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Robbie is going to die for this.
Eli is going to fucking kill him.
The arrogant bastard wouldn’t even see it coming. It could be so easy.
Robbie keeps a gun in his locker. Eli knows the code – Robert Junior’s birthday, of all the fucking things. Sappy bullshit, and a total surprise when Eli noticed it.
“Almost done,” Vitalia says, soft blue light emanating from her hands as they pass over Eli’s face.
She doesn’t approve of what Robbie’s done.
But she won’t do anything about it.
She’s a hypocrite, like the rest of them. Said she’d support him, but here he is still waiting.
It’s been over a decade.
All that time, all that work – Eli fucking made Mecha-Man Astral. How hasn’t he earned his place?
What makes him a goddamn child, playing with toys, while Robbie gets to be a hero.
It’s not right.
“Does this hurt?”
Vitalia touches the orbital bone around his right eye. It itches in the socket. Fresh-formed and tingling.
Robbie punched the implanted one clean out of his head.
Vitalia’s detached most of Eli’s external cybernetics while she works on him. Normally, he would feel vulnerable.
Instead, he feels calm.
Certain.
He’s already modelling out the possibilities. The locker, the gun.
The shroud comes down and he sees it all.
A shot to the heart. Quick, efficient. No one will be able to get to him before he bleeds out. But Eli’s aim will need to be true. Can he guarantee that in the heat of the moment?
The head. Requires accuracy again. It could leave open possibilities for survival. The thought of Robbie, paralysed, rotting in a hospital bed does have an appeal though.
Gut shot. Slow, painful, satisfying, but too much chance of someone intervening. Eli won’t have the chance to enjoy it.
He has to decide what matters more. Seeing Robbie dead, or seeing him suffer.
“Elliot, maybe you should go home for today?”
Home.
Because after all this time, Brave Brigade HQ still isn’t a home for him.
He doesn’t belong. He never has.
He’s just a tool to them.
He’s been clinging to hope all this time, ignoring the evidence, ignoring everything he’s learned about these people over the countless years they’ve used him.
No more.
“Yeah, I’ll do that. Thanks, Vitalia.”
His mouth tastes of copper and iron.
One hit. He couldn’t get in one goddamn hit, because the son of a bitch decided to fight dirty.
Robbie wouldn’t even give him the courtesy of a fair fight.
Not worth the effort it would take to flip the ignition.
No, shooting him dead isn’t going to be enough.
Eli needs to see him break.
#
He’s in the gymnasium before he really has time to go through all the permutations. His hands are shaking, stuffed in the pockets of his hoodie. There’s variables he hasn’t considered, but there is one thing he is certain of. Robbie is going to regret ever meeting Elliot Connors after this.
The sound of fists striking a punching bag echoes, but only within the confines of the gym. Unless someone else comes in, Eli won’t need to worry about the noise.
There’s little probability of them being disturbed.
He has at least an hour before Robbie shows up to throw the kid around on the sparring mats.
He must take after his mother; with his reddish-brown hair and the band of freckles across his cheekbones.
Robert Robertson III bounces on the balls of his feet, throwing punch after punch. The wraps around his hands are grimy with sweat, his t-shirt sticking to his back.
He’s so focused he doesn’t notice Eli watching.
Usually, Eli avoids the brat.
He used to be alright but these days he’s his daddy’s perfect little puppet, and he doesn’t want to risk getting treated like a joke, a loser, like Eli.
The bright-eyed, curious little boy who once said Eli’s augments were ‘cool’, and looked at him with the same kind of wonder he had for Track Star, is long-gone.
A stop-watch goes off and Robert drops his arms, bending over like he’s about to throw up. He’s trembling with exhaustion.
It’s no wonder his dad lands him on his ass every time they fight, if he’s tiring himself out like this well in advance.
No fair fight here, either.
Eli clocks the moment Robbie Junior notices him.
The kid may not resemble the guy all that much, but the look of disdain he shoots Eli’s way is one-hundred-per-cent Robbie.
It’s undercut a second later when Robert furrows his brow and asks “What happened to your face?”
Eli hadn’t stopped to check a mirror. Based on what he knows of Vitalia’s capabilities, he assumes there’s some significant bruising left behind.
“Your dad punched me.”
Robert straightens up.
“Why’d he do that?”
His tone is flat, almost suspicious, but Eli sees the brief flash of shock pass across the kid’s face. He turns away, reaching down for a towel to wipe off some of his sweat.
Eli remembers Robbie throwing that oily rag in his face, and the rage burns like electricity under his skin.
“He cancelled the vote again,” Eli answers.
Robert shrugs, but Eli knows he understands. It’s only every other week the kid whines about his dad never letting him practice in the suit, instead setting him endless physical training drills, material science and electrical engineering projects or college-level essays about structural analysis.
It’s not a dumb request. The kid wants practical experience, and how else is he meant to get it?
From the data Eli has at hand, there’s only one explanation that makes sense.
Robbie doesn’t want Robert in the suit.
“He must have a reason,” Robert says, dropping the damp towel and picking up his water bottle.
Eli doubts the kid fully believes that.
If he had the time, Eli’s sure he could make Robert understand the kind of man his father is – that he doesn’t have all the answers, that he’s not always right because he’s a hero, that Robert doesn’t always have to do what he says.
Unfortunately, all he has is fifty minutes.
And he has to make them count.
#
Eli makes his move while the kid’s still drinking his water.
He doesn’t need it to be a surprise attack – the kid’s already tired from overexercise, Eli’s got almost a foot in height on him and he’s stronger too – but the longer he hesitates the higher the chances are that he’ll chicken out. This plan relies on him being decisive. He’s the weak link here, the unknown factor that could throw all his calculations off.
If he follows the plan, he can achieve his goal.
The first blow lands just beneath Robert’s rib-cage, driving the air out of him and knocking him off his feet.
He’d had time to see Eli coming, but not enough to get his body into a defensive position.
He hits the ground, coughing and choking on the mouthful of water, the bottle rolling across the floor.
Eli doesn’t give him a chance to recover. He gets on top of him, straddling his waist.
The kid’s skinny. Eli has to clamp his thighs tight around him to keep him still.
His hands go into place around Robert’s neck.
“N-no–”
He presses down.
If he applies enough pressure to the carotid artery, this could be over in under a minute. It’s the sensible choice, almost certain to succeed, and it’ll be over before Eli has a chance to back out.
He doesn’t do that.
Instead, he focuses the pressure on Robert’s trachea, cutting off his air.
When he tells Robbie about this, he wants to be able to describe in detail how his boy struggled, the fear in his eyes.
The kid doesn’t disappoint.
Eli should’ve thought to bring a video camera.
Robbie would watch it, he thinks, all the way to the end. He wouldn’t be able to help himself; tough, cocksure Robbie fucking Robertson.
Robert’s shoes squeal as they scrabble against the gym floor, his knees bumping harmlessly against Eli’s back.
His fingers are around Eli’s wrists, trying to hold them back.
Eli’s willing to bet the thought of this, of Elliot Connors strangling him to death in the Brave Brigade Headquarters, never crossed the boy’s mind as a possibility. Never crossed Robbie’s mind. So fucking sure Eli would just roll over and take it, like he’s been doing all these goddamn years.
Robert gets a fingertip into one of the ports on Eli’s forearm and jams it in deep. Crystalline nerve pain shoots upwards, throbbing through Eli’s skull, and he lets go.
“Fucking brat.”
Robert sucks down a wheezing gasp of air, and then he starts to scream for his dad.
With the hand not currently trapped in a feedback loop of pain, Eli slaps him hard.
“Shut the fuck up. Your daddy is the reason this is happening,” he hisses, backhanding the kid until there’s blood streaming from his nose. “All he had to do was fucking right by me, but he didn’t. He could’ve, but he didn’t. I gave him his fucking name, I gave him the fucking power, and what does he do? Fucks me over, again and again. I’m not taking it anymore.”
Robert puts up his arms, trying to protect his head, but Eli smacks them aside and wraps his hands around the boy’s throat once more.
The brief influx of air means Robert’s able to struggle hard.
Eli enjoys it more than he thought he would.
His bare hands. That’s all he needs. None of the fancy ‘toys’ Robbie likes to sneer at. Eli’s going to break Mecha-man Astral with just his bare hands. Not worth the effort it would take to flip the ignition, is he? Not worth fighting fair, man to man.
He’s still man enough to kill a legacy.
Something crunches in little Robbie’s neck.
A fist, still wrapped up in tape and gauze, grasps the front of Eli’s hoodie – pulling, not pushing – as his face contorts in agony.
Eli lets go.
Physically, the exertion is relatively minor, and yet his heart is pounding in his chest. A potent mix of adrenaline and endorphins are flooding his system.
He hadn’t accounted for them.
Robert’s face is blotchy as he gasps for air, capillaries bursting under his skin from the increased pressure. His eyes are bloodshot. When he breathes Eli can hear the faint crackle of tiny bone fragments grinding together.
As Eli waits for his hands to stop shaking and for his mind to clear, he sees Robert wet his lips and try to form words. Each time he swallows, he grimaces and Eli can see a red ring of future bruises rising on his throat. The imprint of Eli’s hands. A signature.
“I…I…won’t tell anyone…so…please…”
Predictable.
Eli adds it to the checklist.
Your boy begged me, Robbie, to let him go. Promised me he wouldn’t say anything. So scared, so vulnerable, so weak. What were you even raising him for?
“Kid, I just fractured your hyoid bone. There are fingermarks around your neck. What are you going to say when your daddy asks you how that happened?”
Tears spill out as the boy shakes, eyes fixed on Eli’s face. Whatever he sees there spooks him bad enough he starts sobbing, mumbling about how he doesn’t want to die, saying Eli’s name, pleading, calling out in his shredded whisper-quiet voice for his dad, even, finally, for his mom.
“I’m sorry, kid. Time to go.”
He lifts his hands and wraps them gently around the thin column of Robert’s throat, for the last time.
Eli’s not sure why, but the kid keeps holding on to his hoodie – both hands now. Maybe it’s reflexive.
He presses down on Robert’s trachea again, and this time there’s a rush of warm, wetness against the seat of Eli’s pants as the pain and fear finally gets the better of the kid and he pisses himself.
Eli goes slow.
He’s never killed someone before. Every scrap of data from this experience is valuable.
He keeps track on his internal clock, feeling the minutes tick by. He needs time to get clear, before someone finds the body and puts the building into lockdown.
The mix of chemicals running through his bloodstream create strange effects.
His eyes are watering like Robert’s.
He can’t stop talking.
“This isn’t personal, kid, okay? It’s not your fault. I’m sorry.”
Focus.
All the background calculations fall silent as he puts all his strength into his grip and feels another, more muted, crunch.
He holds on, attention focused on his hands and the thin, mottled neck under them.
The kid goes still, apart from a few, likely unconscious, twitches.
It takes longer than Eli expected before he’s sure enough to let go. Likely longer than he really needed to exert pressure to ensure total brain-death.
The emotional factors at play again. His algorithms need work. Somehow it’s always so much easier to predict other people, leaving him the eternal unknown.
He feels sluggish as he rises, his thoughts slow to assemble as he surveys the body.
Rigor mortis will not have time to set in before it’s found.
Eli wishes he could stay, to watch Robbie’s face when he finds his son.
Maybe then he could forget the look on Robert’s.