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Malek smiled.

“I know, Nick.”

“I mean it, Mal,” Nick growled. “If any of you see an opening, you run. Take as many of the others with you that you can. Don’t go through that portal with that fuck. I don’t want to know how he reacts if he doesn’t get the magically better life and all the love ad family he expects to greet him on the other side.”

“We will, Nick,” Mal assured him. “We’ll try to get away.”

Nick stared at him a few beats more, at a loss.

“I think it’ll be okay, Nick,” Malek said. “We all love you. That’s got to count for something. Right?”

Nick’s throat closed. He didn’t need to breathe, but he couldn’t speak for a few seconds anyway.

“Okay,” he said, gruff. “I love you too. Tell the others I love them. And get the fuck out of there if you can, Mal. Use your prescient shit. Or your other seer shit, if you can. Use whatever you have to. I mean it.”

“Okay, Nick. We will.”

Nick shut off the comm, feeling a pain in his chest that nearly debilitated him.

For a few seconds more, he couldn’t look at Morley at all.

A few seconds after that, he dragged his mind back to the present.

Even now, he could feel him there. He could feel his mind getting dragged back and forth, from that other Nick back to himself. He could feel the other Nick listening, reacting angrily to some of what he heard and felt, even as he got glimpses of the chateau as his doppelganger and his army of newborns fought to break into the lower regions of the building.

The asshole was still looking for them at least.

That was something, Nick told himself.

He hadn’t found them yet.

That was something.

If they could hold him off, just long enough for Nick to get up there––

“We should call someone,” Morley said from the other bench.

Nick turned his head, staring at him.

“What?”

“We should call someone to help,” Morley repeated. “Any ideas?”

“We’ve been calling people for the last hour.” Nick checked his timepiece. “Make that nearly two hours now. Isn’t the military going up there?”

“They are. They’re too fucking slow,” Morley retorted. “So’s Acharya. At this rate, we’ll be up there before any of them.”

That sick feeling returned to Nick’s chest.

Morley’s face looked pinched too. The old man wrapped his fingers tightly around a cup of gourmet coffee as he stared out the same window where Nick had been staring. Nick watched his friend think and felt a rush of gratitude and affection for him.

Maybe it was Malek’s fault.

Maybe talking to the seer brought up all this emotion in him.

Whatever it was, Nick found himself fighting a lump in his throat again.

He was so insanely grateful Morley stayed with him through all of this.