Jay Posey - Three

But Wren did just what Three had told him. His pace didn’t falter. A few seconds later he came into the courtyard and headed straight for Three. Three pressed a finger to his lips and waved Wren into the far corner, furthest from the entrance. Wren nodded and moved there quickly, curling himself into a tight ball, hands over his ears and terror in his eyes.

Three crept silently to the edge of the nearest building, moved into position, poised to strike. He could hear her approaching cautiously, footsteps falling fainter the nearer she got. Then, silence. Three strained to hear her.

“Wren?” she said again.

She had stopped about two-thirds of the way down the alley. But it was alright. Either she’d come all the way to investigate, or she’d wave it off and turn back the other way. If she didn’t come to him, Three could cover the distance and take her down before she made it back to the street.

“Is there someone back there with you, sweetheart?” It shouldn’t have mattered, but Three couldn’t help but notice the perfect quality of Jez’s voice. Rounded and full, pleasantly deep. Resonant. “Why don’t you come out where I can see you?”

Without even realizing it, Three started edging towards the alley. He caught himself.

“It’s alright,” Jez said. “I want you to come out.”

Her voice seemed to come straight from inside his own head, a honeyed droning that filled Three with a sense of complete calm. And he remembered how beautiful she was. Vividly he saw her in his mind, her perfect features, her perfect form accentuated by her fitted bodysuit. Three felt himself sliding dreamlike, even as one part of his mind raced to analyze what was happening. Some kind of vocal implants, most likely. Wren had warned him. But the most common ones worked through connection, like a virus for the mind. Three had never experienced anything like this before.

“Come out. I just want to see you.”

He knew exactly what was happening. The frequency of her voice was being tuned to modulate the electrical impulses in his brain, inducing a dream-like state that left him dangerously open to suggestion. And even knowing this, he couldn’t keep himself from stepping into the alley.

“There you are,” Jez said with a suppressed smile. Seductive. “I’m so glad to see you.”

She took a step closer. Three’s arms hung limply at his sides, while the tiny part of his mind that was still his own screamed for him to act. He would have to destroy her… but not yet. He wanted to hear her, to see her, just a little longer. He felt so warm, so comfortable. She started walking toward him now. Not the stalking, bird-like movements he’d seen before. Fluid. Feline.

“I was hoping I could be the one to find you, you know,” she said, her voice low. “I wanted to be the one.”

Her smile. Her eyes. Everything about her said she loved him. Desired him. But Jez was going to kill him. He knew it. And he accepted it. It would be alright.

“Asher will love me for being the one.”

Six feet away.

And suddenly an arctic light pierced the veil, a pulse of blinding white shocking him back to himself. He reflexively shielded his eyes. In the next instant he glanced back to Jez, who was momentarily stunned by the flash. Their eyes met for a split second, and as she opened her mouth to speak, Three closed the gap and lashed out, striking her across the throat with the web of his hand.

Jez reeled backwards choking, but as Three advanced she snapped her head around, whipping her long braids towards him. Not realizing the threat he tried to strike through the attack, but felt the sudden impact and sting across his face as the razortips woven in her hair bit deeply into the flesh of his cheek and neck and brow. The shock blurred his vision, and he missed his target.

Three followed with a forearm, but Jez slipped the blow and swiped upward with her palm, aiming for his eyes. Three threw his head back, narrowly dodging the attack. He snatched her wrist with one hand and wrenched her elbow with the other, using the leverage to slam her face-first into the alley wall. Before she could rebound, he drove his knee into her lower back. And as she arched backwards from the strike, he grabbed her head in a lock and twisted nearly to the point of breaking.

It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d been in her position, a fraction of an inch and a few pounds of torque from dead. Jez started to go slack, and Three forced her down on to her knees, keeping a strong stance behind her. Another day, in that critical moment, he would’ve snapped her neck without hesitation. But the sudden realization that if not for Dagon’s mercy he would be dead was enough to give him pause. Locked together as they were, his cheek pressed hard against the back of her head, Three could hear her choking breath as Jez’s throat continued to spasm from his blow. The whole left side of his face was wet and sticky with blood, one eye blinded with it.

“Please,” Jez rasped, barely forcing the word out through his chokehold. The power of her voice was gone. So, it seemed, her will to fight. Jez wasn’t like Fedor or Kostya. She wasn’t a fighter. She was a manipulator, a seductress. And somehow, now, caught in his arms that were so much stronger, she seemed suddenly fragile. Not altogether unlike Cass.

At the far end of the alley, towards the city, the white light continued to pulse. Three recognized the source now. Wren’s strobe from the Vault. He’d forgotten the boy even had it. Three glanced behind him with his good eye. Wren was there, standing in the courtyard. Watching. Three loosened his grip on Jez.

And suddenly—

“Asher, he’s here!” she called out in her damaged voice.

Three strengthened his hold.

“Wren,” he called. “Look away.”

He left her body behind the building and together with Wren fled towards the center of the city. They were careful to dodge other citizens until Three could get the bleeding stopped and the blood washed off his face. Crouched behind a one-story clothing shop, he used a maintenance pump to splash ice cold water across his latest wounds, and scrubbed them clean as best he could.

The cuts sprayed across his face were thin but deep, the kind of precision pain only a razor can deliver. The one across his eyebrow was the worst. He was fortunate not to have lost the eye completely. Wren stood quietly by, pale with fear, brave in his silence.

Three wiped his face and shook his hands dry as well as he could, and caught Wren’s eye. “You OK?”

Wren nodded slightly.

“Where’s Ran now?”

Wren’s eyes unfocused for a moment. “Heading back towards the middle of the city.”

“Governor’s compound?”

Wren shrugged. “I guess. Yes, that seems right.”

Three wondered why. Why Asher wouldn’t send Ran after them immediately. Frightened? He probably didn’t know about Dagon yet, not for sure. But he’d lost Fedor and Jez within eight hours. Maybe in his panic, he was calling all security back home. But Three’s hope of that was quickly lost. The next moment, all across the city, alarms began to blare.

Wren reflexively stepped into Three’s body, buried his face against Three’s neck. Three threw his arm around him protectively.

“They’re coming!” Wren said in a terrified whisper. He gripped Three so tightly, it nearly choked him.

“I’m not gonna let ’em take you, Wren. Not now.”

It was a promise. He said it, and he meant it, even though he had no idea how he was going to keep it. His brow still hadn’t stopped bleeding yet, but if they were alerting the whole city there was no reason to worry about that now. And there was no way to figure out a plan, no time to strategize. Three didn’t know how many guardsmen a city the size of Morningside had, but it was likely in the hundreds. They had to move.