🔥 IT ALL BLURS INTO A RAGING INFERNO. there had been a plan, probably, some shit with entry points, team positions, Robert's voice cutting dry and sharp through the comms, telling him not to blow the entire fuckin' building sky-high--
then some fuckin' Red Ring goon had said containment level. someone let slip that fuckin' hybrid; and whatever reasonable fuckin' leash SDN had clipped around his throat burned through in one clean second.
he hits the first barricade like a meteor with a fuckin' grudge, shoulders first, fire roaring off him in violent sheets of orange-white that turn the corridor into noon; both metal and men scream. good. fucking let them, let every masked freak in Shroud's little basement hear him coming, let the whole place learn what a bad fuckin' idea it is to kidnap Sonar.
Flambae does not slow down; bullets spark and die against the furnace of him, little stupid silver insects evaporating before they kiss his skin. one catches him high on the arm before he flares hot enough to melt the next volley in midair, but the sting is distant, he barely feels it; someone rushes him with a shock baton and Flambae catches the bitch by the vest, lifts him clean off his feet and drives him through a glass partition hard enough that the whole room behind it erupts in glittering shrapnel. another tries to run, but Flambae sends a crescent of flame across the floor in front of him to pen him in, and keeps moving while the man drops his weapon and pisses terror down his own leg.
that one gets to live with it.
the deeper he goes, the colder the building gets. it is fuckin' wrong, the air stripped thin and sterile, all pungent disinfectant and iron under the smoke. cells with heavy doors line one wall, and drains cut into the concrete, as if whoever designed this place had looked at people like Sonar and decided animal was the kinder fuckin' word. the thought hits Flambae so hard that his vision flashes hot-white.
they had put him somewhere like this.
Victor with his clever mouth and his huge brain between those huge fuckin' ears and those pearly eyes like two full moons; who curled around books and melancholy music and games about sad dead kingdoms of bugs like the world had not spent enough time making him feel fuckin' haunted already. who had fuckin' trusted him. who had been gone for days while Flambae fuckin' tore himself open looking.
the next door does not get opened, it gets fuckin' erased. Flambae drives one burning fist through the lock mechanism, twists until the metal runs soft as candlewax, then rips the whole thing off its hinges. heat flows outward, alarms shrieking above him, red lights spinning over the walls. for a second the corridor becomes a throat full of fire and panic; he can hear people shouting evacuation orders somewhere ahead, heavy boots and gunfire; someone yelling Shroud's name like a prayer and a curse.
that coward bitch is nowhere to be seen, but he has more pressing matters now. Flambae launches himself down the hall on a blast from his hands and heels, low and fast, trailing fire behind him like a comet tail; a shutter drops in front of him, and he hits it with both feet, flame bursting around his body as the impact caves the reinforced steel inward. the whole fuckin' thing tears free with a groan and skids across the floor, mowing down three goons who had the misfortune of standing behind their little safety precaution.
"where is he?" Flambae snarls, landing among them. one of them groans, whilst another scrabbles for a pistol; Flambae plants one boot on the gun and melts the barrel flat against the concrete.
there is a map on the wall behind them, half-lit by emergency strips. bright and furious eyes tear across it until he finds the lower west wing. for one horrible second the entire world narrows to the image of a caged Sonar, and Flambae almost loses the shape of himself; flame climbs his shoulders, his hair, his jaw, licking where anger becomes an ugly fuckin' spectacle. he thinks of Shroud looking at Sonar and seeing a tool, a monster, a fuckin' freak to break and point at SDN like a loaded gun; he thinks of Sonar alone in the cold while Flambae was out there following bad leads.
he should have found him sooner. fuck! he should have burned every door in the city until one of them opened onto Sonar.
"Flambae," Robert's voice cracks through the comm, distant under static, "status?"
Flambae does not answer at first, because he is already running.
"found the place," he says after a moment, voice raw from the fire in his throat. "anyone between me and him, I put them through a wall."
Flambae catches one by the back of the vest and slams him into a control panel hard enough to make it spark and die. somewhere ahead, beyond the smoke and chaos, there is one heavy iron door. Flambae stops so sharply his boots skid through ash; his body knows before his mind catches up; every nerve in him pulls forward, every hot, stupid, terrified fuckin' piece of him reaching for the same answer.
behind that door, the cold leaks out like breath from a grave. he sees movement through the window. a shape on the floor. the fire roaring around him falters, one hand punches into the lock, heat pouring from his palm in a focused blaze; the mechanism glows, warps, and finally gives. Flambae rips the door open so hard it slams into the wall and buckles there, and the room reveals itself in one merciless flash: concrete, restraints, blood, the awful fuckin' muzzle, Sonar folded on the floor.
Flambae's flames go out. the sudden dark makes the emergency lights look sick and red over his face, and his chest locks so tight it feels like his heart has tried to climb up behind his teeth and fuckin' choke him. all that rage, all that feral violence, all that fire chewing through steel and men and walls, and it crashes uselessly against the sight of Sonar's bound hands, the blood at his mouth, the way his body cannot even arrange itself into dignity because they have taken that too, the cruel room built around his suffering. the burns; fuckin' Toxic. he knows the signature, has seen what that brand of cruelty looks like on a body.
then Sonar says his name. trying so hard to convey something through blood and iron and a muzzle that gets put on animals, and not even animals deserve it--
Flambae drops to his knees so hard the concrete cracks under him.
"yeah," he breathes, and the fire comes back low around them, no longer a weapon but a trembling corona of heat pushing the cold away from Sonar's skin. "yeah, baby. I'm here. I got you. don't move, okay? don't you fuckin' move."
his hands shake. careful, careful, fucking careful, he tells himself, because rage is useless now, because Sonar is not a door to break open or a bitch to burn. he is fuckin' hurt, he is looking at him through those pale eyes, dimmed by pain and still somehow so violently beautiful that it makes Flambae want to scream until every light in the building bursts. he touches the muzzle like it is a bomb.
"they put this fuckin' thing on you."
the metal is cold enough to bite. Flambae's thumb traces the clasp, finds the mechanism, melts the smallest pin with a thread of flame so thin and controlled it barely smokes; he loosens it without pulling, without jarring Sonar's head, every breath held fuckin' hostage in his throat. when it comes free, he does not throw it-- he wants to. fuck, he wants to hurl it through the fuckin' wall, make Shroud eat every bolt. rip Toxic's dick off and feed it to him. instead he sets it aside because Sonar needs him present and not feral.
not yet; later, he will be feral enough to make fuckin' history.
"med team," he snaps into comms, voice turning vicious the second it leaves the small circle of warmth around Sonar. "lower west wing. bring a stretcher and if anybody comes in here without clearance I will personally redecorate this place with their fuckin' spine."
Flambae burns through the binds at Sonar's wrists next. his whole body aches to gather him up, to put him against his chest and carry him out through every burning hallway like some stupid knight in a slutty suit, but fear has finally found something useful to do; it makes him careful.
"it's over," he murmurs against the fur on his forehead. "you hear me? he's gone. and if they come back, I'll burn the fuckin' air out of their lungs."
it hurts worse than the bullet graze, than smoke in his lungs; under the gratitude there lies a black ocean of failure. he should've found him sooner. his jaw tightens, orange eyes burning wet-bright in the red gloom, and he swallows, throat working; heat trembles over his skin, brighter wherever his anger tries to surge past control. he presses his palm to the floor beside Sonar, grounding himself in concrete instead of touching too much, too fast. he won't think about that. he won't, he can't, he'll think about it later in some corner somewhere where Sonar doesn't have to watch him lose the thread of himself.
danger's part of the job, yeah. he knows that. they all do and sign up anyway. but this wasn't just danger; this was them deciding Sonar wasn't a fucking person. this was them deciding that meant they could cage him, hurt him, shove a muzzle on him like he was something to be owned. Shroud doesn't get to do that and keep living easy.
boots thunder closer, and outside is full of the distant sounds of evacuation, of his own teammates mopping up whatever Red Ring stragglers Shroud left behind. Flambae's head snaps towards the door, fire flaring instantly across his shoulders, coiling down his arms in slow, seething ribbons. for a moment he is all teeth and light, every inch of him a warning carved in flame; he rises only halfway, one knee still planted by Sonar, putting himself between him and the door without thinking. the first SDN medic appears with a kit and freezes at the threshold.
"slow," Flambae warns, fire quelling when Robert assures him through the comm. "tell him what you're doing before you do it. no sudden grabs. nobody fuckin' touches his face unless they have to. nobody fuckin' crowd him."
his gaze drifts to the hallway; somewhere out there Shroud is slipping through shadows. Flambae can feel it like a hook in his chest; but right now, he has nights to spend awake at Sonar's bedside. days to follow him from room to room until Sonar gets sick of his hovering and tells him to fuck off. weeks to learn every flinch, every nightmare, every place the bastards left pain behind. he will be annoying about medication, fuckin' unbearable about food. he will sleep badly, if he sleeps at all, and wake at every sound because once is enough; once is too fuckin' much.
and after Sonar is safe, after he is warm, after no one can reach him without going through Flambae first, Shroud will learn what it means to be hunted by something that does not get tired.
Flambae looks back down at Sonar, and the violence in him becomes molten around something protectively tender.
"eyes on me, Vic," he murmurs, staying close, keeping the room warm, mostly keeping himself between Sonar and the world.
