Chloe was in the living room when Andre and Yuri arrived with a limp Jon between them.
Jin had been in a corner of the room, curled up again with a book. Aiden and Lucas were on the console and Chloe sat with some of the kids, watching them play. And then the door had been barged open.
“HELP!” someone had yelled.
It took Chloe only a moment to burst from the living room to the entrance where she froze, mouth dropping slightly open at the sight of Jon, fear etching itself into her eyes. She felt her head go numb, felt a tremble in her hands.
“W-What happened?” she stammered.
“Where’s Jin?” Andre asked. “We need to get the sword out and heal him with her blood. He’s still alive but barely.”
“Sword,” Chloe repeated, heart starting to thump as she processed everything. The sword. Her gaze shifted toward Yuri, to her scabbard. It was empty. Rage drowned out the rest of her thoughts and she felt something burn inside of her.
She watched blankly as Andre and Yuri led Jon past her and into the living room, where she knew he was being set down on a couch. She heard the sound of a blade being removed and the pained grunt that followed, heard kids make their way out of the living room, murmuring fearfully about what had happened. Then she heard another door open and close somewhere else in the orphanage, heard quick footsteps, heard someone barge out of a room.
Miguel raced past her and into the living room. “Stop the bleeding!” he instructed at once.
Yuri’s sword.
Chloe turned then, heading into the living room to join the others. Yuri stood to one side of the couch Jon was on, looking down at him, one hand over her mouth, tears streaking down her cheeks. Yuri looked toward Chloe and an apologetic expression swept across her face.
“I’m so sor—,”
She didn’t get a chance to finish. Chloe blurred across the distance between them in an instant and there was a crashing sound as Yuri slammed into one of the bookshelves in the room and then dropped to the ground. Several books fell from the shelf and onto her.
“Chloe, no!” Andre yelled, but Chloe wasn’t listening.
Chloe zipped toward Yuri, lifting her off the ground with ease and pinning her by her throat to the shelf. “WHAT DID YOU DO?!” She screamed, before smashing a fist into Yuri’s face. She felt the satisfying crunch of a nose breaking underneath her fist.
She slammed another fist into Yuri’s face and then another to her stomach. Yuri doubled over, gasping loudly, and received a knee to the face that sent blood spraying.
“Chloe, stop!” Andre yelled.
Chloe growled angrily, seizing Yuri by her neck and hurling her across the room. She turned and made to dash in Yuri’s direction but before she could get to her, Andre and Miguel were in her path.
“Chloe,” Andre said slowly and gently, his hands extended toward her in a pleading manner. “She wasn’t the one who hurt him,” he explained. “The things that wiped her unit out. We found them down there. They did this.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Chloe shook her head, and aimed an accusatory finger at Yuri. “She lied to us. You know she did.”
“Yes.” Andre nodded. “She lied. But that had nothing to do with what’s happened here and killing her isn’t going to change anything at all. Please, don’t do this.”
Chloe’s eyes shifted from Yuri to Andre then, burning with fiery determination. “Get out of my way!” she growled.
Andre drew a deep breath and straightened slightly. Defiance shone in his eyes. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “You won’t execute her. Not here. Look around, Chlo…there’s children watching.”
Chloe looked back then. Sure enough, standing at the entrance to the living room, fearful expressions on their faces were a handful of the kids in the building. At the sight of them, her eyes stung a little, watering slightly.
She looked away from them, past Andre and right at Yuri who was slowly getting back up now, blood streaming out of her nose.
“If my brother dies, you’re next.”
***
Jon woke the following morning, his throat incredibly dry and itchy when he did. Sunlight filtered into the living room through the curtains, bathing him lightly. In the room with him were the others, all sat around, gloomy expressions on all of their faces. There was a girl there too that he didn’t recognize, one who sat rather closely to Lucas.
He coughed slightly and stirred in the couch. “Why the long faces?’ he asked, groaning as he did. His chest still hurt.
As soon as he spoke, all of their expressions shifted into one of relief.
“Welcome back to the land of the living, Jonathan.” Miguel had a relieved smile on his face. “You gave us all quite a scare there.”
“Sorry,” Jon said. He noticed Yuri had her face trained downward. When she did look up, her face was bruised, one of her eyes a dark purplish shade. He frowned. “Woah. What the hell happened to you?”
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Every one looked toward Chloe. Jon understood at once.
He shifted into an upright position. “Have any of you gone back down there?” he asked. “We need to get down there.”
“Woah, woah, woah,” Andre said, walking toward Jon and placing a hand on his shoulder. “You just woke up. Maybe take things slow, think things through before jumping right back into trouble? We only barely made it out of there and you want us going right back down?”
“The kids,” Jon said. “It’s the kids.”
Chloe frowned. “What?”
“There was someone else there last night,” Jon explained. “A guy with a gun. He took a shot at one of the Helmets…I saw its face. It was a boy, possibly one of the missing children. Dark hair, green eyes.”
“Tobias,” Miguel murmured, his face falling. “He was one of the boys here. One of the ones who went missing.”
“Not missing.” Jon shook his head. “Taken. Experimented on. Someone’s taking children and experimenting on them, turning them into Pandorans. A whole new breed of Pandorans, stronger and faster than any we’ve encountered yet. But that’s not all.”
“What else is there?” asked the girl who sat with Lucas. Jon looked at her and frowned in a manner that meant he expected an introduction.
Lucas cleared his throat. “Uh, this is Kaia. She’s a friend.”
Jon nodded, then continued. “The stranger who turned up with the gun. He stopped me from killing one of the Helmets. I think he knew already that it was the children in those suits, in the helmets.”
“So someone involved in it somehow?” Jin asked, folding her arms. “Looking out for the experiments, ensuring nothing happens to them? Preserving a new creation?”
“No,” said another voice.
They all looked to the living room entrance where the boy had come from. Standing there with his head poked just slightly into the living room was one of the kids from the orphanage. John. With all eyes on him, John looked a little awkward.
“No?” Chloe asked, raising an eyebrow.
“The stranger,” John said. “We call him the Nightman. He first started appearing right when the disappearances started. But not in a bad way…he was trying to help, looking out for the other kids, trying to stop more from being snapped up. No one knows who he is, but he’s not one of the bad guys.”
“It’d be easier to believe that if he’d stuck around to help right after getting Jon hurt.” Andre snorted. “We don’t know who he is and we can’t afford to be na?ve about things, not with lives at stake. We see him again, we treat him just much a priority as the Helmets and anyone else who might be involved in this. Everything and everyone we’re not sure of is a threat until we can be certain of otherwise.”
Jon nodded. “I agree.”
“Have you taken this to the Chancellor?” asked Lucas’s friend, Kaia. “If you’re right and there’s children being turned into Pandorans like you, that kind of thing will be hard to keep under wraps. The Chancellor should be able to sniff out answers that might help.”
“I already reached out to him,” Miguel said. “He’s ordered an investigation into the labs here. He’s also having the guards sweep the district properly for anything else we might have missed. If there’s anything, we’ll be the first to know.”
“We can’t just sit around and wait on the Chancellor,” Jin said.
“No, we can’t.” Chloe agreed. “What we can do is address a few more elephants in the room. I suggest we start with Captain Voss.”
As she spoke, everyone glanced at Yuri, their expressions dark.
“She lied to us about what really happened down there with her unit,” Chloe went on. “I think we deserve to know why.”
“No, we don’t,” Jon said quickly.
Chloe looked at Jon, eyes wide with surprise. “What? You’re joking, right? Did you get hit in the head a little too hard last night? We’re dealing with experiments stronger than us and you want us to do that with a liar in our midst?”
“Wouldn’t be the first one,” Lucas muttered.
Jin shot him a quick look before returning her focus to Jon. Jon found the ground with his feet and rose, despite Andre’s efforts to keep him on the couch.
“Yuri doesn’t have to explain herself,” he said. “What happened last night had nothing to do with—,”
“No,” Yuri cut him off. Her voice sounded almost lifeless. She raised her head, and glanced at everyone. “You’re right. I lied about what happened in the tunnel. I lied about why I survived, how I survived. The truth about what happened won’t change much, but you should know. You should know why I don’t deserve to live.”
Jon shifted uncomfortably. “Yuri—,” he began.
“Most of what you already know is true,” Yuri started to explain. “My unit and I were down there, patrolling like we were supposed to, looking for the missing children. And just like I said before, we were attacked down there by things we didn’t understand. The Helmets. We didn’t know they were the kids or anything of the sort, we just thought they were monsters.
“They attacked out of the shadows, moving faster than I’ve ever seen anything move. One of them came for me, but Mason placed himself in front of me, took the hit instead. They all fought the Helmets, offering themselves up to protect me, told me to get out of the tunnel and to get help.”
“Wait, hang on,” Lucas interrupted, a confused frown on his face. “Why was your unit putting their lives on the line for you? You were captain, shouldn’t you have been fighting with them?”
Yuri’s face fell. “Yes,” she said. “I should have been…but—,”
Her voice trailed.
“You didn’t,” Jon said. “You didn’t fight. You’ve never fought, have you?”
Yuri shook her head.
“Hang on, never fought?” Jin repeated. “You’re Captain of a Special Unit. How the hell’s that happen if you’ve never—,”
“Commanding, strategy, coordination,” Yuri said. “I excel at those. Having a bird’s eye view of the situation’s always helped get my unit through it. But when I’m up close and right in the thick of things…I—I don’t know what happens, m-m-my body just freezes up, I go numb all over and it’s like I’m a helpless kid watching her home be razed down all over again.”
“But you were captain.” Chloe’s voice was cold. “Mason, the others…they trusted you.”
“They knew,” Yuri said. “Knew what my limits were. I wasn’t keeping them in the dark about anything. I shouldn’t have been down in that tunnel with them—but we weren’t expecting to find anything like what we did down there. So when the attack started, when I froze up—,”
“They tried to get you out,” Jon said. “Offered themselves up in your place. You made it out and they—,”
“Died,” Yuri croaked.
“We don’t know that.” Miguel rose to his feet. “Not yet. If the children are alive and being puppeteered then there’s a chance whoever did this still has your unit. And bad as things might have been last night, there are some positives to be found.”
“Positives?” Chloe repeated. “Like what?”
“The attack means whoever did this, whatever’s going on, it’s still happening in the district. They didn’t just take the children and leave. They’re still here and they’re not done yet. It means you can find them. And you can stop them.”
“We do more than just stop them,” Chloe growled. “Whoever’s responsible for this is twisted, evil beyond anything that should be possible. We find them and we kill them. We can’t let them walk, not after this.”
“Agreed,” said everyone else in unison.