Revive

by Addison Jane

  I push harder making it to the top. Kace simply smiles at me as I let out a puff of exhausted air. He grips my shoulder, squeezing once, but says nothing in a show of support, then turns opening the door and walks in, leaving it open for me. I take a deep breath steadying my nerves, wiping the sweat that’s gathered at my temples, before I roll myself through the doors, letting Eli who’s just inside close it behind me.

  Eli moves in beside me and rubs his hand into my hair, tussling it about in a noogie making me grunt as he chuckles to himself. “Good to have you back, squirt.”

  I shove his hand to push it away from me as the room all chuckle to themselves while I glare at him. “Careful Hulk, I’m getting better with my aim, my wheels are extremely good at crushing toes.”

  He chuckles and ducks out from behind me crossing the room. “You have to catch me first.”

  “Your time will come, big guy, your time will come,” I jest and he smiles at me with a sly wink, and even though I’m playing it up like I feel fine on the outside on the inside I’m screaming.

  I feel her eyes on me. I know she’s behind me at the front with Noah and Jack, her eyes boring holes in my side, but I can’t bear to look at her. The idea of looking at Everly and seeing any kind of sympathy or sadness in her eyes is too much for me to bear, so I simply won’t look at her. My plan right now is to keep my eyes downcast or to look at anyone but her. Avoidance at all cost. She deserves someone far greater than the monster I’m turning out to be.

  “Okay, now we’re all finally here, we can discuss what Corporal Riggs and her team found in the hole that was left in the desert. Obviously, because the dome was practically annihilated, and the workers inside tried to destroy all the evidence before the bunker went down, there wasn’t a hell of a lot left for them to find. From the small amount of shit they were able to recover, though, I have to say the evidence is alarming,” Jack announces to the room making me look up, my eyes solely focused on him. Even though I can see the outline of Everly beside him, I train my eyes to stare at him and only him.

  “Do you know where she’s gone?” Axel blurts out as he stands from his seat in the corner of the room. I turn to look at him, his eyes drift to me briefly as he winces, looking down to the floor like he’s ashamed he might stare at me. My stomach sinks knowing he must feel guilty for me being in this state.

  I was angry at him for a moment. It was his girl we were going after. It was him I was saving when I got hit by the pillar, so technically this wheelchair is because of him. But laying the blame on him? Yeah, that won’t fix my hip. It won’t mend the wounds on my face, and it won’t exorcize the demons from my mind. Blaming him won’t fix anything. And Axel blaming himself won’t make him a better Operative. What it will do is impede his judgment. He needs to forgive himself.

  Jack exhales shaking his head and looks to Noah who rubs the back of his neck. “Her whereabouts right now is… sketchy at best. We know she’s with Hendrix. He’s traceable. But we haven’t had a ping on him just yet. We’ve had our feelers out everywhere, and as soon as something comes up, Axel, we’ll be on it. I promise you.”

  Axel exhales slumping back into his chair as Jack looks to Everly and nods. I’m not sure what she does, as I look down to my lap to avoid eye contact, but she clears her throat and my muscles tense as I know I’m now going to have to listen to her talking. I can’t not listen to what she has to say, but I can not look at her.

  “So what Riggs found in the bunker is some scary stuff.” Her voice is weak, she sounds tired, but the thing that surprises me the most is how much I’ve missed her voice. I close my eyes fighting the urge to look up and just stare at her. I can’t. I’m not good for her. “There was evidence of biohazardous engineering in the science lab. Weird testing of animals. They were formulating, experimenting, coming up with fluids and gasses, of which, the functionality we’re not entirely sure. But what we do know is that it’s for the Syndicate so we can be sure it’s for warfare purposes. We think they’re using chemists to build chemical diseases and possibly antidotes. We also think this was a test lab, where they did the research and basic studies. The actual manufacturing lab has to be somewhere else, because if they were creating diseases in the bunker in the Mexican desert and it blew up, then we would have heard about the leak by now.”

  My eyes open at her words and my body tenses.

  This is not good. Not good at all.

  Shit like this, so close to American soil. Fuck, this stuff can’t be weaponized and sold to the highest bidder. Imagine a virus, unknown to the world, being put in a bomb and then released in a capital city with millions of people. There could be an epidemic. This shit is a very real threat, and if we don’t stop this branch of the Syndicate, America… hell, the world could be screwed. And Kenzi could be a part of it all.

  The room is quiet for a long few seconds before Tanner blows out a heavy breath, drawing the attention of the room. “So this is bad,” she says as if she needs confirmation. None of us do, though, we all know exactly what this could mean. I personally don’t want or need anyone else to drill it home.

  Jack clears his throat. “This is basically as bad as it gets,” he confirms, his voice a bland monotone. “We need to figure out where we’re going to go from here…” With my thoughts running wild and concentrating hard on ignoring Everly from across the room, I don’t hear the door to Jack’s office swing open.

  “You’re not going to be doing anything from here,” a gruff voice says, drawing all the eyes from within the room. I know him, and instantly my gut sinks, and I sit a little straighter.

  “Edward,” Jack addresses him with a frown, one that told me he wasn’t expecting any visitors, let alone, the head of the damn Board. Kace moves in beside me, his body tense as if he’s preparing for a fight.

  Edward stands at the head of the room, his gray hair slicked back, the color almost a perfect match to his flawlessly pressed suit. He stands toe to toe with Jack, a stern look on his face that tells me for whatever reason he’s here, it’s serious.

  Jack doesn’t back down.

  He pushes his shoulders back, stealing his spine as if preparing himself for the blow that’s about to come.

  “You’re off the case,” Edward announces simply, finality in his voice.

  Jack narrows his eyes at the older man.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding,” Kace spits, taking a step forward.

  My eyes move across the room to Axel as he pushes his body out of the armchair he’s in, watching Edward with a fierce glare that means at any second he could blow, and good ol’ Ed’s going to wear the brunt of his anger.

  Edward turns his eyes to Kace, who’s standing just in front of me, his clenched fists directly in my line of sight. The tension in the room is palpable. I finally catch a glance of Everly, her eyes wide as she surveys the rising emotions filling the room. My stomach churns, I should go to her, I can tell she isn’t used to an environment like this. The stress levels are at an all-time high, and there’s promise of violence in the air.

  We’re the best team this Agency has. Nobody comes close to doing what we’re capable of. Each of us brings our own skill set, and each one vital to making the wheels turn. To hear these words, to be told that we’re being stripped of a case, one this fucking important, it’s like being punched with knuckle dusters in the fucking balls.

  Just as I’m about to wheel my chair forward, Noah places his hand on Everly’s shoulder pulling her back, before taking a step in front of her, protecting her. My mind knows that he’s trying to keep her from the rising tension in the room, but I release a heavy breath, almost thankful he’s done it because I was ready to give up this whole keeping away from her bullshit within this moment and go over there to hold her.

  So in reality, Noah’s actually protecting her from me.

  Someone needs to.

  “You guys not only screwed up the damn mission, I came to hear that you have some kind of personal attachment to Hendrix’s sec
ond-in-charge slash girlfriend,” Edward continues, the man with balls of steel, staring Axel down as my teammate is almost frothing at the mouth to get his hands on the old asshole. Edward’s words have us all stunned, though, and even Axel falls back a step, Eli catching him with a hand on his back for support.

  “What the fuck do you mean?” Axel demands as he finds his footing and his voice.

  “What I mean is, not only are they a couple, but she’s in charge of their biochemical labs and engineers that Garrick Gibbs has on his payroll,” Edward explains.

  “That’s a fucking lie,” Axel screams launching his body forward. “Take that back, asshole.”

  Kace manages to step in, hitting Axel’s body with his shoulder like a linebacker and forcing him backward.

  “It’s true,” Noah countered, my eyes widening as I look over at him. He’s watching Axel fight against Kace, Noah’s eyes are full of sorrow and regret. “Everly and I found all the evidence. I’m sorry, man, but Kenzi… she has a lot more power than we thought.”

  “And she left with them willingly,” Tanner adds, looking over at Axel, her shoulders slumped as if it pains her to admit the truth. “She could have come to us. Honestly, she had time to run—”

  “Shut the hell up,” Axel spits. “All of you… Shut. The. Fuck. Up. I know her, she’s not like that.”

  I clear my throat, not wanting to antagonize him any further, but hoping he might be able to see reason and not escalate this any further, where it ends up with him not only being banned from the case but from the entire Agency.

  “You knew her,” I reply, his body stilling and his eyes only moving over to me. “Bro, it’s been almost nine years. Think about how much you’ve changed in that time. The things you’ve had to do to survive that haunt you…” I pause, watching as my words sink in.

  Kace manages to take a breath, easing up, as Axel stops fighting back.

  I continue, knowing that I have his attention now and that he’s hearing me. “Imagine what she’s been through, man. Imagine what she’s had to do to survive. You may not want to think about it, but she’s not the same girl you once knew.”

  I watch as the fight leaves his body and he falls backward, stumbling to keep his feet. “So what? I just give up on her. I let her rot with the enemy?” he asks, his voice weak and confused with a hitch in his words.

  “No,” I assure him, knowing that all the eyes in the room are on me. I may not always be the serious one or the one that has something intelligent to say, but I still give a shit about my team, and if that means dropping the sarcasm for a few minutes to help Axel get his head around this shit then so be it. “You don’t give up on her. You don’t let her rot. But you change your game plan because you need to realize this might not be an easy search and rescue anymore. This might be more like… an intervention.”

  The room is quiet, all eyes focused on me. I usually like the attention, but in this damn wheelchair, I wish everyone would look away.

  I risk a look over at Everly—big mistake.

  She’s forced her way around Noah’s protective stance, her eyes glimmering in the light as she stares at me with a soft smile. It instantly warms my chest, the heat radiating outward and burning through my body like a wildfire. She’s looking at me as if I were some magnificent armored soldier on a white steed, whose words have swept in and saved the day. Unfortunately for me, I’m just a class clown with a jacked up leg riding a wheelchair. I’m who she wants me to be.

  When the room has finally settled, Edward opens his fat fucking mouth and speaks again. “I’m putting another team on the mission. You’re all too close, too involved, and like we found out from the last failed mission…” his eyes focus in on Axel before moving to me and settling on my leg, “… you can’t seem to keep your emotions in check when it comes to this girl.”

  As much as I feel every single one of us bite our tongues, desperate to argue, he’s right. When it comes to Kenzi, Axel is all over the fucking place. He made shitty decisions, and he didn’t put the safety of his team first. And that right there is our golden rule.

  Jack sighs, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead and squeezing his eyes shut. We’re all looking to him to maybe fight for us, convince Edward to let us take another shot at this, but I can already tell from the look on his face, he knows it’s a battle that isn’t worth fighting for.

  “The other team, they’re still going to take this on? Get in there, take out Gibbs’ operation and get Kenzi out?” Jack asks, finally opening his eyes and looking to Edward for an answer.

  Edward nods. “The mission will still go ahead, and they will be given strict instructions to do whatever possible to bring her in,” he confirms.

  It doesn’t make me feel much better, though. Not only are another team taking on a mission that should be ours to finish now we’ve already started it. But the way Edward spoke was not as though he wanted to bring Kenzi back to Axel, but that she was the enemy here, and bringing her in meant interrogation, isolation and God only knows what else they’ll do to her to try and get the information that they need.

  Axel’s body slumps down into a chair and Eli places a supportive hand on his shoulder, while Kace stands in front of him, his arms folded across his chest. “You don’t know Kenzi has turned,” Kace protests with confidence.

  “And you don’t know she hasn’t,” Edward strikes back.

  “All right, that’s enough,” Jack cuts in, stepping forward, so he’s in the center of the room. “Fine, we hand over the case. The SO7 is out,” he answers with regret. “But Everly, she isn’t part of the SO7, and she has the information and the skillset you need and that you won’t find anywhere else in The Agency. So she stays in.”

  Edward looks over his shoulder to where Everly is standing, her eyes wide. She opens her mouth, then closes it again as if she wants to argue or refuse, but Jack quickly hits her with a look that tells her to be quiet. The muscles in her throat move as she swallows the obvious lump inside. Her smooth skin is flushed, the stress of the situation making her blood rush, tinting her skin a pale pink. I want to reach out and touch, my fingertips aching to brush across it knowing it will feel like silk.

  She licks her lips, and I’m suddenly wondering how long it would take me to wheel my fucking way through this gray-haired asshole, taking out his knees in the process, and pull her into my lap.

  “Fine, she stays,” Edward agrees finally, before dismissing us all as he turns his back to the room and walks straight out the door, pulling it closed with an anticlimactic click.

  Everly instantly turns her gaze on to Jack. “I don’t want to stay on the case if the team isn’t on it. I don’t know these other people, Jack. How am I meant to—”

  “You’re going to do it because we need you in there,” Jack demands, his eyes watching the door, his voice low. “We all know that the SO7 is the superior team for the job. We know whoever else he puts on this is gonna fuck it up, and we also know they will not be cautious when it comes to Kenzi’s safety. To them, she’s the enemy. If push comes to shove, they will treat her like one.”

  I know what he’s doing now. It’s not because Everly is the best, although I know that she’s up there and can easily give Noah a run for his money, no, it’s because Jack needs a man on the inside. He isn’t about to let them go at this like a seek and destroy mission. Kenzi means something to Axel. Fuck, she means everything to Axel. And while he may have let his heart get in the way of his head on the last mission, that feeling stood firm.

  The SO7 isn’t just a team. We are a fucking family. We feel each other’s pain, and we fight for each of us to be happy, to protect the people we each care about. None of us are going to let some cocky assholes go in and try to bring these people down and risk Kenzi’s life. She matters to Axel, so she matters to us. Whether she’s bad or good is irrelevant at this point.

  Everly clears her throat. “Well, when you put it like that.” She lifts her chin, a sparkle in her eyes before she looks
to Axel, meeting his gaze. The tension that had been between them before gone and I can see a new found respect as he looks back at her.

  She’s going to stand her ground.

  Jack may have said she isn’t part of this team, but she’s about to go out there and do whatever she can to make sure we know every little bit of information that’s passed through. She’s going to risk getting kicked out of here, risk her dreams of following in her father’s legacy, so she can support us. She couldn’t be more a part of this team, and as I watch her eyes light up with a devious excitement, pride swells in my chest.

  She will fit in just fine.

  Walking with Jack toward the general classified briefing room, I feel nervous. Sure I’ve seen the SO9 team before, walking around The Agency when the SO7 aren’t here, acting like they own the place. But never did I ever think I’d have to work with them. The SO9 are the most recently instated special ops team. Every few years, new teams are developed as older teams drop off. Some think that the name has to do with the number of operatives that are in a team, but it’s simply not realistic to do it that way when you consider loss of life, which is high in this line of work. The number is simply the delegation of order. For instance the SO7 were the seventh team to be instated, it had nothing to do with the fact they had seven members – that was just a coincidence. The SO9 are the ninth team and so on and so forth. And even though the Nine are the newest to The Agency, I’m still a little uncertain about how I should be acting around them.

  “You’ll be fine, Everly. Sure they’re a little more… boisterous than the Seven, but hold your ground, and you’ll do well,” Jack consoles, nodding his head to me as he pushes open the door to the vestibule.