Chapter Thirty-Seven #3
I do the only thing I can think of that might distract them from the ass-whooping they’re giving him. Knock on the door and run.
Literally ding-dong ditch.
A guard opens the door when I’m already around the corner. “Am I hearing things? I could’ve sworn someone just knocked…”
“Whatever. Let’s just go, hermano.” Another guard says. “We still gotta get back here once we’re done with this puta.”
“Si, alright.”
Peeking, I watch as they drag Luthor in chains, a bag over his head, up the hall and through a door. I don’t know where they’re taking him… But I have a bad feeling about it.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
What do I do??
Making a snap decision, I follow them. I have to…
This is Leah’s friend. He’s alive. I don’t want him to die after he’s survived all this time.
Attempting to keep a safe distance, I end up losing them. And when more voices trap me, I have to slip into the nearest cell. In solitary.
“Damn…” I whisper.
A loud bang of thunder rattles the building, pieces of concrete falling as everything goes dark. And now the power is out.
“Damn,” I gasp again, looking around.
This is just great.
Although… It is easier to sneak around in the dark.
The halls are lit by only red emergency lights. I thought there were supposed to be backup generators, but they don’t seem to be working.
Jesus, this place is falling apart.
That’s what you get for using the funding on frivolous shit, pendejo.
After a moment, the muted mumbling from next door signals someone inside the adjoining cell. Making my move, I slip out of the cell slowly, listening closely to the whispered conversation.
“It was you…”
“Does this please you?”
Ivory. Even hushed and uncharacteristically delicate, I’d recognize that voice anywhere.
I hear it in my sleep, for fuck’s sake.
“W-why…?” Someone else is speaking to him.
It sounds like Ren…
“You were always so beautiful,” The Ivory breathes.
Stopped just outside the cell, I’m fluttering, that familiar sensation when he’s near overwhelming my body from the inside out.
“You were waiting for me…” he hums, and my eyelids fall shut. “Waiting for me to come back for you.”
Fuck… you…
Thunder rumbles, even more concrete scattering to the floor. And I feel it, the storm.
In my bone, muscle, tissue, and blood. It’s as angry as I am…
As unsure as I am.
Winds are howling, rushing about with the noise in my skull.
Ren mumbles something as I grip my knife in my fist, quaking like the juddering foundation beneath my feet.
“Do you still hate me, pajarito?”
My eyes snap open with a crack of thunder.
He’s talking to me…
Taunting me through a different poor, chained soul.
The back-up lights flicker out as I step carefully into the doorway and whisper, “Si, Papi… Eres el diablo.”
I can barely see into the room, but I recognize his form stiffening. His ivory white head of hair lifting from where he has Ren pinned to the cot.
The same one where Dash and I…
My heart thumps. He turns over his shoulder. I grip my initials carved into ivory…
This is it.
I’m going to fucking kill him.
Our eyes lock in the dark for only a millisecond as another boom of thunder shakes the building, the walls rattling almost visibly.
Rumbling echoes from beyond the walls, rushing closer like a wave. A cacophony of crashing, rattling, and breaking. It happens in no more than two seconds, but I see it. I watch as the ceiling above el diablo splits, and it all comes plummeting down.
Survival instinct holds me in the doorway, covering my head with my arms, shuddering with fear, though I force myself not to move. A memory of something I learned as a child flashes…
During an earthquake, you stand in the doorway, because the frame will protect you.
Except this is not an earthquake.
The fucking sky is falling.
The entire ceiling collapsed, right on top of us.
Oh, shit.
I’m afraid to open my eyes, but I do, and for a moment my heart lurches painfully. Foolishly. I’m not supposed to care if he dies…
Which I don’t. I was going to kill him.
Did a storm and this building really steal my revenge? Are you kidding me right now??
But then I spot the cot, all mangled beneath some rubble. It looks like he flipped it at the last second… To protect himself, and Ren, but only out of happenstance.
I hear him coughing, debris shifting as he moves under it.
Shit… I have to go.
I can’t kill him now. In seconds, this place will be swarming with officers and inmates, injured people and commotion.
Plus, he knows I’m here. The jig is up. Unless he suffers short-term memory loss, The Ivory is well aware of my presence on this island now.
Better make it count.
Stumbling back out into the wreck, I’m dazed, possibly in shock.
But the adrenaline of narrowly avoiding death only surges me forward.
Back to the mansion I go.
All I’ve done all night is run back and forth. It’s ridiculous.
Climbing out of the ruins, I suck in air and cough, wiping dust and dirt from my face with the spray of rain. But I don’t wait for anything else to go wrong. I leave behind the death and destruction, running past the fallen guard tower, through the woods already crawling with voices.
As I reach the mansion, a pop draws my attention to the sky.
Fireworks.
Biting my lip, I watch the colors fizzle, as if it’s a celebration, not a state of emergency.
Alabaster Penitentiary has fallen! Its reign of terror is no more!
But as we know, toppled tyranny is only the beginning.
The walls of purgatory are down… and all hell is about to break loose.