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Chapter 7 - Chapter 7: Final Words

The fall lasted forever and an instant.

Marcus twisted in the air, pulling Lily against his chest and rotating so his body would take the impact. Through the rush of wind, he heard her scream his name—not Ghost, not the monster, but "Marcus!" The brother she was just beginning to remember.

They hit the concrete loading dock below.

Marcus's spine shattered on impact. He felt the bones fragment, felt his ribs cave inward, puncturing organs that were already failing. But his arms never loosened their grip, cradling Lily against him, her fall cushioned by his breaking body.

They rolled apart on impact. Lily tumbled across rough concrete, collecting scrapes and bruises but nothing worse. Marcus lay still, a broken doll painted in expanding red.

"Marcus!" Lily crawled to him, her doctor's training warring with sister's panic. Her hands went to his neck, checking for a pulse she could barely find. "Oh god, oh god, no..."

His eyes fluttered open, focusing with effort on her face. Blood ran from his mouth when he tried to speak.

"Don't talk," she said, her hands pressing against the worst of the bleeding—the stomach wound. But there were too many injuries, too much damage. She'd seen enough trauma victims to know. "Help! Someone help us!"

"Lily..." Her name was barely a whisper.

"I'm here. I'm right here." Tears streamed down her face, mixing with the blood on her hands. "Why? Why did you do this?"

Marcus's hand moved slightly, trembling as he raised it. His pinky finger extended.

The gesture shattered her. Suddenly she was six again, in the orphanage, linking pinkies with her big brother who promised he'd find her when they grew up. The memories came flooding back—him reading to her, teaching her to tie her shoes, giving her the last piece of his bread when she was hungry, singing her to sleep when thunderstorms scared her.

"You... you gave me up to save me," she sobbed, linking her pinky with his. His finger was cold, so cold. "They were going to take me anyway, and you... you made sure I went somewhere safe."

Marcus managed the ghost of a smile. His lips moved, forming words with no sound: "Live well."

"No, no, don't you dare." She pressed harder on his wounds, her medical training screaming that it was futile. "You don't get to die. Not when I just got you back. Not when I finally remember."

Footsteps on the dock. Lynch emerged from the warehouse's ground floor, his skeletal frame moving carefully, gun raised. Half his face was burned from the phosphorus, one pale eye sealed shut.

"Touching reunion," he wheezed. "But Crane wants you alive, girl. Your brother's death is just a bonus."

Marcus's eye tracked to Lynch, then to a shard of broken glass near his hand. Even dying, even broken, he was calculating angles, distances.

"Don't," Lily whispered, seeing his intent. "Please, just... just stay with me."

But Lynch was raising his gun toward her.

Marcus's hand closed on the glass, the edges slicing his palm. With his last strength, he flicked his wrist. The shard spun through the air, catching Lynch in his good eye. The skeleton man screamed, stumbling backward, firing blindly.

A bullet caught Marcus in the chest, adding one more fatal wound to the collection.

Lynch fell off the dock's edge, a twenty-foot drop to the water below. They heard the splash, then nothing.

"Marcus!" Lily turned back to her brother. His breathing was getting shallower, the gaps between longer. "Please. Please, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I called you a monster. You're not. You're my brother. You're the boy who protected me, who loved me, who gave up everything..."

His hand found hers, squeezing weakly. When he spoke, she had to lean close to hear.

"Proud... of you. The doctor... the woman... you became."

"Because of you. Because you kept me safe."

"No." He coughed, more blood. "Because of... you. You chose... to heal. Could have been... anything. Chose... to save lives."

"While you took them."

"Balance," he whispered. "You're... my balance. Every life... I took... you saved two. The math... finally works."

Sirens in the distance. Someone had heard the gunfire. Help coming too late.

"I remember now," Lily said desperately, trying to keep him conscious. "I remember everything. How you'd check under my bed for monsters. How you called me Lilybug because I was small but bright. How you gave me your jacket when I was cold, even though you were smaller and needed it more."

Marcus's eyes were losing focus, but they stayed on her face.

"Remember... the song?" he asked.

Lily's voice broke as she began to hum, then sing—the lullaby he'd sung her twenty-two years ago when storms scared her. Her voice was different, trained by years of choir and confidence, but the melody was the same.

*"Hush now, little bug, so bright,*

*Tomorrow brings the morning light,*

*No shadows here can make you cry,*

*Your brother watches from nearby..."*

Marcus's lips moved with the words he'd written for her when he was seven and she was five. A promise that he'd kept in the darkest possible way.

"Lily..."

"I'm here."

"The families... the ones I... there's a account. Switzerland. Number in my... pocket. Four hundred million. Stolen from... targets. Give it... to them. The victims. Help them... heal."

She found the paper, soaked in blood but still readable. "I will. I promise."

"Good... good." His breathing was getting worse, wet and rattling. "One more... thing."

"Anything."

"Forgive me?"

Lily bent down, kissing his forehead the way he used to kiss hers when she had nightmares. "There's nothing to forgive. You're my hero. You've always been my hero."

"No," Marcus whispered. "Just... your brother."

"That's the same thing," she said fiercely. "To me, that was always the same thing."

Something shifted in his eyes—twenty years of weight lifting. The ghost of Marcus Chen, eight years old, seemed to overlay the dying assassin's face. For just a moment, Lily saw both—the boy who'd loved her and the man who'd killed for her.

"Still... the best big brother?" he asked, his voice barely audible.

"The very best," she confirmed, squeezing his hand. "Forever and always."

Marcus smiled—a real smile, perhaps the first genuine one in twenty years. "Then... it was worth it."

Police cars screeched into the lot, ambulance sirens wailing. EMTs rushed toward them, but Lily didn't move, didn't let go of his hand.

"Sir, we need to—" an EMT started.

"He's dying," Lily said clinically, the doctor surfacing through the grief. "Multiple gunshot wounds, internal bleeding, spinal trauma. Maybe three minutes."

"We can try—"

"Then try. But I'm not letting go."

They worked around her, starting IVs, applying pressure bandages, preparing for transport they all knew was pointless. Marcus's eyes never left Lily's face.

"Tell me," she said suddenly. "Tell me you watched me graduate. Tell me you were there."

"Medical school... blue dress... you tripped... on stage." Each word was harder. "Laughed it off. So proud."

"My wedding?"

"Back row... left side. You were... beautiful. David... good man. Makes you... happy."

"All those times I felt like someone was watching over me..."

"Always. Every... important moment. Every... danger. Always... there."

His breathing stopped. The EMT with the heart monitor said something urgent. They started CPR, but Lily knew. She'd seen enough death to recognize its arrival.

"Marcus?" She gripped his hand tighter, their pinkies still linked. "Marcus, don't go. Please don't go."

His eyes focused one last time, looking past her at something she couldn't see. Maybe the ghost of their parents, maybe just synapses firing randomly. But his expression became peaceful, almost surprised.

"Mom?" he whispered.

And then he was gone.

Lily held him as the EMTs worked, as they called time of death, as the police secured the scene. She held him as Crane was arrested two blocks away, the FBI finally catching up after Marcus's files had exposed everything. She held him until a gentle hand on her shoulder made her look up.

Sarah Kim—Raven—stood there, her face showing something that might have been grief.

"You don't know me," Sarah said, "but I knew your brother. The real him, not just Ghost."

"Tell me," Lily said. "Tell me everything."

"Later. For now, know this—he saved seventeen people like him. Slaves who killed because someone they loved was threatened. Your brother broke our chains." Sarah knelt beside Marcus's body, closing his eyes with unexpected tenderness. "He was the best of us. The only one who remembered how to be human."

**Three Days Later**

**Baltimore Cemetery**

The funeral was small. Lily and David, Sarah, sixteen former handlers who'd come to pay respects to the man who'd freed them, and surprisingly, Tyler Morrison—the seven-year-old boy with his grandfather the Senator.

"He saved us," Senator Morrison had told Lily. "Your brother sent a warning that saved my grandson from seeing something no child should see."

Lily stood at the gravestone—Marcus Chen, Beloved Brother, 1997-2025. She'd fought for that inscription, refusing anything about his crimes or his code name.

As the others departed, she knelt by the fresh earth and pulled out two things: the Swiss account information and a small velvet box.

"I'll distribute the money," she told the grave. "Every family you hurt will get something. Not enough, never enough, but something." She opened the box, revealing a simple silver ring with an inscription: "Promises Kept."

"And this... I was going to give this to David. A wedding ring. But I think you should have it." She buried it in the earth above his casket. "You kept your promise. You found me when we grew up. Just... not the way either of us expected."

Standing to leave, she paused. "Oh, and Marcus? I'm pregnant. Two months. If it's a boy..." she smiled through tears, "his middle name will be Marcus. And I'll tell him about his uncle. Not Ghost. Not the assassin. But the eight-year-old boy who loved his sister enough to become a monster so she could become a healer."

She linked her pinky finger with the air, the way she'd done unknowingly for twenty years.

"Live well," she whispered. "Be happy. That's what you told me. But you forgot the last part, the part you should have said—'and remember me.' Because I will, Marcus. I'll remember you every life I save, every child I heal. You'll live in the good I do."

As she walked away, a cardinal landed on the gravestone—bright red against gray granite. It sang once, clear and strong, then flew toward the sunset.

Lily didn't believe in signs, but she chose to believe in that one.

Her brother was finally free.

And in the end, the math worked out:

- 341 lives taken

- 368 lives saved through Lily's work

- 17 handlers freed

- 400 million dollars to victims' families

- 1 brother who kept his promise

- 1 sister who would keep his memory

The ledger, at last, was balanced.

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