Apollo stared up at him, his vision blurred by a hot flood of tears. His entire world, the moral compass he had relied upon to navigate the darkness, wasn't just broken; it was being ground into powder beneath Rex's boot.
Behind the tears, something deeper was happening. Something fundamental in his psyche was fracturing, a psychic collapse that made his hands shake with involuntary spasms.
"You're not... you're not the Rex I knew," Apollo whispered.
The words were pathetic, a weak attempt to cling to a ghost that had never existed.
"I was never the Rex you knew," Rex answered, the grin widening until it seemed to split his face unnaturally. "You just hadn't met the real one until now."
"The one beneath the performance... The one who actually has the spine to do what needs to be done..."
Rex began to walk.
He didn't charge; he didn't threaten. He simply began to circle Apollo slowly, like a shark circling a wounded whale.
