by Alice Reeds
Less than five minutes later, I spotted Joe slowly walking toward us with something in his hands, maybe bags or something, I wasn’t quite sure. I was so ready to leave, to get away from this nightmare.
“There’s one more thing,” Miles began, his tone unsure, “that I want you to know before we leave.”
“What is it?” I asked, his words setting off all sorts of bells in my mind.
“I…” He closed his eyes for just a moment like he was trying to calm himself. Why was he so nervous? I really couldn’t take any more bad news. “I love you.”
My heart skipped a beat, and all my thoughts turned into thin air, my mind blank.
I blinked. “What?”
“I have no idea what will happen next, where this journey will take us, so I…I just wanted you to know that.”
Standing up on my tiptoes I kissed him. I was speechless, could barely comprehend that he actually just said that, that out of all the people there were, somehow Miles Echo loved me. I looked at him, unable to keep the smile off of my face, even less so once he smiled back at me, a smile so gorgeous it made my knees weak.
“That was such a sweet display, really,” a new voice suddenly said, Leon appearing close to us, seemingly out of nowhere. When did he get here? “But unfortunately, I cannot let you leave.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Gone
Time suddenly stopped, all four of us frozen into place, three pairs of eyes directed toward Leon, who looked torn somehow. I couldn’t help but frown as the expression in his eyes shifted back and forth between nothing at all and something desperate, fighting a losing battle. His words echoed through my mind, my heart sinking. We’d taken too long, our chance had slipped away through our fingers once again, the realization nearly ripping my heart into two.
“Leon,” Miles said, his voice more controlled than I expected it to sound. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I’m trying,” Leon said, his words making no sense whatsoever. How could he claim to be trying not to force us to stay if that was exactly what he was trying to do? What the hell was going on? “I really am trying to stop, but I…can’t. They won’t let me.”
I’d known that something was wrong with Leon, clearly, but this was worse than anything I thought of before. Had he lost his mind somehow in the past few hours? Or was he always crazy? Also, who didn’t let him do what? It simply made no sense at all.
“Who? What are you talking about?”
“I…” Leon tried but trailed off just as Gail appeared next to him, her eyes moving across Miles and me, then toward Joe, and finally back to Leon. Within a blink of an eye her hand appeared next to his arm, holding something, a syringe maybe, judging by the needle plunged into his flesh, though it looked more like a tattoo gun somehow.
“Now, now, Leon, no more of that,” she said to him, though her eyes were on us, her expression almost predatory, sending a shiver down my spine. “You have an assignment to fulfill, a purpose for being on this ship. Remember where your place is.”
While Gail spoke, her words cold and calculated, Leon’s entire demeanor changed again, morphed into whatever it had been before he started to stammer weird nonsense to us. His eyes turned hard again, his jaw set and face almost perfectly expressionless before it shifted into something a little more relaxed.
Was this what Leon was trying to tell us, that he was being controlled by the agents somehow through whatever Gail had injected him? But how was that possible if Gail was his assistant, thus Leon being her superior? It made no sense whatsoever. But it proved me right in thinking that something was most certainly off about Gail, her eyes harsh as she looked at us, lacking any empathy, any positive emotion I could name. It was easy to see that in her eyes the two of us really were just cargo, part of an assignment and not two defenseless teens.
As I watched Gail, watched every move of her body, every twitch of a muscle I could see, trying to figure out what her next step might be, I could feel Miles shift around me as though trying to place himself in front of me somehow. If it weren’t such a stupid and reckless thing to do I’d be touched, but right at that moment, all I wanted was to push him aside, yell at him to not be stupid. But really, I didn’t do anything, let it happen, hoped that I would come up with some kind of solution to our problem, a way out of the situation we were in, in time.
In the corner of my field of vision, I noticed movement, Leon reaching for something, his arm and hand moving quickly, fluidly, followed by a flash of silver catching the light. A knife. My body froze.
Gail’s face transformed into a menacing grimace, a smile so vile it made my stomach clench, just as Leon raised his hand, pulled back his arm, and threw the knife right at Miles, at his own brother in cold blood.
This was it, the end of the road, the moment one of us would end up dead just like we’d feared for so long. Miles killed by his own brother. My throat almost ripped in two by a fearful cry, panic flooding my blood like ice water. I felt like I watched everything happen in slow motion, everything turning blurry, distorted, leaving me powerless, my body refusing to respond, to do anything, knowing there was nothing I could do.
Suddenly it was over, two bodies crashing onto the floor with a loud thump. But that wasn’t right… How could it be two? I was almost too afraid to look, forced myself to do it, more scared than ever before to see Miles lying at my feet dead with a knife in his chest.
Miles looked up at me with his eyes blown wide and a body shielding him. In a split-second reaction, Joe had pushed Miles aside and taken the knife instead of him, the blood rapidly seeping out of the wound and tainting his shirt deep red, the stain growing by the second.
Joe had given his life to save Miles. Joe, the man who pretended to be homeless to find a way to help me, to watch over me, the man who talked to me like I was an equal instead of a clueless child, who treated me the way a father should. It wasn’t fair.
I looked up at Leon and Gail, time stopping while my mind raced. How could they, how could Leon, or rather how could Gail, and why? Suddenly I felt like we were back on the island, like I was looking at Ji facing the same problem again, but this time, my body refused to move. What Leon had done was so much worse, he’d killed a man who’d done nothing wrong, who simply wanted justice, and I wanted to make him pay for it, avenge my friend who’d sacrificed himself for a boy he didn’t even know.
But I couldn’t.
Ji was a stranger, but Leon and Gail, they were authority figures, the ones in control, who held all the power. I’d fought so many fights, won competitions and practice fights, but fighting Leon? He was bigger, older, ex-military, and above all, a male authority. Every fiber of my being screamed no, you can’t, you’re not allowed, but I had to do something. Miles and I had to get off this ship, try to get home even though I didn’t even know what that meant anymore, and Leon and Gail were what stood in our way.
When I looked the bear in the eye, it felt like standing up to this threat that equaled authority in a way, but this was different. Leon and Gail were real, wouldn’t just turn into smoke. They would fight back, and they could kill us. I’d lost almost everything, and Miles was all I had left now. It was clear that Leon wouldn’t hesitate to take his life. And if he was willing to kill his own brother, he’d very much do the same with me in the blink of an eye.
I couldn’t let any of that happen.
All my life I was taught that fear was something I wasn’t allowed to feel, that I had to be brave, that I had to fight and I had to win. Weakness wasn’t an option; losing wasn’t an option, no matter what. But maybe I needed to feel fear, the entire spectrum of it, to do this, maybe it would be what would make me brave enough to understand my issue and do this.
So I let it happen.
I opened the gate and invited fear in, welcomed it, let it seize my body, but only for a moment. Its cold claws dug into every cell of me, a ringing in my ears threatening to shatter my eardrums, a fist around my heart like steel, an immovable for
ce turning my body into stone. I never understood why I was afraid of authority, why male ones specifically had such power over me, but then Miles mentioned something on the island and it made me think. Now as I looked at Leon, fear coursing through my body, it was like I was seeing a mirror image of my father, even though Leon looked nothing like him.
Without consciously knowing it, my father was the monster I’d been afraid of all my life, the one that made me afraid subconsciously, even though he made me believe that all kinds of fear were unacceptable. So many times, I wanted to tell him what I thought, that I couldn’t go on, that I wanted to stop, wanted to beg and plead, but I never could. He wouldn’t accept something like that, every act of mine he deemed out of line was followed by a punishment.
Maybe I’d never get the chance to talk to him again, tell him that I finally knew what the side effects were to the way he treated me, to make him understand what he truly had done to me, but I could do this. I could stand up to Leon even if it was the last damn thing I would do.
If I could do this, I would be able to break out of the cycle, could break out of this mold my father forced me into.
I took a deep breath…
Dad, you’ve taught me to be afraid of you and people like you, to show respect, be meek and follow every order, but I’m done with that.
…and slowly let the air back out. My body eased and relaxed as I did, my mind clearing and focusing, zeroing in on the enemy and task at hand.
Breaking out of my stupor, I advanced toward Leon, Gail jumping aside with a surprised yelp escaping her. Although Leon was taller than me, heavier, his reaction time was more than pathetic, be it because of the stuff Gail had injected him or simply because he was a bad fighter—something that made little sense to me considering his military background—but at that moment I was thankful for it.
Leon tried his best to counter my every move, every trick I tried to pull, but it didn’t take long for me to analyze him, his style, locate his weakness. His footwork was about as pathetic as his reaction time, a flaw I was all too happy to use to my advantage, moving around him, pretending to attack just to have him react without actually doing anything. Getting him into a position where he’d think my every move was just a bluff and let his guard falter just enough, just for a second, that time more than enough for me to attack, take him down with relative ease, my body rejoicing in the familiar movement.
In the corner of my eye I noticed Miles pick himself up off the floor and move toward Gail. I had no idea what skills she had, what background in martial arts or military type combat, so I could only hope the things I taught Miles on the island would be enough that he could at least defend himself against her. In a best-case scenario he’d be able to take her out, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up.
Knocking Leon out once he was down turned out to be easy, his body remaining on the floor after that one precise blow, and I jumped back onto my feet. One down, one more to go. As much hate as I felt for Leon, the fact that he betrayed Miles in a way no brother should, and the fact that he killed Joe, I knew that the one pulling the strings was Gail. Whoever she was, she deserved every little ounce of pain I could give her. I didn’t know if she was the one standing at the top of the food chain at Briola, though I had my doubts, and I really didn’t care. It seemed like she was the one in control of everything happening on the ship, controlling Leon, and probably also the other agents. She deserved this.
For just a second, I smiled almost fondly at the way Miles tried to get Gail with a slightly sloppy right hook. He was doing his best, and judging by the grimace she pulled, it still hurt even if it didn’t look pretty.
“Miles,” I said and walked over to him, hoping that would be enough for him to understand that I wanted him to let me handle it. He dodged a straight jab from Gail, used the momentum to step aside and making way for me.
Taking her down, her body writhing beneath mine on the cold metal floor, her arms pinned down by my hands, it had almost been too easy.
“I have no idea who you think you are, what makes you think you have the right to put us through this hell, and at this point I don’t even care anymore,” I hissed at her, my anger slowly seeping away from me, the will to run slowly taking over again. As much as I wanted to punish her for what she’d done, I knew that sooner or later Lido would show up, and that was something we most definitely had to avoid. “The only thing that matters right now is the fact that we are leaving, and if you have one ounce of sanity left, you better not fucking follow us.”
At that I let her go, jumped back onto my feet, and grabbed Miles who, while I’d been a bit occupied, had gathered the bags Joe had carried, along with our backpack, and watched everything happen. I could see the question in his eyes, but was relieved that he didn’t ask, that he spared me from having to lie and pretend like I was okay, because I truly had no idea how I really felt.
We moved toward the rafts quickly, tried to figure out how to get them free from where they were secured to the ship. Every few seconds, I’d looked back at Gail to make sure that she was still down, that Leon was still out cold, my heart squeezing painfully whenever my eyes wandered over Joe’s dead, lifeless body, the blood pooling around him on the floor.
“It’s almost over,” Miles whispered next to me just as he managed to get the rope of the raft free, a small smile slipping onto his lips. Maybe we would make it this time, maybe this would finally be it. The idea was too good to be true. I pushed it away immediately. “Let’s go home.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Gail said, suddenly back on her feet, using my second of distraction, my second of victory to try and take back control over the situation. I wanted to curse, to scream, to cry, but instead I just looked at her, horrified, my eyes widening only so much more as she pulled out a gun and raised it at us.
Was this it, the moment when we really would die? Would Joe’s sacrifice be pointless? There was nothing left that I could have possibly done, that much I knew. Trying to attack her again would just get me shot faster, but maybe if she shot me, that would give Miles the time he needed to flee, to survive, to make it and tell our story.
As though he could read my mind, Miles took my hand and held on to it with almost an iron grip, a silent way to keep me from doing something reckless. Damn him and damn me for not trying anyway.
I flinched and braced myself for whatever it would feel like to be shot, as the loud sound of a gun going off shattered the air around us, the sound louder than the engines and my beating heart. But I felt nothing, no pain, no blood. My eyes darted at Miles, tried to see if he’d been hit, but I couldn’t see anything. I just found the same confused expression in his eyes as our eyes met.
There, not far away from Gail, stood McCarty, her own gun raised, the smoke still rising from it while a red patch formed on Gail’s white shirt, turning it the same awful shade as Joe’s, though somehow it seemed even more vivid and saturated against the white. Her mouth fell open in surprise, her gun falling to the ground as it slipped from her hand, her entire body following a second later like a sack of potatoes, lifeless, motionless.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Gone
Who was friend, who was enemy? Did this mean McCarty really was on our side? She had to be, right? What other reason would she have to shoot Gail than to show us exactly that?
McCarty raised her gun into the air, her finger moving away from the trigger, her hands up as though in surrender. “I’m on your side,” she said, answering my unvoiced question, her voice clear, calm.
It was all too much at once. Leon turning out to be a puppet controlled by Gail, Joe dying to save us, or rather to save Miles, and now McCarty shooting Gail. My emotions were all over the place, sadness and anger mixing with fear and relief, with panic and the almost animalistic need to run, hide, and flee.
“We have to go,” I said, instead of asking McCarty any clarifying questions, instead of saying anything else that raced through my mind, those words the most pres
sing and important ones. There were a thousand things I needed to ask her, a million answers I wanted from her, because this meant she was the one who could actually give them to us, but I knew that now wasn’t the time. It had to wait at least until we were off the ship.
“We don’t have much time until Lido comes out to check on what’s taking so long,” McCarty said as she walked toward us, pushing her gun back into the holster secured to her belt, clipping the safety strap over it, another sign that she really meant what she said, I could only assume.
“What about Leon? We can’t just leave him,” Miles argued, and my jaw nearly hit the floor.
“Are you crazy?” I asked, incredulous. “He’s under their control, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to watch him try to kill you a second time.”
“He’s still my brother.”
“Miles, I know he is, but that would be madness. We can’t risk it!”
“It’ll wear off,” McCarty interjected. Immediately both our heads turned toward her, frowns taking over both of our faces. “The injection he received from Gail, it’ll wear off, and he’ll go back to normal.”
Miles turned toward me, his expression almost triumphant, a small smile, the kind that made me weak, something he knew all too well. I sighed, resigned, and finally nodded. I still thought it was a bad idea, even if McCarty was telling the truth. Who knew if Leon was a good guy when not under Gail’s influence? Something must’ve led him toward them in the first place, and who knew if that something wasn’t evil, too, wouldn’t try to manipulate us somehow.
With McCarty’s help we managed to get Leon and our supplies into the boat, climb into it, the space just enough for all of us to fit, and slip away without Lido noticing, or at least I hoped so. I felt guilty for leaving Joe behind, even if he was dead and there was nothing I could do about it. It still felt wrong to leave him with Lido and the people he worked for. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t have time or the mental capacity to dwell on it, everything else taking up all the brainpower I had.