Out of the Ashes: A Metahuman Files: Classified Novella, #1

By Hailey Turner

War never leaves a soldier behind.

 

Staff Sergeant Alexei Dvorkin is still recovering from his brief stint as a prisoner of war. While his physical wounds have healed, the emotional scars are slow to disappear. Agent Sean Delaney's recovery from trauma is likewise slower than anticipated, and he also blames himself for what Alexei suffered through.

 

The ties between Alexei and Sean were frayed by the enemy's hand. Mending what was broken between them will require a depth of honesty neither man is ready to face just yet. But if they don't, they risk losing a future together neither wants to let go.

 

Out of the Ashes is a companion novella to the Metahuman Files series, an M/M military science fiction fantasy series full of found family themes and spicy romance for fans of Vicious by VE Schwab and Marvel's X-Men and Avengers. It is best enjoyed after In the Blood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hailey Turner
• Release date: Feb 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9798223178965

Book preview

01

Washington, DC

USA

I think you’re ready.

Agent Sean Delaney looked away from the latest series of finger-painting pictures on synthpaper adorning Dr. Elizabeth O’Malley’s office wall and met her calm, brown-eyed gaze with his own. It’s been three months.

One thin brow arched upward. Do you think you need more time?

I don’t know. I’m not the shrink.

Sean clenched his hands into fists over his knees, out of sight of Dr. O’Malley’s view. His MDF-assigned therapist was active duty Army, who split her time between Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the MDF when she wasn’t raising three young children with her husband. A well-regarded and well-known psychologist who specialized in trauma and PTSD recovery, she was extremely adept at her job and in high demand.

The MDF had contracted her out late last year on an exclusive basis for an open-ended period of time. Since the end of November, after he was held prisoner and tortured, Dr. O’Malley had been the person Sean had seen most outside of his lover, Staff Sergeant Alexei Dvorkin. The intense therapy sessions had gone from once a day, every day, where she waited him out to speak, to gradually distilling down the hours and days to this moment.

Three months. A total of eighty-seven days, six hours.

Sean glanced at the chrono shining through the skin of his left forearm.

And forty-two minutes.

But who was counting?

You passed your field test yesterday. The supervising agent had only good things to say about your performance.

Friday had been a shit-show, honestly, but Sean was very good at pushing through his own shortcomings to meet the end goal. Fake it till you make it, as the saying went.

Sean nodded, uncurling his fingers to wrap them over his knees. I’m glad.

Three months removed from the field hadn’t been easy to overcome, but he’d done it. If it felt like his progress was a lie, well, no one knew that secret. He suspected Dr. O’Malley might, though she hadn’t ever hinted one way or the other.

I wouldn’t advocate for your return if I thought it would be detrimental to your health, Delaney.

The MDF wants me back in the field.

What the MDF wants and what I will allow are entirely separate, was her calm response. I wouldn’t sign off on your clearance if I didn’t truly believe you could handle returning to active duty.

Sean nodded slowly. Okay.

Do you want to return to active duty?

The question caught him by surprise, despite knowing it was coming. They’d talked about his desire to leave and his desire to stay over the past few months without any pressure for him to make a decision one way or another. Sean had gradually worked through the realization that civilian life still wasn’t for him. That didn’t mean field duty was either. No one would think any less of him if he took a behind-the-scenes position in the MDF going forward, but to Sean, that felt too much like giving up.

What’s more, he was a metahuman, and his power would always be needed in the fight against terrorists looking to create their own metahumans for criminal gains and threaten civilians with Splice. Sean couldn’t, in good conscience, stand down. Not yet.

Sean ran his tongue over the back of his teeth, the phantom taste of metal filling his mouth for half a second. Only recently was he able to eat his food with regular utensils without resorting to plastic ones, the feel of something metal in his mouth too close to the pliers Cillian Halloran had wielded with cruel disdain last November.

Yes, Sean said slowly, looking over her shoulder and not her eyes.

You aren’t obligated—

I want to stay.

His response came out with more vehemence than Sean realized he was capable of these days. Dr. O’Malley didn’t seem put off by his interruption; she only nodded slowly at his statement.

No one wants you to leave, Delaney.

In certain areas of his life, those words were true. In others, well, Sean had his doubts. He plucked at the crease in his suit pants, attention drifting around the bright, open office. Dr. O’Malley had a small collection of books on her shelf, encased within an environmentally sealed plas-glass box to protect the real, fragile paper from the elements. The titles were classics from the turn of the century. He only vaguely remembered them from a long-ago English class during university.

Everyone needed a hobby, she’d told him during their first week as doctor and patient. Hobbies kept people sane, gave them something to focus on beyond the stress of their job and the expectations everyone carried around on their shoulders. Dr. O’Malley liked reading. Sean’s fingers twitched against his knees, thinking about the acoustic guitar his brothers had gifted him for his thirty-second birthday in late December.

The one he’d owned since he was a teenager and a brief founding member of the rock band Atomic Grace had been destroyed when his old apartment was blown up. The sentimental value of that instrument was irreplaceable, but the new guitar went a long way to easing the hurt of its loss.

As the second born of four children, Sean hadn’t been close to his siblings or his parents for years. The change in family dynamic—of being wanted and reached out to and included—was still something he was getting used to.

He hadn’t quite yet worked up the nerve to pick up the guitar and play it, though he kept it in tune. Alexei had asked him for a song once after the guitar found its way into their bedroom, but Sean had refused. The hurt look on Alexei’s face was still seared into Sean’s brain.

Everything about Alexei was still seared into him.

Sean swallowed a little before reaching for the water glass that sat half-empty on Dr. O’Malley’s desk. She had an array of drinks and snack choices for her patients, but Sean only drank water in her presence. The box of tissues near the little bonsai tree rarely went unused. Sean had cried over Alexei more than he’d cried for himself since these sessions started. The all-encompassing guilt he felt from their time together spent in the enemy’s hands had receded a little, but Sean doubted it would ever disappear completely.

He was getting better at overcoming it, but it lingered, making him second-guess every word, every touch he exchanged with Alexei. What little intimacy they’d managed after escaping the trauma had morphed into a tension Sean didn’t know how to break.

Mostly, he knew it was his fault, and he knew he should talk about it.

Instead, he finished the water in his glass.

How are you sleeping? Dr. O’Malley asked, changing the subject.

Sean blinked, thinking of the hours he’d lain awake in the dark, lying next to a warm body, but neither of them touching. Of how he’d seen dawn from the wrong side too many times to count these days.

Of the nightmares that never went away.

Fine.

Dr. O’Malley hummed thoughtfully, the warmth in her gaze neither judging nor pitying. It just was. It had taken Sean far too long to accept she would never find fault in any answer he gave her, to any question she asked.

Sean kept quiet for the last fifteen minutes left in the session. Dr. O’Malley didn’t push him to speak, well aware of the mental block he’d lived with for a few days after returning from Boston last year. It took facing Alexei, seeing him alive and whole again, to finally break his self-imposed muteness. His early sessions spent with Dr. O’Malley were marked with days of not speaking. She had given him room to simply breathe and attempt to process what had happened to him in a safe space.

Sean tried not to think about those days too much.

When his time was up, Sean got to his feet, nodding jerkily at Dr. O’Malley. See you Monday.

She shook her head. Our Monday session is canceled. I’ll see you on Friday for the joint session with Dvorkin.

Sean stared at her. You never cancel our sessions.

I’ve modified them as needed, she reminded him gently. As it is, I’ve spoken with the director regarding your and Dvorkin’s progress. So long as Dvorkin passes his field test tomorrow, expect to be called up. I can’t say any more than that.

Sean’s mouth was suddenly