Dark Matter - The Mors Mortis Trilogy Book 2

Chapter Four - Blood and Bullets

"How many people did we lose?"

Jared remained silent, ignoring his father's question and staring blankly at his hands. The blood speckled across them stood out like grotesque freckles and he felt an overwhelming urge to sprint to a bathroom and scrub it all off until his blood was pooling at the surface instead.

It'd only been 3 hours since they'd attacked the S.I.S and already news articles were erupting across the internet. They'd known taking the fight public would be risky, that the S.I.S would control of the media, but none of the rebels thought they'd have to face that problem. Seth Azemar was meant to have died today. It was meant to be over.

He heard Evans clear his throat.

"There might still be some stragglers who escaped into the city," he said. "But only 10 people who were out in the carpark have returned. We've lost more than half our men."

The silence that followed was loaded. Jared could feel the pressure pushing against his ears until it was broken by a crash. He looked up to find a lamp smashed on the ground, and Brenton pacing beside it, his hands clenching and unclenching repetitively.

Jared could see Brenton's fury churning below the surface and for a moment he stared. That was how he was supposed to be feeling. His anger should be pumping off him, virulent and toxic. He should want to destroy Leah for what she did, but all his mind could process was the way she'd looked at him as he'd held his gun to that redhead's temple. Her eyes had been like green flames, and he'd felt himself burning in them.

"It was a complete disaster," Brenton muttered through gritted teeth. "We're lucky any of us got out of there alive! They had no idea we were coming. We took out their defences and alarm systems. So how did it go SO BLOODY WRONG?"

It took Jared a moment to realise that Brenton was staring at him, his gaze cold and merciless.

"I don't know," Jared said sharply. "I didn't know Leah could do that."

Evans' head jerk towards him, along with the other ten men in the room. They knew as well as Jared did that his reply had been dangerously unapologetic.

Brenton's eyes narrowed and Jared could sense his father's anger reforming, turning its head straight towards him, like a roll of thunder. It made him feel an ugly satisfaction, a fierce relief that finally he'd get a chance for some sort of release – some way to vent the panic and frustration that'd been building inside him from the moment this plan formed.

"Well," Brenton said through gritted teeth, "maybe you should've figured that out before letting her go back to her goddamned family without consulting me."

"You're the one that made that machine we used on her," Jared snapped. "You should've told me about the side effects."

"I didn't know what happened would be a side effect!"

"WELL THAT'S EVEN WORSE!" Jared screamed.

For a moment, the room was entirely silent and Jared blinked, shocked at his outburst. He'd never yelled at his father like that, not ever. He could see Brenton's second-in-command, Parker, sneering at him out of the corner of his eye and he felt suddenly overwhelmed.

He shouldn't even be here. The chaos Leah created back at the hotel should've killed him, and he felt strangely cheated that it hadn't.

"How do you expect any of us to keep fighting for you when you don't even understand what you're doing yourself?" Jared finally asked.