TrankilTylus

—

Roy pulled his bow over his shoulder, three arrows between his fingers. He glanced at Jason out of the corner of his eye, like he was making sure he was still there.

“Run. I’ll cover you.”

“And how exactly are you going to do that?” Jason asked, mocking him just to see Roy flinch. “There’s twenty fucking alphas out there. They’ll see me right away. I was going to jump in the--”

“Trust me.”

Jason turned, astonished. “Trust you?”

“Trust me,” Roy repeated calmly. His sharp eyes -- a hunter’s eyes, just like Dan’s -- were focused on the men sprinting their way. “When I say go, you run. Make sure your eyes are closed at thirty seconds.”

Make sure my eyes are closed? Jason thought. Okay, Robin Hood. You sound confident. Why the fuck not.

Uneasy, Jason stepped closer to Roy, using him as cover. It was only when Roy drew the bow, the three arrows perfectly balanced between his fingers, that Jason saw the growing patch of blood in his side.

“You’re fucking shot and you’re telling me to run?” Jason asked breathlessly.

Roy didn’t reply. His bow was sighted higher now -- away from the armed men. Which was entirely unhelpful.

Fuck this, Jason thought, I’m going for the river.

“Run,” Roy said softly. Jason shuddered anyway, feeling the whisper of an alpha command, yet determined not to give in.

“No.”

“Run.”

The command snapped through his body, and Jason was running before he could think about what he was doing. An arrow whistled through the air, shattering one of the floodlights on the warehouse’s roof.

Jason looked back just in time to see Roy fire another arrow, then another, hitting a pair of headlights on a car someone had started. Faster than he could count, the arrows kept coming, arcing over his head and splitting between the alphas like they were inconsequential.

He’s trying to blind them, Jason thought, suddenly appreciative of the cover. But they’re alphas. They’ll still see him.

The lot plunged into darkness, every single source of light -- including a phone being used as a flashlight -- had been shattered. And Roy was still firing, somehow. Covering him, just like he’d promised.

Just like Jason had guessed, the alphas could still see in the dark. They converged on Roy’s position, seconds away from making contact.

He tried to remember Roy’s warning.

Thirty seconds. Close your eyes.

There were two seconds left. Jason paused under a now-nonfunctional streetlight, covering his eyes with a hand and peeking out warily between two fingers.

A lone arrow flew through the air, wider and heavier than the others. There was something attached to it, almost like a --

Flashbang, Jason recognized in that split second. He clapped his hands over his ears, because hearing loss was a bitch, and he was more than far enough away for a flashbang to burn his eyes.

The flashbang that went off was more like a nuclear weapon than a simple stunning tool. It lit up the whole sky, so bright, Jason could see the outline of Metropolis’ buildings far across the Bay. As it expanded, the explosion turned the typical white of a flashbang, then orange, and then -- a split second at the very end -- a deep, unsettling blue.

Jason flinched away just in time for the sound wave to hit him. Even far away, it almost blew him off his feet. It knocked around his already mushy brain in his less than happy skull.

After a dizzying few seconds, the light died down. Jason closed his eyes, finding the afterimages of the explosion burned into the back of his eyelids.

The lot was suspiciously quiet. If he squinted, he could see a few alphas down on the ground and not moving. Several alphas. Almost all of the alphas, he realized.

He could have taken out a whole army of alphas with that, Jason thought, trying to blink away his astonishment. Smart alpha.

Roy had disappeared into the night, and hopefully had before the flashbang had gone off near his heightened senses. Jason could still feel his fingers around the back of his neck, squeezing tight.

Hiroshi Yoshida, Rapids, 1928

Color Woodcut

Bull moose