The three MPs were walking over to us, so I didn’t say anything until they began their questioning. I thought about calling my dad, weighed the possible pros and cons, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I heeded Kael’s warning and tried my best to stay calm. It was so infuriating and difficult, but I managed for a while.

“Let me see some ID, soldier.”

“So you’re telling me you two just happened to show up here and you know the Fischer boy?”

“He’s my brother. And like I told you, we came here to stop the fight,” I snapped at them. Kael’s hand touched my leg, gently squeezing. I again tried to be calm.

While they wrote whatever bullshit down on their little notepads, I glared a hole through their skulls. Kael was silent, but I could feel that he wasn’t okay. I had finally caught my breath, and the shock of it all was beginning to set in the longer we waited for them to continue their interrogation. Kael answered everything with an even tone, despite the situation and the fact that he’d done nothing wrong and was nearly fucking beaten by them. If anything, I should have been the focus of their animosity, having screamed and put my hands on an officer. That should have landed me in the back of a car pending an arrest. But no—no consequence for me, it was only about Kael.

Apart from Kael, they seemed to be more interested in how we knew Austin than in the fact that Austin was the one who’d caused all of this. In that moment, I couldn’t have cared less about my escape-master brother, who needed to pay for his crimes. I almost told them where he was hiding. I was that mad. Kael sat there with such stillness. He barely blinked as he answered their questions in a controlled, flat, but polite voice. He refused to let them get the best of him, I assumed. I wished that one day I would be as emotionally disciplined as Kael. His eyes were steady but somehow I felt that he wasn’t as calm inside as he appeared to be. The cold night air made little puffs of smoke come out of all of their mouths. I decided that the three of them were now my mortal enemies and I would NEVER forget their names: Solomon, Kruger, and Deek. Especially Solomon, the troll-like man wielding a baton with an evil behind his eyes that enraged and terrified me. Give a man power and he’ll rule, then ruin the world, my mother always told me.

She was proving to be more right every day.