by Dima Zales
He must not see Joe and me hiding behind the car and probably thinks the trio on the grass is what remains of the resistance.
My heart leaps into my throat as the rifle fires.
Ada gasps and then screams.
Since her Share app is still running for Mitya’s and Muhomor’s benefits, I try to look through it and succeed, which means Ada’s brain is intact. Shaking with relief, I realize the reason for Ada’s screaming.
The rifleman shot Luke in the head, making it explode, and the gore is covering Ada’s entire body.
The already slow-moving time crawls for me now, and I can see Luke’s gun begin to fall to the grass and Ada’s hand reach out to catch it.
I comprehend what’s about to happen.
Ada is going to grab that gun and start shooting.
“Ada, no!” I scream at her from my hiding place. Mentally, I frantically add, “If you start shooting, you might as well draw a target on your forehead.”
Ada catches the gun, and I see no evidence that she heard me or that she’s willing to listen.
An insane plan flits through my mind.
I know how to draw fire away from Ada… at a steep price to myself.
The guy with the rifle begins to reload, and I attempt my crazy idea.
The world takes on a surreal quality as I leap from my hiding spot and shoot at the rifleman.
Without the aim-assist app, and with the unfamiliar gun in my hand, I miss.
The rifleman finishes reloading, but instead of aiming at me, he points the barrel in Ada’s direction again. My heart threatens to burst out of my chest, but I climb onto the limo’s ruins, take careful aim at him, and squeeze the trigger again. I must be getting used to my new gun, because my shot fells the rifleman.
His thirteen still-alive allies turn their guns in my direction.
Strong hands push me from behind, and it takes an unimaginable feat of coordination for me to land on my feet.
Joe must’ve pushed me, I realize. Then I hear thirteen shots ring out like a firing squad.
Their bullets are going toward the top of the limo—toward Joe.
I shoot back once, twice, and each bullet reaches its designated helmet.
Something falls on top of the limo, making my heart sink.
I’m reluctant to learn the horrible truth, but I force myself to switch to Ada’s Share view. Her vantage point is getting closer, enabling me to see what the sound was about, and my stomach grows cold as the otherworldly quality of my surroundings intensifies.
It was indeed Joe. A couple of the thirteen bullets reached his head, and what’s left of his skull is barely recognizable as having belonged to a human being.
I instantly regret all my snide thoughts about my cousin. Despite everything, I’ve grown to care about Joe, and I know this loss will devastate our family.
Before grief can warp my mind, another shot rings out, the bullet tearing through my chest.
Despite the Relief app, the pain is worse than anything I’ve felt—though my grief could be intensifying it. The agony is at least a thousand times worse than when the sharp object was stuck under my fingernail.
My knees buckle, and I sink to the ground.
Something tells me I’m only alive because the bulletproof vest saved my life, but this won’t be the case for long, as my enemies take aim at me again.
Through Ada’s Share app, I see her vantage point is getting even closer to the limo, and I finally understand what it means.
Gun in hand, Ada is running to save me—which means she’s running toward the shooters.
“No, Ada,” I scream mentally. “Don’t get any closer!”
To my horror, the gunmen stop aiming at me and turn their sights onto Ada, who must, at this moment, seem like the more dangerous target.
“Drop to the ground!” I scream at her.
Thirteen shots ring out.
Ada’s view is a swirl of motion that indicates she’s falling.
“Ada?” I frantically message in Zik. “Ada, are you okay?”
She doesn’t reply.
My grief for my cousin morphs into a terrifying black hole as Ada’s Share app begins to show static, like an ancient out-of-tune TV.
Mindlessly, I leap to my feet and turn.
I have to see this for myself.
I have to see her.
As I feared, Ada is on the ground, blood pooling around her face.
The shots ring out again, and I know I’ll no longer feel this horrible grief in a moment.
It’s a relief I welcome.
In the instant before I die, something clicks in my head. It could be wishful thinking, but I have to try.
Out loud, as though I’m addressing someone other than myself, I ask, “Is this really happening?”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The surreal quality of the world dissipates, and I snap out of the pre-cog moment—just like every other time I’ve asked myself this question when experiencing those nightmare scenarios.
The brain-boost vision short-circuits, and I find myself back behind the limo—effectively back in time to a few fateful seconds ago, before Joe and Ada got killed.
I understand what just happened. When I came up with that insane plan to draw fire away from Ada, my brain showed me what might happen as a result. During our last Brainocytes Club meeting, Mitya provided us with the new brain boost, and I didn’t get a chance to adjust to it. I was also offline for a number of days. I’m probably lucky this is the first pre-cog moment I’ve experienced—if you can call that scare lucky.
The reality of our situation sets in. The pre-cog moment happened at the speed of boosted thought, and since I didn’t jump onto the limo and no shots were fired, what’s really happening is that the rifleman is still reloading his weapon.
The problem is that I’m running out of options. The pre-cog moment convinced me not to execute that desperate maneuver, but I also know if Ada fires the gun she just caught, she won’t be alive for long.
“Ada—” I begin to scream at her again, but then in her Share view, I see I wasn’t the only one worried about her. I forgot Gogi and his Special Forces background, not to mention his years of bodyguard experience. Since Gogi is already almost hugging Ada, he just makes his hug tighter and falls on top of her the way bodyguards have done since time immemorial.
Ada’s gun falls out of her hand, and she spouts mental curses about being sandwiched between a dead body and a wounded Georgian.
“Better that than dead,” I reassure her mentally.
Either Gogi’s action or my screaming did the trick. After the rifleman finishes reloading, he doesn’t aim for Gogi or Ada, since a flat target is too difficult to hit. He focuses on me, since I’ve been kind enough to scream and announce my location.
Suddenly, Joe jackknifes to his feet, takes quick aim, and pulls the trigger.
The rifleman falls, but that only seems to anger the other dozen attackers running toward us. They begin to fire at the limo.
“The black Suburban will be between you and those people in a second,” Mitya states in the chat.
I can see he’s right, but with or without the black Suburban, Joe and I don’t stand much of a chance.
Then Ada chimes in. “I’m looking through the Suburban’s window with the drone,” she tells us. “I think you might want to look, too.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
The Suburban’s tires screech, and it stops between us and the twelve attackers—a strange maneuver in and of itself.
I follow Ada’s advice and look at the black car’s windows through the drone’s camera.
Unlike the rest of their helmeted allies, this group is wearing sunglasses and suits. That is, aviator sunglasses and creepily familiar black suits. I recognize a couple of people in that car. Agent Pugh is the one driving, and a couple of other task-force Suits—facial-recognition-immune men I first saw at the hospital—are here as well.
“How did I not see this sooner?”
Mitya says as the same realization must hit him. “They were driving the most cliché government vehicle known to man. And it’s even black.”
“What I’d like to know,” Ada says, “is whether they’re here to hurt us or help us?”
I consider her question. Earlier in the chase, I decided that the task force wasn’t behind Vincent Williams, and someone else must have hired him. Was I wrong?
In perfectly rehearsed unison, the Suits stick their guns out of the window and answer my question in the simplest way they can—they open fire at our attackers.
“They must’ve been tailing you,” Muhomor says. “Even after all that hoopla in the media. Thank God bad habits are so hard to break.”
“Not only did they follow us,” I say, “but they also did it from far enough away that they didn’t activate my paranoia. They must be learning from their mistakes.”
Emboldened by the newfound support, Joe and I stand up and aim at any helmeted people we can spot, but it’s difficult with the black car in the way.
I unload half my gun before I see movement inside the red Hilux truck next to us. Seemingly before my conscious mind even knows what I’m planning, my hand takes aim and shoots.
My bullet slices into Vincent Williams’s ear but doesn’t stop his escaping the car.
“Check his passenger,” Joe barks at me. “Williams is mine.”
What Joe doesn’t say, but what I assume based on the cold glint in his alligator-like stare, is that he intends to make Williams pay dearly for every man Joe lost today.
I check the drone view to make sure it’s safe for me to walk to the other side of the limo, since that’s what’s required to get to the passenger side of the truck. The Suits and our earlier attackers are still exchanging fire, and the Suits are winning. Their only casualty so far is one of the dudes I saw at the hospital.
Since the drone doesn’t have a good view of the damaged Hilux, I scan the limo’s sensors. I’m shocked to find a semi-functional camera in the back.
Despite the cracked camera screen that blocks the view, I can still make out Williams as he exits the car. Joe meets the large man the moment his feet touch the ground. The first thing Joe does is put a bullet in Williams in his right hand, disarming his opponent and costing Williams yet another finger or two on his already digit-lacking hand. Williams’s guttural scream brings a horrid smile to Joe’s face—the same one he wore when I caught him beating a bird with a rock as a teenager.
“Oh no,” I say inside the chat. “I’m afraid my cousin might not be thinking strategically.”
No one replies, but in a moment, I’m proven right. Instead of shooting Williams in the head, as I would have done, Joe pistol-whips the man in the face.
“He might be out of bullets,” Mitya suggests halfheartedly as we all see Williams’s lip split and his blood spray across Joe’s face in the ultimate unhygienic fountain.
Whatever the reason for Joe’s decision to throw hits, Williams takes the damage with surprising stamina and tries to grapple with his enemy. Joe is ready for him and uses a move he’s used on me at the gym. I call the move a kick-twister, only I see that Joe was severely pulling his punches and kicks with me. When Joe completes the kick-twister this time, Williams’s right wrist breaks, and his already damaged hand hangs limply to the side.
With an animalistic roar, Williams punches Joe with his left hand. As someone who’s received a punch like that before, I feel sympathy for Joe. To my shock, Joe takes the punch with that same creepy smile and leaps at Williams with a growl.
Since I’m standing in front of the passenger side door of the red truck, I focus on what’s in front of me right now—the damaged truck’s door—and proceed to pull.
The door creaks, but opens. I can see that the helmeted person who rode with Williams is—or was—a man, and he looks knocked out or dead. Something about this person’s body or clothing seems familiar to me. I get the strong urge to lift his helmet to see the face hidden beneath.
Jutting my gun out, I say, “If you’re alive and you move, I’ll shoot you in the stomach.”
“I say you shoot before you check him,” Muhomor suggests. “This way, we’ll be certain he’s dead.”
“That’s cold, even for you, Viktor,” Mitya counters, and I tend to agree with him. Though I did finally take kill shots at people in the heat of battle, killing someone who’s unconscious like this is a whole other step, and one I’m not willing to take, especially considering the vague familiarity I feel when I look at this man.
Clicking the gun’s safety off, I reach for the helmet’s visor.
“No way.” Mitya gapes at the mystery person’s face. “It can’t be him.”
“Seriously,” Ada echoes. “Isn’t he dead? There was a posh funeral and everything.”
“The funeral could’ve been faked,” Muhomor says. “We’re talking about Russia, after all. In any case, if he wasn’t dead before, he might be dead now.”
I study the man’s face until I have no doubt. This is Alex—as in Alexander Voynskiy, the Russian billionaire. As in the guy who betrayed us on that rescue trip to Russia—a betrayal he paid for with his life, after Joe tortured him, or so it seemed until this very moment.
Of course, if Alex had survived, he would want revenge. He’s the perfect person to hire all these people trying to kill us. Besides revenge, he might want us dead so he can stop pretending to be dead—a preventative strike since Joe would kill him if he knew of his survival. So it’s no surprise that Alex wants Joe dead, though I’m sure he’s equally pissed at the rest of us. He’s the exact kind of person who’d put together a kill list, with Joe at the top, and give the list to someone like Williams. This would explain why Williams mentioned some kind of list.
Though I’m still reluctant to shoot him, I consider hitting Alex in the face to make sure he doesn’t wake up anytime soon. Then the implications of Alex’s survival hit me, and I frantically send Ada a telepathic message, saying, “Ada, ask Gogi if Joe has anyone guarding Muhomor. If he does, tell Gogi to order the guard to rush into Muhomor’s room.”
As though in response to my suspicions, Muhomor sends into the chat, “Crap. I shouldn’t have said anything out loud to her. I need help. SOS.”
I find the camera view into Muhomor’s room and confirm my suspicions. Lyuba is there, and she’s holding a pillow over Muhomor’s face.
“Hold on, buddy,” Ada says. “Gogi just passed along Mike’s message.”
Muhomor doesn’t answer—a bad sign—but Jacob, another one of Joe’s people I’ve seen at the gym, rushes into the room.
Jacob is very, very good at his job, and before Lyuba knows what’s happening, the man unceremoniously punches her in the jaw.
Unsurprisingly, Lyuba imitates a knocked-out sack of potatoes as she crashes to the floor.
I never thought I’d see the day when Ada would cheer a man hitting a woman, but she does.
Jacob stabs at the nurse-call button and begins performing CPR on Muhomor.
In case someone hasn’t already reached the conclusions I have, I say into the chat, “Muhomor left it to Lyuba to get rid of Alex. The billionaire must’ve convinced or bribed her to let him live, and she’s been working with him ever since. This is how Williams and his people knew we’d be at that restaurant and how they knew we were at the hospital. We told Lyuba about it. Even this chase is her fault. I bet Muhomor told her what hospital I was left at and where we were going.”
“Tell that brute I’m okay,” Muhomor says into the chat after a moment. “I can’t tell him because he’s rape-kissing me.”
“Hey.” I feel instant relief. “At least we now know you’ve gotten to first base—”
“Watch out!” Ada screams, both mentally and from under Gogi.
Realizing I’ve been paying too much attention to the AROS views and not my real-world senses, I focus on Alex and see his eyes are open and narrowing at me.
“Shoot him,” Muhomor urges. “Use your gun.”
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br /> I’m about to listen to Muhomor, but before I get a chance to pull the trigger, Alex savagely kicks my legs, and my shin explodes in unbearable pain. In shock, I stumble back and trip, falling out of the tall truck.
My gun clanks on the asphalt, but I’m happy that I landed on my ass instead of breaking my neck in the fall, though my tailbone violently begs to differ.
Alex leaps out of the truck after me and stomps on my chest as he falls on top of me, causing the air in my lungs to escape with an almost audible whoosh.
Recovering quickly, he repeatedly punches me in the head.
The world grows distant, and I must use my willpower to stay conscious. In the AROS view from the limo’s last camera, I can see Joe is still in the process of hitting what’s left of Williams’s face with something heavy. That’s too bad for me, since I was hoping Joe would be done with his prey and on his way to rescue me.
“You bastard,” Ada says inside the chat, and even through my haze I’m tempted to tell her Alex can’t hear her cursing without Brainocytes.
Then I see Ada has a plan. Dimly, I watch as our last drone crash-lands into the side of Alex’s head.
There’s a satisfying crunch, though I think it’s the plastic drone that breaks and not Alex’s skull. Still, Alex’s eyes glaze over, and his body goes slack on top of me.
I push Alex off me and struggle to my feet. Since I don’t trust him to stay unconscious for long, I need to finish him off somehow. Shaking my head in an effort to further clear it, I think something I never thought I’d ask myself.
What would Joe do?
Since my legs are barely supporting my weight and my muscles are screaming for mercy, I decide that my gun is my best option. Pulling the trigger will be easier than punching or kicking in my current condition.
I look for the gun, but it seems to be under the limo wreckage. I’m not sure it’s a good idea for me to climb under for it.
In Ada’s Shared view, I see a flicker of movement behind me and instinctively duck.
As a result, I only lose a small piece of my scalp instead of my life.