Chapter 33 #2
Nicole and Boer were completely silent now.
Nicole still pressed that bloodied knife under my eye, still holding up her phone to film what I was doing.
The knife vibrated with tension against my face.
I couldn’t string this out too much longer.
Those psychopaths were already completely unstable. The strain would make them explode.
I entered the final letter. Hit “Enter,” and the very last dialog box showed up.
Last chance to stall. I had to drag this out as long as I could. Make it count.
“Nature’s first green is gold,” that was the first line. .dlogsineergtsrifs’erutaN.
I took my time like never before, but after about forty minutes of my typing, Boer spoke up. “Do you know what I think, Freya? I think you’re fucking with us. What do you think, Nicole? Do you think she’s fucking with us?”
“I do, Wex. I really do. I think a code this long is impossible for a human brain to memorize. So yeah. This sneaky little cunt is definitely fucking with us.”
“What kind of punishment do you think she deserves?”
“Well, she still needs her eyes, at least for the moment,” Nicole said thoughtfully. “But there’s absolutely no reason we couldn’t take one of his.”
“Now you’re talking.” Boer chucked me under the chin.
“Nicole is great with eyes. She just wiggles that knife in underneath the eyeball, and snip, she severs the optic nerve, and ‘pop,’ out it comes. It really is a thing to behold. But you’ll see for yourself soon enough. Go ahead, Nicole. Let’s show her.”
I hurried up with the last few letters, and hit “Enter.” “No, no, no! I’m not fucking with you, I swear. The code is really long, but this is just how our minds work. Me, my brothers. We’re strange that way. Always have been.”
The screen filled with scrolling numbers. Nicole leaned forward, her eyes wide.
“Are we in?” Boer asked.
“We are in.” Nicole sounded excited. “Holy fucking shit, we are in!”
Boer reached down and squeezed my crotch so hard it made me gasp. “Good girl,” he said, in that evil, oily voice. “I’ll fuck you extra hard for being so obedient.”
Boom. A huge, muffled explosive sound from above them.
“What the fuck…” Boer grabbed his handheld radio. “Nelson, come in. What the fuck was that? Nelson? Come in, Nelson!” He looked over at Nicole. Both of them gave me identical suspicious glances.
He turned toward the guys near the door. “Wilkes, Shelby. Go check it out.”
The two men he’d called upon exited the room, leaving two men, besides Boer himself and Nicole, who leaned down over me with a menacing air. Nicole dragged the point of the knife over my cheek, then down to my mouth.
“Do you know something about this, Freya?” Boer asked. “Do you have something to share with us?”
I shook my head, trying to speak, but an unintelligible gibbering came out. I’d used up all my brain power entering that damn code. I had nothing left to be tough with.
Suddenly, the computer flashed, sparked, and the lights went out. Utter darkness.
Now. Something inside me snapped into action as if it were spring-loaded. I released the catch on the little blade hidden behind my thumbnail. Snick, it emerged, a good half-inch of lethal sharpness, pointy and serrated.
Nicole lunged for her phone, which still glowed on the desk beside us, and I jumped up and knocked it out of her hands.
Then I spun around wildly, slashing the tiny blade right across Boer’s face.
Not a lethal blow, but I felt the contact, the friction of his skin, and the bump as it slashed over his nose. A nice, deep, nasty scratch. Good.
Boer bellowed with rage as he stumbled backward and then went for me, but I was gone, launching myself in the general direction of where Jed hung from the ceiling.
I ran right into him, making him grunt in startled pain.
“It’s me,” I hissed, and jumped up to grab the chain and locate the plastic cuffs.
He made a sound of startled agony as my weight added to his own, which was awful, but I ignored it, sawing at the plastic with my thumb blade.
It was hard, to get the right angle in the dark, and I was terrified of slicing him open, cutting a vein, a finger.
Snap. It broke, and we fell together, him on top of me. Jesus, he was so heavy. It felt as if his dead weight had crushed me into jelly. I wiggled beneath him. “Hey? Jed?”
Jed rolled off me and rose to his feet. I struggled to sit up. In the beams from cell phone flashlights, flashing and flickering, I saw him. For just a split second, I saw Jed’s body, silhouetted against some fleeting light source, suspended in the air, kicking.
Fighting, again. Nothing kept that guy down.
I heard shouts, grunts, crashing furniture. Electronic equipment swept off tables, shattering on the cement floor. Bam. Bam. The gunfire was incredibly loud.
A cut on my forehead was bleeding, and the blood was blinding me.
Then someone landed on me like a bag of rocks, and suddenly, I was wrestling, scratching, struggling. I got a smothering mouth full of her slick, bitter-tasting hair, and choked on the smell of perfume and sweat. Nicole.
Catfight. I was giving it my all, but she was on top of me, she was fresher than me, and I was half blinded with blood.
She was pounding my face. I used all of my strength to twist and wrench one hand free.
I slashed my thumb blade, aiming for wherever all that panting and grunting was originating.
She turned her head and jerked back, but the blade bit into flesh. I raked it hard, across her cheek.
Her thin screech sounded barely human. More flashing lights showed a stuttering strobing image of a screaming, goblin face above me, spit flying from wet lips, bloody teeth, wild eyes. I heaved myself up, shoving her off, scrambling back—
And felt it, like a massive, punch to my shoulder. It knocked me back. I hit the floor. Felt the world start to drain away into some big, bottomless hole.
Leaving only darkness and cold.