Chapter 54
vera
Of course it was here.
The Phoenix Building stood tall over me where I stepped out of the car, its skeletal form reaching up to the sky and tapering out as it went, like it was in the process of slowly dissolving into the heavens.
I could have tracked them further. I’d found the car they’d brought her here in, and they’d have left a trail, however subtle. But I knew exactly where they were.
Up at the top. Just for me.
Wasn’t I flattered?
They thought I’d be scared. They thought I’d hesitate.
I hoisted myself over the barricade and into the construction site, and I marched straight towards the lift, banging on the controls. I could feel it thrashing inside me, the beast, the inner demon. The part of me that killed people.
It burned all my other thoughts and feelings away until there was nothing but red-hot rage coursing through me, liquid fire in my veins. I stepped onto the lift, the shaft open above me all the way up to the night sky, and I set it for the top, metal grinding as we rose.
It was no surprise when it stopped halfway up the shaft. It lurched, and I reacted easily, leaping up to an access ladder just as the cable snapped and the lift gave out underneath me, falling to the ground with an earsplitting crash. I didn’t even hesitate, just kept climbing at the same rate.
Elaine.
Gunshots rang through the shaft, bullets striking metal, and I held onto the ladder with one hand and drew my gun with the other.
I saw them as tiny shapes at the top of the shaft, men with rifles, three of them.
I squeezed off three shots, and they all dropped, one still alive and screaming as he fell into the shaft.
Three down. Only the rest of the entire organization to go.
They hurt Elaine. They hurt my wife.
The ladder rattled and started to come away from the wall, and I kicked through a panel to climb into one of the floors. I heard their footsteps ringing all around me, people converging on me as I walked, and I didn’t think, I didn’t feel.
I only killed.
I lost count of how many of them I killed on the way. One shot in the head, one thrown off the edge of the building, five at once when I shot a restraining fixture and dropped a load of steel beams on them.
I walked through fields of blood, and finally came out on the top, where the wind bit at me from every angle, and I grimaced, trying not to think about the staggering drops all around us.
The floor wasn’t fully constructed on this level, and the beams spanning gaps felt like a walkway on a cliffside that was set to give way underneath me.
But that didn’t matter. I could feel another time.
For now, a single spotlight shone down from the steel frame around us, casting a column of white light over where Elaine was kneeling on the floor, her face red and swollen, her hands tied behind her back, looking at me with tears in her eyes.
I should have told her I loved her too.
She had two people flanking her on each side, guns trained on me as I came around the corner, another one on either side of the walkway I came in on, and I stopped in the middle of it all as another spotlight shone on me.
“Vera,” Elaine gasped, looking up at me with her blotchy, tear-stained cheeks. “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t be here. You need to escape, to—”
“You four,” I said, gesturing to the ones standing around her. “Untie my wife. And then step away from her.”
One of them clenched his jaw. “We have orders, Vera Farkas. Put down your gun.”
I laughed. “Sure,” I said, and I dropped my gun. It clanged on the metal, and they all flinched, looking at me in confusion. I walked towards them, and they snapped back to train their guns shakily on me as I walked, my hands up. “Relax. I just want to see my wife.”
“Stop,” another one shouted at me. “Not one more step!”
“Just this one.” I stopped in front of Elaine, and I knelt in front of her, a hand on the swollen red mark on her cheek. “Hey,” I whispered. “Who hurt you like this, Elaine?”
“Vera… what are you doing?” she said thickly through tears. “You’re going to… they’re going to…”
“Someone hit you.”
She grimaced. “It was Glenn, but…”
I kissed her, softly, sweetly, on the lips. “You have something I misplaced,” I said, and she blinked at me, but I reached into her pocket. The guards trained their guns on me again.
“Stop! Don’t touch anything else!”
I ignored them. I clasped my hand around the ring in her pocket, slipped it out, and I put it back on my finger. Her eyes shone.
“That’s better,” I said.
“Now step away,” the guard shouted, straining his voice. “Hands up. And don’t move without being told to!”
I smiled. “Of course. I wouldn’t dream of causing problems.”
I moved in a blink. He fired a shot, but he’d expected me to go straight at him, and it plinked off the metal behind me as I grabbed him by the arm, twisting around and thrusting him in front just as the rain of gunfire came down and hit him from every angle.
I snatched the gun from his hand as he went limp, and I squeezed off three shots, downing the two on the other far corners and one of the close ones, and I threw the body aside when one of the others lunged at me, catching him off-guard and giving me the opening to hit the gun out of his hand and shove him backwards off the edge, where he went down with a scream just as the last one jumped me from behind.
I twisted with the momentum, and I slammed his head down onto the steel railing and then shoved him out over the edge, gripping him by the throat and holding him out over the drop.
“Where’s Glenn?” I said.
“He’s—he went back to headquarters,” he choked. “You’re—a monster. A traitor.”
I clutched his throat tighter, squeezing until I could feel it collapsing. “I’m loyal to one person,” I said. “And you… hurt her.”
He let out a guttural, choked scream through his broken throat as I shoved him off the edge, down towards the dizzying ground below, and for just one instant, the sensation of it clutched at me, seeing him fall.
My mother’s face looking up at me as she screamed, falling down, down…
“Vera,” Elaine gasped, and it shook me out of the moment of madness. I whirled back on her, dropping to her level and untying her bindings.
“We’re getting you out,” I said.
“Vera, wait, it’s Quayle—he’s—”
She didn’t need to finish the sentence. I sensed his presence, like a rotten odor, even before the footsteps came ringing around the corner, and I whirled back to see him with a gun out, trained squarely ahead.
Not on me. On Elaine.
He put his finger on the trigger, and he pulled.