Chapter 60

FEAR OF FALLING

An hour had passed since takeoff, the cabin’s steady hum broken only by the occasional rustle of movement, or the clinking of ice in Augustus’s drink.

Talia napped, reclining in her seat. Annie sat cross-legged with her boots on the seat, glued to the massive screen. Alexander appreciated that she’d switched to using headphones.

That left Alexander and Augustus sitting in silence. Comfortable enough, but heavy with thought.

Alexander had been replaying the invasion over and over. The army of strangers he’d crushed in a matter of seconds, buckling armor, cracking bones, voices screaming until they didn’t. He’d felt worse for the technicians back at the prison, though even that memory had dulled since, filed away in the recesses of his mind.

The ease of it all unsettled him. His understanding was that there should be more weight to it, but how he felt didn’t fit the way he thought he should feel.

Not that emotions had ever been his strong suit. Seeing and predicting them in others was a skill he’d developed from childhood, but logic usually won over emotion when he had to make decisions or choices.

Asking Annie about it was off the table. He knew she still hadn’t come to terms with the fight against Pandora, let alone the medical techs. Throwing herself into the arena again and again seemed to be her way of bleeding it out, one fight at a time. Talia, on the other hand, could probably cite research and clinical studies, backed by a dozen personal experiences. But he didn’t want clinical, or an essay on trauma.

What he wanted was perspective. Should he feel bad about removing enemies from a fight where his friends were in danger? He even regarded the Throne of Scales’ continued existence as important, especially over strangers that just wanted to kill everyone. And that wasn’t even factoring in Julia.

That part was just complicated, though.

He’d been considering how to ask Augustus. The older man had killed as a soldier, a ranger, and now as a supervillain. If anyone could tell him whether his reaction meant something deeper, it was him.

“Augustus,” he began, “have you ever felt little to nothing after killing someone?”

Augustus paused mid-sip. One brow arched as he studied Alexander over the rim. Then he set the glass down carefully.

“Straight to the point, huh?”

Alexander shifted in his seat. He glanced at his favorite drone hovering nearby, remembering that it was still recording. They’d made the call to record the entire trip, along with whatever they found, so there could be no doubt about the evidence.

“I was going for subtlety.”

“You failed spectacularly.” Augustus leaned back, fingers drumming lightly on the armrest. His gaze wandered out the window for a moment, thoughtful. “But I’ll give you credit. You at least asked instead of brooding about it for weeks.”

Alexander waited patiently, letting the silence do the work.

Finally, Augustus sighed. “The first time I killed someone, I felt everything. Shock, guilt, anger, shame. Not in the moment, but later, when I had time to think about it. I remember every detail. The sounds. Smells. The look on his face. It weighed on me for months.”

He picked up the glass and took another sip before setting it back down. “But after a while, the weight changed. Or I learned to carry it, perhaps. You learn that some fights demand action before thought. Sometimes you second-guess yourself, waking up in the middle of the night and questioning the necessity. Other times, you walk away feeling nothing at all. It doesn’t mean you’ve lost your humanity. It means you’ve adapted or made peace with what needed to be done.”

Alexander frowned. “So, not feeling anything isn’t… a warning sign?”

“Not on its own,” Augustus said. “I’d be concerned if you enjoyed it. Or if you stopped questioning it.”

Alexander tilted his head, considering his words. “I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t even want to do it. But I knew I had to do something, and that the simplest, safest solution was to remove the threat entirely. Afterwards, though, I just… didn’t care. Everyone else was safe, and so the end justified the means.”

“That’s the difference.” Augustus leaned forward. “You are asking yourself the right questions. That’s what keeps you human—holding yourself accountable. The moment you stop asking is the moment you’ve lost something essential.”

Alexander glanced out the porthole. “Thank you.”

A small smile tugged at Augustus’s mouth. “You’ll be fine. And if you ever lose your way, you’ve got people that will look out for you.”

From the other side of the cabin, Annie snorted without looking away from her screen. “If you two are done getting all philosophical, the Barkforce is about to infiltrate a space casino!”

Alexander closed his eyes, choosing not to entertain her. Augustus chuckled, settling back into his seat.

The silence returned, still comfortable, but with thoughts lighter than before.

The quiet hum of the engines had grown deeper since the pilot had dropped altitude. Alexander could feel it in the floor, though he doubted anyone without Metallokinesis would. The hoverjet was an expensive piece of tech, and it showed.

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The plane cut through a thinner layer of cloud, adjusting slightly to match the new course.

Alexander had nudged the flight path down through the avionics, feeding false weather data to justify the altitude change. Now at fifteen thousand feet, right where Augustus wanted them, they were minutes away according to Talia’s calculations.

He turned from the window. The others were strapping on their gear. The jumpsuits Augustus had purchased fit snug. Alexander had woven fine steel wiring into them the night before, so that they could pull off the insane part of the plan. Helmets with small oxygen tanks rested beside every seat except Augustus’s. They each had a slim parachute strapped on.

Their signature masks had been left in storage for this mission.

“We can still bail,” Alexander said. His voice carried evenly across the cabin. “I know this is something I want, but I don’t like how little intel we’re going in with. We could find another angle.”

Talia adjusted the seals on her wrist unit before meeting his eyes. “There’s no other way. This site’s so far off the books the CEO made a point of letting others handle it. We’d need access to military or corpo satellites to see more than what I’ve scraped together.”

Augustus swirled the last of his whiskey in its glass before setting it aside. “Intel or not, waiting is the greater risk. Once Santiago realizes exactly what we stole, they could do anything. Shut the site down. Move the gateway. Double the guards. Lay a trap. Every hour we wait makes it more likely, and that’s assuming they haven’t already found out.”

Alexander frowned at that.

“Sometimes success comes down to timing,” Augustus continued. “This is the window we have, and it’s a fair one. Fifteen thousand isn’t high for a jump, and we’ve covered our options. Alexander brings us down to the roof and handles security. My portal gets us inside. We drop down the elevator shaft, go through the gateway, destroy the anchor on the far side, get what we need, and then extract cleanly.”

Talia crossed her arms. “That doesn’t account for superhuman interference on the way, or on the other side of the gate.”

Annie slammed her helmet onto her lap, grinning wide. “Anyone who comes at us, they’ll get messed up!” Then her grin faltered, and she started breathing quickly, muttering to herself. “I am a superhero. I am a goddamn superhero.” She jammed the helmet over her head and twisted it until it locked in with a click.

When she glanced up, the others were staring. Her voice was muffled through the helmet. “What? Okay, so I’m scared of heights. Bite me.”

Alexander reached out and rapped his knuckles on the dome of her helmet.

Augustus chuckled, then sobered. “Talia’s right, but once we destroy the anchor on the far side, they won’t be able to follow. On-site security is the only real concern. And in my experience, on-site security is always light for secret facilities.”

Talia considered that, then pulled her own helmet into place, the gesture as much an answer as any words she might have said.

Alexander studied them, then nodded once. “Alright. Let’s do it. But if this turns sideways, defensive formation on Auggy, and you get us out. As much as I want this… the team comes first.”

The team drew in tight at the center of the cabin. Talia raised her hand, fingers steady despite the tension. Augustus stood beside her, wand angled down and ready to cast. Annie’s breaths rasped loudly across the comms.

Alexander closed his eyes. The mission depended on whether he could pull this off. Augustus could quickly cast another portal to send them back up into the sky to use the parachutes, but that would mean mission failure. Augustus could handle the parachute, maybe even Talia, but he and Annie would not be able to hit the mark if it came down to it, and that meant landing outside the facility. The world narrowed to threads of metal woven into their jumpsuits, the buckles of their packs, the locks on their helmets. All targets for his power. All things he could grip.

Technopathy gave him finesse finer than thought, every circuit and intended purpose of a machine laid bare to him. Metallokinesis was clumsier. Blunt and difficult. But brute power he had in spades. Enough to guide them, and to slow their descent when it was time.

I can do this. After all, I’m going to use this exact same technique to fly one day. How can I do that if I can’t even handle falling fast?

Talia’s hand shifted, fingers folding. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

Her fist closed. Augustus cut the air with his wand.

The portal bloomed beneath their boots, and the cabin vanished.

They were falling.

Wind tore at them, a rushing void of cold night and sky. Alexander didn’t open his eyes. He tightened his grip on the surrounding metal instead, Droney included, holding all of them together as one. The force of the fall immediately tested his control. They lurched sideways, spinning slightly before he corrected, pulling them back into formation.

Hands found wrists. A circle formed in the void, each of them bound by their grips and the steel threads he refused to let go of.

“Your left,” Talia’s voice crackled through the comms. She was calm and measured, trusting in his capabilities. “Three hundred meters.”

Alexander tilted them with careful pressure, sliding their trajectory. He overcompensated, shooting them past the mark.

“Too far!” Talia’s voice cut through. “Back twenty meters.”

He yanked them back, fighting the momentum. The air howled against them.

Annie’s breathing grew sharp and shallow in his ear. Augustus answered, voice warm and steady. “Breathe with me, Annie. In. Out. In. Out.”

Seconds passed. Three. Maybe four.

His grip slipped. Just for an instant, the metal threads in Annie’s suit escaped his control. Her hand tore from his, and she spun away with a muffled shriek.

“Annie!” Augustus shouted.

Alexander’s focus snapped tight, seizing her suit again, harder this time. He yanked her back into the circle, their hands finding each other desperately. Her death grip on Augustus’s wrist didn’t loosen again.

“Ten meters right,” Talia called. “Twenty-five forward.”

He obeyed, still choosing blindness, shifting them fraction by fraction.

“Over the target,” she said.

Alexander reached down. Technopathy pulsed, and the world below lit in his mind: cameras and sensors, signals humming and painting a map within his awareness. He pressed against them, commanding secrecy.

You see nothing. All systems normal. Report no change.

Compliance rippled back at him.

He turned inward again, slowing their descent. Not too much. Not yet.

“Counting down,” Talia’s voice cut across. “Twelve seconds. Ten.”

He pulled harder, slowing their drop. The strain he felt was more the fear of failure, than from the draw on his power.

“Five.”

The wind eased. His control wavered. They dropped faster for a heartbeat before he caught them again.

“Three.”

He opened his eyes. The rooftop swelled below, filling his sight.

“Two.”

They drifted slowly now.

“One.”

Alexander released his hold. Boots met the roof with a muted thump. No shouts went out. No alarm went off.

They’d arrived safely.