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As his eyes fluttered open he was racked by a violent cough.

Trained assassin skills overriding his instincts, he moved but ran straight into a wall.

Everything was dark, he could see nothing.

Standing up shakily, he could still feel the burning in his throat from whatever that drink was...

He shouldn't have been so quick to assume it was the same as what the woman was drinking just by the bottle similarities- hers was lighter or possibly even empty.

And now, according to her, nanobots he'd ingested had planted a bomb in him.

His old mentor warned him not to use his skills for profit, that the ways of this world were wrong.

That skill was no substitute for inexperience.

He didn't listen.

Ajax took a deep breath and sighed, sitting back down against the wall.

Suddenly the adjacent wall slid open and several individuals arrived.

One of which was his recruiter.

Ajax eyed her evilly, the tiger's teeth bared just hardly enough to see.

Drugged and captured. He should have known better.

Then Ajax was a fresh face to the international assassin community, but was exceptionally skilled.

GRA wanted nothing to do with him but it was their loss, because he was with Jinn now.

Maybe against his will, but... Whatever.

He said nothing, now as the room was filled with light he could see it was only a concrete cube with the one sliding panel in the wall. A prisoner's room.

"Ajax, I'm assuming?"

A panther with a wry smile on his face was the closest to him, and to Ajax's surprise, he spoke in English.

"As I am called."

"I'm so sorry about what we had to do to you, but you're a professional. You understand. Just business."

Ajax closed his eyes and nodded.

Jinn would blow him up with the click of a button if he did anything they didn't like.

"You'll take solace in that it's only temporary. Once you've lost use to Jinn, we'll simply release you."

"Lies."

"This isn't the GRA, Ajax. We have morals." For the first time, the panther frowned.

Ajax noticed there was something off about his face, and especially his eyes.

As the tiger looked into them he saw one of them was metallic and the pupil was bright, almost glowing red.

The other eye was a natural red, rare but not too uncommon.

"How does the force controlling half the world get by with morals?"

Once more, the panther smiled.

He abandoned the others, coming within a foot of the snow tiger.

Crouching down, Ajax noticed that he was very young, you could compare him to someone barely into their twenties, much like the tiger himself.

But he seemed metallic, glinting under the fur in most of his face, and as the cuff of his jeans came up from his sneakers, Ajax saw one of his legs was completely metal.

And if this man was who Ajax thought he was, from what he'd heard about the inner workings of Jinn's many factions and political parties...

He couldn't be any less than 50.

"Only the necessary morals, Ajax. Now, in case you haven't realized we intend to keep you here at Jinn for... A while. It's not just one job, hence the bomb..."

"I figured. What do you want?"

"One of our top assassins was killed and we have a job opening..."

"Hired for a job I didn't apply for. Great."

"Welcome to Jinn, Ajax."

Shanghai'd.

///

Once more we open on fists.

And blood.

And rage.

At least, for me.

For everyone else it's just sparring, a chance to improve oneself.

For me, all I imagine is my lost fights in Gibraltar.

Omar, and the fact I'll be dead on sight if I go anywhere near my homeland.

Not that I'd want to go back to hell anyways.

Sometimes, these days, I wonder if I should try, at least try, to do something in Gibraltar.

A gun can accomplish much.

Jake's fists were coming nowhere near me and he was getting frustrated, and tired.

He'd put on MMA gloves but Reyna and I never wore any equipment, even in the fiercest of sparring.

All I could think of was her, and how I should talk to her about it.

At this point I knew she was avoiding me purposefully and I'd done something bad. I just didn't know what... And I had to ask her. Maybe I didn't even care that much but I just wanted an excuse to speak with her, the pangs of a vulnerable heart too much for me.

Blacking out on the floor after training wasn't anything too out of the ordinary but this time it was Janus induced, and I'd felt it all the next day.

It was a little later in the week, actually, a Friday.

Time had passed me by here, and things had been uneventful.

Everyone else was happy with it, apparently in the GRA if you weren't up at dark thirty with your drills you were patrolling contested borders all the time.

GSS was luxury.

I hated luxury, I decided.

My fist connected with Jake's jaw and our height difference was compensated with my reach and slight lift off my feet, and as soon as he was reeling back I was onto him.

Holding up his hand to cease the fight, I held up my fist for another second, forcing myself to lower it.

"Damn, what's Reyna been teaching you?"

"We usually just fight, I've gotten past form."

I looked to Alvin, already dabbing at a split lip with a tissue but he shook his head.

I'd surprised myself. Maybe Reyna had some sort of effect.

"As much as I don't approve of it, it works... But I think I'll go take a shower, I'm spent."

I nodded and Alvin followed the wolf out.

For a moment I stood and watched the door, expecting something to come to me.

Sounds odd, but it usually did. I wasn't left to myself for long.

As I walked over to my bag and chugged my water, I fathomed I had what you could call friends.

What were friends.

I could never shake the feeling of Gibraltar overlapping this new life.

Every hallway was traversed slowly, looking around every corner with the reflection of the adjacent window or waiting and listening for a moment.

I wasn't sure which I preferred at this point; whenever I told myself to stop I felt empty inside.

Leaving the weight room, I decided to go through the kitchen this time, maybe grab something. It was 2 and I hadn't eaten breakfast-

Entering the kitchen, I heard noise from behind me. Someone walked in the door- several someones from the voices and footsteps.

They couldn't have seen me. I had to have just disappeared as they came in.

No shadows as I stared at the ground, no footsteps growing closer or further. Just voices.

Make your escape. Get upstairs, stake out in the kitchen-

No, Tai...

Sighing, I knew it was Marshall from the voice, and there was a woman whose voice I didn't know.

"I'm sorry about this, Mrs. DeSanta. I had no idea you were coming today, I would have got everyone together"-

"Not a problem, Marshall. It's best your squadron doesn't suspect what goes on today."

Marshall cleared his throat, and I'd never heard him so nervous.

"Yes, I just didn't expect... Well, you to be here. I expected a representative, James was certainly more than"-

"Please bring me your afflict, Marshall. I plan to return to the North States by tonight."

For some reason it was pissing me off how much she was interrupting Marshall, the disrespectful tone she was using.

As strange as the wolf was, behind the government attitude and the shades I knew he was a good person, and without him I wouldn't be where I was.

A whisper from a voice I hadn't heard yet.

Marshall leaned backwards to look down the hallway and saw me standing there awkwardly, eavesdropping.

I mean, it was in the entry hall, if it was official it could have been said in better places.

"There he is now. Come over here, Tai."

I walked out of the hallway, and a wave of shyness I could never escape hit me, staring down at the floor with my hands clasped behind my back.

When I reached Marshall's side, I looked up and took in this new party.

Five. Guards, that is. All dressed in ballistic vests, uniforms, the works. Armor was all black.

The central figure, the most important one, of course.

She was a reptilian woman. Lizard, but with spines on the head. Never seen her kind. Wearing a heavy wool coat down to the feet, all black as well.

The last figure was wearing no armor, street clothes. She stood about as tall as me, and I couldn't place her species either. Her fur was black but was tinged with orange, some sort of vulpine by the shape.

Her eyes were somewhat like mine, but less gold and more of a bright yellow.

We met eyes and my arm spasmed, nearly clipping Marshall on the leg. I looked away quickly.

I came to the realization Janus things had something to do with eyes, whatever they were. It's why I always identified them over the person, but you'd think with that particular ability and correlation I'd be able to find something in them instead of a lack thereof.

Then again, every time I saw her I looked into the emerald twilight.

"This is Tai." He said it almost sarcastically and I could tell he was getting fed up with this woman as well. It was somewhat amusing to me.

Turning his entire body towards me, I looked over everyone but the vulpine, locking eyes with the reptilian.

"This is Mrs. DeSanta. She wants to run a few tests with you."

Something about DeSanta was off, and I found myself nervously looking away for a second but always coming back to her eyes.

An electric blue, as if what was inside could not be contained if unleashed.

"I would prefer Opera. Have a seat, Tai."

I gave a nervous look up at Marshall and he nodded.

I expected us to go somewhere to do whatever this test was, but instead we sat on the couches around the coffee table.

Opera and the vulpine sat across from me, the guards remaining near the entrance of the room.

Marshall cautiously sat beside me, and I was grateful for his presence.

I finally tore myself from Opera's eyes, but now when I was supposed to look at her, I was staring at the table.

I noticed the vulpine was staring straight at me, intensely.

"Ariya is going to... Help with the testing process. She's an afflict like you."

I looked back up to see the vulpine look away this time. Some strange instinct told me to stare intensely at her to show dominance.

As soon as she looked back up I found once more I was paralyzed.

No, I found as I couldn't move my fingers...

I actually was.

Trying to look away, her eyes grew brighter, and the world grew darker.

Ariya's eyes were now the only thing visible to me, as all else was pitch black.

For a moment I freed my right hand, and I grabbed something, Marshall's wrist from the feel of it.

At first he flinched away, but as if he was a father with a scared child, let me cling to him.

It was the last thing I felt before I faded.

///

Marshall stared at the boy, his heart pounding in his chest.

Opera was grinning, which was never good.

Shaking hand finding its way to Tai's neck, he checked for a pulse.

There was nothing.

His eyes widened but a firm hand on his shoulder and the click of a hammer told him if he did anything he was going to die.

Slowly talking his arm back to his side, his arm closest Tai was still locked in his grasp.

It tensed for a moment, and Marshall flinched again.

Looking across the table, the girl, Ariya, whatever her name was, was vegetative as well.

Every once in a while her hand spasmed, and her eye twitched.

He opened his mouth to ask Opera what she'd done but the lizard already had a finger to her smirking lips.

Wait

She mouthed.

///

I felt no extreme fatigue or urge to stay down, as I commonly felt when blacking out.

Standing straight up, I was in a void.

But one with a pure white sky, the ground a sort of reflective white chrome.

I touched it, and a strange tingle ran up my arm and into my spine, racking up and down it, and I recoiled.

"You've activated your sixth sense, I wouldn't touch things without dampening it."

The accent was the same from the whisper and it was Arabic, not of the more European African I possessed but pure.

I turned to see Ariya standing there, arms folded.

"Where am I?"

"No questions, I will explain what I will. We have limited time in here. You aren't experienced with this so I'd say we have about half an hour real time until your brain is fried."

My face contorted in shock.

I was about to ask another question but kept quiet.

"In this landscape, you and I both can make anything happen here without consequences, in the real world or the Janus world."

"There's a separate"-

"Alsamt!"

Hearing my native language for the first time in a month startled me, and the world shook around us.

"Try to remain calm no matter what. If you let yourself get out of control you could kill everyone in a half-mile radius. This goes for anywhere you are, Tai."

Her words were harsh, and vague.

"Opera has given me a set of instructions- tests- to put you through. I will not lie to you, it will be extremely painful and some leave damaged beyond recovery. You must steel yourself, especially for the first one."

I didn't answer to that, fearful of another harsh yet only verbal reprimand.

I had a very strange feeling I never had before, and it was as if my head was getting heavier or filling with water.

I tensed up and it pressed harder.

"Relax, Tai. Whatever happens here, relax."

I did as she said, and I knew she was taking note of everything I did somehow, every response.

Life and social (if irregular) interaction was much like combat, I devised.

A flash of pain and light passed over everything and I fell to my knees screaming, the landscape turning black and then many different shades of red and gray.

Ariya swore in Arabic. "For your own benefit, don't resist!"

I couldn't help but; I found I was watching memories that spanned years in seconds, things I would rather stay hidden, traumatizing things my mind had wiped clear from memory...

Looking towards Ariya, her hands had curled in her fists and as the repulsive things came from my mind she closed her eyes and continued, teeth bared.

Everything seemed to speed up for a moment until with a loud bang it all ended, and I fell on my face.

Ariya staggered backwards, clutching her head.

"Fuck me, there's bad stuff in there..."

"What the hell did you just do?!"

"Opera wanted me to inventory your memories, make sure you weren't Jinnrai."

"What?"

"Nothing..." She sighed.

I realized I was still on one knee, and had forgotten about getting up, so I stood awkwardly.

"I honestly don't know what to do with you. I just hit a brick wall, in essence, looking at your memories. If I found anything suspicious I was told to end the test immediately."

Fucking good.

Maybe I wanted her to, but I had a few questions for a fellow... afflict.

"I need help with this stuff."

I caught her off guard finally speaking first.

"No one's explained it to me, from what I gather I'm supposed to be able to do... well, I don't know, and all I've heard is that I'm going to die soon. I want to be able to do something with this, if I'm so valuable why don't they"-

"Get used to it, kid."

She folded her arms and looked into the void. Everything had turned white again, but still it felt so.

"The GRA doesn't care about you and me. We're tools for them, just a little less expendable. There is no formal training. There's no way I can train you, or give you anything useful. All I can do is tell you the scope of your abilities. We're all different. No two Janus work the same."

Whatever test she was going to do was clearly abandoned by now, as she was letting me speak without complaining about our apparently tight schedule. She was suspicious of me, or something like that, and wherever I screwed up I didn't know.

"Is there anything you can do? At all? I just want someone to show me how this all works."

She hesitated for a moment, then reconsidered, but then again stopped.

Finally, she opened her mouth to speak.

"I really shouldn't be doing this, especially not to such a strange subject... But I can show you a few things. Just leave imprints in your mind, no lessons, you'll have to do them yourself."

"Go ahead, then."

"It's going to hurt."

"I figured."

"A lot."

"Just fucking do"-

I was blind and deaf to my own screaming, and the watery feeling from before completely filled my head. I fell to my knees, clutching my face, then on my side, curling into a ball, willing it to stop...

"It's done."

I breathed heavily, and wondered if the headache coming on would affect me outside of this strange world.

"So, what did you just do?"

"Give you a few memories of dead Janus afflicts. What they did in the field and how they worked. You'll be able to recall them perfectly, as if they were your own memories but just be careful when you do."

"Dead afflicts?"

"It's very painful snatching them from those who are alive. I am required to take the last 24 hours of their life so the GRA can observe what killed them."

"But stealing memories?"

"My niche is everything to do with minds and the workings of them."

I considered standing up, but at that point I simply stayed sitting, in too much pain.

Ariya was still clenching her fists, whatever she'd seen had greatly disturbed her.

I didn't expect or want pity from her or anyone. I hated it, when those who were less fortunate are still suffering.

And receiving no help.

"Can we just go ahead and leave?"

She gave a short, sarcastic laugh.

"Most of you new afflicts always want to look around this place."

"Nothing much to see."

Ariya frowned, as if she'd just come to the head of something after my words.

"Yeah. Strange. Since I infiltrated your mind we should be looking at a familiar scene. Childhood memory, something like that. Even repressed ones will come up."

Maybe it was for the best my mind was void, then.

Looking around, I hadn't grasped the sheer emptiness of this place and found myself suddenly feeling smaller than ever.

I could never grasp that we were just specks of dust on a larger speck of dust, then to infinity.

But here, I felt so empty...

"Let me look around, we can leave afterwards."

I sat cross-legged on the floor and expected her to take a glance out in the horizon but instead she shut her eyes and put one hand to her temple.

"There's something out there. Just far away."

She kept repeating the process, facing towards my right and looking out again.

I looked that way too, but saw nothingness.

"Curious."

"Can we leave now?"

"God, you sound like my little sister..."

I suddenly felt very tired and vertigo hit me, but a sense of calm settled over me.

The world faded to me, and it was very much like death.

///

Eyes opening, I looked across the couch at Opera, then quickly to Ariya.

She didn't seem as sharp as she did before, and a strange smile came to my face.

I quickly killed it off and hid it.

Realizing I was still clutching at Marshall's wrist, I let it go awkwardly and he massaged it with the other hand, sarcastically.

Opera stood.

"It's been a pleasure meeting you, Tai. I'm assuming you're done, Ariya?"

Only a nod from the vulpine.

Opera extended her hand to me.

It was as if I'd suddenly entered a state of consciousness deeper than whatever I'd just been in and all I saw was the hand.

I was suddenly disgusted by it.

I wanted it away from me.

I didn't want to shake Opera DeSanta's hand.

She repulsed me. I hated her. She was a terrible person, a tyrant, and I hated her.

I hated the queen of the world.

Snapping out of it, I simply looked her in the eyes with my mouth gaping open.

"Oh- you'll have to teach him to handshake, Marshall. From Gibraltar, I forgot."

Ariya's eyes widened and I looked away from her.

A few brief words with Marshall, and they walked out.

As the door shut behind them, the gray wolf and I stayed on the couch, staring at the doorway for a solid five seconds.

"That was the president of the GRA, wasn't it?"

The wolf nodded.

"I can't be that important."

"You are, Tai."

He patted my shoulder and stood back up, adjusting his glasses.

"Ariya said she couldn't explain anything to me."

Marshall turned over his shoulder.

"What am I supposed to do with my powers in a real fight?"

"Nothing happened at the airport in Connecticut?"

"Not really..."

He hesitated for a moment.

"The way I heard it, it comes with experience. Spontaneous. You can't control them, you have to trust them to do what you need to do. At least, that's what I heard."

He didn't walk away, knowing I still had something else.

Something I felt was too meager to ask, but would do good for me.

"If I'm going to die in a year, what's the point of all this? Why not just throw me on the front lines? Why am I here?"

To my surprise, a smile from the wolf.

He turned back around to face me.

"Tai... When we detected you on the servers, no one wanted to go after you. Everyone thought you were a lost cause. At the end of his lifespan, and from Gibraltar. Guess who convinced them otherwise?"

I looked back up at him.

He looked down at me.

A moment passed between us, something strange. Like a father and son.

Marshall would fucking kill me if he knew I made him out to be soft.

But he was, just through the grit.

"If I didn't believe you were more than just another afflict, you wouldn't be here, Tai."

"...Thank you."

He walked away.

///

Standing outside of Reyna's room, I psyched myself up.

I hadn't seen her all the rest of the week, she was good at hiding.

Maybe I was bad at looking.

Running through what to say, how to act, what I had to do to apologize, I felt sick to my stomach.

So, this is what it is to atone.

But what had I done wrong?

Girls were fucking complicated.

Reyna was something else.

Biting my lip I rapped once on the door.

A moment passed.

Didn't people do it a good 2 or 3 times?

Should I do it again?

What if she didn't hear me?

What if she was doing something? How long should I wait?

Was it normal to ask so many questions to yourself of all people-

"Tai."

She was standing there, we were closer than we'd ever been before.

I opened my mouth to say something but here, I found myself at the mercy of fate once more.

"I assume you came to my door for more reasons than to stare blankly."

My face flushed.

"Of course n-not..." I gulped. "I... I just wanted to apologize. For, uh, what happened the other day."

As soon as I was done speaking I went back to biting my lip, hands clenching, a metallic taste filling my mouth as a bead of blood leaked into it.

Her eyes narrowed, and what silence ensued reminded me of the void.

Am I being dramatic?

I was avoiding her eyes on purpose this time and it took a conscious effort to.

"Come in, if you will."

She stepped back from the doorway and I nervously entered with my head down.

My eyes stayed up, and I looked around her room for the first time.

It was like everyone else's in arrangement, and I'd observed everything else was different.

Mine was just empty and I'd kept it strictly clean.

Riddick's was a warzone and his bed had been shifted 90 degrees.

Reyna's was dark, no lights at all. Though it was early evening and the sun should have been streaming in her sole window had the blinds down, leaving the slats burning with light.

I saw incense sticks on a dresser on the wall. Her bookshelf was filled to the brim with all sorts of strange things, most in languages I couldn't decipher between my two.

The bed wasn't made and it came to me the whole thing was very messy, almost as much as Riddick's.

I found myself standing in the middle of it, beside the bed, casting a glance behind me as if to wonder what to do.

"Have a seat."

I assumed she meant the bed. She did, right? Where else would I sit, on the bookshelf? No chairs, this was too small a room for chairs. Why were our rooms so small? Fuck rooms, I wanted to go back to a sleeping bag and an alleyway. I wanted to go back home-

No, Tai.

Calm down.

I couldn't say this was the most nervous I'd felt, but at least before I had an idea of what to expect.

I eased down on the bed and Reyna sat beside me.

Shockingly, she was wearing a football tee for the Egyptian team, and as I looked around I noticed there was a lot of football stuff there.

I didn't remark on it, I was too nervous to jump shakily at every chance to make conversation.

"It is really I who should apologize to you."

"But you did nothing wrong."

"No, I should not have given up and left you. I should have at least... Told you why."

She closed her eyes and clasped her hands together for a moment.

I took in her face once again, her long braids arcing across my view.

"Some things we cannot help, Tai. I have lost many battles in my life, mainly to myself. And my emotions. Who I want to become, and the way I feel about others."

I immersed myself in her voice, caught on every word.

I had no answer to that and was hoping she would speak more.

"And Tai, I am deeply sorry. No one deserves it. To have a life so castaway and forgotten and cut short in the midst of this world's turmoil."

Some semblance of what she was talking about came to me, but I had yet to decipher the rest of her oddities.

"I feel a certain way about you, Tai. That I haven't felt in a long time."

I jolted forward slightly. Barely noticeable but to people like her, in plain.

"I... I think I feel the same, Reyna."

She shook her head and closed her eyes.

"But why? After all that I have done to try and break you, crush whatever you had, turn you emotionless as I. That you could regard me anything higher than"-

"That isn't you. That isn't the Reyna I see."

I saw her flinch, or rather lightly convulse. She appeared angry.

"And what do you see? Have I failed in my image? Perhaps I have given up but I hope you know who I truly am, Tai."

"I'd like to say I do."

She stood up and turned to face me directly.

"No, you don't! Else you would do as I do! I shouldn't even be speaking to you... If it were up to me I would simply be at Trojan, finishing my studies... This was all a mistake."

"No, Reyna..." I stood as well. "None of this is a mistake. You don't have to hide your feelings anymore."

I realized the sea of her eyes was storming, tossing under the forest of the sky.

"I wasn't. What you see is truth, I am who I am."

"But"-

"God has cursed me, surely... The moment I hold someone above a teammate I find they are..."

"It isn't a wrong to be in love."

Something changed in that moment, everything went quiet.

Darkness already in the room dimmed.

The storm settled.

Or rather, we were in the eye of the hurricane. And the back winds were always stronger...

"Love? That's what you think this is?"

Was I wrong...?

My heart began beating faster, this was nothing like it should be.

Nothing like it should have played out.

"I will never love! Never!" She was angrier than I had ever seen her before, and I couldn't remember her ever shouting at me like this.

I opened my mouth to speak but was cut off before I began.

"Many men have vied for me but none have been accepted! I will turn them away, just as I turn all of you away! No one on this team will receive anything from me!"

My eyes widened and I stepped away, against the bed already.

"Why would I love anyone who is going to die?! You will all be killed before my very eyes! Perhaps I, you!"

Tears were streaming down her face and I knew this was the same little girl who had just witnessed her parents shot in front of her.

She was mad.

She was traumatized.

She was like me.

I loved her.

A hand came to my collar and jerked me forward, forcing me to stare into her eyes.

She searched for something in mine and when she found it, winced and her fist got tighter.

"If you feel in that way about me, leave it be, because I never will return that."

My hand trembled.

I became detached, unaccepting.

"T-then how is it you feel about me...?"

Reyna stopped, and her breathing began to slow, tears stopped falling.

The sea thrashed but the storm broke.

Letting me go, the jackal walked to my right, to the window with the only light in the room.

Twisting the blinds, they opened to reveal a view of the forest behind the house.

No other bedroom had this view, I'd looked at the windows and seen.

"I held you as a friend, the first one I had in ages... I don't give myself friends. They all die, and it hurts me... Everyone I ever care about, I call a friend, dies..."

Though she appeared normal all I could do was stare at the tear tracks on her face.

That she didn't love me was the truth I had denied myself for the greater part of the month and then some, and it was foolish to crush on someone like her.

The most high of them all.

But to be held as a friend by her was still something.

Looking out the window, she was the saddest thing I had ever seen in my life and my heart began to ache.

Turning back to me, we stared each other down, passively.

"I believed I could become normal again. Live life again, and love life again. Have a... Friend. The reason I distanced myself in the first was that all I love dies. And those you fight and die alongside, those in the GRA, are nothing to hold onto."

She had lost me, but I was still grasping at every word she said.

Returning to me, standing in front of me, maybe this was just a distorted version of what I expected.

I never wanted this to happen, all I wanted to do was apologize, not upset her further.

"But Tai, I broke my creed when I saw the rest of you, and how kind you were. And I wanted to be like that. I opened myself to you, and others. And I called us friends."

"...But what changed that?"

Reyna looked down at the floor, in shame.

I wanted to do something to make it better, but I didn't know what to do.

"I... I found out your doom."

For a moment I didn't understand, then I realized.

This only occurred after she'd stared into my eyes.

Several times whenever I had headaches or nausea or something Marshall would shine a flashlight into my eyes.

I had a morbid fascination with eyes.

And just earlier I concluded eyes corresponded with Janus.

She knew.

"Reyna"-

I felt firm hands on my biceps, pressuring tightly but not hurting me.

I didn't meet her eyes for fear she would see mine but nothing could be hidden.

"Tai, the first time in over ten years I decide to be myself.... And you're dying..."

I didn't know what to say.

Maybe just don't say anything.

I couldn't cry, not over something as silly as this.

That's what it was to me. I'd come to terms with it, when I was first told it never shook me.

But earlier I'd spoken to Marshall.

What's the point, if I'm just going to die?

My time draws close, and yet anyone else could die before me.

Younger than me.

And it was then I finally, in my heart, realized, I was dying.

I thought of her perspective, my team's, they weren't used to dying young, even here in the military.

Terminal.

Reyna thought I was her recovery but as soon as she saw it in my eyes, in whatever way...

I felt it was my fault.

Fate and God are cruel.

///

"So you really think this is a good idea?"

Opera nodded, a grin still on her face.

"I'm going to show James, I've assessed Tai thoroughly."

"Ah... This is what this is really about?"

"Not entirely. I need to also run the new Berserker units with a real test, so far they've just been fighting each other."

Ariya gave a sigh, leaning back in her computer chair. Caine was given the day off, but in reality, Opera just didn't want him to hear this.

Any mention of the Berserker unit near the parasite would set it from dormant to attack.

And it would be really nasty, considering how many she'd experimented on.

Caine was her first choice to attack Tai, but after she'd cut his tongue for failing his assignment she'd already created a better strain of parasite, and she'd adopted an odd mentality of hating him in every way, even though the airport was the first time he failed her.

But he failed her miserably.

The reason why Ariya was here.

"Janus... Versus Berserker."

"Approximately. James needs to be shown the ineffectiveness of the Janus afflicts compared to my own experimental soldiers."

Formerly flipping a pen between her digits, Ariya stopped it with a snap against her index and middle.

"Both units are highly dangerous to their own allies."

"Berserkers' parasites can be modified; Janus cannot be helped."

Opera took a moment to look over her new bodyguard, her choice for Caine's replacement.

Ariya Avital was by far their most highly trained Janus unit, but she had a very short lifespan. She had filled herself in through reading Opera's mind, her best talent, and she still wondered how much Ariya knew.

She would neutralize Ariya if she managed to penetrate her most hidden thoughts.

The Janus afflict was a gray fox- but none of her was gray. She was orange only on the lower arms and ears, black everywhere else, maybe gray when it faded the colors together. Grayish-green eyes, not as intense but rather piercing.

They'd picked her up from the Saudi Union when she was only 11, during a fierce battle with Jinn on the borders. The Middle East was going to be lost, but they'd gotten to her before Jinn, that was all that mattered.

Of course, James thought he could disperse the Jinn Flood as they called it, with the Janus soldiers.

The drawbacks being they couldn't just make Janus soldiers, they didn't last long, they were highly fragile, and Jinn was snatching them up just as quick.

It had been almost a decade and a half since the GRA started enlisting Trojan scientists to experiment with genetically modified parasites.

The project was originally intended to develop a bioweapon, but eventually GRA closed down the project... And after Opera came to office, she secretly reopened it.

She'd personally been developing this, sending out her unit to kidnap Jinn and GRA soldiers alike from the heat of battle, using them as test subjects where no one would see it out of the ordinary if someone went MIA...

She'd gone as far as to alter memories and snatch up retired soldiers, erasing their identities and giving them codenames...

Caine.

Flint.

Dirge.

Marshall.

"He wasn't a bad kid. He was strange, but he never freaked out. I'm with Director Harper on this." Ariya snapped her out of her scheming.

"Well, you're a Janus afflict, it's simply bias," Opera countered.

"True, but this... Tai, whoever he is, I've seen his documents. Passed the cube test in under a minute and heard the frequencies. He's extremely powerful, even amongst us."

"He has a short lifespan."

"So do I."

Previously Jinn had taunted GRA by offering to sell them pills that would extend Janus life for half theirbudget.

That was a load of bullshit, Opera reasoned. A bunch of peasants like them could never come up with something so ingenious if Trojan was just getting to that point in their own research.

"This strain of Berserker is the most powerful. One punch on Tai and the frailty of the Janus body"-

"We aren't that frail, I've taken bullets before."

"And nearly died from shots to the hand."

Ariya dropped her pen and it hovered back up to her hand through the air.

"What I mean is... Tai is James' prized possession until either he dies or we recruit a better afflict. Think of how it will affect us if you just kill him to prove a point. And what happens if it comes out you ordered his execution?"

Opera smiled out of sheer outrage and frustration, because now those damned 50/50's were taunting her again.

"James is a smart boy. He probably already knows where the Berserkers are coming from, he's just holding it against me. But as Janus isn't public knowledge either..."

Ariya once more stopped her fingers, a grin forming on her vulpine face as she turned to Opera.

"You're holding that against him. A stalemate."

Opera nodded.

"That's why Tai's life is worth nothing to me. I have an upgraded replacement unit to his kind and I am not threatened by his death. He is the champion of the inferior."

"Champion of the inferior versus your champion of the superior. You seem to have covered everything but the single attribute..."

"And what might that be?"

"Ramses Trojan."

Opera's reptilian nose wrinkled, fists balled. Ariya grinned more at her discomfort.

She hated Ramses with a passion.

The one intellect that could clash with her, even as her underling.

"No, he's accounted for. He already knows about the Berserker project"-

"His niece is on Tai's squadron."

Turning slowly back to Ariya, Opera cocked her head.

"You are very observant."

"Director Harper doesn't know how to guard his mind."

"Well, Ramses is simply going to have to deal with it."

"In other words, you have no plan."

Opera growled audibly.

"Fine, then! I'll delay the Berserker activation, but not for long."

Ariya began to question the true ability of the reptilian she was guarding, not for the first time that day.

Narcissistic, impractical, petty, but most of all overconfident.

In fact, her biggest doubt was Opera's hiring of herself.

A Janus afflict, when she had pools upon pools of Berserkers to draw from.

She'd detected a strong wave of sheer hate towards the reptilian from Tai as she left.

The cat was a conundrum to her; everything about him was off and different and she felt like a psychologist unable to diagnose the strangest patient she'd ever had.

Ariya had administered tests to all the new Janus members since she was recruited; there was one other that could infiltrate minds but she was killed by the Jinnrai.

And was Tai a Jinn sleeper agent? Why had she been unable to access the rest of his memories? Perhaps the Jinnrai brainwashed him, or maybe he was one of the Jinn affiliated Janus.

Point was, she didn't know what was so off about him, but he didn't deserve to die for something like this.

Even if she didn't care for him, Opera would start exterminating Janus and replacing them with Berserker units. Which meant they would stop researching Janus disease.

Which meant Ariya would die, and she couldn't do that.

Thinking of Amira, her little sister had already lost her parents.

If Ariya had to overthrow hell to keep Amira from harm's way she would.

She would contact Tai and tell him about this threat, somehow.

///

Yup, Opera's evil

I honestly don't know how much Ariya's going to play into the plot but this whole Tai vs Berserker thing is something I've wanted to get to for a long time. It opens up some of the biggest arcs and I'm so hype we're finally hitting the good stuff :DDDDDDD

Berserkers is kind of a recent layer I've added to the story but I always wanted a brainwashing element to the GRA.

Might have said it before but there's no true hero or villain in Alcatraz, it's a realist gray area.