Rosabelle 30 #2
“What did you mean when you said we had six months?” he asks, losing some of his composure. “Do you mean six months before Klaus can take control?”
“Yes,” I say quietly.
Pinpricks of relief are beginning to release tension from my body. Warner finally appears to be listening to me.
“I suspect The Reestablishment needs to lock a few more things into place in order to achieve these results, which is why they’re launching these offensives now.”
Warner briefly closes his eyes. “What about preventing the impending attacks? Preventing them from erasing powers from the populace? You once told James we had several more weeks—”
“Several weeks left until all missions across the continent are complete. I have no way of knowing when these missions will be carried out. The explosions, as I said, are meant to be undetectable; they might’ve already happened. They could be happening right now.”
He shakes his head. “There has to be a way. We have your vial. If you don’t carry out your mission here in the capital, at least—”
“It won’t help. I was sent to the capital because the lack of tech in my body gives me greater cover for infiltrating a heavily secured region with the highest concentration of unnatural abilities.
But my change in status doesn’t provide you immunity,” I explain.
“Klaus has certainly replaced me with another agent, one who won’t hesitate to carry out the original mission.
When it happens, you’ll all be affected.
You, your family, your friends.” I hesitate, taking a breath.
“If I don’t remain fully dead in my body, it’s possible that I, too, could be affected.
And then”—I shake my head—“and then we’ll have nothing. ”
“I can’t accept that,” he says. I can almost see his mind working. “The loss would be too great. There has to be another way.”
“I’ve been trying to tell you,” I say, my arm trembling harder now, “that there’s nothing to be done. These recent brutalities are meant to distract you while they do the real work, the undetectable work. The plans have been made and executed. It’s over. You’ve lost. Everything else is theater.”
He shakes his head again, turning his eyes to the wall. “You have no way of knowing when such an attack might strike this region? The capital city?”
“Imminently,” I tell him. “That’s why you have to let me go back to the island. Alone. As soon as possible. If I can destroy the Ark from deep inside, I might be able to kill the nucleus of the program before your city is affected. But I need Sebastian in order to do it.”
Warner locks eyes with me.
“If you care about your brother,” I tell him, “you will keep him away from me. If you care about your world, you will keep him away from me. I have a job to do, and I need to do it on my own—”
I hear the telltale sounds of movement only a moment before I feel the violent hammer of my heart; the weight of my flesh; the harsh breath in my lungs.
My fists unclench like antennae unfurling.
I gasp.
The door rattles.
Bones ladder into place down my spine like the keys of a piano, struck in descending order.
Goose bumps rise along my skin, the cold room suddenly contracting around my body, raising the hairs on my neck.
Fatigue rushes at me from all sides, exhaustion closing its hands around my eyes.
I can’t see James through the window, but it’s enough to know that he’s here.
I can feel him.
I reach out unsteadily for support, finding none, and as I stumble, a wash of moonlight blinds me. My lips are chapped. My muscles spasm with weakness, joints throbbing. My face hurts.
Warner is staring at me in stunned amazement.
I startle as the handle turns. Hunger blazes in my gut, pain pulsing through my limbs. The lock catches. There’s a sudden pounding.
“Bro, open the fucking door—”
The sound of his voice moves through me like magma. I feel hot and faint, my pulse stuttering.
I haven’t heard his voice in five days.
I was hoping I’d never hear it again.
“I know you’re in there.” James is shouting. “Open this door right now or I’ll break it down.”
“Please,” I gasp, shaking my head at Warner. “Don’t. You can’t.”
Warner is looking at me with an almost scientific astonishment. He doesn’t react to the sound of his brother’s anger. He doesn’t even flinch when James bangs on the door again.
He just stares at me.
“Wow,” he says.
I feel suddenly feverish. My eyes close. Open. Close and open again. My right arm is shaking so hard I have to hold it with my good hand.
Warner takes his time moving to the door.
He throws the lock and turns the handle in an unhurried motion, the sounds echoing in my teeth. Then he opens the door partway, blocking the entry with his body, his silhouette limned in loose light.
I can’t slow my heart.
“Where is she?” James says, and I hear the fury in his voice. The panic. “Is she inside?”
“James—”
“Why did you leave him alone with her? I told you—I tried to warn you—”
“James.”
“No. Don’t fucking James me. I’m not playing this game anymore. I’m done. Open the door.”
My heart is a bloodied fist, battering.
“Go home,” Warner says quietly. “Cool off. You can’t be here.”
“What are you going to do to me?” He almost laughs. “Are you going to fight me? Have me arrested? Demote me? Go ahead and shoot me again, see if I give a shit.”
“That’s enough—”
“Open the door—”
“I can’t.”
My knees are giving out.
“Do you think this is a joke to me?” James says. The pain in his voice reaches me here; breaks apart my ribs. “Do you really think I’m going to let this go? I find out she was in recovery because he broke her fucking face—”
“Stop,” Warner says, the word like a gunshot.
“Where is he? Where are you hiding him?”
“We’ve already talked about this—”
“Tell me where to find him.”
“No.”
“Fuck you, open the door.”
“James—”
“Would you be okay right now?” he says angrily. “Would you tolerate this for even a half a second? What would you be doing right now? If you were in my position? Answer me honestly.”
Warner goes silent. Then, taking a breath, he says darkly, “This is hardly the same situation.”
“Just answer the fucking question!”
“You have no choice but to let this go,” says Warner. “Her life is none of your business—”
“You’re my business,” he explodes. “You’re my brother. You’re supposed to care whether or not I lose my goddamn mind. How could you let this happen? I told you—I practically begged you and you refused to hear me—”
“James—”
“NO,” he shouts. “You will never, ever leave her alone with that psychopath again, or I swear to God I will fucking destroy you—”
The blast is deafening, almost dreamlike.
The windows shatter in slow motion, movement separating into stills, my mind struggling to process the impossible. Things change at a frame rate that stretches everything into scenes light-leaked and surreal. My heart thuds like struck mud, shards of glass levitating like glinting, jagged teeth.
Suddenly, sound.
Sound so loud it seems to fill my bones, reach inside my mouth and flood my throat. I feel it like rubber in my eye sockets, like blood in my ears.
I’m lifted off the ground—
BOOM
—and slammed bodily against the back wall. My weakened body crumples to the floor.
Time crashes into itself.
I think I scream, the sound lost in the explosion.
The ground shudders violently, walls shaking, drawers coming loose as cabinet doors swing on squeaking hinges, bashing repeatedly against opposite units.
The single bulb flickers out over head, swaying dangerously on its electrical vine.
Splinters of wood hover like so many daggers, and my head whips back, cracking against the wall.
Glass, like rain.
The sound is musical, moving water.
I’ve taken on the resonance of a drum, pulse points coming alive on my body like working leeches. It takes me a moment to register the discomfort. To realize there’s something in my mouth.
That I can’t breathe.
I lift a shaking hand to my lips, but my fingers catch the serrated edge of glass at my neck, drawing blood.
This doesn’t compute.
The ground is still shaking; in the distance, I hear screams, lost in the wind.
I feel like I’ve been dipped in cold and left to frost, shivering in the endless ink of the room.
Tremors of moonlight paint the dark in disorienting streaks and I try again to lift a hand to the obstruction in my airway, the object I seem to feel in my mouth.
My mind is struggling to understand what my bleeding hands are saying, and reality clarifies in stages, like a stain slowly lifting.
There’s a windowpane lodged in my throat.