45. When he unravels
FORTY-FIVE
WHEN HE UNRAVELS
Lake
The bowl of grain the guard hands me for the fifth night in a row isn’t oatmeal, even though he insists on calling it that. Not that I’m picky since I’m hungry as hell, and they’re not feeding me enough. I’ve lost at least five pounds, haven’t bathed, and I’m getting stir-crazy from being held in the dark for so long.
I still have no idea where I am. Maybe it’s Hades’s hangar and a unit of his military personnel or paramilitary (I wouldn’t know what to call them) guards me. I doubt I’m in France. Once in a while, I hear people speak outside. It’s always the same language that Hades speaks.
His daughter is a piece of work.
She asks for permission to shoot me every two hours, then, when she doesn’t get it, she huffs and complains. When he tells her to shut up, she whines about the hangar they’re keeping me in. I guess she’s inconvenienced. Yeah, try being me.
I taste the wheat and water and manage to swallow it down without gagging. I eat another spoonful just as something crashes through the window. It hits the floor, bounces, and starts to hiss as it spins, releasing white smoke the way a sprinkler sprays water. I don’t know if this is tear gas or something else, but I squint, trying to make out the fury of activity beyond it.
People cry out before their screams abruptly cut off. Men shout, gunshots from rifles ring out, and I take cover under the bed. The smoke hasn’t reached me yet, but I grab my shirt and pull it over my nose.
In a few minutes, the screams die down, and a man walks out from the smoke-filled area. I can see the bottom half of his body. He’s wearing a long, obsidian cashmere coat, paired with pants that fall perfectly over polished, designer leather shoes stained with blood. In his gloved right hand, he carries a machete. In the left, the guard’s severed arm from which the set of keys that unlock my cell dangle. I recognize the keychain.
The man stops by my cell and leans the machete against the bars. The guard’s arm disappears from view. I hear the keys jingle, and the arm hits the floor behind the man as if he tossed it away.
The cell door opens, but I stay under the bed. When a group of men in tactical gear make their way into the cell and boots approach the bed, for a second, I think they’ve come to end me. The smoke’s settling down and drifting toward me now, and I cough from a tickle at the back of my throat.
Someone spoke in a muffled voice. “Ma’am, we’re the extraction team. Come out from under the bed. You’re going home.”
He doesn’t have to tell me twice. I scoot from under the bed. The man who spoke to me wears black on black and a gas mask. He hands me a mask and wraps a blanket around my shoulders, then steps back. “Sweep in one and move out.” He turns to me again. “Can you walk?”
I nod.
“Yes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let’s go.” He guides me toward the wall, and as the smoke clears, I look away from the carnage. I want to get out of this place as fast as possible, which, luckily, is exactly how the extraction team works. They stride with long legs, and I jog next to the man with me until we’re finally outside. When he takes off his mask, I do the same with mine and hand it back to him.
Now, I look around. There’s not much to see. It’s nighttime, and it seems we’re in the middle of nowhere. The smell of smoke still lingers in my nose, so I can’t smell anything that might help me figure out where I am. A single streetlight across from what might be a runway flickers. Under the light stands the man in the cashmere coat, still holding his machete.
His head’s shaved and his face is covered in blood. Although my eyes might deceive me, because they’ve only seen darkness for the past five days, my heart knows it’s Alessio. My heart is trying to move my body to him. I have no right to go to him. To seek comfort from him feels wrong. I don’t know if he could ever forgive me, but I know he slayed people tonight so he could free me. It only makes me feel worse.
“I don’t know if you know this, but he’s a trained fighter pilot.” A man stops next to me, a familiar rasp in his voice. “He stole a jet and flew a nuclear warhead here in exchange for you. Thankfully, his temper got the better of him, and he decided to risk his life too.”
I look up at the man. His profile shows a sharp, masculine jawline and a nice nose. He doesn’t spare me a glance.
“I recognize your voice,” I say.
A familiar noise registers, but I don’t understand that it’s the emergency response sirens until they’re closer to us.
The man turns toward me. “Let’s go.”
“I want to say goodbye to Alessio.”
“You can’t because he was never here. We need to leave.” When he grabs my arm and starts toward the chopper the men are getting into, I try to tug my arm away. “No, wait.”
“We’re on foreign soil,” he shouts over the noise of the chopper. “We need to move.”
“I’ll only be a second. I want to speak with him.”
He pushes me into the chopper and sits beside me.
Alessio remains standing under the streetlight.