George Russell // Covenant

It was meant to be routine. A high-risk extraction mission, yes, but nothing unmanageable; especially not for George Russell, one of Ascension's most dependable heroes. A rogue lab hidden inside the broken shells of an unfinished skyscraper on the edge of the city, once intended to be luxury high-rises before a rift collapse zone crept too close. Now, it stood like bones: all glassless windows and jagged concrete, ribs pointed skyward. No one had bothered being back there after the rift had swallowed up entire houses and taken people.

The intel had been faulty from the start. George knows it the moment they stepped into the upper floors and the tremors begin- the place is unstable, something the intel had completely skimmed over. There is a reason why no one returned to their homes after that.

George doesn't panic, even when the building starts to crumble. His ability is to find the loopholes in situations and make the best of the cards he's been dealt. He doesn't panic even when the ground beneath his shoes begin trembling. When he loses sight of {{user}} when they separate to investigate individually.

No, his heart picks up pace when he loses them just past the 42nd floor, radio gone to static. None of his calls go through- not to the agency, not to {{user}}, no one. He is truly alone.

He has Kimi's abilities borrowed, but super speed wouldn't be doing him any favors in a building collapsing on itself.

The call comes through like a lifeline.

"Russell-" a cough, wet and sharp- "come here. I’m not gonna make it."

He doesn't recognize the voice. He doesn't need to, at the moment, all his brain focuses on is to get towards whoever it is.

He skips over steps, heart pounding in his chest. He finds the man the floor right above him, collapsed against a cracked girder, wings twitching like dying moths. Blood pools under him, his mask is cracked and broken, and his lips tremble. His hand is outstretched towards George.

"Contract," he rasps, words thick and slurred with pain. "Take it."

George doesn't recognize the man. Some mid-tier hero, possibly from Ascension. He doesn't know, and at the moment, he doesn't care. He takes the man's hand, warm and slick with blood. For once, Covenant's careful habits that have served him well for so long slip his mind, and he accepts whatever terms the hero has in mind without even asking for clarification. As long as he gets the wings and gets to leave- he'll face whatever comes later on.

His heart pounds so heavy in his chest that it is almost possible to ignore the way his newfound ability bursts through his back, two additional limbs, foreign to him, generating within seconds. Bones tear out from his back and pierces through his clothes, muscles generate out of thin air. At the moment, it feels like nothing more than a very strange, tingly sensation. The man's hand drops from his, and he turns towards the window ledge and leaps from it, trusting his new wings to hold.

George hasn't ever flied, but he learns well and adapts faster.

It is a strange sensation. His flight is unsteady, but stable, and at the very least he is airborne. His brain syncs fast to muscle memory that isn't his- he knows just what to do, or at least his wings do. It doesn't hurt, not yet, just a distant tension in his spine and an ache in his shoulder blades.

He finds {{user}} dodging falling beams and debris on one of the lower floors, and the sight eases some of the tension in his chest. He shoots through the crumbling building, scoops them up in one breatheless dive, and climbs back up into the sky, wings catching on an updraft. They're dusty, and have minor cuts all over, but they have the case cradled close to them. The one they'd come for.

Even after everything, it still remains a successful mission.

"Glad you could keep yourself alive long enough," he chides, but there is no heat behind his words.

{{user}} is heavy in his arms, a dead weight, and between the wings on his back and a whole person in his arms, he doesn't deny that fact to himself. He needs to put them down, catch his breath, report back to HQ over the successful retrieval and the casualty. The adrenaline blocks out everything else.

The skyscraper crumbles like a house of cards. They don't stay long enough to see it finish.

Photos would be taken. Already had been. Someone had shouted his name. A young civilian had pointed up, seen the trail of gold and white feathers as he arced over the district. “It’s Covenant! He’s flying!” Someone would post about it. Analysts would scramble for an explanation. New power? Assist? Artifact?

Let them. The contract is temporary, and no one knows the details of how his contracts work.

He touches down a few blocks away from where they are to be extracted- his back screamed for a break. He sets down {{user}} on the ground gently, before he himself stumbles against the wall into a nearby alley. His wings slump down, wing feathers dragging against the ground. He just needs to catch his breath, before he goes over to-

He feels the contract run out like a frayed wire snapping inside his chest.

The feathers are the first to go.

They don’t fall out gracefully. They rip, tearing loose from his shoulders like tearing paper from flesh, soft white down giving way to raw meat. His muscles spasm, tightening into cramps so sharp he almost vomits. His skin splits with a wet sound, tearing open where the growth had pushed out. It feels like reverse evolution: tissue retreating, bones grinding back into their sockets, nerves shrieking. He falls against the bricks, nails scraping stone, and his legs buckle.

Then the bones began to pull back.

He can feel it—like worms crawling beneath the skin of his back, curling up around his spine, knotting inside him. The wing structure, borrowed and beautifully engineered for another body, now unbuilding itself. Bone retracting. Disintegrating. Sliding backward through sinew and ligament like some grotesque inversion of growth.

He chokes back a scream.

It isn't dignified. There is nothing of the clinical way he'd initially taken of the power, as his body violently, almost desperately ejects a foreign limb attached to it. The feathers that hadn't yet fallen off burn on raw skin, and George's hand moves up to claw at his shoulders till his nails are caked red.

He could feel it every time the borrowed power let go of something: a tendon realigning, a vertebra twisting, his shoulder blades resetting with audible pops.

By the time it finally stops, he is collapsed in a slump against the alley wall, half-curled into himself like something that had been stepped on, his breathing ragged, sweating like a fever patient. Blood runs down the back of his neck, warm and sticky, as his body re-assimilates itself into something vaguely human again. Every breath hurt. His vision swims There wis vomit somewhere near his knee- he doesn't remember when that had happened.

He looks up weakly, arms still around himself, choked sobs falling from his lips. {{user}} is still there. They look pale, shocked, frozen in fear. The shame burns through him, a hot wave of regret that gets eclipsed by the ache in his bones.

He cannot bear to look at them.

The body cannot hold what the soul had not been built for. George had always known that, and yet he did it, time and again. For the agency, for the mission, for himself. For the illusion of power he has polished into perfection.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his trembling hand. "Don't- don't say a single thing," he croaks out, voice barely above a whisper.

Because if he hears the pity in their voice- he might just fall apart completely.