[13]

SASHA DID NOT LIKE LABS. They brought back memories of being caged, helpless, or both, a combination which she decidedly was not a fan of. The stench of rubber tickled uncomfortably in her nostrils, and she held back a sneeze, holding onto the ends of her hair for some sort of stability. She'd tied it up, which rarely happened - usually, the waves were let free to tangle together, do whatever they wanted. Water was always near it, so trying to dry it was never going to work. The Siren, as her name implied, couldn't stay out of water.

Even now, her shoe dipped into a puddle from the huge water tank in the corner of the room, a stream trickling on the slick tile. She hopped over the rest of the puddle, gazing at the damp toe of the shoe dejectedly.

"I wonder when this was last used," she thought aloud, eyes travelling across the entire room.

"Like, last week. See?" Wildfire pointed at an electronic screen. It gave a weak beep, green binary wafting over the static. Sasha considered trying to read it, but before she could, he'd already murmured, "175". Wildfire was good at coding - he'd always been. It wasn't because of the numbers, per se, but because of the thrill of uncovering something new, a pattern that took a while to figure out. And when it was cracked, the grin on his face couldn't compare to anything else.

"Anything useful that you can gather?"

The ghost of a smile passed over his face as he stood at the control panel. "I can set off a detector that bars all the doors for the bottom ten floors, how about that?"

Sasha nodded thoughtfully. "Meaning no civilians can interrupt?"

"Precisely."

She brushed off the thoughts of people wrapped up in high-stakes investigations, people who really needed Crux. Somewhere in Semper, she knew that someone would die because of their decisions today. But it was a price that needed to be paid. They couldn't afford any screw-ups (though it was hypocritical of her to think so) when the fate of Semper City lay so heavily on their shoulders.

"Wait." Wildfire knitted his eyebrows, eyes flashing threateningly in the greenish light of the monitor of the control panel. "Files. There are files. Some of them aren't even encrypted. God, Crux need to up their security game. This-" he prodded the table, "is terrible. No biggie, just seven million people's data, and it's not even secure!" Grunting with frustration, he continued tapping away at the keyboard, growing angrier by the second.

Sasha stepped away, hoping to find something in the endless filing cabinets lining the walls, their metal outside a shiny black that reflected the bright light above them. In that light, the control room looked more like an operating room than anything else, and she shuddered at the memory of the familiar feeling of a needle in her flesh. The high that came after the injections was more often that not followed by a deadly low, screams and agony as they lay in their beds, thrashing in pain and throwing up every morsel of food that met their lips.

"Sash? You okay?"

She forced a smile onto her face. "Yeah. Fine and diddly," she said, but the air had been knocked out of her lungs, so maybe she didn't say anything at all, in the end. Either way, he didn't answer - she hadn't expected him to. Maybe she'd imagined him, too, a vision of black diamond and icy gold, shimmering opalescent edges that blurred with heat. Maybe he was a mirage, a trick of the eye, and once she reached out, he'd be gone.

Sasha sighed, rifling through the cabinet that marked the records starting with "O". It was the second place that she'd decided to look, after discovering nothing under the "P" section. In a folder entitled "Project ORDER" she found a few stray sheets, but not much to go off of.

"It's not a lot, but it's a log from fifteen years ago."

"So before the project," Wildfire mused as he continued typing, his screen flashing with green.

She nodded, even though she knew he couldn't see her. Reading the small black print, she slid her finger along the words, sounding them out in her head. As much as it made her feel like a child, it was better than fumbling aloud. Even around Wildfire, she wasn't sure whether she was ready for him to see her weakness in the way she saw it - blunt and ugly. Sasha quickly realised that the words were in fact names, names that she mostly recognised, along with ethnicities, blood types and more numbers that she didn't understand. She skimmed through it, reading the lines in bold.

Narcissa Regina Corvus, Italian, Filipina, and Vietnamese, Alexa Garcia and Felix Corvus.

Finneas Connor Johnson, Caribbean (mainly Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago), Karen Johnson and Emmanuel Johnson.

Jasper Jaehyung Lee, Korean and Japanese, Marissa Lee and (presumed) Yamato Nakamura.

Rex Lorenzo Corvus, Italian and Vietnamese, Isabella Corvus and Anthony Corvus.

The last one had been crossed out in angry red ink.

A shiver ran down Sasha's spine, and she raced across the room to Wildfire. He had his back to her, tapping at the control panel, but he turned around as soon as she arrived. A slow grin spread over his face as she indicated the sheet, albeit soon disappearing when he began to read it, replaced with a plethora of expressions, notably shock and fear.

"Holy crap. Rex Corvus. That's not..."

"Related to Narcissa?"

"I mean, it's not exactly 'Smith', so I would guess so. And it says they're both Italian. Also, good news. I've figured out how to disable the panic alarm for the top floors, which is where they should-" he stopped suddenly, tearing his away from the keyboard.

A man was watching them from the other end of the room. At least, the figure looked like a man, until he stepped out and Sasha realised that he couldn't have been much older than her. The white light that had previously left him shrouded in shadow now caught every one of his sharp facial features - a long nose, angular cheekbones, and almond shaped eyes. Eyes that looked vaguely familiar, Sasha thought, starting towards him and clearing her throat.

"Oh, Sasha. Do you really think that's gonna work, little siren?"

She shuddered at the sight of a flash of red in his otherwise black irises, smudges of coal on tan Mediterranean skin. The boy raised his hand as Sasha's lips parted, and she let out a choked sound, the force of an invisible hand closing around her neck. Writhing in pain, she set her sights on his figure, trying to race toward him, but the force grew stronger the more she struggled, pressing on the rest of her body.

She tried to scream, but the force clamped her jaw closed, travelling into her mouth and making her gag. Bile rising in her throat, Sasha cast a desperate look at Wildfire, who was busy letting out gurgled shouts as another hand (which she could see as the boy's actual one) closed off his windpipe.

For a moment, they exchanged equally terrified glances, before the boy began to speak, letting go of a now unconscious Wildfire. In vain, Sash tried to stand up, but the invisible force pushed her down till she was on her back, coughing up what felt like every organ in her body. A trickle of blood left her lips, dripping down her chin, dark against her pale skin. She was completely white under the dusting of freckles on her face, charcoal hair stuck to her forehead with sweat.

"Oh, Sasha. I would weep for you, but I'm not sure that would do us much good. You see, in a moment, you will lose consciousness."

"Who are you?" she croaked, black spots in her vision.

"Tut, tut. I'm offended. Crux never bothered to tell you who I was? Let me guess, you never even knew I existed. Such a waste of a face as beautiful as mine." The boy barked a harsh laugh, setting himself on a filing cabinet like a black-haired gargoyle, eyes flashing with red every so often.

He looked utterly demonic.

"I'm Rex Corvus. We're going to be seeing a lot of each other from now on, Alexandra Sperova."

Was she hearing a villain speech? Did Rex think he was an anime character? God, if she hadn't been lying incapacitated on the floor, she would've punched him. She'd never understood Finn's fascination with those shows, but they'd taught her that villain speeches always meant something. Sasha forced herself to stay awake long enough for Rex to reveal his master plan, but he was silent, just watching her.

She considered pretending to be knocked out, but her body took it a step too far, and everything went black.

[~]

"HI, LEXIE," Rex Corvus purred from the other side of the bulletproof glass. Smacking the glass with her fists, Sash tried to open her mouth to manipulate him, but found her voice completely gone.

"Oh?" he cocked his head, and Sasha caught sight of a chain around his neck, though it was gone before she could investigate further.

She turned away stubbornly, refusing to look at him as she studied the room she was in. The walls were white, sharing the same colour as the floor, which was of a material that Sasha couldn't determine, and frankly, couldn't be assed to try. It was easy to recognise the room as one of the holding cells in the North wing, home to the prisoners that Crux didn't particularly want being exposed to the public. Namely, psychopaths, serial killers, etcetera. Not nice people - and they weren't even in their cells.

Sasha recognised a man next to Rex Corvus as the Mask - a former small-time arms dealer who had gone insane, the namesake of the jewel itself, which Finn had told her was now in Narcissa's possession. It didn't surprise her, really. The Mask stared at Sash with yellow eyes, looking more like a monster than a human, his head shaved and words inked on his skull.

The tattoo that plastered his face formed intricate crystals, once more showcasing his adoration for jewels, all joining together to form a mask shape, little stalactites looping around his ears. It cut off at his cheekbones, so his eyes and forehead were completely clear, normal skin, the rest rich shades of red, blue, yellow and purple, though some of the vibrancy had faded over time.

According to the records that they'd spent hours studying, when the Mask had his stock raised by Crux back in the day, he'd taken it upon himself to stab himself in the head with an especially sharp crystal, but ended up meddling with the workings of his brain, rendering him completely mad. It was said that  he skewered forty Agents with his jewels before he was restrained.

Looking back at her cell, Sash considered that it must've been a good fit for a man like him, with those plain walls and floor, nowhere to be and nowhere to go. But she had a lot of places to be - mainly behind Rex Corvus with a gun, blowing his brains out on those pristine white walls. She laughed, wondering whether she was going crazy already.

It wasn't likely, but it was plausible. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe. Maybe no. May-

She cut off her useless train of thought, returning her gaze to Rex with a snarl.

"You're back. Great!" he gave her a manic grin, eyes red once more. "Well, now that you're all listening-" his gaze travelled down the hallway, and Sasha caught sight of a livid Narcissa a few metres away, punching the glass to no avail. Wildfire and Finn couldn't be far away, then, she thought in relief, despite that not meaning very much, since Rex had beat them all.

"In precisely three seconds, a gas will be pumped into your individual cell, containing the serum that amplified your powers in the first place. You will overdose, and join me in our glorious mission, driven insane by the chemicals. Any questions?"

Sasha saw Narcissa roar inside her cell; if Rex heard her, he didn't acknowledge it.

"One."

Sasha opened her mouth.

"Two."

She stuck out her tongue.

"Three."

She bit down as hard as she could, blood spurting onto the white paint next to her.

[end]

what d'yall think of rex?? also oo for a new plot point