(ty for reading, you're always appreciated <3 the little star thanks you plenty)
(EDITED)(Note to readers: Some chapters ahead may not be fixed to be in line with the new edits)
I was younger by two minutes. Maybe that's where shit went awry first.
"Come here, Echo," she beckoned, patting the space in front of her on the silk cushions, right up beside the window. "I've got a present for you."
My grin was wide, and I went bounding over to her, scrabbling up the cushions with my unpracticed, five-year-old hands. She laughed, helping me sit up.
"Shh," she said, smiling brightly, before reaching over and taking a little blue box from her bedside. She set it between us. "Go on, open it."
I did. Inside, a dozen tiny chocolates lay, all varying in flavor and color, some wine red, some bone white, others blue like blood that hadn't breathed. I took one to pop it into my mouth.
"Massisseo?" she asked.
Being split from my father was its own punishment, and he sought to make us know it. Food wasn't very plentiful, and for the most part, we received leftovers or small snacks or haphazard soups as sustenance. Treats were reserved for holidays, or whenever my mother could sneak them in when she left the house. I'd never seen the outside world outside of our garden and window, so whatever was given, I ate.
"Don't you want some, Umma?" I asked, offering her one.
She hesitated. "Ah, no, I bought these for you! They're very expensive, you know. Swedish chocolates are the best that money can buy these days. Mani meogo."
I stared at the chocolates for a long while. I said, "Did hyung get some?"
For a long while, I thought my mother had chosen me because she'd had no other choice. But my mother wasn't as obedient as I'd mistaken, wasn't as gullible as people liked to believe, and was more a woman with too much hope but not enough trust. And she must've known from the very start, from those two minutes, from the mark on his hip to the mark on mine, that she did not have long to teach me how to survive.
Omegas didn't win the game against Alphas. So, at best, she had to teach me how to lose the game, and win my life.
"Don't be scared of being greedy," she'd said when I told her she could have the last chocolate. "Some people have to be greedy to get what they want. The world doesn't listen to their 'please' and 'thank you'. Sometimes—" She took the chocolate, and then my hand, and let me curl my fingers around it just as the coating began to melt under my warm skin. "—you have to steal first, if you want to own."
"Umma, why didn't you take hyung with you, too?" I said another night, settled against her arm, both of us bundled in white sheets in her bed. Incheon was a radiant blue ahead of us, beyond the windows, glowing with something spring-like and reckless.
My mother wrapped her arm around me. "Elias...needs a different home than you do. For twins, you both are very different."
I bristled at that. "Because he's an Alpha?"
"Because he's Elias," she said. "And you're Echo." My mother brushed my hair from my face. "Some things are just going to be harder for you, and I want you to be ready for it. I want to be here when you need it." She forgot to mention she wouldn't be there later. She wouldn't be there later, and therefore thought you could figuratively stock up on advice and affection, in delusion that it would be enough.
A part of me knew my mother had only favored me because my father had favored Elias, that she'd always seen too much of herself in me to let me go, that she'd seen too much of my father in Elias to hold onto him. That the world operated on a ranking she and I could never beat, and neither one of us were in a family that would protect us from becoming collateral damage of it.
"Trust me, Echo," she pleaded, years ahead, the spring gone and winter replacing it instead, my hands older. "Trust that I know how to make us okay."
Her hand was cold and clammy on mine. Her eyes were mine but not really. Everything was her but not really. Was that the worse part of losing someone? When you realized you'd lost them long before and never got to say goodbye, so you were forced to say it to the part of them you no longer recognized?
I suppose the most she could do was hope.
I closed my eyes. "I trust you," I whispered.
I had to.
Who else was there?
___________________________
2:02 AM. Hallgate. The Luck House. But wait! It gets worse.
"KLA Enterprises, you want to take down KLA Enterprises?" I snapped.
Mercy frowned. "That's not very nice of you, Ghost. Maybe believe in us a little? Doubt's not a good face for you." She winked. "Especially considering your debt."
Mercy ripped into her roast beef sandwich half and I had to close my eyes just upon seeing her chew the meat up. She hummed from her perch on the counter, turquoise skirt riding up long legs, her pitch-colored fingertips clicking on the countertop. She wagged one at me.
"You're getting more squeamish by the day, no? I thought you'd be long past making such a face," She squished my cheek. The scent of meat on her fingers made me recoil. "Bold of you to get cocky about money that's not yours."
I curled my fists. "Tell me about KLA or I'm going back." I couldn't say "home" but she knew what I meant.
Mercy sighed. She hopped down from the countertop, sending a quick whistle signal to the rest of the Bengal goons. 2:09 AM. I was seriously pushing it this time around.
None of Corvus had seen me leave for my early morning or late night escapades as it violated curfew. I couldn't bet on Uma's silence either, and it left me taking the back stairs to the emergency exit by the pool. But I'd always shown up before five thirty as some of them liked getting up early to go to the gym, and walking in smelling of gasoline and/or blood was as difficult a thing to explain as you could imagine.
For a regular gig, two AM wasn't a bad time, but this was one of Mercy's plots, the kind I had to turn the radio off from the next morning and scrub myself raw to get rid of the subsequential scents.
"You act like I'm not paying you," Mercy said.
"Are you paying me?" I muttered.
"Oh, Ghost," she cackled. "Come on now, lovely. For all the batshit-bullshit that awaits us—" Her neck craned back all the way to give me an upside down grin. "—you shouldn't worry so much about money."
A few creatures tried to replicate the art of packs, but lycans just happen to take the cake on economically-weaponized black market plutocracy and biologically-discriminatory elitist social pyramids. But I digress.
The bulgaes' packs were more like factions of their choosing—blazing bastards, but quite amicable, ironically—dabbling in anything from Wisconsin family ranches to coffee machine advertisements to cocaine. KLA Enterprises was a big trading partner with Hyundai, which was shared between my father and its original family heir. They were a small investment on my father's part, but an investment nonetheless and had both that pack's bulgae and my father's name written on it.
All of which was why it was a bad idea to be where we were, doing what we were about to do.
"Your plan is what?" I snapped.
"'Take down' isn't a lightly used term here, Ghost, keep up, won't you?" Mercy sighed. She plucked a cigarette from D's fingers to stick between her lips. "It's a simple liquidation. We've got buyers on the line already."
"You're crazy. You'll crash more than just KLA with a market influx that big," I said.
"They'll pit money where their wound is," she said with a nod. "Give it a few months. Besides, all you've got to worry about are the eyes."
I shook my head. Mercy patted my cheek, the scent of ash following her fingertips. She kicked JJ in the foot and he glared before reaching to haul open the doors of the black van.
Hallgate was far behind them, abandoned in favor of an out-of-lycan territory up the ridges of Central California, Lani. It was a bulgae-dominated city, leaving the entire town scorching hot, the ground black like coals, the buildings thick with fireproof stone. Smoke was constantly in the air, embers flying from face to face, mouth to mouth. The city spoke of heat, drenched itself in it, froze the citizens in amber. Even the icy breath of March's cool morning did nothing to quench the flames. Mercy's non-negotiable black-tie attire was beginning to feel more like torture than dress code.
JJ tapped the doors. "Take what you need," he said.
Bengals swarmed the van for appropriate weaponry, grabbing anything from pistols to AKs to shotguns to seal daggers to throwing knives. Mercy took an automatic and tossed me an handheld, her face excitable, waiting to burst like a firecracker. JJ placed a knife in my inside pocket.
"I thought you said it was simple liquidation," I said.
"KLA has gotten on my nerves enough to have a little extra liquidation coming his way. Besides, bulgae tend to put all their eggs in offshore baskets," she said. "Bulgae have got such bad tempers as it is. Call it fast-forward karma."
"I never agreed to a shootout."
"Oh, my my my!" she shrieked, swiveling on a jade-colored heel. "Puppy's getting troubled. What's wrong? Gonna cry?"
"I never agreed to a shootout," I repeated louder.
"You wanted to take down your father, play dominos with lycan royalty and poker with your life, you agreed to a lot more than a shootout, kid." She pushed the gun to my chest. "What's wrong? You've cut open the dead. What's so different about putting them there first?"
"Time," D reminded.
"That pedestal doesn't suit you, Ghostie," she sang. "Don't you know what you've done?"
It was a shotput to the stomach. I clenched my fists, curled my fingers around the weapon.
"Time," Leia reminded, twisting blue hair between her slimy fingers, scales shimmering in the red flames of the residence.
I tucked the gun into my pocket. "Let's go."
"That's my boy," Mercy sang.
KLA Enterprises stood at twenty three floors, in the heart of Lani, with a theme so red it'd put Hell out of business. There were two cameras per entrance, twenty feet apart in circumference. Two guards, hooked up to the fifth floor's surveillance. Each floor had four cameras, save for the third floor showroom, which had six. Each level had one guard. Twenty three guards and fifty cameras inside, six guards and six cameras outside.
Twenty Bengals rivaled them, two of which were already standing guard in the showroom and the surveillance room, the rest spread out. Mercy clearly, and rightfully, didn't trust to tell me the plan, so instead told me to shut up, keep my mask on, and follow Helena's slimy, siren lead no matter what. The most I could make out from her hissing to JJ and two other Bengals, Olive and Garo, was something about the twenty first floor.
"Remember when I say go," Helena said, "shoot anyone with that tacky silver tie."
"And then?"
"We're gonna overtake the showroom for the cars. The rest will meet us down there. You'll take Krona Street and I'll take Broadhill. Lose whoever chases you and crash the car by the Pizza Hut on Third. We'll pick you up from there and book it."
I said, "This doesn't sound very thorough."
Helena sneered at me. "Wouldn't you know?" she deadpanned.
I took a breath, and pulled on the mask.
We waited by the alley across the building as several Bengals approached them. The late hour left the area desolate, nothing but the occasional crackle from the heads of the bulgae standing guard. Mercy stood beside me.
"Éteignez-le," she said. "Maintenant."
The cameras stilled in their position, facing downward. The guards questioned something of the Bengals, began to gesture off to one side or the other with a shake of their head. One Bengal nodded to the others.
A crack. A shout. A knife to a skull. Five other guards running with cries of stopping. They withdrew pistols.
"C'est tout un spectacle," Mercy whispered to me. "Ces armes ne fonctionnent pas."
Those guns don't work.
Mercy only used French if she knew it wasn't meant to be heard by everyone, if it wasn't meant to be tracked by buzz words or signals. But the Bengals around us didn't all fall into that tight circle, at best, half of us.
"How long have you been planning this?" I hissed in hurried French.
"Long enough," she promised, and turned my chin to the spectacle. "Just watch. It gets better."
No bullets flew from the guards' guns. They only got a moment for the dread to register before the flames in the fireplaces began to boil over and flare out of control. Without flinching, the Bengals bound their mouths with the faux silver ties, and tossed them in. The screams were too immediate, too gutteral. The smell of burning flesh singed my nose.
No sirens came for them.
I grabbed Mercy by her lapel. "What are you thinking?" I snarled. "What are you—"
Mercy flicked her finger at Helena, and smiled at me.
"Go!" Helena yelled.
"There's a lot of bodies out here," she whispered. "Better do your job right."
She shoved me forward with a black gloved hand and bolted the other way before I got the chance to reply. Helena yanked me by the back of my neck and thrust me forward, nearly smashing my face into the brick.
"You fuck this up, kid," she hissed, "I'm gonna put your pretty little face in that bonfire and leave you there for the feds to clean up." She kicked the back of my leg. "Now go."
I grit my teeth together, holding the gun to my ribs. I hauled myself up and raced after her into the blazing night.
We stormed KLA like our lives depended on it.
Mine did, at least.
Helena, Benni, Olive, and I clambered through a shattered window, rushing for the stairs. Guards from both the second and first level stormed us. Black and silver bullets raced for us. The ear-piercing sound of my gun going off was a terrible firework within the fiery building. I tried not to watch the men and women plummet. I tried and failed.
"Get to the showroom!" Helena snapped.
A guard raised a phone to his ear, shouting something over a shot. I barely registered the bullet flying from my gun into his neck.
I ran.
A bullet skimmed my arm and I cursed violently, my feet skidding on the tile. I clawed my way up the slippery marble stairs. Blood made my palm shaky, slippery.
A hand grabbed my shoulder. The wall and I collided before I could even take a breath. My teeth tore into my tongue. The gun flew from my hand and slid into oblivion on the steps.
A guard smashed me against the stone with his hand around my wrist. The heat from his skin and hand sent flames racing down his red skin and burned holes into my blazer. He said, "Motherfucking Bengals."
I withdrew the knife from my pocket. I spared no breath before sinking it into his neck.
Blackened blood splattered over me, his throat choking on it. I shoved his convulsing body off of me and onto the red tile. Metal was sticky and pungent in my mouth.
I took a shuddering breath, holding my still-burning arm. "Not a Bengal," I muttered, and snagged the gun to whirl around and waste another several bullets on a row of incoming guards. Each one dropped like shooting aluminum cans.
An alarm wailed bloody murder. I could barely hear it over the perpetual ring in my ears and rush of epinephrine pumping into my limbs. So I ran, and ran, and ran.
I am your only lifeline.
That is a promise.
A bullet sank past my ribs. But I couldn't feel it, not even the pressure of its impact or the splitting of the skin. I was too occupied with trying not to step on bodies, dodging bullets, keeping a grasp on my own gun and seeing through the sweat and blood in my vision. Olive screamed something in my ear, but it was too loud for me to hear anything but showroom and out the window.
The showroom.
Run, run, running.
We reached the showroom at 2:43 AM. I knew it. I saw it on the blood-stained watch of a guard with three stab wounds in her chest.
The all-red building made it so that I couldn't tell the difference between whether I stepped on stone or blood, whether we were in walls made of innards or ruby. The only thing that saved me from getting sick was the siren still screeching for high hell and the voices still chasing our tails, urging us to go fast, faster. Always faster.
The showroom sported everything from racecars to SUVs, but the Bengals could waste no time being picky when the blue sirens were only growing closer by the slimming second.
"Split up in the cars," Helena ordered. "We're gonna have to drive out of here the second the rest of them meet us down here from the rooms above."
"We're on the third floor," I said. "Where the hell are we supposed to go?"
"You act like you've never driven out of the third floor," Olive said, brushing past me to take the Mantis 66 model, leaving me next to the 720 Granda. "Aren't you a racer?"
Bullets and shouts clawed their way up to us from the stairs. I yanked the keys out from under the Granda's podium and wrenched open the door.
A dozen Bengals burst through into the showroom. Leia screamed, "Start the fucking cars!"
"The things I'd do," I murmured as I pushed the engine to life, "to have slept in today."
Leia, D, and two other fae flew into the car's seats. Leia whirled on me, her shoulder bleeding blue and green, her face wild contempt and contention that I was the one in the seat.
"Can you even drive?" she snarled.
"Hey, I'm only bleeding out," I assured. "How long we got?"
"How fast can you go?"
I hummed at that. I reached down to adjust the seat. Leia hissed, "What the fuck are you doing?"
"You want me to see the fucking road or not?" I coughed out. "Someone turn the GPS on for wherever the fuck that Pizza Hut is." I pushed the radio button and pushed on the navigation icon to type it in manually. "You'd think a 120-thousand dollar car would have voice input."
"Are you GPS-ing our escape route?" a Bengal snarled at me.
D leaned against the window, looking bored despite the blood smeared over his wounded arm. "It's spelled with a K," he said calmly.
"Thanks."
"You've got to be joking."
"Starting route to 517 Krono Street," the navigation said.
"Seatbelts and doors," I said, and the Bengals gave a chorused groan. My ribs fucking hurt.
Said doors barely had a chance to shut.
In less than a blink, police and KLA guards alike broke into the room, bullets raining like someone had smashed an industrial piñata over us. We ducked as they smashed into the car windows and shattered gaping holes in the windshields.
One bolted straight for us, gun out, face bloody. The navigation said, "Turn left."
"Get out of the vehicle now!" the guard roared.
I grabbed my gun from the center console and tossed it to Leia. "Hold tight," I yelled.
Leia raised the gun, and shot the guard straight in the chest, just as I shifted the gears and swerved so far left the car nearly careened right over. Before us, was the window.
"Hell no," Leia breathed.
"Go straight," the voice said.
I stepped on the gas, and we went.
The glass shattered like cutting water. The Granda soared up, up, out. For a moment, we were flying.
But gravity wasn't that kind.
We soared downward like riding the slope of a rollercoaster, nose to the solid concrete, blaring blue cop cars below us like a sapphire moat. I suppose Mercy couldn't pay them all off.
I kept my foot on the gas like I could break the damn pedal.
The Granda landed like a metal fist to earth, my skeleton rattling into rearrangement under my skin. I wheezed blood and air.
"Get them!" guards screamed behind us.
I looked in the rearview mirror. The distinct bruises of black KLA cars beginning to rush for us. Machine to machine, nothing but the road. A coarse excitement flared to life under my palms. Ahead of us, the sleeping city waited for our destruction. Per usual.
"Let's race," I muttered.
"Turn right," the navigation said.
I did.
Bullets were endless at our backs. I could feel it in the car when one of the tires took a bruise to its side, the vehicle screaming. I clutched the steering wheel like I clutched the handlebars of a bike. Nothing but time, and nothing but luck.
I swerved into the empty avenue. The car went crashing into a brick wall, swerving so violently around the sharp corners you could hear the rubber burning up on the asphalt. Through the broken glass littering the dashboard, 2:55 AM blinked on the clock.
A black van sped up beside us. The guard yanked out her earpiece and leaned out the window, gun ready at our heads. "Pull over now!" she screamed.
D leaned out his window, gun ready at her unsuspecting face before he pointed it down and shot all four tires to dust. The van careened with a wail. It zig-zagged right into a 24/7 deli, the sound of ruined metal and splintering glass raining in our wake.
I shifted, took an alleged left. 2:56.
"Turn right in 200 feet."
"You're gonna fucking kill us before we even get there," Leia snarled.
"Who's driving, fucker?" I snapped, and yanked the wheel right with a vengeance for the gas. "Your slimy hands would slip right off the wheel!"
She had no time to be offended when we entered an intersection. From Fourth Street at our right, LED headlights of a monstrous SUV shot towards us, murder in its eyes. I braced myself, but how much could I take at this rate?
Fuck being broke, man.
It smashed into us with such ferocity that car tipped onto its side. With a thundering blow, the car crushed us up against a convenience store. My body took the blow like a fist to a punching bag. Breath fled. Blood rushed. The world was dizzyingly sideways.
"Ghost!" they screamed.
"Make a U-turn," the GPS recited.
I stepped on the gas one last time. "Always nagging," I wheezed.
With a final, heaving, three-tired effort, the car rolled off the hood of the SUV, crunching its grill in the process. Someone screamed, I thought so; everything sounded like screaming when the Bengals were involved.
"Your destination is on your left," the navigation sputtered.
The Granda careened into Third Street. Up ahead, an obnoxiously orange KLA 22 Stinger appeared, with Mercy in the driver's seat. I looked left, and spotted a Pizza Hut. I spotted a closed pawn shop on the other side.
I sighed. "Hold on," I yelled.
The Granda howled high into the night as I twisted its body too fast, too hard, sending the entire vehicle horizontal. Without a second of breath, it crashed hood-first into the pawn shop. Glass galore. Smoke to dust. Then, quiet.
I couldn't move for a few moments. Everything pulsed too violently, the world too red to register. Every breath tasted like metal. My nose was filled with iron and ash. Every breath had my ribs pounding fists on my lungs. The burning, the piercing, was all familiar. But it didn't make it hurt any less.
"You've reached your destination."
"Yeah," I coughed wetly. "Thanks for that."
Something jostled me, held onto my arms to drag me out of the mess. When my cheek kissed concrete, I took in a shuddering, needle-point breath.
"Nice work, Ghostie." Mercy's voice was muffled, a distant thing. "Seems you've still got it."
I stared up at her. I spat out a mouthful of blood and said, "Fuck off."
Mercy shrugged. "Tick tock, three dots on the clock!" She showed me her watch, reading 3AM exactly. "Let's go home, yeah?"
Home.
If I had more blood, I would have laughed.
I let Mercy haul me to my feet, carbon and carnage in our wake.
Mercy sent me home with a train ticket, two hundred dollars, my gun, my knife, my suit, and a wink. I think it was supposed to be her "thank you". Or her "you're welcome".
3:32 AM.
The train ride home from Lani was about as interesting as you can imagine. A night shift nurse, a janitor, a mother and son, and a few college kids watched me as I boarded the early morning train. The nurse gasped at me.
"Oh, my goodness," she exclaimed. "Are you all right?"
I slumped in the first available seat, holding my ribs, and managed a small grin. "Yeah," I assured. "Just slipped."
I let my head fall back against the plastic film window, and faced my reflection in the one opposite of me. The thrum in my skeleton jostled the nerves in my spine, shook me to my phalanxes. But I just had to breathe. The only thing I needed in my peripheral, was to breathe.
"Next stop: Avaldi. In: thirty one minutes."
I pushed the button for the stop. The night gnawed at my bones.
4:09 AM. It was silent in the Talon.
It took a mountain of strength, likely the last I had in me, to climb the stairs up to Corvus's floor. I had to take breaks at every ten steps, gasping through the stinging in my serratus and the hiss of my tendons. When I did eventually make it, I had to keep my head down for the most part to avoid the cameras tracking my steps, which my whiplashed neck didn't thank me for.
The gun was heavy in my pocket. Moon-sized. Jupiter's mass.
I took to the bathroom, tiptoeing as best as I could. I tore off the suit to drop in the bathtub. I washed out my cuts, the bullet wounds, the gashes and scrapes. I scrubbed every drop of blood off until it hurt, dripping ad infinitum down the pink drain.
I sat down in the shower. Peroxide seethed in my wounds. It might've been minutes, might've been hours, before I shut off the water and began the gruelingly slow process of wrapping them.
I washed my suit as best as I could before shoving them into a trash bag and stuffing them into the garbage chute. The fresh clothes were futile comfort. Like a good ghost: no trace.
When I came back inside, someone flicked the kitchen light on, and said, "Hidarigawa ni."
My whole body froze over cold.
I turned my head.
Kenzo stood in the kitchen, perched on one of the island seats. His computer sat before him, papers next to it, likely some sort of classwork he was catching up on. He stared at me with that same blank, solemn expression that he always had. Upon looking over my injuries, it remained so.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
I thought of the gun, the cash, the knife, my suit. Oh, hell.
He said, "Ohayō." When I just blinked, he said in the same, crisp and unbothered Japanese, "You understand."
It wasn't a question. My vision crystallized. Kenzo was two feet and two miles from me all at once.
I said, "What are you doing?"
Kenzo took that dodge gracefully. He shut his laptop, gathering up his things like a dreadful morning class had just ended. "Econ," he said, then in that dreadful Japanese, "What about you?"
My pulmonary veins were going to fucking burst. "It's early."
"It is." Kenzo stared. "So why are you awake?"
"I don't speak Japanese."
"Hidari." When I looked to him, his eyes didn't even twitch. "Warui usotsuki."
Bad liar.
"Not kids," he continued. "Don't play."
"You should go to bed."
"Not the track either," he continued.
I faced him. There was only the faint blue shadows to hide in, but sleeping wolves were on both sides of me, and Kenzo in front, my room in the back. It was the equivalent of a witch burning. The coals heated up under me.
"First rule," he said, and I winced.
"You should go to bed," I repeated. "Don't worry about me."
"What are you going to say?"
I frowned. He gestured at me. I pursed my lips. "Guess I slipped," I said.
"In blood?" His nostrils flared. "Reeks."
Panic overtook me in a wave of violent nausea. Kenzo remained blank-faced. "What'd did you slip on?" he asked.
"None of your business."
"Reeking of blood and a bad liar," he murmured. "You would owe me."
It was a sucker punch. I could've stumbled from the impact. I scrambled for a lie, for something tangible.
"Work can be a bitch, is all." Kenzo perked up, but I bulldozed on before he could ask more. "So for both our sakes', I slipped."
Kenzo stared. I hoped his hearing didn't extend to my rapid-fire heartbeat, that the scent of sweat and death wasn't there beneath the blood.
"Work," he repeated.
"Don't ask."
"Why not?"
"I dont' wanna explain. And, it's a bit of a downer," I admitted. I headed for my room. "I'll see you tomorrow."
He let me go, but said, "If your 'work' comes into our lives, and it's a decision of who I keep safe," he said, Japanese an acerbic hiss.
He didn't finish, but he didn't need to. I clenched my fists at that stinging reminder, because he was right. Corvus was his family, was each other's, blood or not. But Corvus wasn't mine.
"I know," I said.
Kenzo headed for his room. "By the way," he said. "Spring banquet. Next Sunday."
"What?"
"Spring banquet. SoCal D1," he said. "Practice your warai."
His door clicked shut, leaving me with nothing but the kitchen light and secrets as my remaining company.
Bad liar.
He had no idea.