Page 66 of Xerxes Ascendant
After about an hour they arrived in front of a darkened building that loomed over them in the night-time murk, the electric car pulling quietly to the curb and auto-opening its doors. Kyle was dragged inside the building before he could take a proper look at its sweeping, sleek architecture, whisked through propped-open security doors and along hallwayslittered with the glass shards of their broken cameras. It seemed the Carrion’s operation had begun long before their own arrival, and it was with efficient haste that Kyle and Akira soon found themselves in a large space that towered all the way to the city level above and was equally as wide. In it were four aircraft resting in their bays: not the boxy cargo craft used by Divers retrieving valuable resources from the planet’s surface, but closer to the images Kyle had seen of the more aesthetically pleasing transport ships which had once ferried businessmen and tourists between the multiple skyborne cities. Xerxes had been the sole survivor of the tragedies that had befallen the others, but its fate – and that of its million plus inhabitants – would ultimately be the same.
Fall. Crash. Die.
The massive hangar echoed with the footsteps of over a dozen Carrions scurrying this way and that. Some were bearing equipment or machinery, while others were engaged in more nefarious tasks.
Like the pair hefting a body between them, its face slack and fresh blood still dribbling from a hole in its forehead. Kyle blanched.
The gang member holding the corpse’s feet winked at him as they passed.
“Alright there, mate? You look a touch green.”
“You killed him!”
The man snorted. “Nah, just gave him a little tickle.” The other Carrion guffawed with laughter as if that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “Shouldn’t have gotten in our way, then, should he?”
The corpse was wearing the ill-fitting uniform of a security company. He’d just been doing his job: trying to put food in his family’s mouths by protecting this hangar from the type of men they now found themselves in the company of.
It wasn’t his and Akira’s fault, Kyle knew, but logic didn’t ease the guilt.
He swallowed around the lump in his throat and let himself be guided onto the nearest and smallest of the aircraft via its wide rear ramp. Inside, they found a dozen rows of seats, enough to fit fifty or more passengers, with large windows along the sides of the craft and a small bar area at the far end that was empty of both glasses and liquor. From the state of the fabric covering the seats, time had not been kind, and he could only wonder at the state of the craft’s engines.
Released from their guards’ iron grips now they had nowhere to flee to, Kyle immediately gravitated to his man, grasping his hips to pull him close with a primal need toprotect.
“Are you okay?” Akira murmured to him, peering concernedly into his eyes as he laid a cool, calming hand on Kyle’s cheek.
Kyle laughed. “Shouldn’t that be my line?”
He was answered by a rueful smile. “You may be my Dominant,” breathed Akira, “but I will always take care of you, Kyle.”
“And I you, Akira.”
Their breaths mingled with how close they were standing.
And then Kyle stole the remainder of the distance for himself. They kissed, slow and languid and with fingers tangling in each other’s hair, not caring about their audience even when Miguel loudly wolf-whistled.
“Asses on seats,” another of the Carrions growled, apparently less impressed with the show. “We’re taking off in thirty seconds.”
Kyle dragged Akira to the row of chairs that looked least likely to collapse beneath them, but was forced to manhandle the smaller man into his seat when Akira paused in apparent thought. Not that he seemed upset about Kyle taking control.
“Where are the rest of your team?” asked the Master, narrowing his eyes at the closing ramp door. “There must be more than the six of us.”
The Carrion with his finger on the door controls, a man whose facial tattoo faded into his generous beard, shrugged.
“Dunno. I just shoot things.”
“That’s Derek,” Kyle said knowledgeably. “He’s the wrong person to ask. Miguel is the one you want to be talking to.” He nodded at the man seated in front of them, who was manspreading across half the row with his head tipped back like he was a rich passenger on a day trip.
“How do you know their names?” Akira whispered incredulously.
Kyle gave him an equally stupefied look in turn. “Iasked.”
The answer made his boss frown. Master Epsilon may have been many wonderful things, butchattywasn’t one of them. If Kyle hadn’t been kidnapped alongside him, Akira would have undoubtedly spent the entire time in the Carrion’s captivity in perfect, stoic silence. Seated primly with his arms crossed, perhaps, pretending his superhuman self didn’t need sleep or water. He certainly wouldn’t have thought to ask for food, and so the stars really had done them both a solid by ensuring Kyle was where he needed to be: at his boyfriend’s side the whole time.
“Well?” Akira demanded of Miguel roughly, who tilted his head back further over the seat to peer at them from upside down.
“Relax, Coterie. We know what we’re doing.”
“I’m only here to help you navigate the building,” Akira reminded him in a stern, uncompromising tone that Kyle was proud of. “And Kyle isn’t meant to be here at all. I highly doubt the four of you can take on all of Mackenroth’s security forces.”
