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The stink of copper and grime creeps into the air, its predatory scent slithering into his nose, curling around the edges of Tommy’s consciousness as he wakes. His hair is matted, thick with sweat and muck – his cheek is sticky – slick, tacky. Blood. Drying now. Too much of it.
He gasps instinctively, but the breath stutters halfway in. The air is thick, warm and dry against his skin. It’s flat – dead – and against it every inhale scrapes his throat, sour and stale. No wind, no hum of electricity, no voices. Just the broken rhythm of his own ragged breathing.
When he opens his mouth, something yanks at his skin. Tape. Dried, hot glue stretches across his upper lip. A blindfold swallows his vision, and beyond that, a rough burlap sack traps his head. Panic spreads at the edges of his chest.
It feels like hours have passed by the time he orients himself – recognizes the feeling of harsh rope against his wrists, cold steel cuffs against his ankles. The metal chair under him scrapes faintly, but it’s fixed to the concrete. No give. No mercy.
His ribs throb. His head pulses in time with his breathing. Nausea sinks into his gut, churning low in his belly. His skin is tender, scraped raw from rope, the tear of tape, the heat of metal.
Memories shatter behind his eyes, falling like broken glass. Evan’s hand on his arm. The 118 trapped inside the lab. The antidote. The helicopter. Bobby’s voice in his ear.
Silence. Smoke. The hollow aftermath.
The days following the attack linger, grays dusting the cold haze of sadness that hung around the station and Evan – his ex, his almost, his could’ve-been, could-still-be – but that pain feels like it belongs to someone else. Memories too surreal to feel real.
The juxtaposition of that world, coated in gray, senses dulled by heartbreak, and this one – burning with pain, a different kind of turmoil – brings even more confusion. He tries to piece together the puzzle of his mind despite the pain he’s in but it’s futile.
His shoulders tingle, blood circulation failing. The ache spreads down his spine, blooming like wildfire. He’s probably concussed. A few broken ribs, maybe more. Injuries he could walk off – if he could walk.
If he gets out of this.
If.
He drifts, consciousness slipping like a bar of soap between wet fingers. Time folds in on itself. Seconds stretch. Hours vanish.
He groans against the pain blooming in his body, tugging at the restraints. He wills them to loosen between breaths, urging them to dissipate with the blink of an eye. To reveal the world around him to be nothing more than a horrific nightmare.
But it’s useless. He’s still bound. Still bleeding. Still here.
“Firefighter Thomas Kinard, stand down. That is a direct order.” The voice crackles through the static-soaked radio, the harsh tone bursting across the airwaves, barking through clenched vowels and echoed anger.
He turns to Evan and finds eyes shining with hope, begging Tommy to save the family he’s longed for his whole life.
Tommy doesn’t need to think twice.
“Major, I’m having – tssk – trouble – krssh – hearing you – tssk – I can’t – krrssh –” He clicks off the radio, throwing a crooked grin at Evan. “Think he bought it?”
Evan laughs – wet, relieved, broken. “Who cares?”
They made it. Got to Hen. Ravi. Howie.
But not Bobby.
The fever hit fast. Too fast. Bobby realized it in the lab but was too driven, too focused on his team to care – mind set on saving Howie with the antiviral that they had procured from Moira. By the time they found out, it was too late.
The speed at which the disease progressed – it didn’t care how hard they tried.
Even with the antiviral, even with Howie’s blood, it wasn’t enough.
They lost him. Bobby fell and the 118 followed. Teetering like dominos against the grief.
Still, Tommy wouldn’t change a thing. He’d jump into his helicopter and haul ass to Evan Buckley for a splinter or a bullet. He’d fly into a hurricane, disobey military orders – land on the fucking sun if it meant Evan would be happy – safe.
It wasn’t enough.
“If there’s anything you need –”
“I need you to leave, Tommy.” Evan’s voice is cold, distant, sharp under the kitchen lights as he vigorously tackles the sixth recipe in as many hours. His hands work the cutting board like he’s carving grief into vegetables. Sauce simmers. Ingredients scatter like wreckage. His eyes red-rimmed, knuckles white.
Tommy reaches out anyway, palm pressing gently at the small of Evan’s back. “Okay,” he murmurs. “I can check in on you in –”
Evan rolls his eyes and huffs in frustration, tears threatening to fall even as he scoffs, holding anger tightly in place as a shield against sadness. “I’m not a kid, Tommy. You don’t have to hover. I’m fine.”
“You don’t have to be,” Tommy says softly. “I’m here.”
Evan doesn’t look at him.
“Until you’re not,” he snaps instead, brittle and harsh. His fingers work the knife across a pepper, but he pauses, closing his eyes and pressing his palms against the counter, his shoulders tight. “I’m sorry, I just…”
“Hey,” Tommy says quietly, no anger in his tone. “No need to be sorry. I can give you space if that’s what you want.”
Evan inhales a shaky breath and nods weakly as he refocuses on food prep.
“I’ll stop by tomorrow.”
“O-Okay,” Evan whispers before he finally looks up, sorrow painting where sunshine usually glows. “Thanks, Tommy.”
But he didn’t.
Stop by, that is. He meant to. Planned on it.
But…he doesn’t remember – the last thing he recalls is the dark narrow foyer in his house, boots falling to the ground with a soft thud as he made his way deeper into the house before waking up in hell.
And it’s getting worse.
His vision swims even in darkness. The thudding behind his eyes grows heavier. The copper tang of blood is fresh again, dripping down his jaw, slick against his throat.
He’s freezing. Shivering. Each breath shallower than the last.
The line between past and present is blurring. He doesn’t know if he’s dreaming or dying.
He doesn’t know which is worse.
Until he hears it.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Heavy bootsteps. Measured. Menacing. They grow, harsh as they echo across the concrete, each one louder than the last. Keys jangle. A breath huffs in fury. The scent of sweat and smoke shifts in the air, and then –
Heat.
A simmering breath ghosts across Tommy’s face.
He braces, muscles coiled, ready to strike, but before he can even move, the hood is ripped from his head. Cold air scrapes against his damp skin, dragging a full-body shudder from him.
A cold brittle laughter hangs in the air around him, familiar. A laugh he thought he’d escaped. By the time the tape is torn from his mouth and the blindfold yanked free, he already knows who’s standing in front of him.
“Major,” he spits, his voice thick with blood and rage. His teeth are slick with it, tongue tasting iron.
“Thomas,” comes the reply, low and formal. The man folds his arms, stiff and proud under flickering fluorescent light, boots polished, back ramrod straight.
Tommy smiles, but there’s no warmth in it. Only venom.
“Still using fear to get what you want,” he rasps, pressing against the dry crackle in his voice as he spits ire into his tone. “Some things never change.”
The Major smirks, eyes glowing with darkness, hair high and tight, salt-and-pepper mustache neat, surgically precise across his stiff upper lip. “Haven’t changed yourself,” he says, “still up to no good with a godawful boy in your passenger seat.”
Tommy lunges, his body moving before his mind catches up. Rope yanks him back, wrists burning. A growl tears loose from his chest, low and raw.
The Major just laughs again as if Tommy’s pain is entertainment, his broad chest bouncing with his sickening snicker. “Stand down,” he says easily. “Save your strength. You’ll need it.”
“What the hell do you want?” Tommy growls, heart racing as his vision blurs red with anger, black with agony, white with blaring heat.
“Your cooperation.” The Major’s voice oozes false sweetness. “You disobeyed a direct order from a Major General, Thomas.”
“I saved lives.”
“You risked them,” he snaps, voice booming against the concrete walls. The single overhead light throws harsh shadows across the cracked gray floor. “And you will cooperate.”
Tommy scoffs, hollow and bitter. He meets the man’s gaze – once his commanding officer, long before that, his father. The one who raised him in silence and screams.
The one who made home into a war zone.
“I stopped listening to you the day I walked out of that house,” Tommy says.
The Major’s arms fall to his sides. His mouth tightens.
“The last time you had a chance to be something decent,” he growls, stepping forward, glaring down at Tommy with decades of anger stacked behind him. “And you failed. I won’t allow it again.”
“Do whatever you want,” Tommy says, voice quiet. Not defiant. Final. “I stopped being afraid of you then, too.”
And he means it.
His childhood was something dark and meager, littered with harsh memories of a too-violent home and a too-desperate mother. By the time he could leave, he ran out the door, leaving nothing but an empty echo of the person he was. He left everything behind in that house. Especially the man who called himself father.
Major General Thomas James Kinard, Sr., United States Army.
Now, he stands over his son, desperate to be more than a shadow of his past, but that’s all Tommy affords him. He’ll die before he betrays Evan. Before he turns on the family Evan’s built, the one the world deserves far more than the pitiful attempt at one that stands before Tommy now.
The Major smiles again.
It feels like hell grinning back at him.
Then, without a word, he steps aside.
Another chair sits across from Tommy, identical to his own. Another body slumps in it, hooded. The man’s chest rises in short, shallow gasps, a wheezing breath rattling through the silence. Somehow, Tommy’s only noticing it now.
It’s like looking into a funhouse mirror, cracked and distorted. A reflection twisted by circumstance. Two prisoners, bound, bleeding, waiting.
He doesn’t know who it is.
Please, he prays silently, bones aching with the force of it. Please don’t let it be Evan.
The figure’s build…broad chest, long legs…it could be him.
God, no. No. No.
Senior walks slowly across the room, dragging out the reveal like it’s a game.
Then, with a flick of his hand, he pulls the hood free.
Tommy’s heart stops.
Not from fear.
From grief.
From horror.
From a soul-deep pain he cannot survive again.
It’s Bobby Nash.
Alive.