Chapter 30 #10
Make Marcel feel good about himself, give him a taste of how it feels to be praised by someone better than him, make him believe they’re close in intelligence… which would blur the line between them? A subtle brotherhood of smart people?
Could that actually weaken Marcel’s conviction about our execution?
Marcel doesn’t smile, but something in his posture shifts, like a preening cock.
"Not bad for a student," Blue adds, almost idly, like the praise slipped out on its own.
"Give me more! Test me more!" Marcel suddenly shouts, an unhealthy gleam in his eyes. Fuck, it actually worked, he’s now hungry for wins, for the endorphin rush of being right.
But what’s Blue’s endgame here?
"I’m putting an end to this idiocy!" shouts Gunman, who’s clearly not having this anymore.
He pushes off and strides toward the table with the transmitter, and even though he’s wearing a mask over the lower half of his face, I can see his furrowed brows. His patience has been completely drained.
But he doesn’t get very far.
Marcel raises his hand with the gun and fires.
О, блять![20] I didn’t see that coming.
Gunman drops straight to the ground, face first.
Shit, Marcel is a total nutjob. How did I miss it?
I instinctively curl in on myself. Oddly enough, Blue barely reacts at all, but Edgar jumps and swears.
"What the fuck are you doing, Marcel?! There are twelve NFH combatants outside the door!"
"I didn’t kill him," Marcel says coldly. "He did." He points almost theatrically at me.
Yeah. Should I be surprised? I’m his favorite scapegoat.
"Goddammit, this is a madhouse," I curse, because this is spiraling out of control.
Only Blue sits still, seemingly unbothered, eyelids slightly narrowed, all composed.
"Are you aware one side of your face moves a little slower, Marcel?" he asks in an almost soft voice.
Suddenly, a pounding sound echoes against the door.
Marcel walks over, puts his head an inch from it, and calls out, "Nothing’s happening, I fired a warning shot." He directs it at whoever is standing on the other side, and the pounding stops.
At the same time, Marcel double-checks the thick metal bolt, then returns to us with a satisfied look on his face.
"Gunman was right about one thing, maybe it’s time to change this game a bit, enrich it… bring in this poor idiot since he’s clearly bored," he says, stepping closer to me.
Edgar stares at Marcel in disbelief the entire time, his mouth hanging open in a stunned daze. His gaze drifts to Gunman’s motionless body, then snaps back to Marcel again. He meets my eyes for a moment, and I can see it clearly. Edgar thinks Marcel has gone too far.
Working with NFH must have been a serious strain for him.
He is a proud alpha, and I am almost certain he never resolved his fertility issue the way Marcel did, which makes him a liability in NFH’s eyes.
And would a declared exterminator really want to work side by side with a rat? That does not line up.
Edgar must have had a certain level of distrust toward any contact with a murderous organization from the start, but he followed Marcel anyway, and now… his leader turns out to be a nutjob.
But Marcel ignores Edgar’s stunned look. He pulls a folding knife from his pocket, something like a street butterfly knife. Now he has a firearm in one hand and a knife in the other.
He steps up to me and looks me straight in the eyes, then slowly leans in until his face is only a few inches from mine and says, slowly, "Any last wish, Gabriel?"
At the same time, the hand holding the still-folded butterfly knife slides down my chest and stops at my crotch, pressing the metal handle lightly against the bulge in my pants.
"Yeah. Shoot yourself in the head," I growl.
Marcel chuckles. "You’re funny. I have to admit, I like this pissed-off version of you much more than the sheepish one you always showed."
Suddenly he leans in and presses his lips to mine.
I jerk my head aside with a sharp motion and spit, deliberately. "Don’t touch me. I have standards."
I know what’s coming after, but I do it anyway. Marcel strikes me across the cheekbone with the barrel of the gun, but the hit is weaker than Edgar’s, so I do not react much, even though a thin line of blood runs down my cheek and along my jaw.
"I tried to be nice, but you’re forcing me into uglier things," Marcel murmurs, pursing his lips, then slowly flips the butterfly knife open, the blade catching a bluish-white sheen from the light filtering through the window behind Blue’s chair.
There is a moment of silence as I focus on the blade in front of my face, my mind running at full speed, and suddenly… I see it, a solution to the puzzle!
A chance, something that might work if handled carefully. It comes with a horrible cost, but this is about staying alive.
Snow said I would resist the idea, resist breaking this rule.
But I still need to go there. It’s awful, it hurts, but I just somehow know it’s the right direction.
"So you’re withdrawing that last wish?" Marcel raises his eyebrows.
"I assume the scope of what I can ask for is limited. So let’s do it like this. I want to fulfill a fantasy. I want to see you kiss Blue."
A heavy silence falls.
Yeah, this is the one rule an alpha like me would never want to break: allowing others to touch his omega.
Edgar lifts his brows slightly, his mouth curving with amusement. Marcel studies me for a moment, at first with a frown, then he starts laughing.
Blue watches me closely, and I am certain he knows, just like I do, that I am not doing this at random.
One thing is a key factor here.
I know Blue has venom in his fangs, but could he actually use it? Nah. That would end badly. But there is one other possibility.
The one Blue mentioned once before.
The touch is the key.
If anybody touches him, he gains a massive advantage.
What is that supposed to mean?
I have to trust what he said, even if I don’t know the details.
But to reach this situation, many things have to happen first.
I hope… not too many.
My mind filters paths like an algorithm. It is almost like writing code. Some branches simply have a higher probability of execution.
And then it slowly clarifies.
The path with poisoned fangs is ruled out from the start, of course. Even if Blue successfully poisons Marcel, Edgar will run. He won't kill us, he doesn't have the guts. But he will leave us here at the mercy of even more unhinged NFH people.
This is a real problem to solve, a life-or-death one, not some abstract puzzle for bored third-year philosophy students.
But the correct resolution has been right in front of me the whole time.
Edgar.
I get this strange conviction that I have finally solved it.
He’s the key, the person who needs to be eliminated first.
Still, if anything is going to happen, we need to push the first piece forward.
Marcel slowly turns toward Blue, as if the idea is starting to appeal to him. His laughter shifts into a more ironic edge.
"A kiss with the enemy? Sounds like a movie title. Why not. Maybe I will grant you that last wish."
He straightens and starts walking toward Blue, while in my head solutions keep spinning.
The outline of a plan, hovering at the edge of my perception, is pushing forward now more insistently.
It’s like a flash of vision.
The kiss situation can set the first domino in motion!
So I speak out loud.
"Baht, exclamation mark, cross mark, euro… h-bar, exclamation mark, mill sign."
If decoded correctly, it forms a word ‘bite him’.
Marcel is already halfway leaning over Blue, whose calm face is tilted up as if he is about to accept the kiss without resistance.
But Marcel stops.
He hesitates. Did he decode what I said? That is what I am counting on. Marcel is not stupid and it's complex enough that he will treat it as my hidden message to Blue, not bait for him to take…
But it is.
He stays silent for a moment, his eyes drifting somewhere above Blue’s head.
"I changed my mind. I don't think you deserve your last wish after all. You're a treacherous bastard!"
He narrows his eyes and I pray he does the one incredible thing…
"I would rather do something you will hate. As my farewell gift to you, you stupid bitch…"
Then he slowly turns toward Edgar and fixes him with his eyes.
"Rape him," Marcel says suddenly, pointing at Blue.
Oh.
Wow.
That actually worked. As awful as it sounds, as sick, and as much as I do not want Edgar anywhere near Blue, the other scenarios give us no chance of survival.
But this one… gives us a fair chance.
Well… not the rape itself, of course. It won’t come to this. But what would have to happen just before that.
Touching Edgar.
If everything works out, in this setup, the only person left for me to take down would be Marcel.
Yes, he is armed, but my legs are tied loosely enough that I can stand, even with my hands behind my back.
One solid headbutt to his nose or jaw would be enough to knock him out, because Marcel is as slight as Blue.
I would not be able to knock out Edgar easily like this, he’s big, even taller than me by a few inches, and he works out.
Ironically, Marcel himself eliminated the one person who could have been his backup, Gunman.
My heart starts racing.
Edgar, meanwhile, stares at Marcel like he is insane.
"You’re serious?" he repeats, like he cannot process it.
"Yes. Give me that pleasure."
"I don’t understand any of this."
"You’re not here to understand. You’re here to follow orders, Edgar."
Edgar’s face tightens, like he has just been kicked.
"You’re an asshole, Marcel. I’m not in the mood to rape him."
Marcel, like a chameleon, changes his expression in a second, smiling sweetly, fluttering his lashes flirtatiously, and whispering in a tempting voice, "Let’s make a deal.
If you do it, and everything is fine, then I will make out with him and fuck him too.
What do you say? Wouldn’t you want to watch? We do him together!"