The loudest sound in the universe was the ticking of a clock.
It was a plastic wall clock, shaped like a smiling sunflower, hanging above the dresser. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
To Kevin, it sounded like a hammer striking an anvil.
He stood frozen in the lavender light of the bedroom, his arm extended, the heavy .45 aimed at the sleeping shape of the eight year old girl. The amphetamines were still singing in his blood, vibrating at a frequency that made his teeth ache, but the world had narrowed down to this single, suffocating tunnel of vision.
The gun. The girl. The clock.
Pull it, his mind screamed. Just a twitch. A millimeter of movement. That's all it takes to be a god.
He stared at the back of the girl's head. He tried to visualize the outcome. He tried to summon the cold, artistic detachment Asuma spoke of when she described James. He wanted to see the red spray as a painting. He wanted to see the death as a necessary subtraction.
But all he saw was a little girl with a braid in her hair.
His finger rested on the curved metal of the trigger. It was slippery with sweat. He applied pressure. Just a pound. Two pounds.
The girl took a breath. Her chest rose and fell under the duvet.
Kevin's hand began to shake. It wasn't the chemical tremor of the drugs anymore. It was a violent, structural failure of his nervous system. The gun wobbled, the sights drifting away from the target, dancing in the air like a moth trapped in a jar.
He used his left hand to grip his right wrist, trying to force the weapon still.
Be the fire, he begged himself. Be the storm. Burn the forest.
But there was no fire. There was only cold, damp dread.
The silence of the room pressed in on him. It was heavy, physical, pushing against his eardrums. He could hear the blood rushing in his veins, a roaring river of panic. He could hear the wet, ragged sound of his own breathing, a gasping, desperate rhythm that sounded like a dying animal.
He wasn't James.
The thought hit him not as a realization, but as a physical blow to the gut.
He looked at the gun in his hand. It didn't look like an extension of his will. It looked like a foreign object. A prop. A heavy, black piece of metal he had no business holding.
He looked at his reflection in the dark windowpane. He saw the silver suit, stained with rain and mud. He saw the spiked hair. He saw the wide, terrified eyes.
He looked like a child wearing his father's clothes. He looked like a clown who had wandered into a funeral.
I am wearing a monster's skin, Kevin realized, the thought horrifyingly clear. But there is no meat underneath. Just straw.
The rage that had driven him here, the fury at Marco, at John, at Pranav, drained away. It poured out of him like water from a broken glass, leaving him empty. Hollow.
He wasn't a killer. He wasn't a savior. He wasn't even a threat.
He was just a tourist in the world of violence.
The gun lowered. He didn't decide to lower it. His muscles simply gave up. The weapon dropped to his side, pulling his shoulder down with its weight.
Kevin took a step back. The floorboard creaked.
The girl didn't wake up. She slept on, safe in her bed, protected not by Kevin's mercy, but by his impotence.
"He's not James..." Kevin whispered.
The sound of his own voice startled him. It was thin, broken, unrecognizable.
He looked at the empty space in the room where the "Corvini Legend" should have been standing.
"He's not James," Kevin repeated, the words tumbling out in a choked sob. "I'm not... I'm not him."
He backed into the doorframe. He stumbled into the hallway.
He didn't run. He walked. He walked like an old man, his legs heavy and stiff. He walked past the family photos on the wall, Silas smiling, his daughters laughing. He walked past the life he had come to destroy and realized he was too small to even break it.
He went down the stairs. He walked through the kitchen. He stepped over the glass he had shattered.
He went out into the rain.
The cold water soaked him instantly, plastering the expensive suit to his shivering frame. He walked across the lawn, his feet sliding in the mud.
He got into the car.
He sat there for a long time, staring at the steering wheel. The engine was cold. The windows began to fog up from his body heat, sealing him in a grey, misty capsule.
He started the car. He didn't turn on the headlights.
He drove.
He didn't know where he was going. He didn't check the GPS. He just drove, taking turns at random, navigating the suburban labyrinth until the houses gave way to the industrial sprawl, and the sprawl gave way to the highway.
The streetlights blurred into streaks of orange and white.
Kevin Corvini, the heir to the empire, the Alchemist, the man who wanted to set the world on fire, began to cry.
It wasn't the angry, frustrated crying of the War Room. It was a quiet, continuous stream of tears that ran down his face and dripped off his chin. He cried for the brother he could never be. He cried for the father who saw him as rust. He cried for the mother and children he had killed in Marco's house, and the ones he hadn't killed tonight.
He cried because he was alive, and for the first time in his life, he understood that his survival wasn't a victory. It was an accident.
He was nothing.
He hit the highway, pressing the accelerator down, the car speeding into the dark, empty night. He was alone in the metal box, traveling at a hundred miles an hour, going absolutely nowhere.