J A X O N

"You get out tomorrow, right?" Finn asked Hunt as we stood together in the hospital room.

"Yes, the doctors are finally letting me go." Hunt shook his head as it rested on the pillow. "I've already missed so much work."

"Yeah, because you got shot," Riley said flatly, almost chastising him. "You needed all the time to heal you could get. Who knows if they're going to come for you again?"

"We do know they're going to come for him again," Jake broke in, "And we can take advantage of it."

Both Riley and Finn spun to look at him and stated simultaneously, "No."

But Hunt turned towards then curiously. "What am I missing here?"

"He has this crazy idea to risk your life and use you as bait for the masked assassin," Riley told him, crossing her arms sassily. "As if your life hasn't been put in enough danger as it is."

"He wouldn't be going in without backup," Jake reasoned coldly. "We wouldn't let the masked assassin touch a hair on that graying head of his; Hunt just needs to be there to lure the assassin to us." Jake glanced down at Hunt. "It's the only way that we can get the assassin to come to us. You'd be doing the ONNT a great service."

"How do you expect to get the assassin there in the first place?" Hunt asked, surprisingly going with the idea. It seemed that, for the first time ever, he wasn't making things more difficult than they needed to be.

"You're actually going to do it?" Finn asked the ONNT director in a low voice.

"We'll spread the word of your presence to the right people," Jake went on, ignoring Finn. "I know exactly who to tell to get the assassin to hear."

Hunt fixed his dark eyes up on Jake for a moment. "Okay, I will do it. Just give me a time and a place and I will be there."

"Are you insane?" Finn asked Hunt anxiously. "You almost just died!"

"I won't die this time," Hunt said, still watching Jake. "My life is in your hands. I trust that you'll take care of it."

"How can you say that to the biggest criminal on the team?"

"No offense," Arlo muttered under his breath for Finn.

"He wanted to find Adiago Hundsen and did. I trust that he can do the same with this Imperium agent." That was a lot of blind trust for someone who was just targeted by a terrorist group.

Jake gave him a curt nod. "We will move forward with the plan." He set his flat gaze on Finn and Riley for a moment as he still spoke to the director. "I knew that you'd do the right thing."

With that, he made his way to the doorway of the room. The others began to follow him.

"Bye, Mr. Hunt," I told the man in the bed. "Try not to get killed again before the plan can happen." Finn had a pained look on his face but the director looked amused.

Most of the others had gathered outside in the hallway as they waited for Finn and Riley to come out of Hunt's room. Finally, they emerged and closed the door softly.

"What were you doing in there, singing him to sleep?" Arlo asked, wrinkling his nose in distaste.

"I was saying goodbye to him," Finn retorted, slightly annoyed, "Because I'm glad that he didn't pass away from his injuries."

"That makes one of us," Arlo said, to which Riley gave him a dirty look. "Damn, I was just kidding," he muttered under his breath.

"Are you done?" Jake asked, looking extremely bored. "We have work to do."

"Don't even get me started on you," Finn said, turning to face Jake. "You're willing to put Mr. Hunt's life in danger to get what you want."

"He's willing to put his own life in danger to get what I want," Jake corrected smoothly, beginning to walk towards the exit. "Now that Hunt has agreed, my plan will work perfectly."

Riley shook her head and disagreed, "No, you're up to something here. You always are."

"Your point?"

"You don't like Hunt, do you?" Finn asked, beginning to sound more worried than angry.

"It's nothing personal, Peterson," Jake snarled sarcastically. "It's just the fact that he's imprisoned us from the very beginning and forced us to work for him."

"He's got a point," I interjected quietly in a sing-song tone.

"You're not going to keep him safe," Finn spat, looking like he'd just come to a realization. "You're looking to get him killed. And I don't want to go through the stress of watching him dying again."

Jake continued staring straight ahead as he strode on. "If I wanted him dead then he'd have a shard of ice buried in his skull already."

"It wouldn't be hard for you to arrange his assassination. If the assassin was there, you could just let him kill Mr. Hunt."

"I could. But why would I? Hunt is useful to me. He's necessary, at least as of now."

"As of now?" Riley repeated, pushing open the exit door. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Take it to mean anything you want it to," Jake said, looking around the parking lot to see if he could spot the car. Delphinium slowly shook her head at his words.

"He's proved to us that he's on our side and that he does care for us. If you do anything to Hunt, then you'll have us to deal with," Riley warned.

Jake said nothing more, but I knew him better than most of these people. He was going to do what was necessary to his own schemes, and I feared that that might include killing Hunt off.

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"That's a touchdown," I said to Arlo, taking my eyes off the TV. "Pay up."

"Now listen here," he retorted, trying to backtrack. "You know that I'm not sure how football works."

"You still bet on it," Kane called out, his eyes glued to the book he was reading.

But Arlo was still talking. "I don't know, maybe it has something to do with the fact that I wasn't aware that it existed up until a few months ago. You know, because of my lifelong imprisonment."

I gave him a flat look. "So you're going to play the childhood trauma card again?"

He gave me a wide grin. "Whatever works."

I made a show out of cracking my knuckles. "Maybe I'll play the high school boxing champion card."

"I'd like to see that," Kane interjected.

"Shut up, man! Who's team are you on, Kane?" Arlo chided him.

"Mine," Riley said from across the room. I grinned at the embarrassed expression on Kane's face.

It seemed to get colder when Jake entered the room. "Williams," he barked out my last name.

"Yeah?" I abruptly stood up from my chair, making Arlo shrink back into his own.

"I have a job for you."

"Can it wait? I'm about to beat Arlo's ass."

Arlo scoffed. "Yeah, like Jake's not going to beat your ass for not immediately doing what he wants."

"He wouldn't beat my ass," I told Arlo matter-of-factly. I turned to look at Jake. "Right?"

"You're not helping your chances of me agreeing," he replied, not missing a beat.

I'd seen Jake's dark side before, and it wasn't pretty. I didn't want to be on the receiving end. So I stepped away from Arlo and faced my impatient teammate.

"You're going to go to this address," he told me, handing me a piece of paper. "It's a popular bar downtown. Do anything you need to be admitted in, I don't care."

A smile spread across my face. "Okay. What am I going to be doing?"

"Spread the word of who you are and that you personally know Damien Hunt. Let it slip that he'll be there the next night. They have eyes and ears everywhere there; the news will be spread quickly."

I nodded. "I can do that, easy. I won't let you down."

"Oh, I know. You seem to be skilled at letting things slip that you shouldn't." Every word was sharp, made to cut. And it did.

The smile dropped off my face. "Jake, that was ages ago. You know that I didn't mean-"

"It doesn't matter now. What happened then is done. You can't change what you did."

I trudged out of the room, feeling heavier than before. The hard look in Jake's eyes was burned into my memory; I hated myself for letting him down. Look what had happened because I did.

Disappointed though he was, he'd still come to me for help. I failed him before, but I wouldn't now.