Chapter 266: Inhumane?

Everything after they left the port became a blur.

He remembered the wind rushing past his damaged helmet, the distant lights of the city smearing together beneath him, and the constant, unpleasant sensation of dried blood against his cheek.

At some point, Alexis and Zlatan had disappeared from his side. They had teleported ahead, leaving him with Tania.

He didn’t remember the journey very well.

He barely remembered entering the base.

The next thing he knew, the elevator doors were opening, and Myles was standing right in front of him.

"Blake."

Myles looked him over, taking in the damaged helmet, his jaw tightening slightly. He took his hand, and gently pulled him along.

They passed through the room and Blake entered the changing tube. The process of removing his suit was fast, with the damaged helmet coming off last, and the moment it did, the cold air touched his face.

Myles took one look at him and led him straight to his room, making Blake sit. on the edge of the bed.

He returned a moment later with a medical kit, pullinb a chair close and sitting in front of him, opening the kit across his knees.

"Look at me."

Blake raised his eyes.

Myles gently cupped his face, turning it toward the light. His fingers were careful around the damaged skin, examining the cuts left by the explosion and the broken pieces of his visor.

"You have glass stuck in your face," he said quietly. "I’ll remove it."

Blake didn’t answer.

Myles picked up a pair of tweezers.

"Tell me if it hurts too much."

Blake remained still.

One by one, Myles removed the pieces of glass. Some came out easily. Others had caught beneath the surface of the skin, and Myles had to work slowly, careful not to push them any deeper. Every so often, he paused to wipe away a trace of blood before continuing.

Blake’s fingers curled against the bedsheet. It definitely hurt a little.

Myles removed the final fragment and set the tweezers aside.

For a second, he simply looked at his face, freezing for a second. With a slight frown, he started to plaster his face.

Myles out away the medical kit and the chair, proceeding to lower himself onto one knee in front of Blake.

"Blake."

He reached for his hands. Blake’s fingers lay loosely within Myles’s grasp, almost unresponsive.

Then his breathing faltered. His lips parted, but no words came out.

He sniffled once.

Myles looked up.

Blake tried to draw a deeper breath. His shoulders rose, then fell, and he pressed his lips together as if he could force whatever was happening inside him back down.

A sob escaped him.

He immediately lowered his head.

Myles released one of Blake’s hands long enough to brush the hair away from his forehead, then gently wiped the tears from his face.

Blake tried to speak, but his voice broke before he could get a word out.

Myles simply stayed there, holding his hand and brushing away the tears as they continued to fall.

He wanted to understand.

Myles had killed people before. So had the others in the base. Violence wasn’t something they could afford to treat as an unthinkable occurrence.

And now Blake also killed someone.

It wasn’t as though Sylvan’s death had been unexpected. Killing him had been part of the plan. He was a threat, and removing him had always been one of the outcomes of the operation.

But the task had been intended for Alexis. He had the experience, the composure, and the ability to make that kind of decision. Sure, he was attacked by Trail-X but, even if Blake hadn’t intervened, Sylvan would have simply survived a little longer.

But that was no longer relevant.

What mattered now was the state Blake had returned in.

Myles watched another tear slip down his face.

The one person he needed to question about it was Tania.

She was the one who had set everything in motion.

Earlier, the moment Alexis and Zlatan had teleported back to the base, Myles had gone straight to them.

He’d been waiting for their return, and the second they appeared, he approached with an expression that was considerably less composed than usual.

"Did she explain why she sent Blake out there?"

Alexis looked at him.

Zlatan, meanwhile, seemed to recognize immediately that this wasn’t going to be a pleasant conversation.

Myles stopped in front of them.

"She prevented me from stopping him. I couldn’t get through to him properly because of her ability, and by the time I had the opportunity to do so, he was already out there."

He exhaled through his nose, trying to rein in his temper.

It wasn’t only that Tania had sent Blake into danger.

It was that she had done so without giving Myles the opportunity to intervene, even though she knew perfectly well that Blake wasn’t meant to fight unless Zlatan and Alexis ended up in completely impossible situations.

And what had it accomplished?

Blake’s presence had changed nothing that Myles could identify.

Instead, Blake had become caught in a series of events that had left him injured, disoriented, and now traumatized.

As if that weren’t enough, Blake had been struck directly in the head by an explosive not once, but twice.

He had felt sick during the operation, too. Myles didn’t know the full extent of it, but he knew enough to understand that Blake had been struggling long before the confrontation with Sylvan.

And then there was the matter of his visor.

The damage had left him with unreliable vision and a compromised helmet, yet Blake had continued trying to help people anyway.

Myles could barely stand thinking about it.

Zlatan sighed lightly.

"Tania didn’t address that in her report to us."

Myles’ frustration remained, but beneath it was a growing unease.

Tania had clearly wanted something to happen. She hadn’t merely allowed Blake to become involved... she had actively prevented Myles from stopping him.

He wanted answers the moment she got back.

But of course, Blake would return with her... so all the questions he had in mind were secondary to him.

***

Now, kneeling in front of him, Myles watched Blake struggle to regain control of his breathing.

He couldn’t understand everything about Blake’s mind.

He had spent so much time trying to understand how Blake worked, what frightened him, what motivated him, and what he was hiding in his brain.

Myles brushed his thumb across the back of Blake’s hand.

Gradually, the sobs grew less frequent. He began taking deeper breaths, though every so often, one would catch in his throat and leave him struggling to recover.

Eventually, he wiped his face with his free hand.

"Myles... I want to be alone. Can you go out for a while?"

He wanted to refuse.

Leaving Blake alone in this state felt wrong. He had only just stopped sobbing, and Myles had no idea what might happen once there was nobody else in the room. He didn’t want Blake to sit there with everything that had happened, replaying it over and over until the distress became unbearable again.

But the way he was looking at him, he couldn’t just ignore him.

Blake brushed his hair back, pulling at it slightly as he pushed the strands away from his forehead.

"It’s just for a little bit..."

Myles lowered his gaze to their joined hands.

He didn’t like it.

Still, he couldn’t force Blake to accept his presence when he was asking for space, or he’d also get angry at him, which would be troublesome.

Myles took Blake’s hand and gently lowered it onto the bed.

"All right, but don’t hurt yourself."

Blake gave a small nod.

Myles stayed for another moment, clearly reluctant to leave. Then he picked up the medical kit and walked toward the door, closing the door quietly behind him.

Blake remained seated for several seconds, staring at the floor.

Then he drew a deep breath.

He rubbed his palms against his trousers and looked at the small plasters covering the cuts on his face.

He had killed someone.

He hadn’t planned to do it.

He had been angry he knew that much. He had felt the rage building inside him as Sylvan spoke, and some part of him had wanted the man to stop talking.

But there had been a point when his thoughts seemed to disappear altogether.

A point when the world turned white. And when he came back to himself, Sylvan was dead.

Blake closed his eyes, lowering his hands.

He couldn’t change what had happened, and even he wouldn’t even if he had the chance.

At some point, this was supposed to happen. And even if he felt dirtier now, he couldn’t feel guilty, it wasn’t right.

Instead, there was something else he couldn’t ignore, something that had been bothering him long before the operation.

Blake stared at the wall.

Sometimes, he remembers ominous, unsettling fragments from his dreams, that left him with feelings he couldn’t explain.

And now, he was also seeing those things while he was awake.

Blake swallowed.

How could he possibly see himself dead?

He had seen the body in his dream before. He remembered that much. It wasn’t simply the idea of death, or some vague fear taking the shape of an image.

It had been him.

His face and his body lying motionless.

And during the confrontation with Sylvan, he had seen it again so clearly that he could barely distinguish the vision from reality.

He pressed his fingertips against his temples.

"What is wrong with me...?"

He sat there, trying to retrace the events in his mind, but every time he reached the moment when he had lifted the container’s lid, his thoughts became tangled.

That strength.

Blake lowered his hands and looked at them.

He remembered the effort it had taken to wedge his tool beneath the lid. He had been struggling with all his strength, barely able to make the metal shift.

Then he’d seen that woman, he’d heard a voice.

And suddenly, the lid had flown into the air as though it weighed nothing.

Blake stared at his palms.

The suit could only do so much, it boosted him, but now to such an extreme extent.

His throat tightened again, though this time he didn’t cry.

"Spoon."

The name left his mouth quietly, and he waited.

Blake looked around the room, half expecting to hear a familiar response, some indication that he wasn’t alone with his thoughts after all.

Nothing popped up.

Spoon hadn’t returned.

And yet...

Blake’s fingers slowly curled into his palms.

What was that inhumane strength, really?