39 #3
"Say it again. I dare you," Alaska says.
Mr. J, the dumbass, opens his mouth and can’t even get air. Mauro manages a "calm down" that dies on his lips. Sweat beads at their temples, hands slack, eyes vacant. Finally.
"We were eleven," Vega says. The gun steady. "Eleven. We smiled in your photos. Little-girl smiles. I showed every tooth so you’d leave me alone." Her voice cracks for a second. There’s no pity there, just an edge. Brutal.
"Say it right," Alaska says, straight-backed, with a calm that doesn’t match anything that’s happening. "Out loud."
"Say we liked it," Vega repeats, and nobody on our side is shaking anymore.
Alaska has vodka running through her blood, but you can’t tell.
Not a weird turn, not a slip. She grabs Vega’s wrist—the one without the gun.
Squeezes. Not to hurt, to anchor her. I feel the change in Vega in a second.
Her pulse drops. Then Alaska brings up her other hand.
To the one with the pistol. She shifts it a hair.
Doesn’t disarm her. She asks for it without words.
And Vega gives it to her. Slow. Deliberate.
Fuck, these two are all edges, even when they breathe.
"Don’t shake," Alaska tells her, without looking at her.
"I’m not."
Vega steps back, moves behind, next to Irina, and takes her hand the same way she does with Alaska. Irina doesn’t ask. She squeezes Vega’s fingers once. Crystal clear. "I’m here." Nothing else needed.
I look up at those two. In five minutes they’ve gone from "this is a misunderstanding" to "we’re sorry, please" to "you liked it." Gross. Their faces are a guided tour of stages. They look lost, but the cockiness leaks out of their pores. There’s no vaccine for that. For the other thing, there’s going to be a prescription. High dose.
Vega drops her chin at last. My lungs unlock. She didn’t fire. I knew it inside. Not with Irina on one side giving her good weight, and Alaska on the other taking off the bad. Not like that.
The Makarov isn’t in her hands anymore. Now Alaska has it, steady, barrel to the ground. Her jaw carves her cheeks and mine mirrors it, because I’m an emotional sponge and a sucker. I breathe for her in silence. The guys are still there, muddy up to their shins, soaked, babbling.
"This… this isn’t going to fix anything."
"Shut up," Irina says without raising her voice.
"This is a mistake," the other one blurts, his lip trembling.
"It was a choice," Alaska answers. Not a wobble.
She takes a step and I shrink inside. I hadn’t seen her like this. Serious on another scale. Sharp. The Makarov weighs in her hand; wrist firm, barrel toward the ground. She lifts her chin a little and speaks. Her voice comes out clean, no knots. It’s hard to breathe.
"Ready?" she asks, glancing at Vega.
"Ready," Vega answers, dry, without doubt.
"On 'eleven,' same as always," Alaska finishes.
"On 'eleven.'"
Their certainty gives me chills. I get less than half of it and that both pisses me off and calms me.
The clearing smells like mud. It’s raining nonstop.
Water runs off Mauro’s bangs and down his nose.
Anton and Alexei are behind, still, broad-shouldered, hands visible.
Irina doesn’t blink. I’m shivering, socks soaked inside my boots.
Rashel’s phone light gives just enough to see their faces.
"What… what does that mean?" the older one asks, swallowing water and pride.
"That today you pay," Alaska says. "And you answer with no theatrics."
"We didn’t know that…" Mauro starts.
"You knew damn well," Alaska cuts him off. "We know about Soraya. And you’re not touching anyone else. Hands where I can see them. Both. No attitude. Now you obey."
"We’re not going to lie," Don Jota answers, scared. "But…"
"Enough," Alaska shuts it down. It doesn’t sound like agreement. It sounds like a wall.
I take a step toward her and put a hand on her shoulder.
"Nat," she murmurs without turning. "Don’t move."
"Wasn’t planning to," I answer, and my voice cracks.
"Better," Vega cuts in, and half a smile slips out and dies instantly.
"Last one," she says, pinning them with her stare. "Who decided? Names. Who were you selling the videos to?"
Mauro opens his mouth. Don Jota shuts it. They stall. They think. They look at each other.
"He knows," Mauro says, pointing at the other one. Coward.
"Both of you," Alaska corrects. "Don’t feed me stories. Names."
And they come out. They crack on the way out. One. Another. Three more. Each name drops with no alibi. I count in my head so I don’t start crying from rage.
"On eleven," Alaska says, low; only we hear it.
"On eleven," Vega echoes.
"Look at me."
Mr. J, the fucking dumbass, obeys instantly. His chin jerks off-beat. Mauro drops his gaze to the ground, studies the rocks. Then he raises his eyes to her, hunting for a gap, a crack, a pardon that doesn’t come.
"You two don't know what you're doing," Julian blurts.
His voice wants to sound firm, but it shakes.
He's trying to buy time—I can tell. "Put that down, Alaska Vázquez.
I know you're Alaska, I recognize you. You were always the more immature of the two.
Always with your fantasies, with that imagination.
" And there it is, that fucking condescension that's always driven me up the wall—him, the goddamn adult.
"Drop the little game, honey. No need to stage this scene.
This is going to bring you trouble. Lower the gun and we'll walk out of here. You two are going to regret this."
His words slide right off Alaska. She's counting under her breath. Her gaze is a wall of ice. And I'm so fucking done. I take a step; I don't care anymore. I move to her side, close enough to brush, and take her hand. I squeeze it—our silent signal.
Julian, the bastard, catches the gesture, looks at me, and lets out a little laugh I want to wipe off his face. Half sneer, half rancid poison.
"We knew. That you were a lesbian. It was obvious."
I feel rage climb my throat. The urge to go for Julian's neck is real. She feels me. I know it. A spark jumps between us. She finds me with the corner of her eye and, without taking her eyes off Julian, she speaks to me and to him at the same time, her voice pure dynamite.
"Look, yeah. You're not wrong about that—this is my girlfriend."
She grabs me by the lapel and kisses me.
Hard, firm, decisive. I hold her mouth and don't pull away, even with Irina here, even with everyone watching.
She tastes like water and metal. Urgency rips through me.
I grab the back of her neck for a second with cold fingers and don't let go until she pulls away.
Julian bares his teeth in a twisted grin. Mauro tilts his head with a told-you-so grimace.
"But you're wrong about one thing," Alaska finishes, squaring up to him again. "I'm not Alaska Vázquez anymore. I'm Alaska Popova."
She closes her eyes. We all look at her. Nobody gets a "wait" or a "what the fuck" out in time. Alaska brings the Makarov up in a short, clean motion, no hesitation; her thumb flicks the safety lever. The click snaps across the clearing. I hear it in my bones.
"Eleven," she says.
Boom.
The muzzle flash is small, a white light that swallows the dark for an instant, but it's enough.
The crack splits the grove, ricochets off the wet trunks, crawls into your chest and churns it.
The recoil pops the gun up a hair, but she absorbs it; she barely moves.
The smell of gunpowder settles on my tongue, metallic and bitter.
And a scatter of hot droplets spatters our faces and hands, tiny, instant.
I feel three on my cheek, one on my neck. I don't look down. I don't need to.
The world takes a second to snap back into place.
Or maybe an eternity. The crickets, nonstop a moment ago, go silent.
Frightened birds burst out of the trees in a black explosion.
My ears give off a high eeee that drills through everything.
The car's left headlight shivers in the smoke curling from the gun's barrel.
Mauro is frozen, mouth open, the line he was about to say dead before it was born, choking in his throat.
Anton doesn't move. Neither does Alexei.
Nor Irina. She just breathes, deep, once.
Rashel brings a hand to her own chest to make sure it's still there, that her heart hasn't stopped.
Vega lets out a strangled cry, a sound that slips out before she can stop it.
Alaska lowers the gun slowly, still wired tight, her thumb on the safety.
She doesn't shake. She doesn't smile. She doesn't apologize.
There's nothing on her face. Vega grabs her forearm.
I step in to put myself between them and the rest of the world, because my body moves before my brain, because I want to shield her from whatever's coming now.
No one speaks. No one can say "forget it" anymore. The line has been crossed.
The rain keeps at it, cold, steady. The blood turns dark on the gravel at the edge of the headlights, a stain spreading.
I breathe through my nose, deep, deep, and run through the catechism of the job so my heart doesn't crack my ribs.
Everybody looks at Alaska like she's some strange animal. Me included.
"Alaska," I say. "Lower the gun all the way."
"It's down," she replies, voice level.
"The safety," I add, just to say something useful.
"On."
Vega doesn't let go. She squeezes her arm a little tighter.
"Don't improvise now," she says, low.
"I'm not improvising," Alaska says.
And under all of it, a line that won't ever erase, branded into my brain: Alaska Popova just killed a man and didn't blink. Not one single fucking time.
And I'm still here, in front, being a human wall, because I can't help it, because I love her, because today I refuse to let go.