27. Lung Full Of Poison
27
LUNG FULL OF POISON
RIOT
Krypt and Remi have a joke about the moment of death. Remi says it’s regret that goes through your mind when you’re about to die, but not for me. It’s vengeance. Because if this asshole is going to nail a bolt through my brain, I’m going to ensure he knows I’m the reason for the many people who are about to die from an illness that’ll show up anytime now.
He was stupid enough to bring me down from the LSD trip, and now that my mind is my own again, I’m going to use it until it no longer works. I laugh in his face, the air hurting my mouth and my vision almost entirely gone. One sliver is all I need.
“What could possibly be funny right now?”
My smile feels good. Better than it should. It’s my omen, the little thing I leave behind to haunt Reaper Corp. “Anyone sick?” I ask, a new lisp in my voice from my missing teeth.
The device next to my head shifts as his interest is piqued. “Sick how?”
I simply laugh harder. So hard that I throw up from pain and damn near pass out with the effort it takes. Vomit drips down my chin, nothing but spit, blood, and bile, and when he smacks me across the face before grabbing my chin to press the bolt to my head, I choke on my next laugh.
Fuck, I feel like Ghost right now. No wonder he laughs so hard in the face of death. There’s nothing more satisfying than pretending you don’t give a fuck!
“Sick how?!”
“Drink the water lately?” I ask, tears leaking down my cheeks. “Hospitals full?”
“What’d you do?” he barks at me while I laugh more. “How? You’ve been in captivity this whole time!”
Yeah, but while Ghost was stealing those devices and the keycodes we came for, I got up to no good before putting on my show. Never thought I’d be sticking around to see the results, but here we are, and I’m not too mad about it. The Harpy is a crazy old bitch, but she cooks up some lethal things in her cabin in Janie’s woods, and I was more than happy to test her newest creation when Menace handed it to me before we boarded the plane. Undetectable through security, and tiny enough that the small vial fit in my pocket.
The guy is on his phone, telling someone to investigate it and get back to him, but I can tell he doesn’t fully believe me. Which only pisses him off. I understand that. When people get one over on me, it sends me into a rage that’s so consuming I can’t think straight. So, when he firms up the bolt to my head and finally looks me straight in my one remaining open eye, I know this is it. He isn’t going to let me hang around long enough to watch Reaper City reap the benefits of The Harpy.
“Any last words?” he asks like this is a fucking movie.
“See ya in Hell.” I smile as wide as my busted jaw will allow. Like fuck I’m closing my only open eye, so I stare right at his, breathing in the last seconds of my life, waiting for that precipice between that Soren is always after. Maybe I’ll be able to tell him what it feels like.
I’m barely coherent, but right as the bolt presses to my temple, a commotion outside the room draws his attention, and at the same time, his phone rings again. When I look over, I see my omen of death. The one I’m chasing to the afterlife but almost beat him to.
Stalking into the room like the phantom of pure rage, his ice-blue eyes glow at me, bringing back my hallucinations from the other day. Fuck me, has he always been so pretty while lethal? He doesn’t spare me another glance. Soren moves in like he commands the air in the room, grabs the man’s wrist, and snaps it. The bolt device clangs to the floor, and right in front of me, Soren grabs the man’s hair, forces him to his knees, and makes sure I have the best seat in the house to the knife he drags across his throat.
Instead of looking at that, I look up, meeting his eyes. While the man who has been torturing me gurgles and bleeds out, I take stock of reality. Because, admittedly, it takes me a few extra seconds to ensure this is real and not a hallucination from the drugs. Soren is here, killing my enemy, staring at me with an intensity so abrupt my hot skin breaks out in goosebumps, and a few thumps of my heart remind me I’m not dead yet.
Because of him.
“Is this our new game?” I ask, hoping he can understand my slurred and lispy words. “No longer chasing death, just competing to be the hero? Because if so, I think I won, sweetheart. You aren’t supposed to be here.”
“Couldn’t live knowing you fucked me over by being the hero.” He looks at my chains. “Can you stand?”
Gunfire echoes outside the room, making all the other prisoners scream for their freedom. Through the window, a blurry man moves by, and when that man grabs another man by the throat, breaking his neck and throwing a dagger at the third man, I laugh. I’d recognize my brother anywhere.
“Fuck, you’re all so dumb.”
“Thank you works too,” Soren says. “Key?”
I have no idea if there is a key for the lock on the chains, so I tell him to leave me and get the hell out. He’s Soren Sauder, so of course he doesn’t listen.
“We gotta move,” Krypt shouts from the hall, throwing more daggers. “They overrode the lockdown. Ransom! Left!”
Gang’s all here then, yeah?
Krypt disappears, and the hall fills with more bodies.
“Ghost!” Krypt and Ransom shout at the same time from down the hall.
Ghost spins, watching the door fill with armed men. His back is to me, but I watch his shoulders relax, his body crouch into a fighting stance, and I just fucking know there’s a smile on his face.
“Try not to get hard, baby,” he tells me. “I know I’m sexy when I kill, but you’re naked right now and I don’t need anyone getting jealous of me.”
Baby. I scoff, but it hurts my throat. I have confidence in him, but as the hall and doorway fill with more and more men, fear prickles my nape like it hasn’t in the few days I’ve been in here. I’m self-entitled, so I hold my life above others, but right now, my brother and my… Soren are putting their lives on the line for me. And while I think I’m worth it, I never considered that they did, too.
Beneath all my masks and charming smiles lies an insecure boy who never did anything right. I hate that he’s showing.
Twin blades twirl in Soren’s nimble fingers. No. He’s not Soren right now, he’s Ghost, and he’s about to shine in a spotlight he doesn’t often get to have. I force my eye open, ready to call out his enemies as they come, but faster than my fuzzy head can follow, he moves. As silent as an asp and as fluid as a river, forging his way through men as if they’re ghosts themselves. His knives dance, and blood shoots up like fireworks to paint the walls. Disarming them one by one, he cuts, slashes, and stabs fluently, guns only going off to misfire once they hit the floor.
Adrenaline surges within me, finally giving me the strength to do more than just laugh. When one guy gets by Ghost, I kick off the floor with all my remaining energy. My weak legs wrap around his neck, holding him in place as all my wounds reopen.
“Ghost.”
He throws a dagger, and it embeds in the man’s forehead. When I release my legs, he slumps to the floor, face down, impaling himself deeper. Ghost smirks at me, a subtle glance going down to my naked crotch. Not hard yet, which of course he sees as a challenge.
Good luck, sweetheart. I’m barely coherent enough to even know if I’m pissing myself.
A second wave of Reaper Corp soldiers come in, bringing Krypt and Ransom with them. My Vile House brothers fight like they’ve been trained to for years, and my only regret is that I don’t get to fight alongside them. Krypt breaks bones and stomps on faces. Ransom’s accuracy with a knife is unmatched, and when he runs out of knives, he fires his clip until it’s empty, leaving ten more men on the floor.
But Ghost. He moves from person to person, barely making a sound as he kills one before the previous one even hits the floor. When he’s cut by their blades or grazed by their bullets, he doesn’t react, fuelled only by the blood high he’s soaring in.
“We gotta move! Someone get him down!” Ransom shouts as he rushes another man.
Krypt runs up behind me, swaying my chains to get me out of a knife’s path. “Family bonding?” he asks, pushing down on my head as he rips a gun from his pants to shoot the lock.
“Something like that.” Talking hurts and doesn’t sound right, and a vain part of me wants to close my mouth and hide it from all of them. My looks have always been part of my charm, and without them, I feel as though half my masks have been ripped to shreds.
“Try to stand,” he says just before his gun goes off.
My feet land flat on the floor and my arms drop uselessly to my sides. I manage to get my balance for all of two seconds before my legs give out and I fall forward. Agony tears through me as blood rushes into my bloodless arms, the pain akin to a billion tiny needles hitting every nerve. I can’t even get them out in front of me to brace for my fall. When my knees hit the hard floor, I buckle forward, ready to faceplant.
My face hits a chest instead. Ghost’s arms hold me up. Looking at him, coated in blood and handsome with death all over him, I hate him a little more and a little less simultaneously. Fuck him for being the hero.
He grins, pushing me upright. “Don’t worry. You can hate me for it later. Right now, we gotta get the fuck outta here.”
Ransom comes back, nodding at me. “Hall is clear. Riot, can you walk?”
I want to lie, but it’ll only slow them down. “Not much.”
Ransom looks at Ghost. “You still have the keycard?” Ghost nods. “Then we’re taking the elevator. Glitch, we need evac on the roof.”
Krypt shoves an earpiece into my bloody ear, and I catch the end of Glitch’s response. “—some sort of chaos downtown and at the hospital. No idea what’s going on, but the mayhem might work in our favour.”
Krypt and Ghost get me to my unsteady feet, but I’m smiling because I finally have something to bring to the party. “That might be my doing.”
We’re on our way to the elevator, each of us looking in prisoner rooms and doing nothing about it. “What’d you do?”
I gag, vomiting a little before I answer. “Remember The Harpy wanted poison for Moros? Well, she gave some to Menace, and he gave it to me. I poisoned Reaper Corp.”
Glitch laughs in our ears, but Krypt shakes his head. “You get captured and manage to poison their water? How?”
“Not all the water, but they hosed me down and cavity-searched me in the basement decontamination room. Right next to this building’s water filtration system. Half went there, and half went before I even got caught.”
“Kinda like the lisp,” Ghost says, ignoring my heroics. “Gums might be beneficial, too.”
“Fuck you.”
“What the fuck?” Ransom asks us, stabbing the elevator door and shoving the key card in the slot. “You two finally crack?”
I grin at Ransom and Ghost glares at me. Krypt curses us all.
“Helicopter is seven minutes out, heading to the roof. They aren’t going to let it in easy, so you’re gonna have to be fast.”
“Did you get what you needed?” I ask Glitch, hoping Soren was at least smart enough to get the devices out.
“We got it all and then some. Now we just need you, so don’t fucking die, yeah?”
Pretty sure I’m already three-quarters dead, but I laugh. “Workin’ on it.”
As we ride to the top floor, I lose a bit of the adrenaline I had. My arms are in excruciating pain, my legs can’t hold me up, my head is swimming in space, and my second eye is starting to swell shut with the extra movement. I’m weak and starved, coming down from an LSD high where I saw a goth girl in unicorn ears, and I refused every bit of water they offered me, but…
“Look, there might be a bit of a problem,” I force the words out as my lungs rattle. “I might have been waterboarded.”
All three of them snap their eyes to me. Yeah, I’m totally dying of the poison I administered, so this rescue mission is pointless anyway.
Ghost grabs my chin, forcing my one eye open. “Glitch, get Menace to The Harpy for an antidote. Fucking now!”
“Better be ready when we get back,” Krypt growls. “Hurry up!”
But it’s Ransom’s eyes I latch on to. “Trust me,” is all he says, and for whatever reason, I do.
When we get to the top floor, Ghost gets right in my battered face. “I’m the one who chases death, sweetheart. Don’t change our dynamic now. You made me a deal.”
My smile is weak and pathetic because it feels so soft. Soren still wants me to hold his hand. Let’s hope this lungful of poison lets me live long enough to grant his mushy wish.
The outside air hits me with jarring authority. It wakes me up, making me more alert, but with that alertness comes more pain. Devastating pain that crumples my body and blacks out my fevered mind. I hear the helicopter, the boys shouting all around me, Glitch and Facts in my ear, but I’m floating through it without experiencing any of it. Listening to bullets whiz by and stationary guns fire at the helicopter, I’m thrown into it, and that’s when I pass out, the voice of Facts shouting hello echoing as I slumber.
Guess it’s up to fate now.
I smile when I glimpse Soren’s muse. Death herself, smiling back at me.
Hey, Bitch.