Epic: Book 02 - Outlaw Trigger (41 page)

The commander did not speak to the sentries as he stepped past the doors through the archway. He did not speak to his fellow Nightmen as they passed him in Hall of the Fulcrums. The commander did not speak to anyone.

Back in the inner Sanctum, the shrouded man stepped from the shadows. With familiar eyes, he watched Dostoevsky disappear. Then he turned to the throne.

“
Your thoughts,” the Terror demanded.

Oleg Strakhov drew a measured breath. “This has been a strain on the Fourteenth, general. There is great animosity against Dostoevsky, as you expected. Nonetheless, all has worked according to your will.”

The general’s tone fell darker. “If Dostoevsky falls, so be it. He has a successor now.”

“
They know Nijinsky.”

Thoor was silent for a moment before he responded. “Nijinsky is of little importance. He was never the one that we wanted.”

“
Yes, general.” Oleg hesitated for a moment more, then stared at the throne. “They also fear that Remington will take his own life.”

Thoor rose and marched to the floor. “He will not take his own life, for the same reason you will not take yours. You know where you will go when you die.” Oleg made no response, as Thoor stood imposingly before him. “You will remain with the Fourteenth as I see necessary. If Dostoevsky shows weakness, destroy him. If Remington shows weakness…make him strong.”

“
Yes, general.”

“
Leave me, eidolon.”

Oleg raised his hand in salute, and the general promptly returned it. Turning to the door—still donned in his standard EDEN clothing—he strode out of the room.

Thoor returned to his throne, where he lowered into the confines of its grasp. High above the Inner Sanctum, with only the flickers of torchlight to appease him, he returned to take the reigns of the darkness. The monster.

The Machine.

* * *

Scott’s room was shrouded in blackness. Galina’s cot still sat in the corner, but she was not in it. Galina was dead. Her sendoff had taken place earlier that morning, but Scott hadn’t attended. He hadn’t known how. He wouldn’t have known what to say had someone asked him to speak—if anyone would have spoken to him at all. Only one thought reverberated through his mind.

What have I done?

He hated himself. More than anyone else. More than Nicole’s unknown killer. He hated himself for becoming one with what ended her life. Her death hadn’t justified his lust for revenge. What he’d done had been purely selfish. It was pathetic. In his vain mind, the death of her killer would have been payment for the life that was taken. Instead, he’d taken a life of his own. One as innocent as she was.

To honor her, the most courageous thing he could have done would have been to show mercy. She would have shown mercy had the situation been reversed. She would have struggled to do it, but she would have done it. She would have done it to honor him. She would have done it to honor God.

Scott had been angry with God since the day she’d been murdered. But now, Scott feared Him. He feared disconnection. He feared damnation. He feared the very thing that he now heard.

Silence.

Dostoevsky had said Scott was his brother. Though Scott could scarcely bear it, it was true. He wanted nothing more than to resist himself, to throw the horns of his armor aside. But it wouldn’t be the truth. He could no longer hold the Nightmen in judgment. Even though it had been the wrong person, Scott meant to take the life that he took. Just as they meant to take theirs. The Nightmen were sinners like him. They were sinners who’d stepped too far.

Sinners just like him.

No one visited Scott that day. No one knocked on his door. In the wake of his most horrible achievement, the only pity he endured was his own.

* * *

That evening

The lounge was unified in solemnness; death hung heavily in the air. The able operatives of the Fourteenth were there, but words were few and far between. Such had been the case since Galina’s memorial.

There were no tears shed at the sendoff. They had no tears left. There was only the quiet disbelief that came with the greatest fall the Fourteenth had ever seen.

Every table in the room was occupied. At one sat David, Becan, and Jayden. Varvara sat alone at the farthest, preoccupied with a pen and some paper. The sound of her confidential scribbling was the loudest sound in the room. Esther sat opposite Boris, though she might as well not have been there. Travis was absent; he was flying Galina’s body home.

The door to the bunk room opened, and Max’s familiar form wandered in. He stood in the doorway of the lounge moments later, where his numb gaze surveyed the room. He slid his hands into his pockets and stepped inside, leaning against the counter.

“
So what’s the word?” David asked.

The room turned its attention to Max, who shook his head. “Not a thing.”

“
What?”

He sighed. “Clarke never said a thing.”

“
Not one bloody
word
?” asked Becan. The Irishman slouched back in his chair. “Why’d he even call yeh?”

“
To hand me this,” Max said, pulling a folded paper from his pocket.

“
An’ wha’s tha’?”

Max slid the paper away. “Our newest members. Ryvkin, Romanov, Goronok, and Broll.”

“
Those are the Nightmen,” said David.

Max nodded. “Those are the Nightmen.”

No one else spoke and the room’s atmosphere became ever graver. The only constant was the sound of Varvara’s pen as it scribbled on the paper beneath her hand.

It was Esther who finally broke the silence. Her eyes squeezed shut, and she pressed her palm to her forehead. “This was all me,” she whispered. “This would never have happened if I weren’t here.”

Max snorted under his breath as he observed her. “What are you talking about?”

“
If I hadn’t messed up in Khatanga, he wouldn’t have been so upset.”

“
Get real,” scoffed Max. “You think you’re that important? You’re nothin’.” She winced as he spoke. “He did what he did ‘cause they killed his girl. End of story. I would’ve done it, too.”

Esther made no verbal response. Her gaze traveled only as far as the tabletop, then disconnected. The others looked at Max in disbelief.

“
What?”

“
Ever try
not
bein’ a total jerk?” Becan asked.

“
What’d I say that ain’t true?”

Becan waved him off in disgust, and Max moved to the counter.

“
This is all wrong,” Jayden said. “What happened was
wrong
.”

“
Scott knows it was wrong,” said David. “That’s why he’s not here.”

“
I’m not talkin’ about Scott,” said the Texan. “I’m talkin’ about what they did to him. It was wrong.”

“
What Scott did was wrong, too.”

“
You suck, Dave.” The operatives shot Jayden a look as he said it. “You’re supposed to be his friend, not his enemy.”

“
He’s a Nightman, Jay.”

“
That’s dung and you know it. They cheated to make him a Nightman.”

“
How did they cheat?”

“
They lied to him.”

David sighed. “Jay, you’re missing the point—”

The Texan cut him off. “
You’re
missin’ the point, man. The point is that you’re his friend. You can’t just decide not be his friend when he makes a mistake.”

“
Jayden, you’re not even thinking about—”

“
Man, shut up.”

Max pressed against the counter and cleared his throat. “I really love all this bonding we’re doing, but we’ve got some things to sort out. What are we gonna do about the Nightmen?”

“
Nothing,” answered Varvara from the far table. The others turned to stare at her.

“
Nothing?”

“
Nothing. They are part of this unit now, and that is it. We have had Nightmen before.”

“
Yeah,” Max replied, “and look how well that’s worked out for us.”

She glared at him.

“
Right, whatever. You’re the doc.” Max watched as she resumed her scribbling. “What’s that you’re writing? A prescription for lunacy?”

Varvara made no immediate response. Her eyes only lingered over the words on the paper, scanning them from top to bottom. Finally, just when it seemed as if Max’s question had gone unheard, she gave him his answer. “It is a letter.”

“
It’s a letter? For who?”

Her eyes glided over the letter again. She hesitated in her answer, then quickly tucked the paper away. “For Scott.” She said nothing else, and Max fell silent.

No more words were exchanged in the lounge that evening. No more conversations were started. David called his wife in New York, and Jayden subsequently called his parents. Even Becan made a phone call, though its recipient was a mystery.

The Fourteenth eventually filed away, one by one, into their bunks. For many of them, it brought finality to one of the longest days they’d ever known. For all of them, it brought finality to one of the worst. That night, for the first time in the Fourteenth’s history, every operative in the bunk room said a prayer.

Even Max.

^{* * *}

Saturday, August 13
^th
, 0011 NE

0617 hours

Morning

Scott’s eyes opened as the comm went off on his nightstand. It didn’t come as a disturbance; he hadn’t been sleeping for hours. Unlike the last time its wails had echoed through his room, however, there was now no rush to answer. He had no desire to kill something. That hole had already been filled. Reaching over to the nightstand, he clicked the comm alert off. The beeping surrendered to silence.

For the first time in his life, he felt utterly despondent. He made no effort to pray. He could not bring himself to cry. Both would have been futile.

Dostoevsky’s voice crackled over the comm. “Lieutenant…we have crashed Bakma Noboat. Ten miles south of Moscow.” The commander noticeably hesitated. “Will you come?”

Scott lay in stillness in the darkness of his room. It was the first time Dostoevsky had ever asked him that. It was the first time Dostoevsky had sounded uncertain. Scott rolled on his side and wrapped his arms around his pillow. He closed his eyes.

It could have been Nicole, right there tucked away beside him, with his arms wrapped around her body and her face nuzzled into his chest. They could have eloped by then. They could have been one.

He could not help but imagine her there. He imagined his hand gliding gently through her hair, and her murmuring as she snuggled into his side. He imagined himself kissing her on the forehead, as she lazily opened her eyes. Then she’d smile. He imagined her words. He imagined what she would have said, had she been there beside him. He imagined.

“
Scott…why did you kill?”

His mind went numb.

“
Why?”

That was his truth now. That was the choice he had made. He had disgraced her in death, becoming one with what had taken her. That fall was his own.

Scott sat up in his bed and pressed a hand against its frame to support himself. He eased his other hand through his hair. It was the first time Dostoevsky had ever asked—had ever given him a choice to go. Scott looked over at his closet, at the suit of armor he’d dragged there himself.

Scott knew the choice he’d made—the answer to Dostoevsky’s question. He’d chosen it before the comms ever beeped.

The
Pariah
was primed and ready for flight. Inside the cockpit, Travis and Boris prepared for departure.

Conversation was virtually dead. A majority of the crew sat in the troop bay, while the four new Nightmen stood outside. But they weren’t the only ones outside. Dostoevsky was there. Jayden and Becan were there. At the far end of the troop bay, Varvara and Esther stared at the hangar’s side door.

Would he come? It was the second time that week they’d asked the question. Their answer came soon enough.

When he walked into the hangar, everyone turned to face him. They wanted to find their Golden Lion. But that was not what they found.

Where there had once been an expression that burned with confidence, they now found a stare hindered in crux. Where there once had been a stride fit for a knight, they now found a tread of contrition. Where there once had been an aura of righteousness, they now found an imprint of vice.

But that was not all they found.

They found horns. They found blackness. They found sin. They found punishment for the deeds of the fallen—the cost of a murder for love. Their Golden Lion had left them.

This new man, none of them knew.

THREE DAYS LATER

Tuesday, August 16
^th
, 0011 NE

1245 hours

Vilnius, Lithuania

As she pushed open the door to her house and stepped outside, she shielded her eyes from the glare of the midday sun. It was not an unpleasant movement, and as she brushed her golden strands from her forehead, she smiled.