Barren Crossroads

Watch the Fall

a low cold voice. "Look at you- supposed to be stronger than me, better. I know you always thought you were. And now you're here: trapped, beaten, and pathetic. Kaelie would be disgusted with you. If she's even still alive."

The words tasted like vomit in his mouth and his jaw clenched hard, his teeth throbbing dully in his mouth. Lilith looked back at him, and then to the man next to him, and he could almost see the challenge burning in her glittering black eyes. But then it was gone and she just regarded him with the same tired pity she'd been looking at him with since Kaelie first jumped off the roof.

"You didn't seem to have a problem with her being a monster when it made things easier for you," Lilith said, and her voice was flat, wrought with exhaustion.

Jace didn't say anything at first, listening instead to Michael shouting obscenities at him from the next cell. He glanced to the side, his dad's broad, strong profile watched on with only the faintest of smirks. Jace wanted to hit him. He looked back at Lilith and raised first his right eyebrow, then his left. She'd know he was really talking to her now.

"You know, if it were Kaelie down here, she'd have tried to escape already," he said, scratching his nails along his jaw and the light growth he'd let cover the skin there. "Wait- that's right. She did. Left us all behind, again. Who else is not shocked?"

"Fuck you, Jace. She'd have never, never, been through any of this, done any of it if she'd never fucking met you," Lilith spat and Jace hissed in a breath, and then blew it out between his teeth.

"She'd have torn this place to the studs, I bet. If only she hadn't become so weak," Jace said, and his father chuckled darkly behind him. "All this tech, all this surveillance, she'd have found a way through it. Pitiful, really. Bet she'd have even found all the secret hidey holes, all the secret tech, secret rooms."

As he said the last bit, he turned away from Lilith's smooth metal cell door, and spared a quick glance at his father. He hadn't seemed to register much of it, just nodded along as he watched. He stepped in front of Michael. "She was supposed to be the best. You were all supposed to be the best. All those big ideas about taking down all these corrupt people- but you know what? I don't think any of them were wrong. Not anymore. Not even Serna, or Jordan. They wanted order, they wanted power. They wanted to be rid of the Hunter nuisance."

"I hope she kills you, this time," Michael whispered to him, and Jace could see tear tracks cutting through the grime on his handsome face. "It should have been you the first time."

Jace closed his eyes and turned away. I know, he thought. He didn't say anything. He'd done what he came to do. "Let's go, father," he said coldly, and his dad smiled in that eerie, shark like grin Jace had started to associate with people who were just- really, really fucking bad. Serna, Jordan, his father, even Kaelie, in the bad place, they'd all had a smile just like that. One that sent shards of ice shooting along his spine, and made him feel hollow and cold all over.

He walked side by side next to his dad as they made their way up the stairs, and he hated how similar they were. They walked the same way, with the same loping gait that came with being so tall. They lead with their shoulders, but while Jace tended to keep his head down, as if the weight of his own thoughts were too heavy to bear, his dad walked tall, with his head high, confident, sure, and unhurried.

They made their way back to the central room, where the drone team were still combing through hours of footage trying to find Kaelie. Jace was honestly a little shocked they hadn't yet, but then again, they didn't know her the way he did. And, it worked for what he needed anyways.

"You know, I've been thinking," he said to his dad.

His dad hummed at him, signaling Jace to keep talking.