DIVISION 52 - BOOK II

CHAPTER XXXII

P R O X I M O

"Spare me the lecture." I grunted.

She slid into a desk chair and pushed off the floor spinning like a careless girl in her parents office. The only notable difference were the weapons on her hips and the way she rolled her eyes like she didn't have the patience for her own words.

I waited and Scorpion gazed out a wide pane of glass looking out at the outer Sectors.

"I don't care." She said finally, turning in place. "I just needed to look like I did."

I paused and watched her expressional face. Those gold eyes that betrayed nothing to me.

"Here I was thinking we were such professionals." I snorted, moving to the other side of the wide glass and tucking my hands behind my back.

"I would like to know what's got you so... emotional." She mocked the last word like it was foreign. It was foreign to me.

"Dazz."

Her smirk disappeared and her feet hit the floor harshly.

"Need me to throw her in a hole and throw away the hole?" She asked slowly. No bluff in her words.

I huffed out a harsh breath and met her burning stare.

"She was blackmailed by Hades. Apparently she had many opportunities to kill both you and Makayla." I added, watching that lethal expression darken further. She ran a finger carefully along her dagger sheath as she considered my words.

"I would tell you she's lying but even I can't deny the truth that I had always questioned... How the hell we made it out of that tower alive if Dazz was always working with him." She finished quietly. "–that does not mean I'm not still ready to kill her the moment you let me."

I snorted and watched lines of fusion crafts race by in lines of the sky.

"You wouldn't be Scorpion if you forgave easily."

"Or forgot." She murmured, releasing the blade. "She still almost made that escape pod a death trap. I had to actually think my way out."

"God forbid." I muttered.

"Where does that leave us, Proximo?" She spoke clearly. Like a finely made knife.

I slowly met her expectant gaze without a solid answer. "I was hoping you would tell me... That I wouldn't have this–this liability so close."

She laughed humourlessly.

"She is no family of mine. I have no issue tying a loose end, it is only you that keeps her breathing." She stated, spinning in the chair freely once more. My hands tightened behind me.

"I let her go, she plots the next way to cripple the Division. I keep her alive and she rots in a cell here. There are no options available to me." I growled. "Everywhere I look there's another waiting to stab us in the back."

"Stop being dramatic." Scorpion drawled, her cool making me lose my own faster. She raised a hand before I could start a new argument. "Enemies I can handle. What I cannot handle is enemies close to my allies." I waited for more. "At least not in my city. I can fund her a new start in another continent with a new identity–but that is as far as I go with her, Proximo." She finished slowly. With a weight.

It was far more than she had deserved and she knew it. Yet still the leader of the Division watched me calmly and offered a new beginning to one who had condemned her present.