𝐄𝐤𝐤𝐨 | 𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐲 𝐋𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐀𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐬

29. Shark

"Betrayal..."

That single word slid from his lips like poison, curling deadly through the quiet as he rose from his chair. I stood watching him, as he clasped his hands neatly behind his back and walked toward the window that looked over his office.
An unblinking eye.

"...that pain," he went on, gaze fixed on the fractured skyline of Zaun beyond the glass, "that feeling that crawls from the inside out. It can either break you..." A pause, reflective as each syllable thrummed with unspoken experiences. "...or forge you into something greater."

I remained silent, forcing myself to breathe evenly, to listen for any hidden message buried beneath the surface of those words.
My fists curled tighter at my sides. Every breath I took felt like a quiet accusation— of things I hadn't done, hadn't even considered.
Silco turned, walking slowly around the desk, the sound of his boots soft against the wood. His fingers trailed absently over a messy, charred engraving burned into the surface— one of Jinx's impulsive creations. He lingered on it a moment before speaking again.
"There are always mishaps in battle, Shark." His voice lowered, steadier, colder. "And if you've learned anything from me..." he glanced at me, his good eye narrowing faintly. "...it's that they are never risks I'm willing to take."

I swallowed and inched forward, just slightly, trying to meet his gaze— trying to make him believe me.
"I'd never betray you," I said, as steady as I could.
"Not for Piltover's empty promises, not for treasure or power or anything they have to offer. You're the only one who ever understood what I truly wanted." My chest tightened. "If what I did was betrayal in your eyes, it wasn't intentional."

For a heartbeat, the room was utterly still. Then Silco turned fully, facing me. That assessing glint passed his seeing eye— a flicker of something piercing and searching.
"Everyone makes mistakes, right?"
He began circling me, his hands gesturing slightly as he spoke— not wildly, nor theatrically, but with the same precision of the discussed topic. "What matters is that we don't repeat them."

My breath hitched. That line. He'd said something almost identical once before, and I had repeated my mistakes— the same reckless choices, the same failures.
My gaze fell to the floor, guilt gnawing its way through me. There was nothing I could say.
No excuse that didn't sound hollow in the heavy silence between us.
Silco stopped in front of me. Even without a single step closer, his presence loomed— vast and suffocating. His shadow stretched long and thin in the dim light, wrapping around my boots like a void pool.
"You failed," he stated. "And I believe I asked you not to disappoint me again."
The pause stretched, deliberate and cruel.
"Yet... you did."

I opened my mouth, searching for something— anything— to offer, and all I could manage was a whisper. "I was found unprepared... things just... happened—"
"I expected better from you than excuses," he cut in, honed.
It struck like a lash. My body locked in that position, and I stood there, with all the bravado and resolve I'd carried inside, slipping away piece by piece.
"How was it?"

"What?" I asked.
He tilted his head, studying me still.
"The break," he answered, almost casually, curiously. "From what you knew."
I froze. My mouth went dry.
That was how he saw it— as if I'd simply gone on some leisurely stroll away from everything I'd ever been. And yet... there was something else underneath his resolve.

He knows.

The thought clawed at my chest.
He knew I was with them. With Ekko. And if he knew, then he'd—
"Do you know," Silco interrupted my spiralling thoughts, "why Vander called you Shark?"
The question hit me sideways.
My brows furrowed and I shook my head once, wary.
"Sharks," he began, taking a step closer, "crave almost ceaseless action. It enables them to avoid acknowledging the abhorrent things they do."

The distance between us vanished in two more measured steps. Then his hand shot forward, fingers curling around my jaw. My breath caught. He tilted my head slightly upward, forcing me to hold his gaze.
"You were restless," he added quietly. "Wild— to the point of becoming a danger." His thumb pressed faintly against my cheekbone as if to anchor me there. "I noticed it the first time you joined with Sevika. Your bursts of rage. The adrenaline you seemed to never run out of..."
His eyes bored into mine— one the deep, dirty green of toxic rivers, the other a wicked slit of crimson haloed in black. I felt them both pulling me apart and holding me still at once.

"You were the biggest threat to yourself." His voice dropped even lower, if that was possible, carrying such a suffocating weight that I felt I couldn't breathe.
Then his hand slipped away, pushing lightly but firmly against my face. The sudden absence of his grip made me stumble back a step.
"I made you the biggest threat to everyone else." He finished, the bite in that last sentence leaving a ringing silence behind it.

I felt my pulse thundering in my ears.
I was a creature dissected and displayed beneath his attention, reminded of every monstrous piece he had forged into me.
Silco turned without another word, the scrape of his steps on the wooden floor sounding loudly. He went back behind his desk with that unhurried grace of his, pulling open one of the lower drawers.
"I still believe in loyalty," he pronounced. "No matter how many bodies are left behind... and how many more will be. Loyalty," he continued, fishing something out of the drawer deliberately slow, "comes from a story of opposites."

The soft clink of glass against wood made my chest tighten even worse. When he straightened again, a thin vial of neon violet Shimmer dangled between his fingers. Its light caught the faint glow from the window, bathing his scarred features in an otherworldly hue.
Panic rose, choking in my throat.
My feet shifted back of their own accord, step by step, as he started walking toward me again.
"There's this thing in your head," Silco murmured, hand raking back through his salt and pepper hair. "And it's raging, lighting everywhere with madness."

My back hit the door with a soft thud.
I pressed myself against it, fingers fumbling uselessly at the edge of the handle.
"Wait—" My voice cracked. "Please... let me redeem myself. I can fix this. I can do this."
Silco didn't stop. His eyes fixed on the vial, on the swirling light within as if the answer to every question rested in that tiny bottle.
"I've showed you, where I almost drowned," he recalled, almost absently. "Do you know what that feels like?"
He closed the space between us once again, so close that I could feel the chill radiating from his body— the kind that seeps into your bones and settles there, unrelenting. My skin burned beneath it, fear coursing hot through my blood.

"There's peace in water," he whispered. "Like it's holding you... whispering to let it in. And every problem in the world will fade away."
The soft pop of the vial's seal made me flinch.
A tendril of purple smoke unfurled into the air, its acrid sweetness stinging inside my nose, prickling at my eyes.
"Please..." The word barely left me as more than a breath.
But Silco continued as if he hadn't heard.
"That day, I let a weak man die. And another was reborn." He extended the vial to me, his good eye staring into mine. "To fight. To survive."
Tears slipped down my cheeks before I realised they were there. I shook my head once, twice, the room spinning as I begged again, "Please..."

"Fear haunts us all, child," Silco offered, tenderly. "But you need to let the past go. Let those memories die... so the fear of pain will no longer control you."
My breath trembled in and out.
Everything he talked about was true— or at least it sounded true. I had let myself believe in change... when what I was ever meant to do was burn it all down.

My fingers lifted, they hovered, trembled, then wrapped around the thin glass of the Shimmer vial. Silco's expression shifted— barely— into something like satisfaction.
Determination glinted in his mismatched eyes as he leaned closer.
"I need you," he said. "Now, more than ever. Take what you've hunted for this whole time. Let go of that helpless little girl... and give Shark the revenge she deserves."

The Shimmer pulsed faintly in my grip, a ghostly heartbeat against my palm. And in that small, endless moment, I stood at the razor's edge— between everything I was and everything he had always wanted me to become.

The vial felt delicate between my fingers, too light to hold something so lethal.
The Shimmer inside seemed to have life of its own, almost breathing with me.

I swallowed hard once and, before I could stop myself, I brought it to my lips.