Hope leapt in his chest. There was still time. Without a second thought, he cocked his gun and began down the hallway only to have Leta snatch his arm and draw him back.

“Cyrus,” she hissed. “What’re you doing?”

“We have to take the bridge,” Cyrus answered at once, looking back at her. “We have to stop the ship.”

“How?” Leta pleaded, her eyes shining with horror. “There are at least four agents in there.”

Cyrus glanced back towards the bridge door. She was right. What the hell was he thinking? He couldn’t just walk in there, he’d be captured or killed instantly. But what else could they do? They were outnumbered regardless and if they didn’t act fast, they’d take off and be on the way to Satieri and they’d never find Fiearius and get back to the Dionysian like they planned.

Cyrus had never felt quite like this before. Reckless desperation was unfamiliar to him, but it was enough to give him a sudden confidence he’d never before had.

“We’ll just rush in and take the ship,” he told her, his voice hardly sounding like his own. “We’ll catch them by surprise. We’ll take it and we’ll stop it and we’ll get my brother back and everything will be okay.” He heard the hysteria in his words, but he still went on, “Everything will be fine. Everything will be normal.”

“Cyrus….” Leta breathed, her voice cracking. But just when he felt she was going to back away or tell him to give it up, she too lifted her gun, cocked it and nodded at him.

“Ready,” she whispered quietly.

“Stay close,” he told her and, in perhaps the stupidest move he’d ever made, he hurtled towards the open bridge door with all the speed and momentum in his entire body before he burst into the room and found six surprised crew staring back at him.

For a moment, just a moment, he panicked. What was he doing? Fiearius could shoot six men before one could even draw their weapon. Corra could shoot a thimble off a finger from 500 meters away. Cyrus couldn’t even hit a single unmoving target on a wall without five minutes of aiming first. If anyone was suited for this, if anyone could save Fiearius, it wasn’t him.

But he was all there was. So he fired. Right into someone’s chest. And he fired again into someone’s arm. And as a bullet from Leta’s gun embedded itself in another’s head, the other three in the room hastily reached for weapons of their own and panic ran through Cyrus. A yell ripped out of his throat and he fired again. Again. Again. Unthinking and uncaring and relentless.

He was still shouting to his own deafened ears when his finger pulled the trigger and his gun clicked uselessly in his hand. Empty.

But just when he expected gunfire straight to his chest, he vision cleared and he saw Leta: breathing hard, gun in hand, one foot pressed into an agent’s chest as he sprawled on the floor. Ren was behind her; she’d thrown herself in front of him protectively.

“Are you okay?” she asked Cyrus, short of breath, eyes blazing.

He almost nodded. But then he looked around the room. One, two, three, four, five bodies. Five? Where was–

A quiet whimpering sounded from the far end of the room, and a few stray strands of hair stuck up from behind one of the front consoles. One left. He glanced at Leta. She nodded and carefully crept forward.

“Hands up, drop your weapons,” she ordered when she was close enough, holding her gun to the young man’s head. Immediately, the whimper turned into a wail and two skinny hands shot up in the air.

“P-please, I’m unarmed,” his shaky voice declared, tears running down his face. “I’m just the pilot, please–please don’t kill me.”

Cyrus marched over towards them and held his own gun to the man’s head, useless as it was. “Where’s Dez?!”

Confusion flashed over his face. He blanched. “Who?”

“Dez!” Cyrus barked, hardly sounding like himself. “Desophyles Cordova. Where is he?!”

“C-Cordova? H-he’s not on this ship!” the man despaired.

Cyrus shook his head. No, it had to be this one. It had to. One of his hands dug into his hair and he yelled, “Are you carrying a prisoner to Satieri?! Fiearius? Fiearius Soliveré? Is he — “

“N-no! We’re headed to Ellegy for a pick-up!” he cried.

Dread knotted his stomach. “Cordova’s ship,” Cyrus said at once, his eyes growing distant. “Is it still docked on the Baltimore?”

The man looked up at him with watery eyes. “I–n-no. We were delayed so it could take off. J-just a few minutes ago.”

With a raw, angry growl of loss, Cyrus suddenly shouted and threw his spent gun across the room, making it crash in the corner. He stalked away, digging his palms into his eyes. This couldn’t be happening. This had to be a mistake.

“This isn’t over,” came Leta’s trembling voice from across the room. She was standing there hollowly, her eyes wet. “We’re not losing Fiear. They can’t have him.” Cyrus could barely look at her when she ventured, “So what’s our next move?”

Cyrus turned away. Fiearius’ words echoed in his mind. ‘We lost’. ‘It’s over.’ But no. It couldn’t be. After all they’d been through, everything they’d overcome, all that had happened, it couldn’t end this way. He wouldn’t let it.

“We go to Satieri,” Cyrus said before his mind even caught up. He dropped his hands from his face. “We go to Satieri and we get him back.”

In a rush, he stalked to the main console and furiously tapped the screen until the COMM channel opened up. “Dionysian, this is the Beacon, come in,” he shouted into the receiver. “Corra? Finn? It’s Cyrus. Come in. Please, fucking please, come in — “

It was only seconds, but it felt like hours, until the speakers crackled and a familiar voice filled the room.

“Cyrus?! What’s going on? What happened?” Corra sounded panicked, even from this distance. “What—you’re on another ship?!”

“Corra, I’m going to bring down the barrier from here,” he told her matter-of-factly. “You’re going to need to synchronize your exit with ours. Take the Dionysian back to where we left the crew. Wait for us there.”

“Wait, what?! You’re staying on another ship?!”

“Yes,” he said bluntly. He glanced at Leta, who nodded for him to continue, “Get the bridge door sealed. There are still other agents aboard, it’s only a matter of time before they figure out something’s wrong.”

“Cyrus, what the hell is going on?”

“You,” he addressed the young man still cowering behind the console. “Pilot? Get her ready for take-off.”

“Cyrus?!”  Corra cried, but Cyrus talked over her: “Finn, don’t forget you need to disengage the forward throttle immediately after the first push in takeoff or you’ll stall the engine–”

“Cyrus! Explain what is happening right now!”

At last, Cyrus mustered a sigh and lowered his head.

“Fiearius was taken,” he informed her, his voice hardened. “I’m taking this ship — “ He caught Leta’s furious glance and corrected, “We’re taking this ship to Satieri. We’re going to get him back.”

Stunned silence filled the other end of the call. Cyrus could just imagine the horror on their faces.

But he could not imagine their response.

“Right,” said Finn finally. “We’re coming with you.”

“Leta.” His voice was raspy and dry, unused for days. His eyes scrutinized her face. “How — “

Before he could properly voice his myriad of questions, Leta angled her forehead against his, and then her lips were pressed onto his, softly but warmly, relief pouring out of her and into him, until she knew it had been a few seconds too long and she broke away.

“We have to go,” she breathed shakily, fumbling now to get Ren’s arm around her shoulders as she hurried to a stand. “Can you walk?”

“Leta.” Ren was having a most difficult time pulling himself into the moment, out of the haze. “How’d — I can’t leave, we can’t make it past–“

“No, no, we will,” Leta hastened, and there was a note of hope in her voice now, her breathing still shaky from the threat of tears. “I’m not alone. We just have to hurry — “

Mercifully, Ren seemed to be gaining more consciousness and movement in his limbs as Leta drew his arm around her neck and hurried to the door.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Thump.

Fiearius spun around just in time to see the agent’s figure land heavily on the hangar floor. From where he was standing at the base of the Dionysian’s ramp, he couldn’t see which of his helpers from above had fired the shot, but he’d have to remember to thank both Corra and Finn later. They were likely the only reason he was still standing at all.

The ‘grab the biggest gun on the ship and cause a distraction’ plan had started out rather well, mostly because the biggest gun on the ship was a monstrosity Corra had affectionately named ‘the Crowd Breaker’ that effectively fired an array of ten rounds at once in practically every direction. It wasn’t built to do that. But apparently she’d broken it at one point and that was the miraculously positive result.

The Crowd Breaker and Finn’s rifle had been enough to fight off the initial wave and, he presumed, buy Leta and Cyrus the time they needed. Now, however, the inevitable had occurred: Fiearius had run out of ammo.

Wham.

Fiearius stepped back as another agent stumbled and fell to the ground.

Fortunately, the Crowd Breaker wasn’t just a great gun. It was also a pretty fantastic battering ram and he’d made good use of it in simply swinging its length into his attackers’ faces. Face after face after face. It seemed the Baltimore agents were following an order to simply overwhelm him until he could be captured. Alive.

Not a single one had fired at him which could only mean one thing: someone on this ship knew about the Verdant CID. Someone knew he had it. And someone knew that some poor prison ship agent shooting him down would only cause more problems. Someone knew he had to be kept breathing.

But who that was couldn’t concern him for the time being. For now, he had to stay focused. Focused on the man’s face in front of him as he knocked his teeth out. And the next who got an elbow to the gut and the butt of a gun to the forehead. It was becoming mechanical at this point, like some rhythmic dance that was slowly wearing down his energy. He couldn’t stop, he had to keep going until the ground team returned, but dov’ha ti’arta, he wasn’t as young as he used to be. Nor was he the only one doling out injuries.

There was blood running down his temple from a blow he couldn’t now remember. Someone had dug a knife into his shoulder right before Finn took him down. There had been a few seconds when enough of them had managed to restrain him long enough to put some mounting bruises on his ribs. But the pain of the wounds, even the worst of it, was drowned out by adrenaline. That is, until all of a sudden, he felt a sharp burning tear across his legs.

Before he even had a chance to reconcile what had happened, he found himself crumbling to the floor, his joints no longer willing to support themselves with the fire now racing through his nerves. There was blood, he realized with a start, looking down at his legs through vision that was starting to become fuzzy, lots of it. He could feel the warm stickiness spreading quickly and coating his skin.

A familiar scream sounded from above the ship and a familiar voice shouted something directly behind him, but he couldn’t understand any of the words. It sounded like it was coming through a tunnel. Far off, distorted. His weapon was wrenched out of his hands, an effort he couldn’t even fight.  A figure’s shadow spread over him from just above on the ramp. And slowly he became aware that the reason this had happened, the reason he had fallen, was a deep gash on the back of his legs, right where the joints met. And he knew exactly whose blade had made the cut.

Struggling to regain his senses, Fiearius managed to slowly look up to face the triumphant figure standing above him. Though Desophyles Cordova has always been an inch or two shorter, he nonetheless consistently dwarfed Fiearius simply in breadth alone. He was the one man Fiearius would never challenge to an arm wrestle. Not just because he was obviously stronger. But because he knew every single way in which he might cheat.

“Well,” he began, straining to keep his voice conversational, despite the searing pains he was beginning to feel all over his body. Apparently some of those hits had been a little harder than he’d thought. “Fancy running into you here.”

But Dez wasn’t paying him any attention. He was standing there, holding up the long straight blade that bore a fresh sheen of blood and admiring it thoughtfully. For a long moment, he said nothing. Until at last he asked, as casually as someone who’d just sat down to dinner with an old friend, “Didn’t you used to mock me for bringing this on missions?” He glanced down at Fiearius now, his dark eyes sharp and hollow as ever. “Bit ironic, isn’t it?”

Fiearius was in no laughing mood. He was starting to feel faint and though his arms were still managing to hold him up, they wanted to crumble any minute now. Even so, he forced a bitter one-note chuckle and growled, “Hilarious. So they’ve got you serving–” His breath choked in his lungs, “–on TTDs now? Kind of a downgrade.”

“They told me it was a useless gamble to wait here,” Dez remarked absently as he began wiping the blood from his blade onto his shirt. “They said there was no way you’d do something so stupid as to waltz right onto a Society prison ship of all places.”

Suddenly, he glanced down at Fiearius as though only just realizing he was there. A slow smile pulled across his face as he crouched down beside him and clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder. Fiearius struggled for his arms not to give way from the weight. “But they don’t know you like I do,” he said quietly. “They don’t know your weaknesses.” Dez sighed heavily and put his hands on his knees. As though scolding a child, he shook his head and said, “What did I always tell you about pretty girls?” His smile shifted into a sympathetic frown “They’ll only cause trouble.”

Fiearius met his stare calmly, though he was anything but. His thoughts went to Leta and Cyrus, out there on the ship with no idea what they were going to come back to. It hadn’t worked. This whole thing. He’d failed. And all at once, Dez put a hand on his forehead and shoved it backwards into the floor.

As he felt his mind start to dip into unconsciousness, he saw Dez stand up over him. “Forget the ship, find the others,” he ordered to the agents still hovering around the scene. “They’re here somewhere.” He glanced down at Fiearius, his expression cold as ice. “Someone take this one to a containment unit while I prepare my ship.” And the last thing Fiearius heard as his vision turned to black was, “We’re going home.”

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –