Barren Crossroads

Sins of the Flesh

and Lilith, and every time he closed his eyes at night and saw the faces of all the people that had trusted him with their lives, he wanted to scream.

He wanted to throw things and rage and yell, and he wanted someone to hurt. He wanted anyone to hurt that way that he did, and to feel the guilt that suffocated him and stole the air from his lungs every moment. All of them, they'd all tried to tell him they didn't feel safe, and he'd pushed on anyways, and they'd all paid the price for his mistakes.

He thought that maybe the worst part of it all was that he wasn't shocked by it. He wasn't surprised, and it felt like he'd known what was coming, and let it happen. And now more people were dead. He wondered if this was that kind of constant, pressing, aching pressure that Kaelie had felt on her chest every time the Hunters found her again, every time she'd tried to save them, everytime she killed someone else to keep herself or Michael or Lilith or Sarah alive, and every time someone died anyways.

It had been days now. Days since he'd convinced his father to provided him the technology to send out a drone and monitor it. Days since he'd located Kaelie and watched on a high definition feed as she stumbled and cried and hallucinated, and just a few hours ago, she'd been taken by a group of strangers.

The itch to do something, to find her, to do anything felt physical and he found himself digging his nails into the raised ridges of sensitive scar tissue along his arms and chest. He sat and thought and thought and thought of endless plans and ideas of how to help her, how to get to her, anything to help her and came up with the same implausible and useless solutions as he always did.

As he sat leaned back in his chair, feet on the table in front of him, and staring at the ceiling, he scratched and zoned out of the mindless footage. He'd left the drone hovering a ways away from the small camp she'd been taken into. He sat for a few minutes and tried to let the blissful blankness of disassociation take over his thoughts.

It didn't work.

He groaned out loud and kicked his feet back onto the floor with a thud. And then the first good idea he'd had in hours hit him and he wanted to smack himself upside the head. His father had left the quarters around an hour ago to do some check ins with security or something- Jace hadn't really paid attention.

But since Jace's declaration of shame and regret, his father seemed to trust more and more. He'd left his own computer open on the desk for the first time, instead of taking it with him or shutting it down and locking it. Jace stood quickly, lurching over to the desk and sitting himself gingerly in the chair, like the slightest noise would bring his father storming back in.

Nothing happened and Jace smiled to himself. Ryan could be useful after all. It was time to find footage- security footage of the night Kaelie went into the cells, tapes of his conversations with Jordan, notes, anything. Anything that could tell him what Kaelie was trying to find, and anything that could help him get Michael and Lilith out before Ryan finally decided to kill them and rid himself of the trash.

He'd been able to do the monitoring, but hadn't been able to copy the files and look at any of them. He'd need Lilith for a lot of it, he was sure, and he almost wished she hadn't killed Berkley and been able to fool Ryan along with him into letting her have some access. But if he could find a way to talk to her- or convince his father to let her help- anything, it would work. He knew he could, too. At this point, his father just refused to see the hate in his gaze and was so far deluded he'd accept almost anything Jace said as long as Jace didn't leave.

And as much as it made his skin crawl and his bones ache, if the way to help Kaelie right now was to pretend he loved his father, Jace would do it. Jace would do whatever it took for her. From the first moment he saw her, he should have known that the rest of his life, past and future, would be and had been meaningless without her.

She belonged to him, and he'd make sure she knew it now.

Chapter 6

Cut Your Teeth

Jace poked around in the files, copying anything and everything over to his computer as fast as he could before Ryan came back and saw him. He'd have to check later to see what was relevant and what wasn't. À lot of it looked like surveillances and intelligence files on all of them. Him, his mother, Lilith, Sarah, Michael, Kaelie, even Ben. It was clear now that Ryan had been watching them all for far longer than even Jace had thought.

It made him angry, and his jaw clenched so tight as he dug through everything that he thought he could hear his teeth cracking. He heard à noise in the hall, faint, but something, and whipped his head to the side quickly, his neck straining. He heard à voice- and it was his dad finishing à conversation. Jace tapped his fingers rapidly waiting for the last file he'd been able to find to finish copying over. Two seconds passed, maybe three, and he wanted to scream. Finally, the computer pinged softly to indicate à successful copy and transfer, and Jace quickly tabbed out and closed everything he'd opened, ripping the cord out of his father's computer and leaping back over to his own chair, just as the door slid into the wall and his dad walked in.

Jace fought to control his heaving chest and keep his breathing as smooth and even as he could as he met his father's cold stare and chilly smile. "Father," he said in greeting. "Good meetings, oh bountiful overlord?" If his father could hear the undertone of malice and hatred that ran through Jace's words, he pretended to ignore it.

He did smirk at Jace's comment though. "That's à new one," he commented and Jace shrugged. "I always did enjoy your wit, even as à child. I knew you'd do well to take over for me one day, if I was ever able to get away from your mother and the Illusion's poison."

Jace grit his teeth together and forced à smile. "I'm glad."

"Have you found it yet? The girl?" he asked and his lip curled in disgust, like even the mere mention of Kaelie could leave à palpable stain on his clothes.

"I have. She's been wandering through the country side for weeks. Made it to the next state over, but not much farther. She's suffering à severe infection and doesn't seem to have à firm grasp on reality," Jace started, trying to pick and choose which information would be helpful to share and which he might need to keep to himself. "If we're lucky, the wounds she left here with might finish the job for us and we won't need to waste the personnel and resources it would take to go after her. After all, winter travel gear, provisions, and the kind of weaponry we'd need to ensure we can take down à Hunter, even injured like she is, is à lot. If we can get away without needing to use it, we should."

"Really?" his father asked, stroking his slender fingers over his clean shaven jaw. I guess I injured the girl more than I thought. I was hoping she'd be able to lead us to- well nevermind."

"Lead us to what?" Jace pushed, and he watched as his father's face locked down, completely blank and every inch the controlling sociopath he showed to the rest of the world. "Nothing, Jace. Show me the bitch." The curse word startled Jace. His father rarely cursed, and as Jace looked up at him for à few more seconds, he watched as his jaw tensed and untensed rapidly, like he was chewing the inside of his cheek raw to keep himself in check.

Oddly, Jace understood the feeling.

He'd been smart enough to prepare à short loop of footage from before Kaelie had gone into whatever camp she'd found. It was around 30 seconds of her stumbling through the frost covered ground, falling to her knees, getting back up, and staring at the sky. The whole time, her lips were moving like she was rambling her thoughts out to the sky and the world, even with no one around to hear it.

He pulled up the file, and made sure the small edit for à blinking "live" signifier on the corner was still there. He couldn't be sure he could fool his father, but he had to do his best and hope that his father's blindspots for him would cover him. "See? Just wandering around. Raving like à lunatic. I got à close up of the missing eye and the stab wound. It's extremely infected, and is likely causing some inflammation to the brain. That's what mom would have said," Jace told him, his voice catching à bit over the word mom.

"Anyways, she's probably not even sure what's going on or where she even is. If she was looking for something, I'd be surprised if she remembers what it is or why," he continued.

Ryan nodded again, still rubbing over his jaw like he was deep in thought. "Well, we do know that Hunters tend to be able to withstand infections and fight them off with better luck than regular humans. In à few more days, she could