Joe
Joe’s first suggestion is to run through the building, all guns blazing. But if Copley’s behind this, it means more manpower than Quynh or Booker alone could have mustered. He runs through various plans over the centuries, sharing the ones he feels are useful until Nile finally agrees with one.
They steal building plans first before adapting their plan. Joe tries not to let the thought of Nicky hurt detail him, but he’s lost without Nicky just as the night sky would be lost without the moon.
Screw years, they’d spend decades in Malta when this was all over if Nicky wished to.
The plan involves underground sewage tunnels and cramped space that Nile’s trying her best not to be terrified by. He makes a joke that perhaps it’s claustrophobia that had her flying out the window over taking the elevator at Merrick’s. She laughs for his sake and he reaches back to take her hand in his.
The tunnels let up into a small room in the building that’s been reduced to rubble. Nile dry heaves against a broken wall the moment fresh air hits their faces again. Its pitch black darkness, even the moon’s barely a sliver in the sky.
It’s what the world should look like he thinks, when Nicky and he are apart.
Nile gives him a nod and he sets off towards the other side of the building. Taking the crumbling steps two at time, he comes to a hallway. Peering in it, he counts four guards total. Far, far less than Merrick.
It takes Joe all of a minute before he takes them all out. He kicks open all four doors, revealing no one. He tries and fails to curb his frustration as he calls to Nile through the earpiece.
She gives him an all clear as well. They retrace their steps to where they started and Joe’s about to suggest another split up when a scream pierces the air.
He’s echoing it, moving towards it before he’s even realizing what he’s doing.
My Nicky. Nicolo. Nicolo. Nicolo.
I’ll kill them. I don’t care who they are, I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them.
But Joe knows Nicky’s screams, the extent of injuries they connect to. This scream means none of them.
This scream is reserved for when one of them gets hurt, and Joe’s heart is suddenly a leaden, lifeless thing in his chest as another name fills his mind.
Andy. Andy. Andy
“Nile come,” he says absently, already moving. His gun’s raised when he bursts into the room, and he remembers Nicky’s urge for him to exercise caution all too late. Nile remains out of the sight to kill off the last of the guards.
A bullet pierces his heart, followed in quick succession by two more. He barely registers it even as he falls to his knees, barely registers the fact that it’s Quynh, the sister of his heart, who pulls the trigger. 500 years he hasn’t seen her but his eyes still go to Nicky first, they always do. He follows Nicky’s panicked gaze with dread that feels like crushed glass running through his veins.
The pain in his chest vanishes as everything quietens. He’s never known such oppressive silence, never felt anything quite like this and he hadn’t thought that was possible after being alive for near millennia.
It’s not pain, not yet. It’s just unbearable nothingness and for a second he thinks perhaps the bullets to his chest have really killed him this time.
But Nicky is still alive so that can’t be the case.
Joe’s died more times then he can ever count but this, this is the closest he’s ever felt to death. He feels like a child again in the face of it, scared, helpless.
He sees nothing but Andy, eyes blank and lifeless as she seems to stare straight at him. He’s seen her wake a thousand times from death and a mildly hysterical part of his mind’s laughing cruelly for ever thinking he knew what death was.
Because for the first time he realizes death isn’t the absence of a beating heart. It isn’t vacant eyes or pale skin.
It’s the departure of a soul.