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There is nothing he hates more than feeling without an ounce of power. And there was nothing about that situation that was under his control. Except, perhaps, throttling Kevin.
Here is an incomplete list of things Andrew knew:
- Neil had been lying—more than he could have imagined.
- Kevin had been lying too.
- Neil had broken their agreement (but did it count?)
- Someone was going to die. Andrew hoped he would have a say in who’d it be.
When things started flying, he did his job: he got his family safe and out of the way. And the foxes knew how to handle much more than people gave them credit for, so it was not long until everyone got on the bus. Almost everyone.
Wymack, Abby, and his classmates only had to exchange one look to notice a problem and, without words, they got off as quickly as they had gotten on.
Andrew was the first one to see and reach Neil’s bag, and that is when he knew something was truly wrong.
He took out Neil’s phone—which was, incredibly, charged—, and looked at the last call: It was from an unknown number, and searching in his messages, the only one that stood out among the conversations with the foxes was a simple “0” from yet another unknown number. When Andrew opened the folder with the deleted texts, he saw it was the last of many others.
A countdown.
He had known.
Neil had not only known something was coming, he had known for a substantial amount of time .
It really wasn’t usual for Andrew and his sizeable memory to find themselves out of words but, at that moment, he didn’t know how to name what was happening to him.
“Did you find anything?” Allison demanded and, without waiting for a response, took the phone out of Andrew’s hands. “Is this a fucking countdown?” She cried, clearly puzzled.
“Open the calls,” Andrew heard himself saying. Allison did that without sparing another glance at him.
“Where’s this from?”
“Maryland, I think,” Aaron said from over her shoulder. Everyone’s expressions showed unmistakeable confusion.
Except for Kevin.
Kevin’s face had lost all of its colour and he looked a breath away from crying out of panic.
“Start talking.”
The foxes looked at Andrew and, noticing to whom he was talking to, directed all their eyes to Kevin.
“Kevin?” Nicky asked. “Do you know what’s happened to Neil?”
Kevin looked choked, like he couldn’t get enough air to say anything.
That was not going to do.
With only three steps, Andrew got to him. With only half a second, his hands got to Kevin’s neck.
“Andrew!” Numerous voices yelled, but he didn’t bother differentiating whose.
He could see Kevin’s pallor being replaced by a dark red, and he felt various irking hands getting on his person, but he didn’t have time to do anything about them. There was still misplaced air in Kevin.
Eventually, the force of those hands separated him from Kevin’s throat, who started to cough desperately. The hands kept Andrew away.
At one point, when Kevin’s barks subsided, Dan’s voice sounded from somewhere near. “Kevin. Start talking now. What’s going on?”
Kevin looked almost ashamed. Andrew couldn’t care less about it.
“I—,” Kevin stammered, but then he looked at Andrew and words started messily rushing out of his mouth, like he couldn’t contain them. “I didn’t know this was going to happen, I swear, I only—”
“Kevin,” Renee interrupted him, not unkindly. “We need you to tell us what’s important right now.”
Kevin nodded. “That number,” he said with a ghostly sound, pointing to Neil’s phone. “It’s probably from Baltimore. It’s probably Nath— Neil’s father.”
“And where do you know his father from?” That was Matt, in an unlikely small voice.
“I don’t— It’s not exactly…” Kevin took a breath that seemed useless. “Neil is not Neil. I mean— his name is Nathaniel. Nathaniel Wesninski. He’s the son of a killer. A hitman under the Moriyamas. Neil’s the son of the butcher of Baltimore.”
Andrew, still not taking his eyes away from Kevin, could feel the tension and confusion around him. He only gave Kevin a look that suggested it would be best for his health if he kept talking.
“His mother took him just before Nathaniel was going to be given over to the Master. They ran away from the butcher. They’ve been running for years. And some time ago the butcher was convicted— I don’t know, maybe he escaped. Maybe— I don’t know. I didn’t know who Neil really was until recently. I didn’t know when we went to Millport. I—”
“Kevin,” Wymak finally spoke, putting a stop to him. Then, he turned to the rest. “ We can’t solve this on our own. We can’t find him by ourselves. I’ve got some calls to make.”
Fuck him. Time was such an alien thing. Fuck Neil. Fuck Andrew. Fuck Neil for selling him an inexistent present and an inexistent future. And fuck Andrew for going against everything he knew and buying it anyway.
When the FBI told them, somehow, that Nathaniel was alive and at a hospital, every last one of them lost their minds. When they told the foxes to forget about him, that “he was not their problem anymore,” it was pandemonium.
Again somehow, Wymack got them permission to see him. But Andrew got handcuffed to their coach.
They crashed into the hotel’s room and Andrew couldn’t believe how he dared to say “If you tell me to leave…”
How dare he think it was over? How did he even dare to fathom that Andrew would let this go so easily?
Andrew did the one thing he knew would work best. He only had to say “You aren’t going anywhere,” and the foxes took care of the rest.
Not Neil and not the FBI and not anyone had the right to suddenly leave Andrew’s world hollow again.
Andrew had never been one to stay down.