(Old Version) The Blood of the Covenant

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Micah

 It was morning.

Or at least, he thought it was. It was hard to tell, with this weather.

The sun didn't shine down on him from the sky overhead. He didn't expect it to. He could practically picture the scene in his mind. The clouds were thick and gray. The sky was a muted, dull color. The forest around them was dark, foreboding, and the warehouse behind him even more so. A gloomy day. Depressing, Rose had called it in a low mutter.

The cherry to top off their failure sundae.

Micah laid in the grass, one knee drawn toward upward, his arms sprawled on either side of him. In one hand, he held his phone. In the other, a fistful of cold, moist grass.

Everything had gone so wrong.

He knew it'd go bad... but this bad? God. It was something out of a nightmare.

If this had been a mission Pardus gave him, if he'd created such a mess while under that terrifying man's employ... he didn't want to think too hard about it.

The whole team, if he dared call them that, had been compromised. Injured or exposed in one way or another. Rose's wing had been broken, in desperate need of medical attention. Micah was able to split it, but he worried about what sort of job he'd done while blind. Max's cyborg leg had been ruined by the idio of that Leo boy. Alastor and Colton suffered from electric burns and all sorts of bruises.

And Lian?

Lian had locked himself in his room. He wouldn't come out or speak to anyone.

He and Micah had been the two who needed to keep their identities secret the most. And yet, they were the two who'd been the most exposed.

Lian, to his sister, unless she died of the brutal injury he'd bestowed upon her.

And Micah... his mask had come off, of all things. He just prayed his hood and the shadows kept his face hidden. But with how surveilled a place like TAFAH was, his only hope seemed to lie in poor camera quality and perhaps the fact that his face wasn't well known to most heroes.

And yet, that didn't change the fact that he and the others had been put under so great a risk.

Needless to say, it couldn't happen again.

That hint of responsibility that had flickered in him before now burned like a wildfire. If Scythe had his way, they'd all be dead before Christmas. He couldn't let that happen. He wouldn't. He knew Scythe would come crawling back, and he knew the man would be gunning for Micah after what he did.

It'd be a war for control of this team. A duel for leadership.

Micah would need to win the others over. It wouldn't be easy. Not even close. He'd never been a leader. He'd always been led, been told what to do. But Scythe was the furthest thing from competent, and the others were inexperienced, naive. He'd step in until someone else could. Someone... worthy.

But he couldn't do this so long as his past still haunted him. He had to cut ties. To seal this fate of his. He'd already gone this far. There wasn't any turning back for him, and he knew it. This team, this stupid school of Scythe's he was taking command of had to become his commitment, his life, his every waking moment. No distractions. No safety nets. No ways out.

He sat up, his joints creaking and his muscles aching, a soft and involuntary sound of protest fighting its way out of his throat. He winced, then drew his hands in his lap and looked down at his phone, sitting cross-legged.

And there he sat, unmoving, for what felt like hours. He didn't want to do this. He felt like he might not be able to.

Then, he heard a voice from behind.