22. Rhett
I’m directly across the table from the kid, trying to disassociate from the terrified, blubbering mess of him. He pleads with me, and it’s soul-tarnishing.
I’m not holding a gun yet, and the fact I’m seated this time tells me Micah has a different plan.
“I’ve decided you can join the game for your little stunt last time.”
He spins a revolver on the table, then he produces another.
“One has a bullet. The other is entirely empty. Take your pick, Kaiser.”
This sadistic motherfucker.
My hand reaches for one, my eyes on him like a hawk. He smiles to throw me off, and I reach for the other. His head cants, eyes turning wild. He’s truly the most vile creature on the planet.
It’s a fifty-fifty guess. I try hovering my hand over each again to get a read on him. Then again. All his face speaks is pure sardonic pleasure, and I think he’ll delight in this no matter the outcome.
Out of all I’ve faced, nothing has worn me down as easily and rapidly as this. The fourth time I’ve been forced before an innocent young boy and made to balance his long life in my palm with the power to crush it.
I pick up my choice after my fourth attempt at figuring out which one might have the bullet. The screen in front of me turns on, and instinctively, I shoot to my feet. A firm hand stops me, slamming me back down.
Is Ana here?
The room is sparse like where they’re keeping me, but her bed has a frame. She has a desk too. Ana lies still on the mattress, and I assume she’s unconscious. I start to pick apart what’s different enough to shatter my hope she’s in the same four walls as me. The ceiling is lower and the lights are different. Her walls aren’t raw concrete, they’re soundproofed, and I despair for her to wake up in the maddening kind of silence I know too well.
“What the fuck have you done to her?” I snarl.
I was weak and exhausted, but now I’m wide-awake, teeming with rage.
“Nothing ... yet. I might decide to exact your punishment on her in other ways for trying to shoot me.”
I’m detonating from the inside with no way out.
Micah adds, “Alistair is disappointed with her, and he feels she’s better off here for your motivation.”
“You’re going to wish you were never born.”
“No need for lullabies while we do this.”
Micah picks up the other gun. “Here’s how it goes. You take that gun to the head, and I take this one to little Ryan here. We each take shots. Easy, right? One of you lives, one of you dies. Best get a good last look of the little bird. Truthfully? I’m hoping the bullet is in yours so I can take her. I bet she fucks real good?—”
My impulse to aim my gun at Micah wins. I fire the whole round. And they’re all fucking empty.
Micah’s manic laughter chills my sweat-slicked skin. He shivers in delight like a real fucked-up piece of shit. “I was hoping you would do that. Now we know this one is loaded.”
The gun in his hand is slipped across the table to me. My teeth grit so hard they might break.
On the screen the door to Ana’s room opens, and a man enters. I haven’t felt this helplessly, violently ill since the day I watched Sarah get shot. Ana is so vulnerable I want to yell and yell and hope she’ll hear me through some fucking mental plane of existence and wake up.
He points a gun at her sleeping form.
“You have ten seconds,” Micha sings.
I pick up the gun, unable to contain my tremors. I look away from the screen to breathe, focus, breathe. I have no choice. My will to protect Ana trumps everything—my morals, my safety, my well-being. She will always come first no matter what I have to sacrifice.
“Five.” Micah teases the countdown. “And don’t look away.”
I lift the gun, staring the terror-stricken kid in the eyes, and it’s a mild relief that he closes his tightly. Fucking brave kid. It takes far more bravery to find acceptance than to plead a powerless case.
I make it quick, firing all rounds faster than I ever have before, braced with a blackening soul and a mind for the click to turn into the condemning blast of a bullet.
It never does.
The boy peels his eyes open, meeting mine, wide and terrified, but as his tears fall there’s a flicker of hope in them. I don’t know if it’s a blessing he feels even a little relief he might make it out after all, because the next second Micah produces another gun, aiming it at his temple.
“Huh, I actually thought you’d aim for me again.”
He pulls the trigger.
I look away as the boy’s head goes limp. I’m so mind-numbingly cold.
“I may have fired the real bullet, but your willingness killed him first.”
I killed him.
I killed him.
I killed him.
I don’t deserve to look at Ana, but I have to know she’s safe. The only light in this hell is that she’s alone again. So still and peaceful.
The gun is in my hand one second, then flying across the short space to crack off Micah’s skull the next. He doesn’t expect it, and I lunge for him, slamming him to the wall. I get one good punch across his jaw before I’m pulled off by two guys. One lands a punch to my gut, the other across my face, until I’m spitting blood on the floor like Micah, but it was fucking worth it.
“You’re going to pay for that,” Micah snarls, peeling himself up.
I don’t care. About anything anymore. Ana will find a way out. Xoid will keep her safe even if I never get back to her. It’s a pitiful, weak thought. I think about how she would scold me for it, and I laugh. I haven’t heard the sound from myself in months, and though it’s delirious and strange, I laugh some more.
They’re about to unleash their anger on me, and I brace myself for it, but the impact slamming into me doesn’t come from anyone in the room. It comes from the room itself. Stone, debris, and clouds of smoke. I come to fairly quickly—at least I think I do. I push a slab of rock off my legs, and I groan, getting to my hands and knees.
Someone steps over the small mounds of crumbled wall, and I look up. I don’t know who the fuck I’m staring at, but he plucks the cigarette from his mouth with a tattooed hand, strolling in here like he’s arrived fashionably late to a summer fucking barbecue.
“Apologies for the dramatic entrance. I have a thing for explosives—gets the chaos going,” he says, so lax and amused, but not with the kind of sadism Micah possesses.
“Who the fuck are you?” I wheeze, getting to my feet.
“My name is Silas Balenheizer.”
My blood runs cold. I don’t realize we’re not alone until he holds out a hand and someone places a gun in it. To my shock, he extends it to me.
“I guess you could say a little bird sent me.”
The impact of the blast was nothing compared to what slams into me at this.
Oh Ana, what the hell have you been up to?
I don’t have time to consider the impossibly of how Ana managed to get a Balenheizer on her side. “Where the fuck did he go?” I snarl, looking around, but Micah’s body isn’t in the debris.
“Who?” Silas asks, taking another drag of his cigarette.
Ignoring him, I stumble over the debris and check down the halls. That damned rat.
“Infiltrating this place was like walking into a child’s playground. But I imagine there will be backup soon, and I don’t like wasting unnecessary resources,” Silas says.
I store Micah’s name high on my list of people to find and kill. He might even have earned himself a spot above Forthson.
Silas has guys around us, but some of Lanshall’s are still around. We duck behind walls when shots are fired at us. I don’t wait around for anyone else to get the job done—I have three fucking months’ worth of pent-up rage to unleash, and so I take my chances after a quick look to determine there are three motherfuckers at the end of the hall.
Ducking out, I time my maneuver perfectly to hit one guy between the eyes when he tries to get a gauge on my position. The other two are on my side of the wall, a better angle for Silas and his guys, but I step out brazenly, darting across to the wall as they fire at me. I keep moving so they can’t get an aim, advancing before they can scramble an accurate shot, until they’re swallowing my bullets instead.
“Glad to see you’re not all talk, Kaiser,” Silas says. He finishes his cigarette and flicks it onto one of the bodies. Their clothes catch flame, and he walks past them without a care in the world. “There’s more where that bomb came from, so we’d better get far and fast.”