The Destroyer

27

Chapter 27

We returned to stage -8 afterwards. Aunt Cora was shocked to hear I went in contact with Damien. None of the boys were surprised, since they knew all too well they didn't try a thing. I guessed Damien would start the operation anywhere between 8 and 9 pm.

As soon as I sat down on the floor on stage -8 Dice joined me to find out if we were still on good terms.

"What do you mean?" I asked him playing dumb.

"I don't know, you seemed quite angry at me," he answered.

"I didn't just seem angry, I was furious and I still am, but that doesn't mean we're on bad terms. I just thought you understood your mistake when you blew up the factory and it didn't even seem like that was the time you were talking about."

He did what I feared the most. He didn't answer, he just looked down at his enterwined hands, his elbows on his knees. He fidgeted with his fingers and he didn't need to say a word for me to understand. He had killed even before we blew up the factory and he told me that a while ago. Maybe deep inside I still hoped he was joking. I suppose that's not the thing to open up about when you first meet someone, but we've known each other for a while now, not even talking about how much we've been through together. I think I deserved that much.

"You did," he answered my thoughts. "You deserved a lot more than that and I'm sorry I didn't acknowledge that."

"You can do it now."

I waited for his reaction, but none came. He didn't even look at me, he just stered at the floor in front of him.

"I was your age," he said as if it wasn't just last year. "Yeah, last year, but you can't imagine how far away it seems. A lot has changed since then, almost everything. One thing stayed the same: the Gov wanted to kill me even then and they sent some boy to murder me. Remember how I told you? He was still too young to die. But so was I. I didn't know who he was. The Government didn't even care about people who knew the additive existed until then."

I tried to keep myself from imagining how Dice was stabbing the poor boy, I instead focused on his last sentence. "Why? Who was he?"

"Graham Wing, son of the president. He was on his first mission, wanted to prove to mother he was worthy. I saw it in his thoughts. The last thing he thought about was apologizing to her."

He looked up at me. I stared at him with my mouth open. President Wing, the most merciless woman who orders go kill every second person, was once hurt the same way she hurts others. I've lost people close to me, too. The only difference between us is that it made her seek revenge, but made me want to keep everyone out of the same pain. This is what made me human and what made her a monster.

"That's exactly what makes you better," Dice said.

For a second I unintentionally thought about what it would feel like to lose someone as close to me as Wing's son. What if my own son died? I know I wouldn't survive that.

"I don't know about your son," said Dice. "But I promise to not let you lose Shade."

That was what brought me closer to him. I had no privacy, but I was willing to sacrifice it if it meant having no secrets between him and me. I couldn't hide anything from him and what was even better is that he chose not to hide anything from me, either. Well, at least eventually. It was nothing like comfortable to know he heard everything I just thought about, but grandpa once told me everything comes with a price. This was the price of our relationship and I was more than willing to pay it.

I think it was somewhere around 8pm when we heard explosions coming from far up, partly muffled by the distance. Either someone forgot about the bombs and went out, or Damien was here. When we heard two more bombs explode we understood it was the latter. None of us dared to go out before we were sure it was safe. Another bomb exploded and then everything quieted down. Almost ten minutes passed in silence and then we heard the elevator arriving. We stood up and stared at it, not sure was it our people or the Gov.