The Falling (Brightest Stars, #1)(74)

“Karina, no!” Kael’s voice brought me out of my blind rage. “Come here,” he said, softer this time.

Everything was still blurry as it slowed down, but Kael was safe now, though limping to the curb, calling for me again. I went to him and sat a few feet away, catching my breath and trying really fucking hard to calm down. Kael’s hands were holding the bottom of his pants tightly around his ankle.

“Are you okay?” I asked him. I blinked away the tears that were stinging the corners of my eyes. I had dirt or something in them.

Kael nodded. “Are you?”

He had a cut above his eye, and it made murderous waves of anger flow over me to see him hurt. “Yes, but you’re not. I want to fucking kill them. How dare they come at you!”

He groaned, still rubbing his ankle. Kael’s hands were visibly shaking as he lifted them up and balled them into fists. After a few seconds, he opened his eyes and went back to rubbing near his ankle.

“Do you want me to look at it?“ I began to offer.

“No. I’m fine.” Kael stopped me in mid-sentence, yanking the pants all the way down to the top of his sneaker.

He looked past me, then to my eyes. “They’re coming. Answer their questions and try to stay calm. If you don’t, it will only incite them further.”

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.

The temperature had dropped significantly since we’d arrived. I had lost track of what time it was and how long we had been there. I was still in my work clothes, but my adrenaline kept me from being cold. I paced next to Kael as he still sat there, his legs extended in front of him.

The other guy involved in the fight had already left without being questioned; it was only Kael’s identification they had collected and scanned. Their awareness of Austin’s name triggered a connection to our dad, so they didn’t even bother to look for my brother. Nor did they seem to care who Austin’s assailant was, and they didn’t go after him either.

When I quietly told Kael it wasn’t fair, that this was all completely wrong and had to be against regulations, he explained that if I wanted to survive here next to an Army post my whole life, I shouldn’t question authority, that it wasn’t safe. Things were the way they were, and I wasn’t going to change it.

“If you want to fix things, go for something that’s possible. Smaller. You’re not going to change what’s ingrained into American culture.”

“And that’s it. You’re just going to take it?”

“You know you’re lucky that after putting your hands on an officer you don’t have a bullet in your head. If I had done that it wouldn’t be the case.” Kael’s eyes darted from my face to the night sky, but when the men looked back at us, he was composed again.

The questions continued and Kruger rolled his eyes at me when I got choked up talking about the situation with my brother—his getting mixed up with the wrong girl again, drinking too much, getting jumped by the not-ex ex-boyfriend. He was scribbling down everything I was saying while holding a recording device between his middle and index fingers. It felt like hours had passed. My brother was lucky to have slid off.