15. 15
“Cassie,” Elias said as I ran toward the door, stopping to pick up the forgotten flashlight.
I didn’t look back. I didn’t care what Elias did to Taylor’s grunt.
The last place we had sight of him was down the hallway, so that’s where I went.
My footsteps echoed in the silence, as I was the only thing making noise in the building.
I’d trusted Novikov, to an extent, at least I had tried to, and he betrayed me every step of the way.
He brought me to Russia under false pretenses, and now he told Taylor to call his goons on us?
No fucking way.
“Hey!” I screamed. I wasn’t hiding anymore.
Elias caught up to me. He’d always been so fast.
“What are you doing?” He tugged on my arm, desperate to pull me away, to hide me somewhere. That wasn’t going to happen.
He’d abandoned his gun, replacing it with Misha’s axe.
“I’m finishing this.”
Elias spoke in that gentle, conflict ending, irritating voice of his. “Wasn’t the plan to wait for evacuation? We still can. Come on.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go.”
“No.”
“Please don’t do this to me,” he begged. His voice cut through my anger. It was broken, pleading, and for an instant I forgot about the rage. I couldn’t look at him. I knew that he would win, so I didn’t meet his eyes, and I allowed the anger to return. It felt fantastic.
“Do this to you?” I challenged. “You did this to me.”
He let go, and I heard his hand fall to the side, the sound of skin brushing against a pant leg.
His voice was uneven when he spoke. “I’m sorry.
For all of it. I know you’ve been struggling, but I thought that I could help you, somehow.
It was delusional. I know it’s my fault.
Everything that’s happened to you since October has been my fault, but I need you to live and get on the plane and come home with me.
” He was winded, speaking so quickly I wasn’t sure if he’d taken a breath.
“I don’t know if I can keep going without you. ”
“You don’t get to do this,” I snarled. “You don’t get to wait until I’m doing something you don’t like to come pour your heart out.”
I was holding myself back from the words I was burning to say. Words that would maim him, tear him down. I could call him a coward, tell him I agreed with him, that I did deserve better. I wanted revenge, to hurt him for both saving and ruining my life.
“I'm trying to get you to make the right decision.”
“That’s your shtick, isn’t it? My car, the guns I shoot and how often I shoot them.
My workouts, how quickly I can run a mile, how many fucking vegetables I eat.
Right, all my decisions with your guidance.
” I sorted through every memory of us, searching for a moment where I made the wrong choice and dealt with the fallout.
The last decision I made on my own was going to work for the final time.
“That’s not fair,” he whispered. I wasn’t sure if he was capable of speaking any louder.
“It might be.”
Elias didn’t breathe, didn’t move. He stood behind me, stuck under the weight of what I’d said.
“Cassie, I don’t care if I was drunk, I meant it when I said that I–”
No. No. “Don't you fucking dare.”
“Fine,” he said. We’ll do it together.” I heard the sound of his sweaty palm tightening on the handle of the axe.
“I killed Dr. Fassi, have you forgotten?” I hadn’t. I would never forget the way it felt to kill a friend. “I can take care of Novikov.”
“I told you I wouldn't leave your side.”
Finally looking over my shoulder, I went soft at his expression.
His jaw tight, his brow sunken, he looked completely miserable.
I wanted so desperately to be angry at him, at the world, but I couldn't. Elias looked like that because of me. He’d begged me not to, but I was intent on doing it anyway.
Closing the gap, I fell into his arms, and I heard the axe hit the ground. His arms encompassed me, all of me, the good and the bad. The parts that loved him and hated him. This was us, messy and dangerous and confusing.
Face pressed into his chest, my whisper was muffled. “I’m sorry.” It was for more than chasing down the doctor.
“I forgive you,” he said. “Always will.” His arms tightened, clinging to me like he was being pulled away.
A set of heavy boots trod toward us, faster than before.
“He’s coming.”
“He is,” he confirmed. “I’m ready.”
“Me, too.”
Stepping away, I readied my firearm, pointing it where I expected Novikov to turn the corner.
“Are you done hiding, Dr. Hayes?” He asked, his voice booming down the hallway. “It’s a shame, I was having fun.”
“Were those your last words?” I mocked. He had to know what I’d done to Fassi, what I would do to him.
He rounded the corner, his hands up silently saying, “Don’t shoot.
” Flesh pulled away from half of his face, the metal shining against the sunlight coming through the windows in tight beams. His clothing covered his body.
His hands, neck, and head were the only visible pieces of him, revealing that the metal had emerged in irregular fragments where he was exposed.
I didn’t have much soft tissue to work with.
“I only want to talk,” he said.
“You may.”
Regret wasn’t the right word for what I felt, but it was close.
My mind wasn’t in the right place when I’d run out to find him, though I couldn’t say it had corrected course now that I was here in front of him either.
If I could keep him talking until the military arrived, I could catch him distracted.
It wasn’t a great plan, but it was easier than wrestling with him.
If I fired and missed, there would be hell to pay.
Elias eyed me as I lowered my gun, begging me to take the shot.
“Is it fair to assume you want to know about my work with Taylor?”
He was so arrogant it made my skin buzz. My fingers twitched on my weapon, pleading with me to raise the gun and fire.
“Only if you’re telling the truth.”
He smiled, half of his teeth missing. A line of blood ran from the corner of his mouth and down his chin. “I would not want your report to be inaccurate, Dr. Hayes.” He rolled his shoulders like he was easing an ache in his back. “If you make it back to write it, that is.”
“You’re boring me, Dr. Novikov. Please say what it is that you want to say.”
His eyes found Elias. “How you put up with her, I have no idea.”
I gritted my teeth, holding back my tongue.
“I find it’s easiest just to do what she wants,” Elias said. “We argue a lot less when I give in.”
“Katya was much more subservient, I prefer them that way.” He’d already begun to speak of her in past tense. “This really did start as medical research. I was not lying about that. Then I saw what it could do, the power that could be harnessed from it.”
“How does making you harder to kill really benefit you?” I asked. I imagined long term, he’d just turn into a statue unless he had discovered how to stop the transformation. I didn’t understand it, but I had barely studied it.
“I am sure that the United States would be interested in soldiers that could not be killed.”
Elias cut in. “They already have one.”
Novikov laughed, slow and dark. “You are lucky at best, Mr. Elias. We almost got you.”
“But you didn’t.”
Novikov shifted his gaze back to me. It was clear by his tone and insistence in calling Elias my bodyguard, that he held him in low esteem. “We’ll start by selling our miracle cure to impoverished countries.”
“So you’ll infect the world, for what?”
“If you cannot figure that out, then you are not smart enough to stop us.”
Money, then. Money, political power: the usual suspects. They could infect the world and sell the cure, right after they recruited me to create it, and I would have no choice but to go along with it. I couldn’t exist with the knowledge that this virus was out there unchecked.
I had to stop him.
“I am not opposed to letting you live,” he spoke to fill the silence. “You could be useful. On the other hand, your bodyguard–”
The next thirty seconds were chaos. Unpredictable, unadulterated pandemonium.
I fired off a round, interrupting Novikov’s impending speech. If someone deserved to monologue, it was me.
The shot landed on the right side of his face, the part that still looked like flesh.
Under the surface of his skin, the virus had progressed more than what was visible because it ricocheted off of him, tinging off the walls and ceiling until it lost momentum.
Novikov rushed toward me, crying out in anger.
I gasped, my arms frozen in the air in front of me. He was slower than I was, but he had the advantage of his anger while I stilled in fear.
Movement happened all around me. Elias crashed into me to knock me out of the way. We made it a few steps before we hit the ground hard. He knocked the wind out of me as we collided, and all I could muster was a small squeak as we fell.
Misha appeared between us and Novikov at the same time the door at the end of the hallway was kicked in.
Carrying a large plastic bottle in his arms, Misha scrambled to intercept Novikov before he reached us.
He tripped over his own feet, the liquid in the bottle spilled out onto the floor and he slipped in it, nearly losing his balance.
When he made it to the doctor, he tipped the jug over, pouring the contents onto Novikov’s face.
Wisps of hissing vapor cascaded off his skin.
Novikov was enveloped with the white cloud, and he cried out, scratching at himself. He clawed at his eye as it sizzled and melted away. Misha had brought a corrosive that he knew would be effective against the metal Novikov was turning into.