"I don't want to live in darkness."

-

CHAPTER THIRTEEN — SINNERMAN

The room was dimly lit by a few lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling.

Five sat on the cot in a corner as Luther faced him, his large frame hunched over my husband.

"Coffee?" I asked, already pouring the steaming black liquid into two mugs.

"Yes please," Five replied with a raspy voice, his eyes gazing around the room slowly as he sighed, dragging a hand through his hair and taking the mug I handed him.

"When's it supposed to happen? This...apocalypse," Luther asked, sitting in front of the cot as I leaned on the brick wall.

"I can't give you the exact hour, but from what we could gather, we have four days left," Five replied, sipping the coffee slowly.

"Why didn't you say something sooner?" Luther crossed his arms.

"It wouldn't have mattered," Five mumbled.

"Of course, it would," he shot back. "We could've banded together and helped you try to stop this thing."

"For the record, you already tried," Five said, looking up at me.

"What do you mean?" Luther asked, his eyes darting between the two of us.

Five didn't reply.

I wrung my hands together and replied for him, "We found all of you. Your bodies."

"We die?" Luther gulped.

"Horribly. You were together," Five's voice broke. "Trying to stop whoever it was that ends the world."

Luther looked away from us as I rested a hand on Five's shoulder, his hand gripping onto mine tightly.

"Wait, how do you know that?" Luther straightened up.

"This was clutched in your dead hand when we found you," Five fished the eyeball from his blazer pocket and tossed it over to Luther, who caught it and examined it.

I almost grinned. "Must've ripped it out of their head right before you went down."

"Whose head?"

"Like she said, we don't know," Five looked down.

"Well, there's a serial number on the back. Think maybe you could try-"

I sighed. "No, that's a dead end."

"It's just another hunk of glass," Five chuckled.

Luther passed the eyeball back to Five just as the door burst open and Diego stormed into the room.

"Piece of shit. Do you have any idea what you just did?" Diego shouted, his eyes blazing with fury.

Luther grunted as he caught on Diego, grabbing him tightly as he tried to reach us.

"Nope! Let me- Get your ape hands off of me!" Diego shouted when Luther lifted him up.

Luther's voice as steady when he replied. "I can do this as long as it takes you to calm down."

"Fine," Diego panted.

"Now, wanna tell us what you're talkin' about?" Luther asked, placing him down.

"Our siblings have been pretty busy since they got back. They were in the middle of that shootout at Griddy's and then at Gimble Brothers, after the guys in masks attacked the Academy, looking for them," Diego pointed at us.

"None of which is any of your concern," Five scoffed.

"It is now," Diego scowled, still panting. "They just killed my friend."

"I bet it's a girl," I said, raising my eyebrows.

Diego glared at me as Luther asked, "Who are they?"

"They work for our former employer. A woman called The Handler. She sent them to stop us," Five replied, twiddling his thumbs.

"Then, soon as Diego's lady friend got in their way, well, fair game," I stated.

"And now they're my fair game," Diego growled, turning to the staircase. "And I'm gonna see to it that they pay."

"That would be a mistake, Diego," Five lifted his head to look at Diego. "They've killed people far more dangerous than you."

"Yeah, we'll see about that," Diego scoffed confidently, slamming the door shut as he exited.

Luther turned to us. "Former employer? What's this really about? And don't give me any of this 'It's none of your business' crap, all right?"

"Well, it's a long story-"

I snapped. "Just tell him, Five!"

"They turned us into the perfect instruments for rehabilitation of the time continuum. Or 'corrections', as they called them," Five said.

I twirled a lock of my hair nervously as I piped up once more. "We weren't the only ones. There are others like us. Beings out of time, fractured, extracted from the lives that they knew."

"We don't know how they got there. But I do know that none of them were as good as me," Five smirked.

"Hey, I could take you down," I dug an elbow into his ribs slightly, grinning as he feigned pain.

"They didn't realise but we were biding our time, trying to figure out the right equation so we could get back. If we could just get back, we knew we could stop the apocalypse. Save the world," Five said.

"If only it were that easy," I muttered under my breath.

"So we broke our contract," Five smirked lazily.

"I tried coming back before, but the timelapse was messed up and he had to do the equations again, and you guys were-" I sighed, dragging a hand through my hair. "-well, difficult."

"So, you guys were hitmen?" Luther asked.

"Yes," Five replied.

"Uh... I mean, you had a code, right? You didn't kill just anybody," Luther sat down.

"No code. We took out anyone who messed with the timeline," I said.

"What about innocent people?" Luther questioned.

"It was the only way we could get back here," Five rubbed his temples.

"But that's murder!"

"Jesus, Luther, grow up," Five scoffed. "We're not kids anymore. There's no such thing as good guys or bad guys. There's just people goin' about their lives. But when the world ends, all those people die, including our family."

I sighed. "Time changes everything."