Reign

Part 2

I feel a type of way about Torrent

"I thought this son of bitch was dead?" Torrent growled, slamming his fist into the steel of the table under him.

We had finally returned to the stronghold to tell the others of what we had discovered at the warehouse. We now sat in our spots on our round table, the others staring back at us with a mixture of emotions, all of them ranging from the lack of emotion to fear to pure rage from the news.

"There was no confirmed body when we had battled him and his forces at the citadel in Night City, Maxwell." Warden answered, his blank face stared back at us as he crossed his arms over his chest, "I promise you, we looked everywhere and nothing was found."

Warden's face was undecipherable underneath his blacked out mask, he always seemed to remain neutral even in times where others were panicked. Torrent growled as he slammed his fist into the table once more, a small indention slightly noticeable. I looked over at Seraphina, her face looked like it was staring into oblivion, her reaction staying the same from when we had returned. She looked nothing short of afraid, her experiences with Vander were well known in our group, she was completely terrified of the man. Unlike her—or the others for that matter—I had never experienced him before our fight with him at The Citadel, he had remained an enigma to me even in that moment.

I had heard stories of the atrocities that Vander had committed over his years of activity, it had been 2 years since anyone had last seen him and his signature porcelain mask. He was what everyone considered a sociopath, but there seemed to be a method to his madness, even though he was severely unpredictable.

"Bullshit! Once Sera and I looked over the bodies again all the evidence was there, it was screaming in our faces" Torrent roared, his exclusion of me from our findings made me cringe slightly.

No one said a word about my exclusion from the case, my eyes connecting with the glittery eyes of Lynx from across the table, the pity in her eyes staring right back at me. I felt irritated by her stare. The women of our team always seemed to have that look when they witnessed my exclusion, when they noticed that the others would not include me or discredit me in anything we did as a team.

"So all of you are saying that Vander Stein is alive and well?" A calm and ominous voice stated from the head of the table.

The others shut up as we all stared towards the direction of the voice, coming into contact with the light green eyes of Wonder, his stoic face outlined by his chestnut brown hair. Everyone looked at him in silence, the table becoming so quiet that I could not tell if anyone was even breathing. Wonder had sat and listened to our discussion prior to Torrent's outburst, taking in the information that was said by the others, waiting for a more definitive answer to what we had found at the crime scene. The coldness in such a beautiful face was terrifying.

I shivered within my seat.

"I'll ask again" Wonder asked, his eyes traveling across all of our faces, "Does this mean that Vander is still alive?"

We stared in silence. The tension in the room was so thick it reminded me of a dense fog that always plagued our tower every morning, a fog that always dissipated once I woke up from what I had been told. But it was never said kindly. Wonder continued to stare at us, the sound of a pin dropping would be enough to make the others jump in the midst of the dead silence.

"It seems like a high possibility," I blurted out, surprising myself. "From the expressions on their faces, it seemed that they had been exposed to something that scared the shit out of them"