Chapter 11: Fucking
The sterile chill of the sleep pod was gone, burned away by shared body heat and the raw, animal truth of what they’d done. Dawn was a grey suggestion at the edge of the blackout blind. Heaven lay awake, cataloging the new ache between her legs, the pattern of scars under her fingertips where they rested on Killua’s bare stomach. He was asleep, his breathing deep and even, one arm thrown possessively over her hips. In the faint light from a status LED, he looked younger, the ruthless lines of his face softened.
It was a lie. A beautiful, transient lie.
As if sensing her watchfulness, his eyes snapped open. No drowsiness. Just instant, hyper-aware clarity. The assassin reasserting itself over the man. His gaze met hers, and for a fractured second, she saw a mirror of her own turmoil: a bewildered, hungover shame from the emotional carnage.
Then he blinked, and it was walled off. He stretched, the muscles in his arms and chest corded. “We burned eight hours.”
“We needed the downtime,” she said, her voice morning-rough. She sat up, the thin sheet pooling at her waist. The air felt clinical again against her skin.
“Downtime is a luxury for people with retirement funds.” He swung his legs out of the pod, his back to her, a landscape of old violence. He pulled on his pants with efficient motions. “Mach’s toys won’t test themselves.”
The shift was brutal, necessary. They dressed in silence, the previous night’s desperation folded away like a secret weapon. The duffel bags waited by the door, inert and ominous.
They secured a private testing chamber through a chain of encrypted drop points—a decommissioned industrial laundry in a forgotten sector. The air was thick with the ghost of bleach and mildew. Massive, rusted machines stood like silent monuments. The perfect place to make things disappear.
Killua unzipped the first duffel, the sound loud in the hollow space. He lifted out one of the vortex charges. It was heavier than it looked, a matte-black disc with a pulsing, deep-blue core. “Instructions were ‘point and think angry thoughts.’ Not exactly precision engineering.”
“Mach’s precision is in the psychosis, not the manual,” Heaven said, assembling the disrupter rifle from its components. The parts slid together with a series of sickeningly smooth clicks. It had a wrong weight to it, hungry and inert.
They worked. It was their oldest language, older than kisses or apologies. Setting up target arrays of scrap metal and concrete blocks. Syncing their scanner suites to measure blast radius, energy diffusion, feedback wavelengths. A dance of calibrated movements and shorthand jargon.
A dance of calibrated movements and shorthand jargon. The first test was a controlled breach. Heaven took position behind a rusted boiler, the rifle’s stock cool against her cheek. “Fire in the hole.” Her finger squeezed the disrupter’s trigger. A silent, visible pulse rippled the air. The vortex charge on its pedestal fifty yards away flared neon-blue. It didn’t explode. It unraveled. The target—a stack of rebar-filled concrete blocks—simply ceased to be in a sphere of perfect nothingness, leaving smoothed edges and the smell of ozone and hot stone. The vanished mass was about the size of a small car.
“Clean,” Killua called from his monitor, his voice echoing. “No secondary fragmentation. Energy signature matches the schematics.” He didn’t sound relieved. He sounded clinical. “It just deletes matter.”
“Efficient,” Heaven said, lowering the rifle. Her hands were steady. Inside, something cold tightened. A weapon that left no mess was a special kind of nightmare. “Your turn with the popcorn maker.”
He approached the second charge. This one was smaller, cylindrical. The activator was a simple pressure switch. He placed it at the base of a towering, corroded washing machine drum. “You’re clear?” he asked, not looking back.
“I’m clear.” She watched him move, that predatory grace. He depressed the switch and blurred backward in a flicker of Ren.
The charge emitted a low hum. Then, a flash of blinding white. Not an explosion, but an expansion. A web of crackling electrical energy, thicker than his lightning and wrong-colored, a sickly violet-white, erupted in a twenty-foot radius. It didn’t just arc; it clung. It crawled over the metal drum, etching deep, smoking grooves, dissolving bolts, turning steel into brittle, blackened lace. The sound was a shrieking, spitting static that drilled into the teeth.
It lasted seven seconds. Then it winked out. The giant drum collapsed in on itself with a groan, a pile of sculpted slag. The air tasted of ionized metal and burned plastic.
“Area denial,” Killua said, walking forward to inspect the damage. He kicked a piece of slag. It crumbled to dust. “Nasty. But predictable.”
“You call that predictable?” Heaven gestured at the ruins.
“Compared to our families?” He met her eyes, a ghost of his old smirk playing on his lips. “It’s just machinery, Heaven. It follows rules.”
The dark humor hung between them, a fragile bridge. They reset for a third test, this time a paired sequence: a disrupter shot to breach a barrier, followed by an arc-web charge tossed into the breach. The simulation was a straight extraction under fire. The rhythm returned, a wordless coordination built from memory and shared instinct. He positioned the charges. She lined up the shot. For a moment, it felt like before. Like partners. Like possibilities.
She fired the disrupter. The pulse hit the designated steel plate, carving a perfect, man-sized hole. “Go!” she yelled.
Killua pitched the cylinder through the opening. It should have armed after a one-second delay, flooding the space behind with cleansing fire.
It armed immediately.
In his hand.
A millisecond of recognition flashed across his face—pure, unadorned calculation. He couldn’t drop it. The blast radius would catch them both. He made the only move left. He turned, curling his body around the device, and used the momentum to hurl himself sideways into the deep, empty concrete reservoir of a massive industrial washing vat.
“Killua!” Heaven’s scream was raw.
The violet-white web detonated inside the confined space. Light screamed from the open top, casting jagged, frantic shadows. The shrieking static was magnified, contained, a howl of artificial lightning cooking the metal interior. She was running before the light died, before the sound faded, her heart a hammer against her ribs.
She skidded to the vat’s edge and looked down.
He was on his back at the bottom, seven feet down. Smoke curled from his clothes. His jacket was shredded, the skin beneath bleeding from a hundred fine, electrical burns. The charge was a dead, black lump beside him. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, his chest heaving.
“Hey,” he croaked.
“You idiot.” The relief was so violent it felt like rage. She jumped down, landing in a crouch beside him. “You fucking showboating idiot. Your Nen—”
“Dissipated most of it,” he gasped, wincing as he tried to sit up. “Enough. Still feels like I deep-fried my nerves.” He looked at his trembling hands, the skin red and blistered. “Faulty trigger. Mach’s quality control is for shit.”
She didn’t care about Mach. Her hands were on him, checking for major damage, her fingers pushing aside torn fabric. The burns were superficial but widespread, a angry map across his torso and arms. The smell of seared skin and ozone was thick. Under her touch, his muscles were wire-tight with pain and adrenaline.
“We need to get you cleaned up,” she said, her voice tight.
“In a minute.” His hand, still shaking, came up and gripped her wrist. His grip was weak. His eyes weren’t. They were dark, pupil-blown, fixed on her with an intensity that had nothing to do with the pain. The aftermath of near-obliteration thrummed in the air between them, a live wire. The pretense of professionalism shattered.
He tugged her wrist, a feeble pull that held the force of a command. She didn’t resist. She let herself be drawn down, until she was straddling his hips, her knees in the cold grit on either side of him. The compromised vat walls surrounded them, a ruined, private cathedral.
“You’re burned,” she whispered, but she was leaning closer.
“I’m alive.” His other hand came up to cradle the back of her neck, his fingers tangling in her hair. “Feels like the only thing that’s real right now is this. Is you.”
Then he pulled her mouth down to his. It wasn’t like the night before. There was no nostalgia, no tender exploration. This kiss was a claiming, a confirmation of existence, salted with the copper taste of blood from where his lip had split. It was brutal and desperate. She met it with equal hunger, biting his lower lip, sucking the wound, swallowing his sharp gasp.
His hands dragged down her back, claws catching on her tactical gear. He found the straps, the fastenings. He fumbled with them, his burned fingers clumsy. “Get this off,” he growled against her mouth. “I need to feel you. Now.”
She complied, a frenzied collaboration. She shrugged out of her top, peeled it away. He shoved her pants down over her hips just enough. He tore at his own belt and fly, a ripping sound, pushing fabric aside. There was no patience, no preamble. He was hard, jutting against her belly, and she was already wet, a slick heat built from fear and fury and this relentless, fucking gravity between them.
He guided himself to her entrance, the head of his cock nudging through her folds. His eyes locked on hers, a blue flame in the dim light. “Look at me,” he commanded, his voice ragged.
She did. He thrust up, burying himself inside her in one fierce, deep stroke. She cried out, a sound ripped from her throat, as he filled her, stretching her, a burning, perfect fit. He was so deep it stole her breath. He held there, impaling her, his body trembling beneath her from the strain and the pain.
“Fuck,” he breathed, his head falling back against the concrete. “Fuck, Heaven.” He began to move. It was a brutal, punishing rhythm, each upward drive jolting through her core, his hips pistoning from the floor of the vat. The raw friction was overwhelming, the angle relentless. Every nerve was alight.
She braced her hands on his scarred, burned chest, riding him, meeting each thrust with a downward slam of her own. Their skin slapped together, a wet, obscene counterpoint to their ragged breathing. The air was cold on her sweat-slicked back, a stark contrast to the inferno where they were joined.
“Is this real?” he gasped, his hands gripping her ass, fingers digging into her flesh, pulling her onto him harder, deeper. “Tell me.”
“Yes,” she moaned, leaning forward, her breasts brushing his wounded chest. He hissed, the pain transmuting into a sharper pleasure. “God, yes. Don’t stop.”
His control snapped. He rolled her suddenly, pressing her back into the grit and cold concrete. He never slipped out. He drove back into her, now looming over her, his arms caging her head. The pace became frantic, savage. He fucked her with a single-minded abandon, each thrust a wordless vow, a penance, a prayer.
She wrapped her legs high around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back, pulling him in impossibly deeper. The coil in her gut tightened, a brilliant, screaming pressure. She could feel his own rhythm fracturing, feel the hot, heavy pulse of him deep inside as he approached his end.
“Come with me,” he begged, his forehead against hers, his breath hot. “Please. Now.”
It was the ‘please’ that undid her. Her climax tore through her, a silent, seizing wave that clenched around his cock, milking him. He shouted, a raw, broken sound, as he followed, pumping his release into her in hot, pulsing jets. He collapsed onto her, his weight a welcome anchor, his face buried in the crook of her neck.
They lay there in the grime and aftermath, tangled, spent, breathing in unison. The cold seeped in. Reality reasserted itself: the burned metal smell, the chill, his injuries.
Slowly, he pushed himself up on his arms, looking down at her. His expression was unguarded, devastated. He opened his mouth to speak.
A sharp, electronic chirp sliced through the quiet. Then another. It came from their discarded gear. Their linked scanners. They both froze.
Killua rolled off her, moving with a pained stiffness. He grabbed his device. The screen displayed a simple, pulsing map coordinate. A location, now active. A tag. It was Mach’ signature. An invitation. Or a trap.
Beneath the coordinates, a three-word message flashed: ‘HEAD EAST, KITTENS.’
He showed her the screen. All the heat, all the vulnerability, sealed over in an instant. His eyes turned to glacial chips. “We’re done testing.”
The coordinates led them to a derelict weather station perched on the coastal cliffs, all rusted girders and shattered glass whistling with the wind off the sea. They approached it as they approached everything: separate angles, silent signals, weapons live. It was empty, save for a single, polished communication terminal glowing softly on a grime-caked console. Mach’s voice, when it crackled to life, was pre-recorded, tinny. “The merchandise works, I see. Your biometrics during the test were… stimulating reading. Head east. The real party’s in Yorkshin. Details are in the buffer. Try not to die before you spend my money.”
The screen went dark. Killua exhaled, a slow, controlled sound. “He was watching.”
“Of course he was,” Heaven said, her knuckles white on the grip of her pistol. The violation was clinical, expected. It still burned. They downloaded the data packet—a manifest, a warehouse number, a bank routing code—and destroyed the terminal with a precise strike from Killua’s charged fingertips. It fizzed into molten slag.
They moved east under a bruised sky, putting miles between themselves and the test site. The memory of his burned hands on her skin, the animal coupling in the concrete vat, hung in the silence between them like a third presence. They didn’t speak of it. They drove. They secured a new room, this one in a forgotten transit hotel overlooking the railyards. The walls were thin, vibrating with the distant thunder of freight trains.
Killua sat on the edge of the bed, peeling the dead skin from a burn on his forearm. His motions were detached, surgical. Heaven watched from the window, the neon sign from the bar across the street painting her in cycles of red and blue.
The silence wasn’t peaceful. It was full of the things they’d done, the things they’d lost, the suicide pact of a mission they’d chosen. The fight with their families wouldn’t be a battle. It would be a mutually assured obliteration. The weight of it pressed down, harder than the atmosphere in the laundry vat.
Heaven turned from the window. Her heart was a frantic bird against her ribs. The idea had been forming, a fragile, insane tendril of hope germinating in the dark soil of everything they’d just rekindled.
“What if we waited?” The words left her mouth before she could cage them.
Killua didn’t look up. “For what? A better offer?”
“What if we waited… to take down our families.” She took a step toward him. The cycling light caught the uncertain line of her mouth.
Now he looked up. His eyes were flat, cautious. “What are you talking about?”
She crossed her arms, a defensive gesture. Her voice dropped, softer, almost lost under the rumble of a passing train. “What if we waited. And had a kid. Or two. Or three.” She forced herself to hold his gaze, to see the shock ripple through his practiced calm. “We train them. We build something… ours. And then, together, all of us… we take down the families.” She swallowed. “Is that stupid?”
The room held its breath. Killua stared at her. The raw, ambitious insanity of it hung in the air, a schematic for a life he’d never let himself diagram. A family. Not as legacy, but as weapon. Not as chain, but as army. Built on love, forged for war. Her proposal wasn’t an escape from their world; it was a colonization of it. A long, patient revenge seeded in their own blood.
He didn’t laugh. He didn’t dismiss her. He looked at her, really looked, as if seeing the ghost of the future Mach had once taunted them with—the one they’d both secretly, desperately imagined every single day apart. A future with a backyard. With little monsters wearing their eyes. Teaching them to fight, to think, to survive. To love. And then, to burn the rotten world that made them necessary.
He opened his mouth. Closed it. The professional assassin warred with the man who’d just fucked her senseless in a hole, who still loved her so deeply it was a physical ache. His voice, when it finally came, was rough, stripped bare.
“It’s the most dangerous fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”
He stood. The distance between them was two steps. It felt like a canyon, and the only bridge was made of shared delusion. He crossed it. He didn’t touch her. He just stood there, his energy a silent storm around him. “A kid. You and me. You really think we could….”
“I think we’re the only ones who could,” she whispered.
Something fractured in his face. The control shattered. It wasn’t lust this time. It was a tsunami of longing, for her, for that impossible, beautiful, terrifying blueprint. He grabbed her face in his hands, his thumbs pressing into her cheekbones. “Say it again.”
“A family,” she breathed against his lips. “Our family. Our war.”
A low groan vibrated in his chest. His kiss was a vow, a surrender, a pact. It was deep and consuming, wet and open-mouthed, tongues sliding together with a frantic, starving need that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with soul-eating hope.
Clothes became obstacles. His jacket hit the floor. Her shirt ripped at the seam; buttons pinged against the wall. He palmed her breast, his thumb circling her nipple, rough and urgent before he ducked his head and took it into his mouth. He sucked hard, his teeth grazing the sensitive peak, and the sharp pleasure-pain made her cry out, her fingers tangling in his white hair.
“Killua…”
He walked her backward until her knees hit the bed. He pushed her down, following her, his body covering hers. The feel of him, solid and heavy and wanted, was an anchor. He shoved her legs apart with his knee, his hand sliding down her stomach, over the waistband of her pants, into her underwear. He found her wet, soaking, her flesh swollen and hot. He pushed two fingers inside her, curling them, and she arched off the bed with a sharp gasp.
“You’re already so fucking ready,” he muttered, watching her face as he worked his fingers in and out, the slick sounds obscenely loud. “Thinking about that? About a baby in you? My baby?”
“Yes,” she hissed, her hips rolling to meet his thrusting hand. “God, yes.”
He freed himself from his pants, his cock springing out, thick and already leaking. He rubbed the head through her wetness, coating himself, not entering yet, just teasing them both. The pressure was exquisite, maddening.
“Tell me you want it,” he demanded, his breath hot on her throat. His eyes were wildfire.
“I want it,” she moaned. “I want you to fill me up. I want you to come so deep inside me it takes root.”
A ragged sound tore from him. He positioned himself, and with one powerful, driving surge, he was inside, hilting himself completely. The stretch was immense, perfect. She screamed, her nails raking down his back.