Jazzy sprung into action, running ahead of us down the hall of the train, heading for the door leading outside. I made sure the train arrived early, that the crowds welcoming me would arrive hours later, that no one would see my fall.

Next came Zabdiel, who rolled his sleeves up as he followed her. I could see the air around his hands shimmer with heat. The door had to be opened by Onus blood, it was the Onus entrance, not the one open to all. There was no use of getting Ilyaas to the tunnels if he could be followed seconds later.

Zabdi would open it for Ly, I would guard him with my body.

The alarm blared while I pushed Ilyaas in front of me. "Follow them." It was my turn to guard his six. "Go! Go! Go!"

The alarm rang for Ilyaas Malak, and I knew the guards were ordered to shoot to kill. All hopes of hiding him quietly flew into the wind.

It must have been Uncle Hassan, or Natasha, or one of the ministers... but it made no difference now. All I could do was get him into the tunnel and face the consequences, whatever they turned out to be.

My hand didn't leave Ilyaas, and his eyes didn't leave Zabdi's back.

I could see the guards start rushing to their positions outside, seeing through the window. They were getting ready to barricade the door.

But this was a shock to them, the order surely didn't come from me, as their uniforms gleamed in white, not the imperial purple. They were less trained, less poised, less deadly... but deadly, nonetheless.

In my momentary clarity, I knocked on every door along the hall and screamed "GET OUT!"

The sleeping princes awoke with shock and ran down the hallway like mindless ants. They flooded into the entrance, our shield of precious heads no one would dare shoot. Off they went, out the sliding doors and into the cold marble floor of the King Solomon the Second, Imperial Station.

I shivered. The marble was the exact same as those in the crypts.

When the cold air of the early morning hit our faces, so did the blare of the megaphone. "EVERYONE HANDS TO YOUR HEADS!"

The clicks of rifles loading their ammunition into place filled the grand receiving hall in echoes that sounded like rain. But no water would fall today, only bodies.

That was when Jazzy roared.

The princes and billionaires fell to their knees as Jazzy surged forward, knocking down guard upon guard just as I asked her to. Fast... faster than any animal was supposed to be, she dodged the hail of bullets the barricading line set free on her body.

Soon enough the first line was breached, and while the princes cowered behind us, Jazzy pushed forward, closely followed by Zabdi, by Ilyaas, by me.

"Liz-" I looked back only once, sky blue eyes piercing mine, and before I let the guilt drown me, I ran.

We evaded the running guards, and they stopped shooting the moment they caught sight of my silvery gold hair.

Gunshots rang across the expanse of the train station, in a perfect incoherent dissonance with the siren. I could see the floor bleed in and out of white and scarlet, reflecting the lights of the alarm, marring my sight.

My throat was constricting, knowing where we were headed, and the air around me seemed to be buzzing.

The needled entrance was under the great portrait of my grandfather, in a high-ceilinged hall with indoor balconies. I remembered doors lining the walls of the hall, lining the second and third floor. It was so open, and when we got there, I knew the enemy would have the advantage. It would be like shooting ducks in a barrel.

Calm down. Zabdi whispered in my head with the least calm voice I've heard him with.

We're gonna die. I whispered back, his head and eyes straight forward.

We won't. He replied.

That's worse.

When my feet finally stepped into the hall, my heart filled with hate.

It was his face. Fifteen meters of his face across a brick wall; dark raven hair, sun-kissed skin, almond-shaped heather eyes, and the smile that reminded me of every scar on my back.

He was hovering two meters above the ground, the hidden elevator's outline resembling his throat.

That moment of anger was my moment of weakness, that instant of evanescent distractedness made me overlook the quiet gleam of black metal awaiting to fire.

Click.

All their guns were loaded, all the guns pointed at Ly. I turned to face Ilyaas, willing him to look, but my eyes locked with Zabdi's instead.

I swore his irises were flames.

I saw him swallow, grit his teeth, and smile. He pushed his hands forward and raised them above his head.

Heat exploded from his body and the red and black darkness was pierced with columns of fire, the molecules in the air exploding into light like a thunderstorm.

White Coats on the first floor screamed in agony as the flames wrapped them in a blanket of pain. I could hear the fire, I could feel his fear, I felt him bury it.

"RUN!" Zabdi let out a blood curdling scream, and I grabbed Ly's hand and bolted for the wall.

I pushed him in front of me, dashing, blocking his back from the bullets I knew I'd survive. As I passed Jazzy, she seemed unfazed by the flames, and blocked the unburnt back-up running for us by going for the kill. I didn't know how many fell, all I knew was that she was covered in crimson.

Suddenly, I heard the gunshots from the floating balconies ringing across the floor. I looked back once and saw how Jazzy hid from the bullets by walking through the flames and into the shadows, but I saw one hit her. She didn't flinch.

With my feet, twenty feet from the wall, I heard Zabdi. The stentorian sound his knees made when they fell to the floor was muffled by his resounding scream.

When I looked back, he was bleeding from the torso, falling on one knee.

"RUN, ILYAAS!"

But where?!

"GET OUT OF HERE!" Zabdi screamed in agony.

Jazzy roared behind the fire from pain from God knows what. Ilyaas's heels were getting shot at, he was running for a dead end. I froze in the middle of the floor, the bullets missing me by mere inches. Zabdi was hit again. Ilyaas was hit too, he was running, crashing-

I willed the soldiers to forget their targets, but it was no use. I willed them to jump from the railings, but nothing happened. I had to touch each and every one of them to make anything happen...

But I felt the tingle again; the feeling of a billion atoms in the air. The certainty felt like the memory of learning how to walk.

I reached my palm forward the way Zabdi did mere moments ago, and I swore the air was alive. I reached out to atoms between every body shooting down on us; down their noses, down their throats, down their lungs... and pulled.

One by one they collapsed, flame by flame, the fires went out. It rang in my ears, the vacuum I left. I let go in an exhale only we got to breathe. But with the shield of fire finally out, we were open targets.

I reached Ly in a second, my back covering his, my hand reaching out to the concealed needle in between the bricks. I heard a different gunshot, and my heart sank. Just as I turned, I saw from my peripheral how Zabdi was hit in the stomach again, his scream cutting the air between us like a knife.

"SILVER!"

And that was when Ilyaas pushed me forward, my hand finding the needle, bleeding into the metal. The door opened and I surged forward, pulling Ly with me as three shots rang in my ears.

I pushed the button down. The doors closed around us. I gave a sigh of relief, my eyes finding Ly's face.

And then Ilyaas fell.

The three bullets found themselves in between his ribs.

My hands immediately went to the up button, too shocked to address the fear welling up in me.

"No." Ly whispered, pushing it down, shaking.

My knees gave way, my fingers finding their way to his wound, keeping pressure there, wondering if it would be my second time in the night holding a dead man.

"I can't-" Ly says, his voice cracking, his eyes looking at me as if to memorize every hair and color. "I-"

"Shh" I whispered, the tears marring my vision of his beautiful face. "There are medics at the bunker. You'll be okay." Lies. All lies. I had only lies.

"You have to say goodbye." A tear ran down his face, the way he was resigned to his fate ripped me into pieces. "You couldn't do that with-" He coughed, and blood stained his lips. "Are you injured?"

Even at the threshold of death, he thought of me over himself.

"WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!" I kicked at the elevator doors. "I WOULD HAVE HEALED!" I screamed, my voice rattling the steel box. "I'm Onus." I whispered. Defeated.

I'd singlehandedly sealed all our fates.

He raised his eyes towards me and smiled, asking me to do the same - to do him this last small service. The last.

His hand struggled to touch my face, and when his fingers finally, weakly, grazed my cheek... I saw everything.

I saw his mother's face seconds after his birth. I saw his father raising him up over his head. I saw his arms - my arms - holding his brothers for the first time. I saw his father burn.

I saw a star fall from the sky into the sand. I saw a girl with the palest gold hair, and the cut on her head sew itself back into place.

I felt that girl touch my hand and say my father's name even though I never spoke of him since he died. I heard the crashes of the shells above my body, and hers against me absorbing the shock.

I saw her look at me with eyes I did not deserve.

I saw her bloody back and the whip in my hands for hundreds of times and I wanted to die. I saw her kiss my cheeks after I tried ending it all. I heard her grandfather order her death, and I saw my hands kill him with a drone meant for her. I saw my hands plunge a silver knife into a friend's back.

I had no regrets.

And I understood... That if she knew how much I loved her, she would marry me. And if she married me, she would die for me and for the sins I committed in her name.

But she must live... Because I loved her. I loved her. I love her.

He loves me.

"I know." Ly's voice snapped me out of his memories, of how his eyes saw me. "I've always known... And I love you." He smiled at me with that smile he only had for me... and I knew he would no longer speak. Ly wanted those words to be his last.

I pressed my lips to his. Weak, cold, our last.

"I love you." I said into the void of death I was losing him to.

"I love you." I said knowing it would be the last time I meant it in my life.

"I love you." I said to the friend who loved me enough to live and kill and die for me.

"I love you." I said, willing my hands to let him see himself through me and failing.

"I love you." I said to Ly as his eyes lost the golden light I clung to for dear life.

"I love you." I barely whispered, feeling myself die.

"I love you..." I said to his deaf ears, hoping that ghosts were real and could hear my hopeless anguish.

He was gone.

There was no denial.

Grief. It was grief, and I maybe recognized it from years past.

This pain was different, though. This pain was so light it was almost not there, and yet so heavy everything seemed to be made of it. It was as if gravity was made of agony and there was no way I could escape the pull. I could feel it then... The eternity I would have to live alongside it.

My only consolation was that we heard the last same words echoed to each other. I intended them to be the last words I ever said and heard.

And then I broke.