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Chapter twenty

Still Alive

Niko wanted to be alone for this. He’d made his way out to the Sonadora and sat in the cabin.

The ship was quiet, the silence of the giant, empty hangar beyond pressing down on him.

He could hear the whisper of his heartbeat in his ears, warning him away from what he was about to undergo, speaking its dread.

He opened her folder. Niko didn’t want to see this.

If it had been difficult to force himself through watching the other victims’ videos, this was nearly impossible.

He’d never gotten to meet Cleo Kestrel, but the abundance of devotion and feeling Elliott had for her had spilled intrinsically over into Niko as well.

Elliott had loved her deeply, so Niko couldn’t help but love her too.

She was like his own family now, yet someone he would only ever know through her living proxy.

He’d become acquainted with her smile and natural, bright charm through the myriad photographs in Elliott’s case files.

He had nothing but admiration for her through Elliott’s stories of a sister’s selfless love.

She had rescued Elliott in so many ways.

She’d taken the hits for him, standing up to their cruel, pathetic excuses for parents.

She’d taken him away from their abuse and given him a real home.

She’d worked hard to put him through school, so he could have the best chance possible for a good life.

She had never expected anything in return.

And, above all, she had loved him—a gift that was painfully rare, Niko was finding, in Elliott's life.

Niko had made a promise to her that he would carry on her legacy of watching over Elliott. They shared a posthumous bond through that oath.

And now, he was going to watch her die. He was going to watch her suffer.

Every part of him rebelled against it. In some ways, it was worse than even facing down the security footage of his own family’s deaths.

Theirs had decimated him, had scraped his heart out from its chest cavity, leaving only a gaping wound behind.

But their deaths had been clean, and quick, too.

He knew Cleo’s wouldn’t be.

But he owed it to Elliott to see what he’d had to, all on his own. To witness the final cruelty of the Honeybliss files. To find who had really killed Cleo Kestrel.

He played the first video. It started the same as before, with Cleo at every disadvantage, tied up in a large warehouse, Uru Taal looming over her, grotesque as a monster.

Niko kept looking away, but not looking didn’t stop it from happening.

Not looking didn’t mute the sounds of her pain and pleas, either.

Someone was filming it from their phone, a Heenva with a telltale blue thumb that occasionally blurred the corner of the video with sloppy filming.

The video ended, and she was left still alive.

Niko felt ill. It was hard to even breathe.

It would take a lifetime to recover from what he’d witnessed in that ten-minute video.

How Elliott had ever sat through this, he couldn’t fathom.

He didn’t know if he could move on to the second and final one.

He felt like he needed days to heal between them.

But he didn’t have that grace available to him. So he opened it, too.

This one was longer, and appeared to be possibly days later.

Cleo was bound against a far wall, looking worse for wear.

Uru Taal was there again, as well as his son, Duuru Orkan.

The same clumsy-handed Heenva was filming, his amused chuckle occasionally coming from behind the camera as though something was quite funny to him. Niko had no idea who he was.

All around them in the warehouse were emptied bottles of alcohol, drugs, and various weapons, as though it were a makeshift seedy compound. No—that’s exactly what it was. Niko’s grip tightened on the arms of his wheelchair as he watched.

The camera shook wildly as the Heenva stepped forward and drove his boot down hard into someone Niko could now see had been kneeling on the ground, previously out of the shot, hands bound behind him. A second captive and victim. The figure fell forward before moving to right himself—

All the air left Niko’s lungs. He paused the video.

A familiar mess of pale gold crowned the head of the kneeling man. He would recognize it anywhere.

Elliott . Elliott was there.

Niko had never known. He had never realized. He’d never even thought that he could ever have been there, too.

He’d never watched the video.

And Elliott hadn’t mentioned being there, not even once. It was probably locked so deeply inside him, so wildly, searingly painful that he couldn’t . He’d likely just assumed that by giving him the files, Niko had known what he wasn't able to say.

Everyone else knew it.

Everyone but his idiot, fuckup self. Lady Death's quiet conversation with Elliott. Zann's perplexity at Niko’s ignorant comments. Even fucking Bubblegum had known, with her cruelly aimed taunts that had wormed their way beneath Elliott’s skin.

This very video was out online now. Everywhere. It was all around him, and had always been. He was the only one in an entire galaxy who hadn’t known what his own boyfriend had endured.

Elliott had never just been avenging his sister’s death.

He’d been a direct victim of Honeybliss, too.

The edges of Niko’s vision turned black, and he had to force himself to take in one breath, then another.

Several minutes passed before he had managed to calm down enough to continue the video. It resumed, the Heenva laughing as Elliott struggled to sit up again.

Uru Taal stood beside him, his disgusting form towering partially out of the shot. He reached out and stroked Elliott’s hair, and Elliott flinched violently at the touch. Niko was going to be sick. He wanted to kill Taal himself. He wanted violence, craved it like air.

Uru dropped his arm and gazed over at Cleo in the background.

“Let her go. Let her fucking go! ” Elliott yelled. His voice was hoarse and broken.

“Are we gonna have fun with him too? He’s pretty, like his bitch sister,” said the Heenva.

“This one has been whining,” Uru said, his voice a deep grumble. “He won’t shut up about the other one. But since I’m generous, I’m going to give him a chance.”

Uru moved away from Elliott and made his way—unhurried, leisurely—across the warehouse space toward Cleo.

Elliott screamed in wordless rage, straining against the ropes binding his wrists and trying to stand, but the Heenva gave him another hard kick.

Niko wanted to break the arms of his chair, break the Heenva.

Uru hunched down and took Cleo’s hand, Elliott defiantly screaming his fury at him the entire time. It was ignored. He stroked the back of her hand with his own thick, clawed, scaly thumb, then plucked a delicate ring from her pinky finger.

Then he stood and hung the ring on a small peg, just above where she was chained. It was so tiny that it was hard to see; Niko had to enhance the video. Then Uru just as slowly made his way back to Elliott and the cameraman. “I’m going to give you one chance, because I’m so benevolent.”

The Heenva snickered.

“If you can shoot her ring off the wall, your sister gets to go home and you’ll take her place, instead.”

“No. No, no no no! Please! Don’t do that to him, please! Don’t hurt him!” Cleo wailed from the background. “Please don’t. Ellie, don’t do that. I don’t want you to take my place. Please, just let him go home instead, I’ll do anything—”

“I’ll do it,” Elliott said.

The Heenva gave another snicker, and Niko had never been so blindly enraged by a sound in all his life. He would rip those lungs out, if he could. Maybe he would still get the chance to.

Uru reached into the weapons pile and drew out a sniper rifle.

The sick irony of it made Niko’s stomach churn.

“There’s one bullet in here. You get one chance.

You hit that, and she gets to go live her life again.

If you try to shoot me or my friends here, we will break both of you.

I’ll kill her first in front of you, and then you die. Do you understand?”

Elliott nodded, his whole body trembling.

“Say it, you fucking worm,” the Heenva said.

“I understand,” Elliott ground out.

Uru took a switchblade and cut through the ropes restraining Elliott’s wrists.

Niko could read him, could see the way he hesitated and thought as he rose to his feet, the way he considered if he could take on Uru.

But Uru was a Toliai—even bullets did nothing to them.

Even if he’d managed to get through Uru somehow, the second Toliai and Heenva—and anyone else not caught on camera—remained.

Elliott took the sniper rifle, his hands shaking.

Niko couldn’t bear it. He held the thing oddly, like he didn’t know what to make of it, what to do with it, how to even hold it.

It was so vastly unlike the Elliott that Niko knew now, intimately familiar with a sniper rifle like it was an extension of himself, his aim unmatched, his work frankly masterful.

“Take your time,” said Uru.

Elliott looked at Cleo.

She shook her head at him pleadingly. Tears streamed down her bruised and dirt-stained cheeks.

“Ellie. Hi , Ellie,” she said, and the heartbroken affection in her voice even in the midst of such suffering broke Niko’s heart to pieces too.

“You don’t have to do this. I don’t want you to take my place. I’d rather you go home, okay?”

“Nobody said anything about him going home,” said Duuru.

Elliott said nothing. He raised the rifle, peering through the scope at the ring hanging above her.

It pained Niko to see him do it—he was so awkward, so wrong on how he positioned himself, on how he gripped it, like it was something alien.

He stood for a long moment, lining up the shot with as much care and focus as his trembling hands would allow him.