Atlas's jaw tightens. "Upstairs. Packing."
I'm up the stairs before he can say anything else.
Zero's door is open. He's standing at his bed with a black duffel half-full of clothes. His letter is on the nightstand after he picked it up off the front drive, the edges crumpled where his hand has been gripping it for hours. He’s throwing shirts into the bag like he’s sick of this place and won’t stand to stay here a minute longer.
"No," I say. From the doorway.
"Don't," he hisses.
"Zero. No."
"He hit him." Zero's voice is flat. Emptied out. The voice he uses when the feeling is too big for tone. "Our father put his hands on Max and split his face open and Max is gone and I amnotstaying in this house."
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know. Anywhere. A hotel. The car. I'll sleep in the fucking parking lot. I am not spending another night under a roof that man owns."
"Zero—"
"He hit him, Bane!" He stops packing. Looks at me. His eyes are bright and wild and the thing living behind them is the thing I have spent a decade monitoring—the Zero who goes past the line and doesn't come back. "He hit Max. In the face.Max, the last person in the fucking world who deserves that shit. My own father–"
He rolls his neck, his eyes going wide as if the world is crumbling around him and he’s seeing it for the first time.
He’s losing it.
"I know." It’s all I can say. I can’t excuse what Richard did either. I want to kill him with my bare hands.
Zero’s eyes meet mine. His are blazing and somehow I can feel through the bond that his entire body is on fire. He’s burning himself out like the last light before a battle. He feels nothing but pain. "Then you know why I'm leaving."
"I know why you want to. I'm telling you not to."
He stares at me. The bag is open between us. His knuckles are white around a shirt he hasn't let go of.
"This is the only address Max has," I say. Quiet. Steady. The voice I use when Zero is on the edge and the edge is real. "If he's looking for us—when he's looking for us—this is where he comes. If we're gone, if we've scattered, if you're in a parking lot somewhere and Atlas is at the office and I'm at a hotel—he won’t know where to find us. He comes home to an empty house and a stepfather who just hit him and no brothers."
Zero's hand tightens on the shirt.
"We stay," I say. "We stay and we wait and when he shows up—because hewillshow up, Zero, he wrote us love letters, he is coming back. Or we’ll hunt him down if we have to, but if he finds us first—we are here. All three of us. In this house. Where he left us."
The silence stretches. I can see him running it. The math. The cost.
He drops the shirt into the bag. Doesn't unpack. Doesn't zip it. Leaves it open on the bed like a held breath.
"If I seehim, If I see…" Zero’s voice trails off. Low. Meaning Richard. "If I see his face today, Bane. I will put him through a wall."
"Then don't see him. Stay up here. I'll bring you food."
"I'm not a dog you're crating."
"No, you're my brother and I'm keeping you out of a felony. Sit down. Stay."
He almost smiles. Almost. The ghost of it, the reflex, before the weight of the morning crushes it back down.
He sits on the edge of the bed. Next to the open bag.
I leave before either of us says something that makes this harder.
∞∞∞
