Operation 007 (SpyxFamily)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Was this really all Anya's fault?

She wrung her uniform and couldn't look away from her parents who'd been immobilized. Her esophagus was clogged and she couldn't swallow. Something tried to crush her chest but when she clutched at it, nothing was there. Her eyes stung with the suffocating ache that ran from her heart up her throat and nothing was more horrible than the thought that Kai might actually win.

Her parents were trapped and Kai had used to her to cause it. He would kill them and she would never see them again. They'd be dead and it was too terrible to think about.

If she hadn't—she didn't know that he'd left the intercom on. She didn't mean to draw them in, she didn't mean to, she didn't mean to.

If she'd said who Kai really was from the start, would this still have happened? Would it have made any difference? If she'd told them about her life, that she was in danger from the beginning, they could have stopped him, she knew they could've. She'd protected her secrets above everything else and they'd still found out. What was the point of that then?! It would've been better to just tell them! Why couldn't she just have told them?! She didn't want them to die! She didn't want them to die!

Kai pressed the button again on his small device.

"Gnngh!" Loid growled and grit his teeth at the raised voltage and Yor hissed at the pain.

"Stop it!" Anya cried and knew it meant nothing to him as she gained a side-glance in return. "STOP IT!" She screeched. "Stop it! Stop i~~t." And sobbed as a foot beat softly at the floor in distress.

It had gone on too long already. How many times had he done this? How many times would he remind her? She knew already! She knew already! It was her fault! He could stop now!

"This is what happens, I told you. If you can't deal with the consequences, you shouldn't have involved them." Kai replied, unswayed by his daughter's theatrics, and it drove the knife-like guilt deeper.

"Stop iiit." Anya covered her face and crouched on the ground. "Leave them alo~~ne." She bawled.

She wished her parents hadn't come. This was worse than being left here. Now she'd be left here and her parents would be dead and it'd be her fault. She thought they'd be okay, she thought they'd win like they always did and she didn't think it could possibly go this wrong. If only she hadn't lied at the orphanage. She wouldn't have been adopted, her papa would probably have finished his mission, and he wouldn't be here right now, her mama wouldn't be here right now. They'd be safe. They'd never have ended up on Kai's radar at all.

He pressed a button and her parents huffed with relief as the voltage lowered.

"You're the one who brought them here, Anya." Kai spoke with confusing gentleness and exasperation. "This is for your own good. People you involve in your life will always get hurt one way or another."

"No! I'd keep them safe! No one else would get hurt!" Anya yelled desperately and she wasn't sure she completely believed it. If this could happen to her parents of all people, whose to say it wouldn't to anyone else?

"Yes." He said calmly and raised the voltage again. "They would. And your own refusal to learn would make it worse." He insisted with utter surety that he couldn't be wrong, and Anya felt compelled to believe him.

"Stop it!" Anya cried and she didn't want to admit it. The rising fear, the horrible sensation that he was right. "Stop it! Stop hurting them!" She wavered.

"You're the one putting them through this. Do you think this would be necessary if you'd listened to me in the first place?" He said and the reproach stabbed viciously at her heart as if the guilt she had wasn't enough. "You should have stayed home. You can't expect other people to be able to handle you. You're too valuable. Too unique. They'll only hurt themselves trying to keep up with you and though it's not entirely your fault, it is your responsibility." Kai threw back at her as if it was an attack on her defences and they were all coming down. She had no retort, no response and she held her face again wishing she could hide from this. From him. From what he said. She huffed unsteadily through wet sobs and she couldn't stand that it was true. The begrudging recognition that she had hurt Becky just by being friends with her. And Damian who'd gotten caught up in this just by knowing her. Even her not so close relationships caused problems. "I'm s—orry! It w—on't happen ag—gain!" She hiccupped as his words dug deeper and deeper.

"You've said that before." He answered and looked pointedly down at her. "It was a lie."

"It's no—ot this time, it's n—ot!" Anya insisted and it wasn't. People were getting hurt because of her, because she didn't listen. She'd left the lab and everything he'd said would happen had happened. She'd caused pain and problems just by existing outside of Kai's instructions, and she didn't know what hurt more. That he was right. Or that the life she wanted, the world she'd lived in, had only been a short dream that she'd never have again.

If Kai had his way, she'd be here for the rest of her life and she didn't want it. She didn't want to believe it was the best thing for her and her energy was draining, her mental resistance, and she cried harder.

Kai lowered the voltage. "And why is that?" He asked, deceivingly casual, knowing this was going where he wanted.

Anya sniffled and she couldn't steady her breath or words. What he said was true, it had already happened multiple times and she couldn't escape the crushing realizations that drilled deep into her mind. The awful things she'd always rejected, her stout disbeliefs of what he claimed, were melting away and she couldn't deny it anymore as devastating acceptance took the place of her stubborn rebelliousness.

It was the last thing she wanted to believe. It was everything she hated, everything awful in her life that'd she'd tried and tried to forget. The lab was the last place she wanted to be, the kind of life she didn't want, and the fact that it seemed to truly be her only option, learning she had been wrong all this time cracked and tore her open. Her soul was dying in a vat of inky, viscous blackness that dragged it down where it would never rise again and she was left with the truth the director was pressing on her.

"Be—" She tried and it was difficult to speak over the sobs. "Because—" She hated it. "Because I ca—n't have o—ther people." She hiccupped and every word made it more real.

"Why?" The director asked gently.

"They—" She whispered hoarsely and to say it, ached, to admit it out loud. "They ge—t hurt." Anya said and the last word barely came out.

"And?" Kai nudged her on, not allowing her to falter.

"It's—" She struggled and her hands fisted. This was too hard.

"Yes?"

"It's. . . too much f—or them." Anya said and it aligned with how every other family she'd stayed with hadn't kept her. She'd been to weird. To creepy. Too much.

They couldn't deal with her. Her classmates called her eccentric and wild. Her teachers wondered if she was a problem child.

The director sighed as if his daughter had made a painful but important breakthrough and was proud of her. "That's right. I'm glad you're starting to see reason." He said, relieved, hinted with expectations. That this was how it should be.

It wasn't enough and he went further. "And who are these people to you?" Kai spoke of her parents evenly, calmly, though Anya knew he felt anything but.

He wanted her to forget about them. Adamantly and fiercely. Wiped from her affections and memories and Anya didn't want to look up at them. She knew what would happen to them, it was too easy to imagine and if she saw their faces it would just make it all the harder. She didn't want to look, she didn't want to.

But she did and regretted pulling the comfort of her hands away from her eyes.

The sight of them broke her apart. They were paralyzed in place but they shook anyway. They breathed heavily and their faces were drawn and murderous. They were tiring and even their superhuman bodies could only take so much.

They were everything to her, she didn't want to leave them behind. Even if what Kai said was true, she still didn't want to be without them. She loved them, she wanted them to continue being her parents wether it was selfish or not. She knew it wasn't going to happen and a knife stabbed, twisted, and dug into her heart.

The hesitation lasted too long and Kai shocked them again.

"No! Stop it!"

"Who are they to you!?" Kai yelled back at her.

"No one! They're no one! Leave them alone!" She cried desperately and she crept with aimless stress and frustration that she couldn't stop it. That it rested solely on Kai. "They're no one, they're. . . no one. . ." She sobbed into her knees and she didn't know how else to help them.

She hoped they couldn't hear her.