Chapter 18.

I stood on the edge of the Gray. Shacks that passed for houses bled into the desert from here. And then there would be nothing but dunes, and then a small skin farm. Followed by a small shell of a city, burnt out and rubble filled – occupied by a single family. Young Haven after that. I knew the path I'd follow, I knew where to avoid. But I didn't know where I was going.

My feet retaliated with every step. My boots stuck to the concrete, the dust of the desert a centimeter away from me. This was the easy part. Just one step, and the last month would be nothing but a bad experience. But something was anchoring me to the Gray. The sunglasses hanging from my collar felt heavy, the backpack weighed a ton.

I hated this city, so why won't my damn legs just take a step forward. Why won't my heart stop threatening my chest and why won't my head stop pounding. A burst of harsh desert air bit into me, I pulled the bandana around my neck over my mouth and nose. Sunglasses on after that. The cracked lenses giving me a distorted view of the undulating waves of sand and shacks in front of me.

I must be dehydrated, because the sunglasses smelt of her. Of her honey and strawberries. But that bridge had been blown up a week ago. But…I didn't have to say those things. I was angry, at her and at Hera, at Tick and the rest of the Rogues. But she didn't deserve that. She only wanted to help. But she had also said things that cut too close to home.

"Dan?" a voice said next to me.

It was Lara, she looked healthy. Happy. Brown hair thicker than I had last seen, less like straw, more like thick thread. Her eyes weren't sunken anymore, cheeks back to what I think was her normal.

"What're you doing out here?" she asked, examining my backpack.

"'Bout to leave, actually," I sighed, coming out muffled. I pull down the black bandana and say it again.

"What? No way, dude," she grabbed my wrist. "We're going to head back to Kira's and have a drink. I heard you started doing that." She paused. "Well, I won't. One month sober and all that."

I pulled away. "No, Lara. I'm leaving."

"Why? You told me you were going to stick around."

"Things changed," I muttered. "A lot of things changed."

She crossed her arms. "You lied to Kira then."

I shrugged. "Look, I gotta go."

"Okay then." She cocked her head, brown eyes boring into me.

I tried to put a boot onto the sand. But I just couldn't. I could feel her eyes stabbing into my neck, her sigh caught and carried by the wind.

"Thought you were meant to be somewhere," she said with only the slightest hints of condensation.

"I…" my words tripping over themselves, my mind scrambling for something. Anything.

"Planning to leave and you don't have anywhere to be." She shook her head. "Do you have any idea how much that girl cares for you?"

I shook my head. "Don't have time for this."

"Then be my guest," she said, gesturing towards the desert. "Go. Leave. You're the Stray right, this is your thing, isn't it?"

I pulled my boot off of the concrete and onto the sand. A small boy with blonde hair eyed us from a small shack, its wooden structure creaking in the wind.

"Just know she spent the entire week looking for you," she yelled over the sudden wave of wind.

I paused. "She didn't."

"She did. But you wouldn't know," she said. "You were busy making her worried. She told me what you guys said to each other. Brutal stuff to be honest. And she wanted to tell you something, too."

I stood there, one foot in the Gray, the other in a hasty decision. The wind buffeted my black hair, the ends slapping against the sunglasses. The hasty decision was slowly grabbing hold of me, my foot sinking in the soft sand. The earth practically saying, see! One step and we'll swallow up your problems!

"She wanted to say sorry. She admits she was selfish, but how can you blame her, Dan. She doesn't open up easily, but throw the girl a promise and she will. And you broke that promise." She began walking backwards, disrupting a hologram advertising robotics replacements. "Hope you leave knowing that."

She disappeared into the constant flow of people, towering sky scrapers looking down on me.

She had been selfish and accepted it. I was leaving because I was being selfish. And if Kira of all people could swallow her pride and say that…then maybe I should to. But that doesn't change the fact that I'd be used as a tool. No memory of Mum, no memories of Tick and Runt, Or Kira. And it would just be more killing, over and over. I'm not anything like that thing. But if I stepped back into the Gray then I would be. A carbon copy of him. The concrete below my foot was saying the opposite, all my problems were going to remain my problems. No one else was going to take responsibility for them.

I bit down on my lip and turned around. Several large men stood in front of me, all of them in black tactical gear. Faces hidden behind bare white plates. I took a step back, and then another. These weren't Watchmen. Watchmen weren't as discreet. These were soldiers, trained and armed, rifles and pistols pressed against thighs and chests

I ran. Darting to the right of them, a thick hand clamped around my neck. I kicked out and caught nothing but thick padding. A fist slammed into my gut, another forcing a thick bag over my head. Air was caught off immediately, I tore at the bag, trying to pull it off. My hands forcefully clamped behind my back, my normal wrist twisting with a sickening pop. Pain burst through my arm, running down my back and up my neck. I roared and another fist swung into my gut, making me wheeze and sucking in air that didn't exist.

I was lifted up and carried for what felt like hours, eventually being bodily thrown onto something couch like – dry leather squeaking and rubbing against my skin. The couch lurched forward and the bag was torn away from me. I gasped for air, my eyes struggling to adjust to the sudden dark. A man sat opposite me, two of the soldiers sat either side of me. We were in a car, the windows darker than Mum's hair, cutting off wherever we were.

The man was in a blue suit, army medals plastered on its front. "Hello Stray."

"Where the fuck am I?" I yelled. I wanted to lunge for the door, but it was probably locked. My head like TV static, the acidic taste of adrenaline running down my throat. "Who the hell are you?"

"A friend of your fathers," he said, toasting a glass of an orange liquid towards me. "May his drunken soul rest in peace."

I spat at him. The wad of saliva passing through him in a small bloom of pixels. A hologram. Of course it was. He wasn't real, the rifles pressing against me were definitely real. The leather underneath me squeaked some more as I moved in an uncomfortable silence as the man chuckled.

"He did the same thing to my carpet some time back," he muttered.

"What the hell do you want from me?"

"The Unit, Stray. We want the Unit." He smiled, too white teeth stark in the dark cabin. A shark smiling in the wrap around darkness of the ocean. "Will you help us? I'm asking as a friend."

"I've never been assaulted and kidnapped by a friend before."

He laughed. "Let me rephrase that. I'm asking for a friend."

I stared at him. The dots finally connecting. He must be that Magnus guy Hera was talking about. The conductor to the orchestra of death that painted the Gray red. He and that thing deserved to be in the same hole in the ground.

He leaned forward, pixels hazing from the sudden movement. "Do you have friends, Stray?"

A simple question that I couldn't answer. Not at this moment in time. Not for some time.

He nodded. "I know one of your friends. He's tall, handsome I'd say. Reliable. A Russian spy, I'd classify him."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I growled. The car slowed down, speeding up soon after.

"I see you didn't pay attention in history class."

"I never went to school. My Mum taught me everything."

He shook his head in amusement, that shark like grin spreading over his face again. "Amazing. Your father is such a large part of it, and you don't even know what I'm talking about." He leaned back and said, "But history is written by the victors. Your father may have led the way to win the war, but he was certainly not a victor."

"He was a monster," I spat. My eyes sharp and glaring at him. I couldn't risk using the Unit right now. He'd know I have it, he'd know where I'd run to.

"Orders," he muttered. "Orders make monsters."

Kira's orders to slam her gun into my jaw. Her orders to shoot the thing in the hospital bed. Orders to hunt people down. Did she fall in the same category of monster as my father?

He shook his head. "But I can see you've not been exposed to the truth, and as you can see, I am not a history teacher." He sipped the drink, the sound filling the cabin. "So let me shoot straight with you. Tick is a spy."

I felt like one of the soldiers had punched me again. Like a brick had slammed into my head. "What?" Then louder: "What?"

"A best friend that holds lies to his heart can't be considered a best friend. Because how can you block the one thing humans can connect with by selfish boundaries," he drawled. "He's worked for me for years. We were the ones who dragged him from the gutter and fed him, clothed him. Gave him a place to stay." He smiled again, beady blue eyes shining. "Could say that he stopped being a stray."

"You're lying," I said, the straw was back, a sharp ring ripped through my ears.

"He joined Hera's ranks as a spy. Cultivated relationships. Built trust. A hard worker, just like his father. But then, one day, something in him shifted."

I shook my head, trying to dislodge the lies. Tick wouldn't be on his side. Tick wouldn't have let hundreds of people die. Is that why he had looked so empty recently? He wouldn't lie to me. That was a pillar between us. Why didn't he stop the massacre from happening if he knew?

Too many thoughts, too many emotions to sift through.

"Do you know when he shifted?" he asked.

I shook my head – slow, deliberate.

"When he ordered for his own best friend to be killed." He shook his head. "How the greats fall. He flipped a coin and made the decision. And then he turned his backs on us, giving us false information. Hundreds of my soldiers have died because of him. I'd say his body count is higher than your mother's."

I darted forward. Stupid because there was nothing to hit. I fell against the hologram, its pixels shifting to where I had sat. Magnus sitting in between his soldiers, sipping his alcohol, that ugly grin wrinkling his pale skin.

"Don't you fucking dare talk about her like that," I growled, the sound coming from deep in my chest.

"Touchy. Like father like son." He finished the drink, the glass disappearing in his hands. "Now. The Unit. You're going to show Tick where it is."

"Kiss my ass."

He nodded. "Alright. Listen up, Stray. Don't tell him, stay out of the bubbling pot of the Gray. But you'll leave knowing that Tick is going to be killed by your hand. Imagine that, the first person you kill would be your best friend. Poetic."

My voice catching in my throat just before I was going to interrupt him.

"Or," he said, dragging it, "You can tell him, and we'll let him go. The two of you can disappear."

"W-what would you do with it," I whispered. Tick wasn't going to die because of me. He'd been looking out for me since I came here, but I had been stubborn and he was going to pay the price. That's not how it was supposed to work.

"What else would I use the Unit for," he said, "apart from killing all of the Rogues."

I was on a balancing set. I could tell Tick that I'm the Unit, meaning that I'd just be used to kill everyone. Or I tell Hera that I'm the Unit and be used to kill everyone. I'd be following orders. I'd be a monster. Just like my father.

Or I could look at it the way Hera had said. I'd be paying for one person's sins. Either my father's or Tick's. They'd both killed people. Neither of them was going to be able to pay for their sins alone. I wasn't going to pay for my father's sins. I could repay Tick for everything he's done for me, all the long nights and days of nothing but walking. All the hours he spent consoling me and telling me it would be alright. That I'd find my Mum. He had done things for me my father would never. And if that meant paying for his sins at the cost of…everyone, then so be it.

The Rogues hadn't done anything for me. Nothing but lie to me and give me false promises. But they'd also been friends. For a short period of time, I had more than one friend.

But Tick had been with me from day one. Since I crawled out of Young Haven. Since he came across that boy crawling through the sand, bones threatening to puncture skin, eyes like an owl's. He'd lifted me up, he'd carried me, and he'd taught me how to smile again.

"Fine…I'll tell Tick where it is."