26. Axel #3
“I know… I know. It’s my fault.”
“It’s your f-fault!”
“It’s all my fault,” Ember replies to the recording. “It’s my fault!”
“Dimples,” I beg. “Put it down. Let’s go.”
“You heard her, Ax. It’s all my fault.”
“Don’t do this. Don’t let them get inside your head.”
“You left me to die.” Gracie’s accusatory voice forms a cruel lash. “I hate you.”
In a fit of rage, Ember hurls the device at the wall. It shatters upon impact with the solid brick, raining down in jagged shards to cut off Gracie’s cries.
“I did this to her!” Ember clutches her head. “I left her there.”
“Em… No. Don’t believe that, babe. This is what they want.”
Wrapping my arms around her from behind does little to calm her tremors. I’m shaking hard too. All I can hear is Gracie’s terrified voice, coming from those goddamn speakers.
“I’ll never find her.” Ember trembles against my chest. “She’s gone, Ax!”
“Shh, babe. Deep breaths. Gael’s messing with your head.”
“You heard her?—”
“I heard a scared girl saying whatever she was told to. He’s taunting you.”
“I still left her there!”
My arms tighten, attempting to squeeze the self-hatred out before it swallows her in one greedy gulp.
“You were torn apart,” I whisper into her ear. “There was no choice in it. They took you away from her, Em. They did this. Hate the right people.”
“She’s all alone… I can’t find her…”
“We will. I swear on my life, we will find Gracie.”
“Your life, brother mine? It isn’t worth much.”
Gunnar’s vocal whip scares us both, causing me to surrender Ember and spin on the spot to face him. Neither of us heard the invisible Hunter following our tracks. He steps into the room, a pistol aimed ahead in his right hand.
“What’s going on?” I ask uneasily.
Gunnar cocks the gun. “Did you receive the message?”
“What fucking message?”
“I’m not usually one to play the role of running errands, but I wanted to make sure you’d find it at the right time.” His gaze travels to the shattered plastic. “I see it was well received.”
“You,” Ember howls. “You’re one of them.”
“Never.” Gunnar seethes at her.
“Then what the fuck is this?” I shout back.
“I’m a contractor. Consider this your team being outbid for a higher price.”
Measuring the distance between us, I try to calculate how long it’ll take to draw the gun I holstered and empty it into my twin’s useless hide. He’d likely shoot me first.
“I know that you have zero intention of fulfilling your end of the deal.” Gunnar snickers haughtily. “That’s why I negotiated a better offer. They get the girl, and I get you.”
Slowly, I inch in front of Ember. “Over my dead body.”
“That’s rather the point.”
“What about Warner?” My gaze homes in on his weapon.
Gunnar laughs, a skin-crawling sound of pure delight. “You set me up rather nicely to slip away from them and follow you. It was awfully shortsighted of you to put so much trust in me.”
Fingers twitching, I long to tap the piece still tucked in my ear to call for help. On our current system, we have to press the device to speak, keeping communication lines clear. Our backup is likely with Warner by now, unaware we’re in deep shit.
I hear Ember shift behind me, stepping closer to us. Gunnar fires off a warning shot that blasts my ears, the bullet lodging itself in the wall just to our left.
“Don’t move.”
“You’re seriously going to hand us over?” Ember glares daggers at my twin. “You saw that child, Gunnar. He was nearly starved to death. Are you going to help the monsters who hurt him?”
“Those monsters sign my paycheck, and I get to walk away. I’m not helping anyone but myself.” Gunnar juts his chin towards me. “A lesson this one taught me long ago.”
“It isn’t too late—” I begin.
“It’s eighteen years too late!”
The next shot hits directly in front of me, mere inches from our feet. Ember sucks in a breath while I try to implore my brother with wide, begging eyes.
“You can stop this. Help us bring down Madden and Gael.”
“Why do you think I care?” He hurls a laugh.
“Because I saw your face when we discovered that poor kid,” I continue knowingly. “I saw the pain and the loneliness. I saw the ghosts that haunt you.”
“Enough.”
“What happened, Gunnar? Who hurt you?”
“I said enough!”
“You’ve been that child,” I press on, noting the way his hands shake wildly. “You were lost and alone. Begging for a home. Hurt, terrified. Hungry. You know how that feels.”
Just as the gun wavers, he looks ready to relent. Gunnar clamps his eyes shut and snarls, teeth bared in a pained scowl. I’ve lifted my finger to hit the earpiece when he re-trains the pistol on me, eyes flinging open and burning bright.
“I do,” he sneers. “Because of you.”
In all my years of service, I’ve often felt death’s cold breath. Far more times than I can count. Each encounter lessens the impact when it comes back around until the fear feels practically normal.
But at the sound of his gun firing, a new level of fear ignites and races through every single part of me. It should happen in a flash. A mere heartbeat. In reality, it’s agonisingly slow. So slow I can feel my life slipping between my fingers.
Then… pain.
The kind of pain that leaves no room for thought or reason tears through me at close range, hitting beneath the vest to penetrate my lower abdomen. Ember’s scream mirrors my own. She seizes hold of me as the bullet rips a hole in my body.
It feels like being punched by a sledgehammer. Wet, scalding heat pours from my abdomen like molten metal is tearing into my flesh and chewing it up. When I look down and see how much blood I’m losing, my knees fail me.
Time stutters, carrying my consciousness in disjointed flashes. Hitting the floor. Nerves wailing. Broken glass slicing my intestines up then spitting them back out the hole that’s been carved in me by a laser point. Warmth gushing between my fingers.
Blood.
Everywhere… hot, sticky, endlessly pouring from me.
All I can do is peer up at the white spots forming above me, causing my vision to blur at the edges. Then a face. Pale and horrified. Eyes glistening. Tears splashing my cheeks. Lips moving to form words that I can’t focus on.
Ember.
“R-R-Run,” I wheeze out.
She shakes her head, hands clamping down on top of mine. The pressure causes more searing agony to melt me from the inside out. Something is burrowing into me. A terrifying, animalistic realisation. I can’t fight. I can’t run.
I’m going to die.
My mouth flops open but fails me when I try to warn Ember. She’s shadowed by a looming presence. Face slack and stare lifeless. Not even triumphant. My brother dominates over her without a single speck of emotion as he taps the bubbles from the liquid in a syringe.
Where…? How did he…
Her shriek fails to penetrate my cotton wool brain as the needle buries in her neck. Ember spasms, mouth forming an ‘O’ as the dosage is delivered. Then Gunnar wrenches the needle free, grabbing her red braid to pull her from me.
“No,” I whisper weakly.
She’s tossed across the room to land in a heap. I’m left with the image of my brother’s identical face braced over mine, lips curled back to flash menacing teeth.
“You never should’ve asked to meet me.”
Then his booted foot lifts to bear down on my screaming abdomen, and the entire room whites out.