Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“You armed the bomb,” Eric snarled, grabbing Gus by the shirt front and twisting it until the asshole was choking. “You fucking son of a bitch.”
“It was always armed.” Gus’ voice was choked and tight, but he didn’t fight Eric. “I started the countdown before the other bomb ever went off. That switch is just a backup. In case the timer fails.”
“It’s been on the whole time we’ve been sitting here?” Nikolett’s voice tipped up in alarm. She leapt to her feet, then pulled on Eric’s shoulder.
“Eric, Gus, get up, we have to get out of here.”
Eric surged to his feet, not letting go of his brother’s collar.
“Why are you trying to get me out?” Gus demanded as Eric dragged him out of the cell. “Leave me here to blow up.”
“Nope. I’m going to beat you to death myself,” Eric snarled.
“Eric, not helping. Hurry.” Nikolett led the way up the stairs.
Gus sucker punched Eric in the gut, pulling out of Eric’s hold as he wheezed. Gus retreated several steps.
“No, you don’t, asshole.” Eric lunged for him, but Nikolett, several steps above him, grabbed him, holding tight.
“Eric, please. Please.”
It was time to go. Time to run as fast as they could.
He was counting on Regina having followed his commands.
The instant he realized Nikolett was missing, he’d told them to evacuate Triskelion.
He hadn’t had a definitive reason why, but that ever-trusty scope sense and decades of being in dangerous situations and improbably surviving told him they needed to get out of the castle.
If they listened, all his people were safe.
Except Nikolett. The person who mattered most of all. She was here with him, the bulk of the castle above them, waiting to become their tomb.
And yet he hesitated. He hesitated because Gus wasn’t coming with them. Gus, his brother. A brother he hadn’t known existed, whose story he only barely knew, wasn’t going to leave.
When the bomb went off, Triskelion would become a tomb with only one occupant.
“I can try to disarm it. Buy you time,” Gus said. “The bomb it’s…big. You need to get back. As far as you can.”
“You can disarm it?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you need help?”
Gus hesitated, just enough that Eric knew the answer was yes, even as he said, “No.”
Eric leapt down the steps. “Nikolett, make sure everyone’s out.”
He didn’t think she’d obey, was prepared to fight her, but her footsteps raced up the stairs.
He looked back in time to see her disappear down the hallway.
I love you. I’m sorry. I have to try to save him.
He hoped she’d understand.
Gus disappeared under the stairs.
Eric raced after him, turning sideways and cursing as he tried to squeeze himself through the narrow opening of the half-crumbled arch. He’d assumed whatever was on the other side had long ago caved in, or was full of long-forgotten items and impassable.
It was almost, but not totally impassable, for the first two meters. Then it opened up into a dank, dusty, but otherwise clear, corridor.
Gus was in a small alcove off the left side. Eric skidded to a stop when he saw what was waiting there.
A bomb the size of a large suitcase.
This was no sleek, military thing, but homemade. A mess of pipes and wires.
The clock on the side read 2:24.
2:23
2:22
Gus was hunched over, arm stretched down into the exposed guts of the bomb.
“Go,” he muttered. “I can’t…I can’t reach it.”
“Where? What am I looking for?” Eric dropped to his hands and knees, trying to look up from the side. He could see Gus’ fingers.
“There’s a switch. A kill switch.” Gus grunted. “I can’t…I can’t reach it.”
Eric tried, hope a bitter, terrifying thing as he wiggled his massive arm through the web of wires without disconnecting any of them. He didn’t need to be told that yanking wires would be a very bad thing.
“Out of my way,” Nikolett snapped, stepping over Eric to join Gus. “What am I looking for?”
“No,” Eric breathed even as Gus started pointing and explaining. “No. You’re not supposed to be here.”
“You were really going to die here as some deeply troubling brotherly bonding experience while I…” She trailed off as she leaned over, sticking her arm down into the bomb.
Gus put a hand on her waist to steady her.
“…watched from outside? No. I sent a text telling everyone to stay back until I said otherwise.”
From his position on the floor, Eric saw it. The moment her slender arm did what neither his nor Gus’ could, sliding far enough in that she could flick the kill switch.
The quiet beeping of the clock fell silent.
Eric rolled onto his back on the dirty floor, which may have been an actual dirt floor, or maybe a stone floor layered with grime to the point the stone was entirely camouflaged.
Nikolett carefully extracted her arm with Gus’ help. Then she touched Gus’ cheek—the three scratches Eric had noticed but didn’t get a chance to ask about.
“You two fought?” he asked from the floor.
“Yes.” Gus stepped away from Nikolett, awkwardly putting his hands in his pockets.
Eric wrapped a hand around Nikolett’s ankle, anchoring them together.
“Did you hit her?” he asked Gus softly.
“No.” Gus met Eric’s eyes. “But I would have. And I hurt her in other ways.”
“I hit him,” Nikolett said.
Eric sat up, keeping a hand on her.
“Will you hurt her again?” Eric asked slowly.
“Does it matter? The things I’ve done—”
“It matters. Answer my question. Will you hurt her again?”
Gus looked at Nikolett, and a desperate longing Eric understood all too well stamped itself on his face as he looked at her.
But Gus never got to answer, because with a beep, the bomb switched on again.
This time, the clock started at 4:00.
“Fuck, I didn’t ask for a reset kill on this one,” Gus snarled. “Why is it a reset kill?”
Nikolett didn’t hesitate, curling over the bomb and once more weaving her hand and arm between the components.
“No,” Gus said. “Let me think. Don’t—”
Nikolett flipped the switch.
Eric’s heart started beating again. He leapt to his feet. “What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t make the bombs,” Gus said. “I assemble them. I have a guy who actually makes the components and gives me the diagram. The last one I had before this I had a reset kill switch.”
“What’s a reset kill?”
Gus grimaced. “It isn’t really a kill switch. More like a snooze button.”
“You put a snooze timer on a fucking bomb?” Nikolett’s voice was high and thin. “Why?”
“Do you really want to know the answer to that?” Gus demanded even as he started unscrewing a pipe near the top.
“No,” Eric declared. “We’re leaving before it resets again. Stop fucking with it.”
The bomb beeped.
3:00
2:59
Every time they reset it, the time got shorter.
They only had three minutes before the bomb went off.
Not enough time to leave. Not even close.
Nikolett looked at Eric, then pushed up on her toes to kiss him hard and fast. “I’ll hold it,” she said as she stepped away. “You two get out.”
“I’m not going to leave you here holding a switch on a bomb!”
“Only until you get a bomb expert here. We have one—”
“He’s in America.” Eric yanked Nikolett back as she tried to slide into her previous position.
“Go,” Gus said, and his voice was utterly, perfectly calm. “Let me hold it. It will be the one truly good thing I can do.”
Eric started to protest that he couldn’t—literally couldn’t since his arm didn’t fit—but whatever Gus unscrewed had allowed his arm to fix. He reached down into the bomb. The timer clicked off.
“There, it’s off,” Eric said. “When you let go, we’ll have two minutes. If we run really, really fast—”
“No,” Gus said again with that strange calm. “We won’t have two minutes. I had to unscrew the cap pipe. This isn’t a reset kill switch anymore.”
Gus looked at Eric, and Eric understood.
“It’s a dead man’s switch,” Eric murmured. “You let go and the bomb goes off.”
“Yes,” Gus said simply.
“No,” Nikolett whispered, voice watery. “No.” She shook her head. “How long can you hold it? Can we get a piece of wood or—”
“I don’t know how long I can hold this, or even how long it will work as a dead man’s switch. This bomb was built to create and destroy hope.”
Eric hated what it said about his brother’s life, and soul, that he would commission bombs that gave people false hope for survival.
“I need you two to go,” Gus said, his Spanish accent thick. “I need you to find peace and be happy. Put a flower on my mother’s grave.”
“Gus, no, please.” Nikolett was fighting tears. “It can’t end like this.”
“You know the place,” Gus said to her with a soft smile. “I told you about it, even if I didn’t tell you why I loved it.”
“There’s another way,” Eric insisted, desperation choking him.
“I don’t think there is,” Gus said. “Go, now, and remember me for the man I could have been.”
The bomb beeped.
“No!” Gus looked horrified. “I can. I’ll…”
1:00
One minute wasn’t enough time to make it out of the castle.
0:59
“Go! There’s still time,” Gus shouted, bent over the bomb. “You can get out.”
0:58
There wasn’t time. Wasn’t a way out.
Nikolett laced her fingers with Eric’s. She looked utterly defeated.
He remembered her words from earlier. I’m weary.
0:57
0:56
“I’m going to go in and get them,” Grigoris murmured, knowing his earbuds would pick it up and Nyx would hear him.
“Trust her,” his wife insisted. “She texted you to stay out until she gave the all clear. That’s what you need to do.”
Grigoris suspected that Nyx, who rarely followed orders unless she agreed with them, was motivated less by respect for the office of admiral or obedience, and more out of a desire for him not to run into a building that may or may not have a bomb in it.
Especially since Nyx was pregnant.
She’d taken the test only four days ago, while he’d been in Paris, and had reminded him several times it might be a false positive.
He couldn’t wait to get home to her.
And so he stayed, Regina at his side, her phone to her ear as she coordinated stalling the fire brigade who desperately wanted to come hose down the exploded Spartan Guard building.
For now, the closed gates and assurances that they had several “gas leak” experts here already were holding back the authorities.
The ground heaved, throwing Grigoris first up and then back. He almost somersaulted in the air, but instead landed flat on his back, the air forced out of his lungs. All around him, people were thrown like dice tossed across a table.
The first ripple through the earth was powerful, but silent.
What came next was loud and shocking. Triskelion Castle lurched, almost seeming to hop into the air, as if punched from underneath. It suspended there for a moment, cracks appearing between the stones at the apex of this improbable, impossible jump.
And then Triskelion Castle collapsed. The sound of stone striking stone, over and over again, was deafening, just barely masking the sound of the bomb’s shock wave. The earth that had first heaved now vibrated ominously.
“Get back!” someone shouted. It might have been him.
On hands and knees, they scrambled back, away from the still-collapsing castle.
The rumble of the earth didn’t abate. It got worse. The sound warning those still on the surface that there was more happening below.
A massive chunk of the cliff sheared off, falling down into the sea.
Then another piece.
And another.
They watched in silent, helpless horror as the cliff collapsed, taking the toppled remnants of Triskelion Castle with it.
Both the cliff and the castle that once sat atop it disappeared into the sea, taking the bodies of anyone left inside down into the cold, peaceful dark.
The End
Ha ha. Just kidding. How mad would you be…