✓ | 3. soldier, soldier, spy [STEVE HARRINGTON]

ten.

CHAPTER TEN:
THE MÜLLERS

[ THE FLAYED ]

❖ ❖ ❖

Behind them, Billy hurled himself at the door hard enough to make the chains creak and Thomas whirled around, his feeling of betrayal momentarily forgotten. He threw out his veined arms to protect the kids, legs in battle-stance.

Billy took another run-up. The gap between the door and the frame widened as the chains begin to fail them; the pipe they were tied to bent out of shape on the forth hit.

"Get back," Thomas breathed with widening eyes, unknowingly pushing his glasses up the slippery slope of his nose. Realised he wouldn't be heard, forced his words out, forced volume. "Get back! Eleven, get the fuck out!" His eyes flashed with violent speed between the pipe and Billy, blinking rapidly to accommodate for his exhaustion and the flickering light above.

There came a final roar, and on the fifth blow the pipe burst. Steam exploded into the room, and through it Billy threw himself across the floor from the power of his own speed. The kids screamed; Thomas staggered back, watched Billy roll and come to his feet.

         The lights flickered so quickly it was hard to see.

Billy rose and so did Thomas' gaze, eye to eye, the most powerful connection in the world.

In a corner of Thomas' brain, somewhere deep down, he felt like he was looking into a mirror. A distorted one, maybe, like at a fun fair — but a mirror nonetheless.

Billy's eyes — but they weren't Billy's, not really, not those black, darkened things — almost widened. The eyebrows raised and the mouth opened and almost curled into a grin. His face looked like the word, him.

Eleven screamed behind him, and then one of the weights from his right was flung into Billy and they hit the brick wall on the left together. The noise was colossal. The wall cracked in two place, the weights digging in like claws as Eleven rose beside thomas, arm out, nose bleeding, face scrunched with concentration. Another arm shot out. With a crunch and a yell from Billy, the weights slammed further back into the wall, crushing his neck. His bare feet, blackened with ugly veins, struggled for stance.

His veined hands grasped the bar, pushed outward, fighting. Eleven screamed, struggling to hold it.

Thomas could see it happening — and instinct told him this, not the tiger deep inside nor the mirror he was staring into. He seized El and shoved — her powers fell flat, like a heart monitor.