FIRE [FIRST DRAFT]

Chapter 19: Bereavement

 Aimee was so fixed, so confused by Abba's message that she hardly noticed the twins enter the room. They had no idea what had happened; they only saw the catastrophe around Sylvain's unmoving body, the micro-scopes and broken beakers, and called for Aimee until she stood up from her place behind the counter. Despite the prominent red bloom around her neck where she had been choked, and her unambiguous trauma, she insisted that she was okay.

"Come here," Valerie drew her into a hug.

Finn watched Sylvain with such despise, it was scary to imagine what murderous thoughts he might have been thinking.

"Do you know why he hurt you?"

Aimee gazed at him, gulping silently as his sister, too, waited in unfading concern for her answer. This concern swam in their eyes. She wished she could somehow ignore it, and she wished she could tell them the truth. The message was for her and Benjamin. All she knew was that she had the strongest need to find him, and the one other person she believed had to know anything about it.

"He just came at me for no reason. I need to see Stefan, where is he?"

"In Central Command."

"Go," Valerie placed her hands on Aimee's shoulders. "We'll take this guy back to the basement; at least he can't hurt anyone from there. And if he wakes up before we get there, we'll team up and go all Irish on his arse."

"You know that does not sound even slightly threatening," Aimee smiled – Valerie drolly slapped her arm.

Aimee went with them anyway, knowing – and not caring – that she had made Sylvain her responsibility once again. But she would not make him theirs; it was not in her nature to pass the buck. Besides, she still had the keys.

Nothing had changed in the basement, except there were fewer guards on duty and everyone who had been unconscious had come out of their sleep. That other soldier, the rowdy one, was still there. They put Sylvain down in a jail, convinced themselves that it was the right thing to do no matter how cruel it seemed, while mutely regretting that it had to be done. Aimee suddenly empathised with her captor, the one with the humanity in her eyes.

Afterwards, the twins went to their dorms; Aimee knew her way to Central. They were all the same, the dorms, from the third to the fifth floor: green-and-white, clean and classic, like the rest of GINM. Most of the agents kept their rooms that way even though they were permitted to do with them whatever they wanted. Gavin once told Aimee that he hated the idea of living in the same place he worked, that's why he decided to be independent, pay for his own place. Still, he appreciated the idea of them – they were a free home for so many agents, for so many of his friends.

Finn was lying on his bed, his belly supporting his acoustic guitar, which he played masterfully. The classes he used to take when he was younger had really paid off. Valerie was stationed at the foot of her bed, listening to him practise and sitting on her vintage trunk of keepsakes that only she was allowed to open.

"Finn, why would Sylvain attack her like that?"

His fingers stopped in the air, and he sat up with a sigh, "I don't know. Maybe it was like a reflex and he just freaked out, or he thought he was still fighting Abba and attacked Aimee by accident."

"That doesn't sound right; he would've realised eventually. Her neck was red, he choked her."

"I don't know, Val," he lay back down.

"Something happened. There's something she isn't telling us," she assumed with concern and compunction.

Valerie rested her head against a vertical beam – there was one on each corner of their beds. She ogled her brother in anticipation of some sort of response, but after a while, he just continued playing his guitar.