Overwhelmed [3] 《SHADOWHUNTERS》

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The trip back to the New York Institute was difficult on Jace's freshly sealed flesh, despite their clearance to use the official portal in Idris. Maryse and Robert had not shown up to say goodbye, though not one of their adult children could claim to be disappointed by their absence. It had been difficult to meet their parents' eyes after such obvious abandonment. They stepped out into the piercing sun that sliced into the large arched windows at the eastern end of the library. Its warmth was unreachable in the chill the building had taken on, empty and still. 

They felt the tear of every past event in the failed normalcy of an eight-in-the-morning arrival to an unhomely home. Isabelle was quiet when she broke apart from the rest by going to her bedroom. Clary and Simon were left a bit untethered by her sudden reclusion, but Andy and Alec certainly weren't in any state to be looked to for comfort. 

An awkward note strung in the presence of Jace's stubbornly-wavering self as he continued to refuse assistance walking, despite the tug in his chest and abdomen that he kept bracing his hand towards. The one who could be relied on for always talking had reverted back to grunts to deny the silent requests to assist him that hung from all of their eyes. Alec failed to play it cooler as he asked Jace if he wanted fresh towels, only serving to chase the man off as well.

Andy's jaw shifted and she watched her brother commit to his clambered escape of their presence with fallen shoulders. Alec almost reached out to her, next, but she escaped him before he could even raise his arm, headed in the opposite direction towards mission control. His head straightened with force, an attempt to keep himself awake enough to follow the lead of his second-in-command.

The vampire and the redhead looked at each other with knit brows, left alone in that cavern of knowledge.

°◊°◊°

The Official Heads of the Institute broke through a crowded array of their few remaining soldiers as they scanned the room for the Elite guard that had temporarily run the building in their absence. The white in the room seemed to glare into their eyes, a taunt of the memorial that would not be held for the Lost Souls of the war in Idris. Blue monitors blinked with maps of a city that had way too many pins tagged across the streets to be considered back under control.

They found Liv Longford in the midst of handing out orders to a few familiar fresh faces that were not typically found in their part of the world. The Clave had sent out a demand for all unassigned soldiers to fan out across the world for any facilities that needed them as soon as they had finished their training at eighteen. The elite warrior looked up and blinked a few times as she realized they had returned to take their posts. She introduced the new recruits to them and their position, offering Alec to take over, which he politely waved away. At that moment, Longford had the best knowledge of the situation in New York since they had left.

They waited by the edge of the map, each peering over different tags across the buildings that showed what missions were coded as. There were far too many purple miscellaneous squares created within the last seven days for either of their liking. 

Liv balanced herself on the cold metal rim of the map in its corner. "I was going to update you before sending out the morning's watches," she shared honestly with a twinge to her cheek. "But we got more info from overnight and you guys weren't in yet."

Alec assured her it was fine, they had all had a lot going on. Andy spoke up from his side with caring eyes on Liv that the elite soldier had never experienced before, an equally surprising sweetness genuinely swept in her voice. "Were you able to find Kyler?"

Longford's dark and heavy eyes left them as they were torn apart with an unexplainable pain. "No," she shared regretfully. Her hands trailed in front of her, as if debating whether to pull it up, before she scrawled out the file name and had a video feed of the Institute's main entrance during a slaughter. Then, the video feed scrubbed itself into a loop for five hours. "There was so much blood, but only two bodies. Maybe they escaped, but..." Her face fell as she let the truth lie between them.