Chelen City: Chapter Twenty-Six, Part One

 Notes: Hoo boy, looks like we're going to get another story about these two. Way to mess with my plans, plot bunny!

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Twenty-Six, Part One

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Chapter Twenty-Six, Part One

 

Ah.

Well.

This was a bit of a to-do. One not at all helped by the fact that Elanus’s first response was to say, “What the fuck!?”

He managed to quell Kieron’s rage long enough to shut off any broadcasting devices, get the door closed, and haul Moreno into the only functional ship nearby—Lizzie. There had been another ship, apparently, one manned by a less intelligent AI than Elanus’s kid, and Lizzie hadn’t hesitated to infect it with a virus that sent it into a self-destructive spiral. Its engine overheated and all the electronics melted to slag. The rest of it, Elanus would have to take care of later. For now, there was plenty to take care of, not the least of which was the total collapse of his plans, all the way through Z.

“Why did you kill him?” he demanded once Lizzie’s hatch closed. “There was no need for that!”

“He was holding you at gunpoint, so I’d say there was every need for that,” Kieron snapped back. “What the hell? You told me you weren’t going to be in any real danger, but that looked like intensely real danger to me.”

Elanus shook his head impatiently. “He wouldn’t have killed me.”

“He would have.”

“He wouldn’t, it would have been a death sentence for him, he—”

Kieron stabbed a finger toward Moreno. “That piece of shit was responsible for the attack that nearly killed both me and his vice-president. Right? He’s been inciting people into a frenzy ever since he was put into custody. You think he couldn’t have made a case for self-defense when it came to killing you? You think he might have bothered at all, when the goal was getting himself off the planet? He. Was. Going. To. Kill you.”

“You don’t know that,” Elanus insisted. “That’s not how we do things on Gania. We only assassinate others when we’re positive it won’t come back on us, and I might not be as popular as he is but I employ over half this fucking city. There would be plenty of pushback over my death, and it would make things incredibly difficult for him.”

“At least he’d have a future!” Kieron shouted. “You’d just be dead! You’d be dead, you think—you’ve got Elfshot, complications are a given, you think it’s bad enough that my brains are scrambled beyond all belief, how would anything get any better with you being stuck in a Regen tank while you regrew a heart? Or lungs?”

Elanus sighed. This wasn’t an argument he was going to win. “Fine. But now he’s dead, and Lizzie doesn’t have a Regen tank so he’s going to stay that way, and you dragged our daughter into your deception of Catie, who’s feeling like shit at the moment—” he could feel her angsting over Lizzie tricking her over the implant “—and we have a hell of a lot of problems to solve now.”

“Do not talk to me about deception when you lied to me about what you intended to do here today,” Kieron said coldly, and Elanus’s ire subsided. He had a point there. “I wouldn’t have had to fly over here at breakneck speed with Lizzie blocking all radars and putting her sister off just to save your sorry ass from being murdered if you’d been honest with me in the beginning.”

“Kieron—”

“Are you ever honest with me?” Kieron persisted, and now Elanus was starting to get worried. “Do you ever actually tell me the truth, or is it always a guessing game when it comes to what you deign to share? Because I’ve got to be honest, if that’s the way things are then I don’t know how I live with you. I don’t know what’s keeping us together other than trauma. Honesty is vitally important to me, Elanus, and I might not be able to remember our relationship but I remember the fuck out of that.”

The worried feeling blossomed into full-blown anxiety. “What are you saying?”

Kieron crossed his arms. “I don’t know. I don’t—I can’t talk about this right now. We need to figure out what to do with the body first. What’s the plan? Come on, smart guy,” he added sarcastically. “Give me a plan.”

He wanted a plan? Fine. Elanus actually had one coming together in his head right now. It wasn’t the plan he’d hoped for, but it ought to work. “We…need to make it look like Moreno got away with it,” he said slowly, sounding it out as he spoke. “Everything that happened in there was recorded, it’ll go to Caria. We need to make it look like Moreno has taken me along with him and escaped. He’s won, kind of, but he doesn’t give his followers any last messages or anything like that. He just…leaves. Anticlimactic, the kind of thing that will take the wind out of their sails. That, on top of him abducting me along the way, will give her a lot of room to work when it comes to discrediting him.”

“You won’t be able to stay here if that’s the play,” Kieron said stiffly. “The girls are good, but the odds that someone will catch sight of you in some way at some point are high.”

“True,” Elanus agreed. “I’ll have to leave Gania. Put someone else in charge of the company again, shut down the house, genuinely step away for a while until it’s safe to come back.”

Kieron narrowed his eyes. “I’m not staying here without you.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Elanus replied. “Actually, I was thinking…maybe you’d pick where we go.” He held his breath. Kieron might be too furious to even consider this avenue right now.

He frowned but paused to consider it. “Why me?” he finally asked.

“Because,” Elanus said as earnestly as he could, “you came here for me. You left Cloverleaf Station for me. You’ve done a hell of a lot of things for me ever since we met, and it’s been hard for you. I can’t imagine how hard it is right now. I want to…” stay with you, fuck, don’t leave me “do whatever you want, for now. As long as it’s remote,” he added. “We can’t risk me being seen abroad for a while.”

“Hm.” Kieron’s hands clenched where they gripped his arms for a moment. “I’ll think about it,” he said at last. “For now, we need to finish making it look like Moreno got away.” He went over to Lizzie’s storage closet and pulled out a mobile cleaning bot. “I’ll go take care of the blood.” He let himself out, and Elanus pressed his hands to his slightly sticky face and suppressed a groan.

He needed a plan to make sure Kieron took him with him, fast.