10. Roman #2
The van swings as the driver aims around the barricade to reach the street.
I almost get slung back out as the van lumbers down over the curb, but I grab hold of the driver’s seat.
I’ve lost my gun, so I grip the driver’s head with my bare hands and snap his neck before he even knows it’s coming.
He slumps against the wheel, pulling it toward the curb again.
The swaying van bounces partway onto the sidewalk but doesn’t make it this time. As the van tips and gravity pulls sideways, I cling to the driver’s seat to avoid getting ripped down into the crushing space of the open door, which is now below me.
The van crashes onto its side and slides across the pavement with a shriek of metal.
The noise and movement through the darkness is so disorienting that reality kind of vanishes for a second.
Maybe that’s why, when everything goes still, the pitch-black space confuses me.
On a certain level, I know I’m still in the van.
When I let go of the driver’s seat and sit on the pavement, I know, mostly, that I’m in the space of the open sliding door.
But the black box surrounding me opens a pathway in my brain. I had forgotten this, how they used to turn off all the lights in the prison, plunging it into a darkness that would last for hours, or sometimes days.
Men would lose their minds in their closed-in, pitch-black cells.
The longer it went on, the more they would yell and scream and cry.
The sounds were muffled and distorted by the concrete walls and steel doors.
It was so strange to be surrounded by that but isolated. It was so surreal, like a nightmare.
How could I have forgotten that?
I start shivering. I don’t know why. I’m not scared. And I could just open that other sliding door above me. I don’t know why I don’t.
God, I’d forgotten this. The pit that forms in your stomach. The strange, pressurized nothingness.
I jolt when that sliding door opens above me, letting in the lighter darkness and a shadowy glimpse of my brother.
“Jesus Christ ! Fuck, Roman, are you okay?”
When I don’t answer fast enough, Vitali jumps up onto the side of van by the door opening.
I stand up because I don’t want him coming down into this space with me.
I put my hands on the edge of the frame and pull myself up.
Vitali and I both jump down. His eyes are darting all over me.
He grabs at my bulletproof vest like he’s going to check under it.
Normally, he doesn’t do shit like that, but he’s not thinking. I push him away.
Quinn comes over. He and Vitali start talking agitatedly, but I tune it out.
I walk along the sidewalk, trying to reorient, trying to stop shivering.
Our men are busy dragging the bodies to the vans. They’ll have to clean everything up quickly. The overturned van will be the most difficult, but someone is already leaving, probably to get equipment.
Something feels wrong.
At first, I think it’s just me, that I’m still disoriented, but some other instinct is tugging at me. Something’s wrong, I’m sure of it. We’ve missed something with all this planning. Something base and instinctive.
I reach the end of the line and turn, heading back to Vitali and Quinn. Vitali’s eyes jump to me.
“He’s not here,” I say. “Paulo.”
“That’s what we were just discussing,” Vitali says.
I turn around and walk off. I reach one of the cars that formed the blockade. I get in. I’m not thinking. I don’t need to. Something is wrong. I don’t need to name it to know it.
I hear my name being shouted, but the keys are in the ignition, so I just start the car and drive.
It doesn’t take more than a few seconds for a pair of headlights to show up in my rearview mirror .
I get out my phone and call Lucas, but he doesn’t answer. I call Sasha. She doesn’t answer either.
My phone rings. It’s Vitali.
“Just stay calm,” he says when I accept the call.
I don’t say anything, but I’m sure he can hear my harsh breathing because he says again, “Just stay calm.”
“Are you watching the cameras?” I ask.
“Sasha knows what she’s doing.”
For a second, my vision goes out. There’s nothing but white light and emptiness and a high whine. It’s like an inversion of the closed-in blackness of the van or the prison. It’s the un reality of existence without—
“Roman, do not wreck that fucking car.”
I blink, and the road reveals itself. Signs and buildings flash by.
“He didn’t answer his phone,” I say woodenly.
“They’re getting to the roof,” Vitali tells me. “It’s what they’re supposed to do if they can’t get out. Jesus, Roman, slow down.”
I don’t reply. I can’t slow down. I won’t.
“Roman—”
I don’t hear the rest because I drop the phone. It clatters away from me.
I can’t think about Vitali right now. Nothing matters but the distance between me and Lucas and that I close it as fast as possible.
This is the second time I’ve driven like this to the house. The first, Lucas was with me and we were fleeing our captors. But now he’s not with me. I can’t see him. I can’t protect him .
I take the exit and blow through the stoplight. I overshoot the turn and skid onto the opposite shoulder. It’s the middle of the night, so there’s no traffic, but the tires squeal on the pavement. I get back into my lane and smash the gas pedal. The headlights keep pace behind me.
I slow down a little as I near the property, but I’m still going way too fast as I blow through the already-smashed gates. I overshoot again and skid off the pavement into the grass, throwing dirt in my wake. I clip a tree with the side mirror then bounce back up onto the driveway.
I speed toward the front of the house. The lights are off. Everything is dark, but I can see the boxy shape of an SUV in front. I hit the brakes and yank the wheel to spin the car and slam the passenger side against the front of the SUV to block its departure.
The crash knocks me into my door, rattling me in the driver’s seat.
Shots are firing before I can even open the door.
Headlights are blazing toward me, but Vitali’s car veers off, headlights now revealing several men with guns.
As those men scatter and the gunfire briefly pauses, I get out and run for the porch.
I race up the steps and through the open front door into the house.
Everything is so black that I know the power’s been cut.
I catch a drift of light at the stairs. Someone is hunting for the roof access.
I’m not being quiet, so it’s not a surprise that the light brightens as I barrel up the stairs. I no longer have a gun, but I’m past thinking like that anyway. The light meets me at the top, a flashlight blazing into my eyes and blinding me.
A gun fires twice before I grab a huge, dark shape. With a roar, I spin and hurl it down the stairs, away from Lucas.
The flashlight goes flying, slashing wildly through the air. The heavy body is tumbling, and I’m stomping down the stairs behind it. That’s all it is to me. A body. An opponent. Someone who threatened what’s mine.
He gets up. He shouts something, but I’m past words. I don’t hear them.
The sideways beam from the flashlight makes him into a big, vague shape as he starts to scramble back, trying to get space to raise his gun. I’m two steps above him, and I kick him so hard in the chest that he goes flying back into the sitting room, crashing into a chair.
He’s on his feet by the time I reach him, but he’s lost his weapon.
He swings at me. I twist to avoid the worst of it.
He gets my shoulder instead of my throat.
I nail him in the gut. He curls around my fist and drops.
He’s not down long. He lunges up to catch me around the middle.
He’s big and manages to drive me back several steps before I sling him off me. He slams into a wall.
As I stalk toward him, the constriction around my torso becomes intolerable. I tear at the straps and rip off the vest.
It gives my opponent just enough time to get to his feet, but it does him no good. I pin him to the wall and start hammering him like a punching bag. He doesn’t stand a chance. He never did.
I wish he had. I wish he could really fight me so that I could really fight him because all this does is uncap my rage. It’s not even close to enough to drain it.
I’m brutal. I fucking obliterate him. I don’t know at what point he dies. He was only ever a body to me.
I’m very loud now. I can hear the animalistic sounds I’m making over the dull thuds of fists on flesh and flesh on hard surfaces. Blood is warm and wet under my hands.
It stops being satisfying when the body gets loose and pulpy. With a roar, I finally sling it away.
Everything is still dark. Like the prison. Like the spaces inside me that hold all this rage. But it feels good to be roaming free in it. I know what I am, pacing in the dark with blood and death at my feet.
The Beast.
But soon I’ll be back in my cage, and this wasn’t enough .
“Roman.”
My head swings toward the voice. I don’t register the name, just the presence of someone who can’t control me. I won’t go back in my cage, not yet.
I stalk toward the voice, but I never get there because another speaks from the other direction: “Roman.”
That voice I would know anywhere, even in the darkest places .
I turn toward Lucas. I stalk his way. He doesn’t move at my approach. He doesn’t scream when I grab him. He just wraps his arms and legs around me and lets me carry him up the stairs to our room.