Page 70 of Static/Cling

“Not anyone,” his soft-hearted half told his brain, and he couldn’t argue with it.

He wanted them. Bjorn with his guileless acceptance of Kassian’s quirky brain and his tender kisses to prove he didn’t care. And Leif, who saw him more clearly than his own family ever had and wasn’t afraid to flirt outrageously anyway.

Annoyed, he glared at Rufus in the reflective surface of one of the monitors, trying to read his brother’s meaning in his placid expression.

Rufus hadn’t told him to save their skins. He had said to save the day. Sacrifice for the greater good. Like Gerome had with the bike. Sacrificed his potential—his dream—for Kassian and the twins. Become the saviour that had kept them together and skating on just the right side of the law until they’d no longer needed him.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

Rufus squeezed his shoulder almost to the point of pain.

Kassian glanced up, and if Rufus’s face remained still, the expression in his eyes didn’t. He didn’t like this any more than Kassian did. He had regrets, and it all clicked into place in Kassian’s head, the machinations becoming clear to his brainiac,along with the apology his other half sensed but that Rufus couldn’t say out loud.

Because hehadlured Kassian here. Not to take the fall for him, but because sure, he could have broken the encryption, but he couldn’t write the necessary code to destroy the file and save all those people. He didn’t know how. He knew it could be done, and knew Kassian could, given the time and opportunity, figure it out, but could not do it himself.

Kassian grimaced. “Fuck you, asshole.” He shrugged his brother’s hand off him and began to type, not bothering to watch his brother’ retreat in the monitor’s reflection.

He had to believe Rufus knew he understood the assignment. After everything he’d done so far, followed this damn thing through cyberspace for as long as he had, erasing all trace of it he could find behind it…

He’d sent worms into computers as the file was passed on, destroying hard drives it had stopped on, just to be sure there was no copy. He’d erased reams and reams of cloud storage, locked people out of accounts and systems and bricked phones to keep them from getting back in. He’d corrupted backup copies of pretty much any and everything the file had tangentially touched. He’d done everything in his power to remove all trace of it as he’d followed it to this final destination.

The one thing he’d never been able to do was affect the file itself. Not without leaving a fingerprint as obvious as a lipstick stain on a glass.

Rufus had to know that if Kassian could have done this thing without getting caught, he would have done it ages ago.

So Rufus knew what he was asking. Knew what it would mean, and what it would cost.

So Kassian had to believe his brother had a plan.

Had to hope he had a plan beyond the one that meant Kassian ate a bullet the second General George understood what had happened to his precious database.

There was no way to ask, so he worked. He did what was being asked, and ignored everything else. Let George think he was scared of the threat, that Rufus had betrayed him, that he had no reason not to comply to save his own ass at this point.

Let Rufus think he was willing to sacrifice himself for this. Because he was. He’d seen, first-hand, what happened to people in the hands of villains like George.

Rufus and Randolph had lost their powers. Sal had lost their confidence, become someone who never left the safety of the 500 square feet surrounding their desk. Roger had so many hang-ups there was no way to count on him, and he knew it, and that only made all his hang-ups that much worse.

“Fuck my life,” he muttered.

He’d done everything in his power to do this some other way, but this was, as he’d always figured it would be, the only option. He just hoped to hell Bjorn and Leif would be able to take care of Sal and Roger from now on.

“You’re leaving your friends in their hands. How sad is that?” he asked himself.

He yanked a leg, watching the anchor in the wall from the corner of his eye. Did it wiggle? Even a little bit? He kept the tension tight, just in case. “They’re in perfectly good hands,” he reminded himself. “You know that. You trust them.”

“They’re idiots.”

“But very pretty idiots.”

“Fuck off.”

In reply, that little voice snickered, then focused its attention on flexing his muscles, tensioning the chain, stressing the connections that kept him captive.

The rest of him typed. There was also no reason to draw it out.

He typed.

He hoped.

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