Chapter 27
My broken arm reached full extension and his grip on my wrist stopped me. I screamed again, the surge of pain down my arm dragging cries from my lips. The sound of blood in my ears had gotten worse, so bad that I could tell that Henderschott was talking to me, but I couldn’t tell what he was saying, only hearing fragments. “Submit...do not resist...”
I twisted and dangled, hanging by my broken wrist and staring fifty-something floors down to the plaza below where we had entered, the atrium lit up like a light with spiderwebs of darkness running through it. There were no clouds for the first time I could remember since leaving my house, and the first strains of light on the horizon told me it was close to sun up. The noise in my ears was getting worse, and finally I realized that it wasn’t the blood rushing through them, or the wind.
A Black Hawk helicopter dropped into view from above. Henderschott looked up and froze, almost as if he were shocked at its appearance. I could see the members of M-Squad inside, the door was open and someone wearing a tactical vest was hanging out as it swooped low over the rooftop. It didn’t slow down and I saw the person jump out about ten feet above the roof as the helicopter started to pull up and gain altitude. I saw an M16 with an underslung grenade launcher go skittering as they landed rather badly.
Henderschott dragged me in from the edge and tossed me to the ground, then placed his boot on my chest. I felt the pressure of his weight lean onto me and I couldn’t breathe. “Don’t...go...anywhere.” His words came out in low gutturals but I understood every one of them.
“Why...would I go anywhere?” I put my good hand on his foot. “I like this...spot,” I said, fighting for breath. “It’s you who...needs to move!” I lashed out at the last, rocking my hips and pushing my legs up so my heels hit him in the chest, sending him teetering off balance. I pulled in my leg again and then kicked him, knocking his feet out from underneath and sending him toppling.
I stood, ignoring the fire in my side. “You know,” I said, “I used to spend hours encased in metal too. Probably wasn’t as pleasant as how you’re doing it.” I tried to grab him by the leg but got a metal boot to the chest for my troubles. If possible, the already painful injury to my stomach multiplied and moved north. I suspected he had broken some ribs. I curled up into a little ball and tried to catch my breath, then attempted to force myself to stand. I watched as Henderschott got to his feet and I backed away from him, taking one hobbling step at a time.
“Hey!” The shout caught my attention, forcing me to look back and see Zack, holding the M16 with the barrel slightly elevated, pointed at Henderschott. I covered my ears and dived to the ground as I watched Henderschott’s metal head tilt in confusion (or maybe amusement) at the sight of Zack. He didn’t stay confused (or amused or whatever) for long. A low, whumping noise cut across the roof as the grenade launcher on the bottom of Zack’s weapon fired and it caught Henderschott right in the armored chest and exploded, sending him backward, arms pinwheeling, over the edge of the building.
I got to my feet and lurched over to Zack, still holding my chest and side. “Big strong man, come to save me,” I said, cringing from the pain.
“You looked like you needed some help.” He pointed his gun in the air.
“He sucker punched me,” I said. “Again.”
“Yeah?” He looked at me with a little acrimony. “Maybe this wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t totally disregarded what Old Man Winter told you—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, mocking. “I don’t see the city leveled, so don’t count my strategy out yet.”
“What was your strategy again?” He looked at me. “Get pummeled by the man in black while Scotty and Kat tried to avoid getting toasted?”
“You should talk.” I took a deep breath and cringed at the pain from it. “If I’d had a helicopter, none of this would have happened. That armored assclown followed us from outside the campus.” I looked back at the helicopter, which was swinging around for another pass. “Besides, what was your strategy?”
“Parks is up there with a sniper rifle,” he said, pointing to the Black Hawk. “Clary’s jumping down on their next pass, but if we get even a sign that Gavrikov means to explode, Parks will drop him.”
“Why didn’t Clary jump the first time?” I looked at him. “You know, with you?”
He looked a little hesitant, almost embarrassed. “I uh...I wasn’t supposed to.”
“You fell out?” I tried to hide my amusement.
“I jumped out,” he said, “to save you. Clary was tasked to Gavrikov, he wouldn’t have helped you in time, so I forced the issue. The crosswinds are a real bitch up here, though, and it wasn’t the best moment to jump. Bastian is having a hell of a time keeping the chopper steady.”
“Makes me wonder how Parks is gonna pull off his shot,” I said, starting to limp toward the other side of the roof. I could see Gavrikov and Scott still going at each other, the flame versus the water.
“He’ll pull it off,” Zack said. “But honestly, we don’t really need him to.” He pulled his gun up and stared down the sights. “I can riddle him with holes if we get closer.”
The helicopter swooped overhead and Clary appeared at the door. It looked like Bastian was trying to keep it level but there was serious chop and the helicopter was swaying in the wind. I watched Clyde yell out something that sounded like “Geronimo!” and jump, his skin turning to darkened steel on the fall. He was aimed perfectly, and hit the roof only a few feet to Gavrikov’s left, causing the flaming man to look up from his battle with Byerly. I watched Clary land—
And disappear, falling through the roof. I turned to Zack. “Boy, am I glad we amateurs left this crack mission in the hands of you professionals. Marvelous work.”
He shot me a pained look. “I’m sorry, I gotta—”
“Go,” I said. “Do what you have to in order to stop him.” I started to say more but a black metal glove hit Zack across the back and he went flying, his gun skittering off the roof, his body stopping just before the edge. I wheeled and threw myself back in time to dodge Henderschott’s next assault. “Next time we throw you over I suppose I’ll have to make sure you really fall.” He swung at me again and I started to panic; I couldn’t evade him like this forever.
Something stirred inside me as the fear took over. He had beaten and pummeled me, hurt me again in a way I would never get used to. Whatever it was came from deep inside, was primal, destructive, awakened by my purest survival drive. It was familiar, a feeling and a consciousness that had been suppressed by the drugs that I hadn’t taken in...I glanced at the lightening sky...over 24 hours.
“You’ve got more lives than a cat, Henderschott.” I shouted as I dodged another attack. The pain started to fade and it felt like it had in the cafeteria when I had attacked Scott; I was there, but parts of me were starting to respond to someone else’s command. I vaulted over him, the pain in my side masked from my feeling it, and I grabbed hold of him before he could turn to face me, somehow gripping him with both hands. This was going to hurt tomorrow. A voice, deep and sinister, something absolutely nothing like my own, filled my ears with a hissing, lustful sound. “But not as many as Wolfe.”
My good hand grabbed at his helmet and pulled, ripping at it with a strength far beyond my own. I twisted, dragging him off his feet, tearing at the metal surrounding his head, knowing it was attached to his skin and ripping as hard as I could. I could hear him screaming inside his suit and his hands reached up for me but I fended them off, turning him over, stretching out of their reach even as he hammered at my wrists and I ignored it, blind to any sort of pain at all.
With a last, wrenching tear the helmet came off, filling the world with Henderschott’s scream. His face dripped blood as the helmet came off and my hands brought it down across the back of his head. I heard a sickening crunch of metal on bone. Henderschott went limp, but I wasn’t the one who brought the helmet down again and again. My hands did it while I watch
ed, dumbstruck, his head turning to little fragments of flesh and bone before my eyes.
“Wolfe,” I said, whispering, “enough.” But he was in control and I had none. My hands grasped Henderschott by the remains of his head and dragged him across the roof to the edge. I lifted him up in one hand, his eyes dead and rolling, but they found mine for a second and the awful, hissing voice of Wolfe came back. “Wolfe should have done this a long time ago, but Wolfe showed you mercy. Now there is only the mercy of gravity.”
Henderschott spoke, but it was hard to hear. “They’ll keep coming for you.” His eyes were locked on mine, even as his head lolled back at a sick angle.
I wanted to ask who, and I fought, fought for control of my voice. “Who...?” I said it, and it came out as a whisper.
He blinked his eyes, the blood trickling down from the top of his head falling into the lids, turning them red, as though he were crying tears of blood. “Omega.”
Before I could ask him anything else, my hands drew him back and heaved Henderschott off the side of the tower. I saw his eyes look at me as he passed, and they were haunted, horrible. He flew out in a lazy arc and started to fall. I watched him sail downward, but it took an impossibly long time for him to finally land on the street below.
When he did, a scream tore through my head and I realized it was my own. I dropped to my knees at the edge of the tower, Wolfe receding to the back of my consciousness. I cried out, again, tears freezing on my cheeks as I stared down, far below to where Henderschott had landed; the second person I had killed with my own hands.
I wanted to cry, wanted to scream, but I heard both from behind me before I could let out my own. I lurched to my feet and started back toward the far side of the roof. Gavrikov hovered, bursts of flame flying through the air, balls of fire aimed at the helicopter above, forcing it into motion.
Kat was kneeling next to Scott, whose body was burned horribly. Her hands were already on him and his skin was returning as I stepped onto the long, empty section of roof where they were. Gavrikov turned to them from where he hurled another bolt of fire at the helicopter and his face changed, even beneath the flames. “What are you doing?” He threw a small fireball at Kat, forcing her away from Byerly. “I save you from them and this is the thanks I get?” The Black Hawk shifted and flew off, coming around in the distance angling to approach the tower.
“I don’t need saving!” Her words came out as a cry. I was still a good many paces away from them, but I could see Aleksandr’s skin begin to glow brighter. “I don’t even know who you are! I don’t want to go anywhere with you, I want to go back to the Directorate—it’s my home!”
Gavrikov was quiet for a moment, but he hovered only a foot or so off the ground. “I tried to save Klementina. My penance for failures, for crimes—for murder. For the murder I did when I was too young to know how to control myself.” He edged closer to her.
She skidded away from him, sliding across the roof, almost on her back. “I didn’t ask for this—not for you to help me, not for any of this!”
Gavrikov drifted closer to the ground. “I see how it has become. Things are not so different from the world we grew up in. Family betrays you at every turn, it is cold and dark and miserable and bereft of light. Everything Father did to us was nothing compared to what the world will do, with its cheap brutality and meanness.” He let out a tortured howl that shook me inside. His skin glowed all the brighter, but he had stopped advancing on Kat. “You’ll see soon enough.”
There was a crack of gunfire and a bullet whistling through the air. I saw it hit Gavrikov and he dropped to a knee, the flames around his shoulder dissipating to show puckered flesh, blood squirting out in short intervals. He seemed like he was going to fall over but steadied himself. “Thank you,” he said, “for proving my point.” He heaved the largest fireball yet at the Black Hawk and I watched it sway as Bastian tried to dodge, sending the chopper into a dive beyond the edge of the rooftop and out of our view.
I was only a few feet away now and Gavrikov saw me but didn’t react. I stopped, my chest heaving from the effort of crossing the roof. “And you too, matryushka? You are more like the sister I remember than this one is.” His hand reached out, the flaming fingers extended to indicate Kat, who quailed away from him. “You know the pain she has forgotten. You have tasted the rich inequities of life.” He smiled, but it was rueful. “You have fought, been hurt, been beaten down.”
I stared back at him, exhausted. “What of it?”
He smiled and his chest burst back into flame. “I will give you the greatest gift I can.” He rose into the air a foot. “Life doesn’t get better from here, it gets worse.” His hands came up at his sides, giving him the rough look of a human cross and he started to grow brighter. “I will give you the only gift I can. The same gift I will give all these people.” His hand waved to indicate the city spread out before us. “Peace. True peace, lasting and final.”
“You say peace,” I said, drawing closer to him, “but I kinda think you mean death.”
Even through the fire that engulfed his face, I could see the line that was his mouth twist into a rough smile. “Death is the only peace in this world.”
The flames leapt all around him, the glow encompassing him like what I imagined the rising sun to look like. “I’m sorry, Aleksandr.” I peeled off my gloves and let them fall to the ground. “I can’t let you do that.”
His burning eyes looked down at me and he drifted closer, the flames receding from his face so that he could look at me with his own eyes. He glowed ever brighter and I knew I had only seconds. “What will you do?”
My mouth was dry. “Give you peace,” I whispered and brought my hands up to touch his face. I felt the skin singe as I touched him, the fire from his body so hot that it started to burn me. I ignored it and looked into his eyes, saw through the pain, the anger, saw the wounded soul beneath. He smiled when I touched him, and closed his eyes. His face went slack, even though I knew he hadn’t felt the effects yet. He jerked for the first time a few seconds later, and the fire around his body started to gutter out.
“A metal box to spend the rest of your life in would do you no favors,” I whispered as he sagged to the ground, then fell to his knees. I held his cheeks clenched in my fingers and he jerked again, the fire now out. Tears streamed down my face as I felt him heave for the last time and I let go, staggering back and falling over, my brain on fire with memories and visions, whirling in my skull. I looked over and saw his body start to blacken, then turn to ash that was carried away by the wind.
My head was pounding but I forced myself to turn over and sit up. Kat passed me and knelt next to Scott, putting her hands on him. He started to stir, a few moments later, his skin rejuvenated, coming back to life. I felt a hand land heavily on my shoulder and turned to see Zack. I tried to force words through the jumble of thoughts clogging my head as my brain made way for Gavrikov inside it. “Are you okay?”
“I feel like I just spent an intimate evening on the freeway being made love to by a Mack truck.” Zack’s face was bruised.
“Is that better or worse than spending the evening being made love to by a trucker named Mack?” I said it, huffing as I tried to stop the spinning in my head. I started to shake my head, but it felt impossibly heavy, like it would roll off my shoulders at any minute.
“What happened to Gavrikov?” Zack reached out and tugged at my arm, helping me to my feet.
“He wanted...peace.” I stared over the edge of the roof to the east. “I gave it to him...as best I could.”
“So he’s...” He looked around. “Gone?”
“No,” I said and pointed to my head. “He’s in here, now. With the other one.”
“Oh, I’m sure that’ll end well,” he said as I caught sight of Clary hobbling toward us from the stairs. I could hear the blades of the chopper as it hovered above us and Bastian drifted her down, using the wind to steer his approach. He brought the helicopter down to a mere f
oot off the roof, resting the front wheel as Kat and Clary helped Scott into the side of the chopper.
I paused as Zack pulled me toward the door and turned around. The sun was rising in the cloudless sky, a bright red disc slipping over the horizon, the sky lighting up gold around it, with the first strains of blue transitioning to a deep indigo in the west. I stared at it, trying to savor the moment. I stopped resisting Zack’s tugs and let him guide me into the helicopter and I watched the roof drop away beneath us as the Black Hawk turned and we headed west. I craned my neck in my seat, trying to watch the elusive sun as it cast a light on us.
“It does get better,” I whispered so low no one could hear it over the chopper noise but the one I intended it for, nestled as he was in mind. “It has to.” I watched the light as we raced the sunrise back to the Directorate.
The Girl in the Box Series, Books 1-3: Alone, Untouched and Soulless Page 53