☑ THE SHADOW | Peter Maximoff

f o r t y - o n e

His heart skipped a beat. His mutation?

It's a little sad. It really did look like fun, ruling the world. But, Amara said no. We were only allowed to pretend to like it.

He looked down at his hands for a split second, then back up at the door.

They were watching. We had to trick them.

This was it.

But, we're with you, Peter.

They were finally getting out of here.

Always.

Peter stood up and peeked his head out of the cell. Once he determined the hall was empty, he stepped out and looked around, a giddy grin plastered on his face.

"Where did you say she was?"

The throne room.

The throne room. He saw it, that's for sure, but had no idea how to get there. He didn't sweat over it, though. He'd find it eventually.

Amara must have placed his goggles on his head, and he pulled them over his eyes as soon as he noticed they were there. The anticipation built in his chest as he adjusted the straps around his head.

Peter's eyes shut as he focused on the air around him. He slowed his breathing down to try getting himself in the mental state that he was about to be in a shitshow.

If there was one thing he always knew about Amara, it was that when she got an idea into her head, no matter how insane it was, she was going through with it. No matter what the mission was, no matter what kind of danger it put her in. She was going to do it. A brief realization told him that was definitely because of It. Even if she couldn't protect herself, It would. She could afford to be reckless - she had an entity sworn to protect her living inside her.

That meant, if It said they were blowing the place up, they were blowing the place up.

He had to be careful, though. He hadn't eaten a proper meal in over a month, and he'd been on the run with Amara for what had to be a week now. He was going to have to be smart about the limited energy he had.

There was the stillness in his ears that told him his mutation was working. He could hear the difference. And when he blinked his eyes open, his grin crawled back onto his lips. Instantly, he put one leg in front of the other. His heart raced faster than it had in what felt like forever.

His speed, while it made everything around him still, also made him almost completely weightless. He moved up to run on the wall just for fun, jumped off the railing and flipped to land in the middle of the courtyard, then picked a random hallway and started down it.

The wind in his face was harsh, even as he paused to open every door and peek inside. He welcomed it with open arms. Clearly, he had taken having his mutation for granted. It was so good to finally have it back.

None of the rooms he checked were the throne room.

He climbed the stairs and ran down even more hallways, all the way until he saw the first speck of color at the end of a long, empty hallway. He was right to follow it.

The little piece of color he saw ended up being a large flag hanging from the ceiling, sporting a crest with many versions of the Remedy logo in each of the corners. It took up almost the entire back wall, hanging just behind the magnificent "throne" that none other than Kiselyov sat in.

Peter entered the throne room from the second level, allowing him to peek over the ledge of the balcony to see how many guards were standing there. If he had to guess, around a hundred. But his eyes weren't on them for long.