him not to question her. She simply said, “She’ll double back. I’ve studied, breathed and lived everything the Masters had on her for two months. The moment she knows she’s been compromised, she won’t fight forward; she’ll run.”
Neil fell silent.
Kevin turned on a heel and did as the commander told. Obedient, Neil fell in step behind him.
“If we hadn’t lost Johnson,” Kevin caught just as they left, “alpha group could’ve taken her.”
It was too late to worry about his record for that oversight. Neil asked to drive. He handed over the keys, they swung themselves onto an off-road jeep and took off in a dim roar for C-1.
Beta group, Jackson reporting, crackled over the radio. One hostile down. Male. Remaining female subjects are armed.
Gamma group, Hughes reporting. Targets have split. Human headed south to headquarters. Sentinel’s location currently unknown.
How did you lose her, Gamma? She was right in front you.
She’s fast, ma’am. Fucking freak of nature. No offense, Day.
None taken.
Beta group, Romero reporting. Human in scope. Permission to open fire?
Permission granted. We need the sentinel, not her baggage.
…
…
Parked one-hundred twenty yards away, if Kevin strained his ears, he could just barely hear the jeep’s engine pop and hiss as it cooled. Neil at his side, heart slow and breath steady, was a much nicer thing to focus on.
Even with insulated headsets, their radio was too loud. But they were in position, and downwind, and relying on one officer’s word; Kevin put the radio out of his mind and, instead, an eye on the hand-held radar they’d given him.
Beta group, Jackson reporting. Hostile female lost.
How?
Romero’s down. Tires are blown.
Fuck’s sake. Where’s Walker? Who has sight on Walker?
The radar blipped. A red dot appeared in its green.
Got her on the grid! She’s doubled back. Who’s in C block? Shit -- alpha group?
Day and Wesninski, take point, alpha group’s co-leader replied. We’re on the wrong side of these damn trees. T minus twelve for rendezvous.
If Kevin strained his ears, he could just hear the rapid footfalls of someone fleeing a fate they very, very much didn’t want to meet.
Neil’s glance asked him in silence, won’t she know we’re here?
He shook his head. She has no focus. She won’t be able to pick us out just like that.
If they’d been upwind, she would have caught the distinctive smell of another sentinel and diverted her trajectory. Unfortunately for her, Kevin wasn’t green. He clicked off the radio and radar and shouldered the tranquilizer gun higher. By his estimation, she’d arrive on their right.
He flicked his fingers. Neil took left.
The night-darkened trees made for good cover. As they had the element of surprise, it was in their benefit.
He held still. Neil held still.
Walker was well-trained. She did her best to keep her run efficient. In better conditions - not startled, not running for her life, not facing off against another sentinel, not facing off against Kevin and Neil - she would’ve been impossible to follow.
Unknowingly, she closed in. Kevin, by sound and smell and an educated estimation, steadied his gun where she would emerge.
Then: Neil moved.
Kevin froze.
They were alone. The nearest back-up was eleven minutes out. Walker wouldn’t be able to tell two humans from two deer at her range without help, but she’d recognize the sound of boots on leaves and be a damn fool not to put two and two together. Words would clue her in even faster -- Kevin bit his tongue for that reason, but flicked his fingers around his cover to tell Neil to hold position.
Neil did not.
Neil doubled back to where they’d come from.
And Kevin remembered:
The jeep’s keys were in Neil’s pockets.
(Rookie mistake, Day.)
In two seconds, Kevin considered the possibilities. If he used the gun on Neil, Walker would definitely be alerted to their presence and escape. If he held position but Neil didn’t, Walker would most likely be alerted to their presence and escape. If he abandoned position to chase her down himself, he had a chance at apprehending her, but Neil would escape.
In the third second, he considered what wasn’t a possibility: if Neil stopped, none of this would be an issue.
Walker’s footsteps stalled as Neil’s picked up. She knew they were somewhere.
He abandoned position and gave chase.
Behind them, Neil ran.
The world returned in starts and shuddering stops. First, his eyes: the pupils dilated and contracted. Second, his fingers: the muscles twitched. Third, his throat: a dry swallow, the taste of copper lingering. Fourth, ears: noise filtered in like moss-clumped soup from a jug or sludge from a tap, garbled and jumbled and distasteful and utterly useless.
Every step forward was like ramming into a brick wall. He was hyper-aware of everything without registering anything, and it hurt.
He wasn’t sure he was breathing. He knew he needed air, but he couldn’t recall what part of him worked the oxygen-in, carbon-dioxide-out process, and he wasn’t sure what to do about not knowing what to do.
He felt young. He felt very, very young, and weak, and defenseless.
He shut his eyes to stifle panic and focused on figuring out how to breathe.
Unfortunately, his ears weren’t as easy to turn out: noises drained into the canals, solidified and stuffed him, and, bit by agonizing bit, too loud by far, began to make sense.
“... ext time.”
“This was my next time, Jackson.”
“Guess you’re up shit creak without a paddle, commander.”
“Guess so.”
His whole hand twitched, not just his fingers. The female voice turned to him and subsequently ramped up in volume; he found the rest of him was beginning to respond, as he managed a full-body flinch.
“Rejoining us, Day?”
Experimentally, he breathed deeper and exhaled slower. It worked. His lungs responded as they should. The world was still too bright even through his eyelids, the hum in the walls and buzz of lights too loud, the fabric on him and below him too itchy, too hot, too much.
He wondered why he was having such an issue with this.
Where was Andrew? He could be trusted to know what to do, always.
It’s been over five months since your last zoning, his mind helpfully informed him. You bonded to Neil Wesninski. Andrew isn’t here.
Right.
Companions left sentinels, usually violently, occasionally from disease. There hadn’t been too many cases of it - two, in thirteen years - but it was well-known a sentinel could eventually find another companion.
They left out the in-between. The part where it felt like one’s own body didn’t belong in the world or to one’s self; like he had been complete, and now he wasn’t. Like he’d lost everything below his rib cage, but his heart refused to stop and he struggled onward as half a creature and more than half senseless.
It hurt.
Jackson whistled. Again, Kevin flinched.
“Damn,” the man said. “I’d heard about the… zoning bullshit. Didn’t realize it made ‘em harmless as a babe.”
“There’s a reason the companion matters,” the officer replied.
“Huh. Guess so.”
Kevin attempted to focus on what mattered.
Everything aching in him replied: Neil Wesninski.
His mouth, never traitorous, managed: “What of,” a long pause to sift through Neil to the name he wanted, and he thought the other two knew who he meant but they left him to scrabble at straws anyway, “Walker?”
His eyes still weren’t open. But the air shifted, and he thought they exchanged a glance.
“Lost her,” Jackson said.
“Not possible,” Kevin said.
“What?”
“Not possible,” he repeated.
“We can’t hear you, Day. Speak up.”
“Not possible,” he shouted. “I had her locked down. She nearly broke my wrist, but I had her.”
The words range in his ear, and he felt on the verge of panic all over again. And yet, they reacted as if he’d barely whispered.
“Your companion bailed,” the commander said. Kevin struggled to breathe, eyes squeezed shut. “And you zoned. If you had her, Day, you lost her the second Wesninski went rogue.”
Shaking, clamy hands pressed against his eyes.
He was in front of an officer. He needed to stand up.
He managed to sit, hands dropped to his lap, eyes cracked open. Two watery blinks, and he forced them all the way open.
“I failed the mission,” he realized, head stuffed with cotton and thoughts far away. “I let the target escape.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, kid,” Jackson told him, not in the least bit sympathetic. “It’s more Wesninski’s fault than yours. He had one job, and he deserted you.”
No, came the immediate thought. He got away. That’s better for him.
Unfortunately, Kevin was not so selfless he could stop the resentment from welling up. He’d known Neil’s plan, and - maybe he’d known when Neil would run, and he hadn’t taken precautions to stop him. But the fact Neil had taken the opportunity-- without Kevin- stung.
(That was the most shocking part: without me. He left without me.)
(He wasn’t surprised.)
(As much as he’d been full of everything a moment before, now he wasn’t anything.)
“Day?” The officer called, cautious.
He gave the appropriate response. Like a ticket machine: insert this, receive that. Yes, ma’am.
“We’re on his trail. I know he’s been an expensive investment. Anyway, he can’t have gotten far.”
Understood, ma’am. I’m willing to lend what skills I have.
“We’ll find him before we find Walker, that’s for sure.”
That’s unfortunate, ma’am.
“It is. Can you return to the motel on your own? We’ll give you a ring once we find anything. You should report to your handler.”
I’ll do that immediately, ma’am.
He stood. She dismissed him. He bowed. He left.
A call came as they flew back to Evermore. The Master’s woman, still polished in black and red and utterly unchanged save for disdain at Kevin’s double failure, answered it.
He heard the whole conversation, but after she hung up, she told him it all again anyway.
“They have him. He really didn’t get far.”
One job, Kevin thought. You had one job, Neil. You had to make it.
He also thought, Thank you. My God, thank you.
He thought he said, I’ll wait at the tarmac to collect him.
It must have been the right thing that left his mouth, because she tsked and said, “No need. Make your report and attend your debriefing. Proceed as normal for the circumstances.”
She meant: for a failure.
“Understood, ma’am.” He paused. He did not question.
He paused.
He questioned, “What will become of him?”
“You know we don’t deal lightly with deserters, Day.” She replied, eyes cool and unconcerned. She didn’t know him. She didn’t know Neil. She didn’t care about either of them. “He’s lucky he’s too valuable to be quietly put down. I’m sure in due time he’ll be back at your side.”
Don’t worry, he mentally added, and felt hysteria rise.
He repeated that he understood. Then, after three minutes of sitting in acceptable silence, he excused himself to the restroom and, quietly, broke down.
“Before our session ends, I wanted to inform you about a change in my nurse’s schedule.”
“Off the record?”
“Nothing’s off the record, Andrew.”
“The official record.”
“As much as something can be.” She paused. Tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. Watched him. She felt a reason to be cautious. He ran through the dozen worst-case scenarios he always kept in mind. “Negotiations with our German sister company have been going well. They’ve recently opened their doors to receive a few of our top specialists. If all goes well, the transfers will be permanent.”
“...”
“Mr. Minyard is very good at his job.”
“He’s not a specialist.”
“His academic studies have been going well. With a few hours in residence and exams, the university he’d been planning to attend has agreed to accelerate his qualifications.”
“...”
“He also has the appropriate language skills. You have relatives there, I believe? Or-- just one? A cousin?”
“When?”
“In three days.”
“...”
“...”
“Thank you.”
“They wouldn’t have informed you otherwise. I’ve found kinship means surprisingly little here.”
“It might change my behavior.”
“Your brother is being moved overseas. I’d be more concerned if it didn’t change your behavior, Andrew.” The chair creaked. Wrappers crinkled. “Take as many as you’d like. I’ve three extra bags.”
It wasn’t the same room.
It might have been five months but he’d had --- what had Kevin said? Two weeks? He’d had two weeks to map out a space barely four strides wide, and so he knew this wasn’t the same room.
The lights stayed on the same, unwavering and, as he stared at them until his eyes began to water, buzzing horrendously. The mattress was bare. The grates weren’t clogged. The water tap--
Didn’t work.
Great.
“Apparently we’re on a time crunch,” he lamented to the dry spigot. “The statistics prove starvation’s too slow. Dehydration’s much more efficient.” Unlike the first time around, he didn’t have a keen sense of impending doom to weigh down his mind. He only had what dirt was left under his nails, the lingering memory of an open road, blessed freedom and solitude, a sunrise over misty, uninhabited hills and the undying pain that he’d never see any of it again.
Or, worse, that he wouldn’t care about seeing it again. He knew he had limits, though he rarely realized them until he’d tipped right off the edge of one. He knew in the same way that he knew how to assemble a rifle in under a minute that people were malleable: hell, he just had to think of Kevin, and he had a prime example.
Running had given them perfect reason to lock him up. Every comment he’d made before that, every line he toed and crossed, gave them perfect reason to turn his brain into mush.
All they needed was his body. It would’ve been nice to have a fully functional soldier, but really, really, at the end of the day, all they needed was--
“Wesninski?” It came from nowhere. It came from everywhere. “Hello. It’s good to finally meet you. I’ll be your attending physician for the next while; my name’s Dr. Proust.”
It came from the corner above the mattress, and it didn’t make Neil want to any friendlier than he already felt.
(He felt like breaking each of the doctor’s fingers, for the past and present and future.)
“No hello? Hm. Rude. But that’s alright. Correcting behavioral issues is precisely why we brought you here.” The overhead light buzzed right through his ears; that had to be intentional. It couldn’t be on the verge of burning out forever. “Roughly a month ago, Mr. Minyard occupied this same room. It would be a shame if Mr. Day followed the pattern his roommates have set. He used to show so much potential.
“But at this point,” dripping in sympathy and pity in equal measures, as if he hated to say it, “it’s safe to say it’d be outright negligence not to examine all of you.”
Neil bit his cheek. Hard.
“Oh, but I don’t mean to be cold. Do you mind if I call you Nathaniel?”
Four strides along one wall, three along the other. He paced. It was better than sitting and staring.
“That’s a bit long. How about Nathan? According to my file, that’s your father’s name. I don’t suppose you’ve had much news from or about him since you joined us. Or before - your mother wouldn’t let you see him either, would she? Perhaps that was causing you some stress. A boy needs a father; yes, yes, you’re no longer a boy, but to a father, their child never really grows up.”
They’d found him because he’d depended on the jeep too long. He’d known it was bugged. He’d just -- want to get as far away as possible before hoofing it.
He hadn’t even made it a full day.
What if he was bugged, and he didn’t know it? Kevin and Andrew probably were. Something undetectable - something in their blood, too small to ever be removed. He couldn’t remember anything being injected into him, but if he looked for it, if he thought about it, maybe he could. Maybe that itch on his neck wasn’t from Kevin; maybe it was from something foreign, something that his flesh and blood knew didn’t belong but he’d been too stupid to notice before.
You’re being paranoid, he told himself. Stop. There’s nothing under your skin. This is what they want.
“Fortunately, Mr. Wesninski’s agreed to a visit. The details are currently in progress, but I’ll keep you updated, Nathaniel.”
He didn’t believe himself for a second.
New fear, he found, had nothing on a child’s fear. What was or wasn’t under his skin didn’t matter; the very real existence of his father terrified.
“Before that, however,” Dr. Proust continued, his voice lightening ever further, “I’ve arranged for your peers to aid your behavioral adjustments. Since you and me don’t have even a professional relationship yet, I thought it best to surround you with those you knew. Is that alright?”
“No,” he told the corner.
The door unbolted and cracked open.
“Nathaniel,” sympathy and pity twisted into insult, Riko Moriyama tsked. Behind him, ever hollowed, Jean Moreau stood with a black box in his hands. “You’ve always been so uncouth.”
On the opposite end of four strides, Nathaniel held his ground.
“Take care, boys,” Dr. Proust told him. “I’ll check in again in a bit.”
The microphone presumably shut off. The door closed.
Nathaniel did not hold his ground for long.
Neil didn’t stand a chance.
The punishment for his failed mission began with a twenty-four hour suspension as they reworked his regime to address the concerns newly brought to light. The biggest gap was, as it had been, his lack of influence over his companion. Rectification for that oversight would begin with Nathaniel, but he would, of course, need to be involved soon. They estimated five days before his presence would be necessary.
As before, lacking one member didn’t outwardly change their apartment. The kitchen was the same. The bedroom was the same. The bathroom was the same.
When Andrew arrived an hour before curfew, he was not the same.
The he there was-- either of them. Both of them.
Between the two of them, there weren’t any surprises. This meeting continued that trend.
Andrew joined him at the table. He wasn’t, as a general rule, one for casual touch, but when their knees knocked under the table, he didn’t move away.
Kevin appreciated that.
“You smell like shit,” Andrew told him. “And you look pathetic. Like you took three days to wallow around in a sewer.”
Kevin appreciated hearing that, too.
Mostly.
In the sense that it meant Andrew hadn’t -- he didn’t know. He’d been wrapped up in Riko’s sudden dislike and Neil’s offer of everything enough that he’d forgotten a bit of this, how it was with just Andrew and him. As it went with most things, he hadn’t realized what he’d had until he lost it. Easy understanding, no pressure to focus on anything but a set goal, no expectations to be anything beyond what he already was. He didn’t do well without something to strive for, but Andrew’s acceptance-- was comforting. It was safe.
With Andrew and him, it was a lot quieter.
Literally. It was much quieter. They didn’t need to shout to be heard.
He told Andrew, “He managed eighteen hours.”
There: a touch of surprise. Not the good sort. Andrew hated surprises; Andrew, also, had been rooting for Neil’s permanent escape, though Kevin wondered if he’d understood what that really meant, or if Kevin was alone in struggling with that hollowed space.
(Sometimes Kevin wondered about how Andrew watched Neil, about how easily he’d accepted him into their life, about how it couldn’t all be out of respect for Kevin’s designated companion.)
(Mostly, he didn’t. Whatever it meant, if Andrew didn’t bring it up, then it wouldn’t interfere with anything, and it didn’t truly matter.)
Too soft to be a word, Andrew let out a breath.
Then, a hint of frustration and bigger dash of disgust (not, Kevin thought, truly turned toward Neil): “I told him to make it count.”
Riko Moriyama was not at the mess hall during the mandatory lunch hour.
Kevin noticed immediately. Andrew noticed two seconds after him.
“Have you two seen Jean? At morning class, maybe?” Knox asked, a little more tight around the edges than usual. He didn’t flit between social groups this morning: he came right to them, tray clattering heavy on the table as he sat.
“No,” Kevin finally replied, tearing his eyes away from the open space in the chief specialists’ table. “He wasn’t there.”
He didn’t attend that class anymore, either, but Andrew did, and what Andrew knew, Kevin knew.
Knox blew out a breath, hand scrubbed through his cropped hair. “Oh. Alright.”
“Worried about your boyfriend, Knox?” Alvarez teased. Or, attempted to -- she, too, looked a bit strained around the edges. Her, Laila and Knox roomed together; if this was how Knox acted in public, Andrew could only imagine what sort of anxious mess he turned himself into in the relative privacy of his room. “He’s not actually your companion, you know.”
“This is the second day he’s been missing,” Knox stressed, fingers tapping on his unopened milk carton. The companion comment didn’t grate; it was, after all, true. It didn’t, as he often told the table, matter. Sentinels could be friends with unenhanced humans just fine -- and, really, Jean seemed in need of a friend. “We have electical together, him, Riko and me, but they were missing yesterday and now they’re missing here.”
“Have you checked the medical ward?” Laila asked, a little more fed up than tense.
“Why would Riko be missing, too?”
She hummed deep in her throat. Alvarez immediately pressed her leg against hers. “Fair point.”
They didn’t ask about Neil.
They didn’t need to. Evermore rarely missed an opportunity to make an example out of someone.
That night, neither could sleep.
That night, Kevin grappled for Andrew’s scarred wrist over the kitchen counter. Andrew snapped his hand back with a wordless snarl. He didn’t try again.
“Learn to use your words,” Andrew whispered to him later, the microwave’s clock telling them they had two hours before they had to stop pretending they were five minutes from going to bed. They sat side-by-side at the kitchen table, Kevin ramrod straight and Andrew’s mouth a breath away from his ear. “Maybe we’d get somewhere.”
“They’re with him. Riko and Jean.” Kevin murmured back. “I know it.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“If--”
“Them not being with him won’t make a difference in the long run.”
A dry swallow.
It wouldn’t. But it wasn’t as if they - him, Neil, Andrew - belonged anywhere else. What would they do if they didn’t have Evermore?
“Do you trust me?”
Kevin didn’t have to think about that one. “With everything, yes.”
“You’re a fool,” Andrew informed him. Kevin shivered, but it wasn’t just -- it was, sure, yes, Andrew wasn’t someone he’d completely been able to ignore, but it was also as Neil said: restlessness. Energy without an outlet. Hours cooped up in a room for no purpose other than restriction and control. Regardless, he wanted. “Don’t lose your naivity too fast, Day. You wouldn’t be you without it.”
He wasn’t--
“You still don’t want to leave,” Andrew corrected him without him saying a word. “You’re not stupid. You’re blind. There’s a difference.”
Moment by moment, his spine lost its rigidity. Piece by piece, he bent.
(He missed, ultimately, Thea. She understood. She understood so, so well.)
“Use your words,” Andrew goaded.
Kevin’s jaw clenched.
Then: relaxed.
“Can I--?”
“Not tonight,” Andrew replied. It wasn’t a no. With effort, Kevin didn’t take it as a yes. “Remember. There’s no meaning if you don’t chose it yourself.”
They didn’t sleep.
Eventually Andrew’s fingers curled around his wrist. It would have to be enough.
In the morning, Andrew fisted his hand in the back of Kevin’s black shirt and pulled him right rather than left.
“I don’t have cardio in the mornings anymore,” Kevin reminded him, stumbling on the abrupt re-direction but - ultimately - following.
“You’re not feeling the best,” Andrew told him. “Being separated from your companion has left you volatile and paranoid. We’re going to Dr. Wymack.”
He opened his mouth and managed the start of a protest.
Andrew let go of his shirt, turned his back, and told him he had a choice, but he’d best make it fast.
(He had a plan.)
(Andrew could always be counted on having a plan.)
Accepting it, Kevin followed.
The halls to the medical ward looked no different from the halls to the gymnasium. The only change came from what signs were bolted on corners and what foggy white words were stenciled on what plain grey doors.
In the end, they didn’t make it to Dr. Wymack’s office.
Instead, they ran into Abby Winfield, who was wild-eyed and trying hard not to be. Her anxiety preceded her: sharp and high, it straightened Kevin’s back and turned Andrew’s head; when the woman followed the fear with a “Oh, thank God! You two!” they stopped in their tracks.
She didn’t ask what they were doing outside of their scheduled places. She didn’t, it seemed, have time for that.
“David pushed through the red tape and found where they’re holding Neil--”
“He’s his primary physician, he’s required to do any post-mission examination,” Kevin cut in to argue, and then, fortunately, stopped himself.
“Where?” If one was generous with their definition, Andrew asked her quite reasonably.
“This way,” she gestured, turned, and led. Cameras glinted overhead, along the ceiling’s edges and over doors; somehow, they managed to curb their mutual urge to run into a light jog. As they went, she asked them, “Do you have anything with you?”
Kevin shot her a sharp look for the implication. Andrew responded, “We have what we need.”
She said, “David will keep them for a bit. We should take a stop at the office - I was sent to fetch Neil’s file, and a few things besides.”
“Will that be necessary?”
“I insist.”
The office was close. They accepted the offer.
Nabbing a thick, unmarked folder, she shoved that and three packs at them - one, she said, courtesy of Bee. Andrew didn’t have to open it to smell the chocolate inside. In a furtive whisper in the darkened office, she gave them a series of numbers and a series of dates, a time and an open exit.
Andrew listened.
Kevin barely followed.
She said, “Aaron’s flight is scheduled to leave at ten.”
Andrew replied, “I won’t go anywhere without him.”
She shook her head, her knuckles white on the back of her chair. “You’re of better use to him outside their reach.”
“We’re of better use to you outside their reach,” Andrew corrected, voice still as death.
She didn’t deny that.
“Check the files when you’re secure,” she whispered. “You can try to intercept his flight, Andrew, but he’s traveling with thirty of the best to a land that, currently, isn’t completely under the Masters’ control. Neil, on the other hand, is only being watched by three, and needs you right now.”
Footsteps approached their door. All within froze, barely breathing.
The footsteps passed, unconcerned with a shut and dark doctor’s office. They headed down the hall; Kevin closed his eyes and listened as they turned and continued, not a second of hesitation.
When Kevin turned back to Abby and demanded, “Where is he?” Andrew did not protest.
She waited for them to put on the packs, and led the way.
Kevin knew this:
Five doors into solitary confinement, his father and Dr. Proust squared off as two white-coated professionals locked in a stalemate. Wymack looked like he’d rather square off with Dr. Proust as an unprofessional, preferably with his fists against Dr. Proust’s pasty white cheekbones.
Wymack saw their approach first. He said, loudly, “Oh! Good! The files, wherein I am in fact listed as his primary caretaker!” And then, with louder surprise that wouldn’t have fooled a toddler, “Kevin? Andrew?”
Kevin knew this:
Dr. Proust’s much more real surprise as he turned.
Kevin also knew this:
Nine methods to break a man’s neck with two hands. Two ways with one hand. More than either combined with the addition of gravity, legs, or creative improvisation.
He restrained himself not because Dr. Proust immediately wet himself and begged once Kevin had him by the lapels against the wall. It was Wymack’s voice alone, saying, “That’s one way. We’ll have your thumbprint alive or dead, Dr. Proust,” that kept him from permanently breaking the sniveling rat in two.
Interested in survival, he acquiesced.
Solitary confinement was built with the same insulation that allowed a sentinel fresh off the lab table a chance at sleeping: it kept everything in, and allowed absolutely nothing out. Without a door, its inhabitants had no chance at ever leaving its walls. Fortunately, this one still had a reason to open. The moment it did, its contents flooded every sense, superhuman or otherwise.
Kevin didn’t know this:
What he’d even expected.
Andrew knew this:
By being here, Aaron was out of his protection.
Andrew knew this:
By succeeding here, Aaron wouldn’t be out of his hands forever.
Andrew knew this:
The sight of Dr. Proust hampered his reaction time. Kevin, the overachiever that he was, filled in the gaps. The containment door he himself had walked from opened under a terrified man’s thumb, and humanity, raw and unfiltered, poured out.
He put himself at an angle to see most everything in the room because if he did not, he was sure he would’ve fallen into the same biological trap Dr. Proust had been so set on using against him. As he’d predicted, Neil was immediately in view. As he’d thought in one of many worst-case scenarios, the only part of Neil he could see were the legs Jean Moreau held down.
Riko Moriyama looked up, someone else’s blood on his cheek and expression surprised.
Andrew knew this:
In potential, all sentinels were equal. Through training, he was physically stronger than the rest. Through discipline, Kevin had a better eye and steadier hand than any other. Through design and birth, Riko was untouchable.
Andrew, in blasphemy against the Lord and his Masters, laid his hands on Riko.
A red knife glinted under harsh light. It missed its mark wildly; its wielder dropped it mid-swing. Jean, untouched, scrambled back in soundless shock.
Andrew knew this:
Riko deserved a lot worse than a swift death.
But when it came to one breath and the next, he breathed easier with the visceral pleasure of knowing the sound of Riko’s cervical vertebrae snapping apart.
Andrew didn’t know this:
Why he’d waited this long.
Neil knew this:
Demands. Denial. Pain. Pain. Pain.
Air. A different set of hands keeping him awake with bandages and compresses.
Demands, from afar. Denial. Demands, closer. Denial. Pain, pain, pain.
A door opened.
Air.
A different set of hands moved him. They couldn’t avoid causing pain.
He, gratefully, crashed into unconsciousness.
Neil didn’t know this:
Small, limp and bloodied as he was, Andrew gathered him close and, without looking up from muscle laid bare and brown-spotted bandages, told Jean: “Get out.”
Jean left. Dr. Proust did not follow.
(That one was on Wymack and a very convenient Taser. It was meant for if his patients became unruly, but, well. Dr. Proust had been much more unruly than any of his patients ever had been.)
Over his colleague’s slumped body, Wymack told Kevin and the ones within the cell, “You need to go. We’ll cover you as well as we can, but we can’t compromise what we’ve built here.”
“You’re staying?” Kevin asked, his whole body taking up the doorway. He couldn’t look in, not at what he’d heard and smelled and saw, but all the same, he knew he couldn’t allow anyone else in. He wasn’t entirely sure he could move from where he stood. He wasn’t entirely sure, period.
“You’re not the first,” Wymack told him. “You won’t be the last.”
“Read the files,” Abby added. “The names in there are to be trusted. They’ll help you. They want to.”
Behind him, movement. Andrew stood on steady legs, his hands gentle and heart - however brief the jump had been, Kevin had caught it - slowing.
One person’s blood didn’t really smell any different from another’s. Riko hadn’t even bled.
Still, Kevin couldn’t look.
Wymack caught his eye, and there was -- something there. He didn’t know. A chance, maybe; a choice, most likely. This morning was full of them. Kevin rather preferred order, clear paths and set goals. This felt like free-falling; like grasping air and waiting to meet the ground; like what he, enhancements or not, would not survive.
He was sure he had something to say to Wymack before possibly never seeing him again.
Possibly? If he left--
“Kevin,” Andrew, at his elbow, Andrew and Neil, his gaze slipped sideways and he saw blood, blood, blood. “Focus. I’m right here.”
It used to be what he’d say on the field, in the gym, in the apartment, after each and every loss of sense and place and purpose.
“You need to go,” Wymack urged them, black eyes moving from Neil’s prone form to the incredibly empty hallway they had come down. “There’s medical supplies in your packs, I’d offer to patch him up here but there’s no time.”
“Take the way we discussed,” Abby said. “There’s a jeep at the end. The keys are in the glove-box. It’ll be red and unlocked. It’s not bugged.”
“You all have vehicle training, right?” Wymack added, dark humor warming his voice.
How did you two know, Kevin wanted to demand. But there wasn’t time, and it wasn’t the right question, and -- Andrew moved past him (he did not look into the room) with Neil, and he had to follow. He had to. Those two were as much a part of him as his hands, his eyes, his anything.
Behind him, Riko didn’t move. Riko, some detached part of himself knew, would never move again.
Heart in his throat, he followed.
Behind him, Wymack grasped the something that had been in his eyes. The words followed Kevin as much as the stench of Neil’s blood, tangible and unforgettable and not anything Kevin knew what to do with: “I’m proud of you.”
The alarms began to blare when they reached the garage.
Lock-down commenced just as they tore out in a red bodied, black canopied jeep, Kevin at the wheel and Andrew in the passenger’s seat, Neil cradled and unconscious in his arms.
Compared to Evermore, a world clinical, constructed and controlled, the outside was bright, vast and overwhelming. Above, the sun hung amid tremendous blue; at their sides, whites and yellows and reds dotted lush green as trees and rocks and hidden creeks flew by. Beneath, the jeep’s engine rumbled and roared, the shocks thin and wheels taking each dip in a rough, narrow road hard. It should have been too much.
But Neil breathed, so Kevin breathed, and Andrew would never cease breathing as long as they needed him.
The packs contained clothes, official-looking government paperwork declaring them United States citizens, freeze-dried rations, water, a hunting knife, and fairly thick wads of cash. Andrew’s contained chocolate and a note that he didn’t immediately read. Red smudged manila as Andrew passed the files to Kevin; one hand on the wheel, one hand paging through until Andrew said, “There’s the map,” and he pulled it out for Andrew to peruse. His chin hooked atop Neil’s curly, sweat-slick hair as he pinned the paper to the dashboard, face blank.
It told them to go to Atlanta, he eventually reported. Combined with the dates and numbers Abby had given them, the path was interspersed with safe houses and checkpoints. At several points, they were given instructions to change vehicles.
“Junction up ahead,” Kevin warned him. “Highway or interstate?”
“Highway,” Andrew replied. “Stop at the second truck stop. He’s fine for now. He won’t need stitches. But the cuts need cleaning, and more importantly, he needs to wake up.”
Kevin turned onto the highway.
When the jeep’s compass told him they were headed north-west rather than south-west, he didn’t question it.
He drove.