by Camilla Monk
“Island, stay down!”
March’s command was superfluous—while Sabina threw herself to the ground with a scream, I curled into a ball behind the black lotuses, feeling in sadly familiar terrain. Yet, for the first time, I wasn’t scared. I was under an unbelievable amount of stress, and enough adrenaline pumped in my veins to trigger a heart attack, but I wasn’t paralyzed by the same sort of immediate fear of death I’d always experienced until now. Somewhere along the way, over the past six months, I had toughened up.
In between two rounds, I saw March run toward the scaffolding’s stairs and find shelter a few yards away from it, behind one of the fake walls enclosing Princess Pamina’s bedroom. In the dark, shapes moved, shooting in March’s direction as they climbed down the stairs.
I figured my day wouldn’t get much worse anyway—still hiding behind the biggest lotus, I pulled out my gun. Cocked, unlocked. Panting fast, I raised my arm and took a series of blind shots toward the bunch of shadows I assumed to be Gerone’s men. I entertained no hope of hitting anyone, especially given how my arm shook each time I pressed the trigger. I just wanted to distract them long enough for March to get up those stairs and teach them why both Erwin and the Queen appreciated his services so much.
As expected, as soon as I as started emptying my magazine their way, loud shots strafed toward me. I covered my head reflexively when bullets crashed into the lotus I’d been shielding myself behind. Velvet and glittery shredded tulle flew all around me. If these idiots managed to ruin Gerone’s cannon, we’d at least be able to call it a night. Someone smart shouted for the men to stop shooting at the lotus. Right afterward, a new pair of footsteps clanked on the boards of the scaffolding. March had managed to get up there.
I saw a guy wearing the Poseidon’s teal uniform fall from the scaffolding and crash onto the stage in a pool of blood. I heard fighting and several rounds of automatic fire, before a second body fell down the stairs. I figured that for these guys, it must be like in those horror movies where some creepy space creature is waiting in the dark for an opportunity to snatch you and spit back a body part in front of the camera. I’m pretty sure that’s how some of them must have felt as March progressed up the stairs . . .
I could no longer see him, but, crawling a couple of feet away from my hiding spot, I made out two bodies wearing black fatigues resting on the scaffolding’s first story. I prayed he was still doing fine and eating people up there. My gaze locked on that thing I’d seen fall earlier, a small black device, a phone maybe, still resting on one of the steel boards—March had been perhaps a little too busy to pick it up. I tightened my grasp around the P99 and took a shaky breath. In the orchestra, Sabina still sat huddled between the first and second row, while up there, her crazy ex was getting ready to crush us all under an approximate seventeen thousand tons of water. Possibly with that very device . . .
When the gunshots paused, likely because each side needed to reload, I scuttled all the way to the stairs leading up the scaffolding. If March ever noticed me climbing over the renewed fire exchange, he didn’t shout for me to get down like I feared he would, which would in turn give away my location. It was only when I reached the first floor and found myself shrouded in darkness and standing among dead bodies that around the P99’s grip, my hand started shaking. I swallowed and steadied it.
The board I stood on couldn’t be more than thirty feet long, and at the end, a blue hue filtered, coming from the night sky outside the dome. I glimpsed my goal, which rested a few feet away, on the edge of the board. I crouched down and listened, still as a sparrow. Metal clanked above my head, the noise barely perceptible. Whoever it was, they were at least two floors above me. I crept forward and struggled to grab the black object with my left hand—yep, that hurt, but I didn’t want to let go of the gun I held in the right one.
The device did look like a phone, but the screen was fingerprint locked, so no way to find out if I could use it to at least call my dad. I tucked it in my bustier and made my way back to the stairs. The gunshots had stopped, but I didn’t like this new silence. I needed to find March.
As I'd feared, on the second story, I found several dead bodies, some wearing the same teal polos as the Poseidon’s personnel. I was about to proceed to the third and last level of the scaffolding, but I froze. Fifteen feet above my head, I caught the dangerous whisper of March’s voice, speaking to someone.
“Have you ever met him? What can you tell me? Speak. Or die.”
A chilling synthetic voice answered him. “You can’t kill me. Pio already did.”
Gerone. I climbed the first steps as silently as humanly possible. Around the gun’s grip, my fingers were clammy.
“Maraì? Not a lab accident then?” March asked in that stony, remote tone I knew he reserved for clients.
When I was close enough to see him, March’s fingers clenched, save for the index, which he shook slightly in a no gesture. Relief flowed through me as I realized he knew I was here. Had probably known all along, in fact. I stayed hidden. At his feet, bathed in the bluish hue coming from the glass, an indistinct mass rested, wearing a blood-soaked tuxedo. The man raised his head. I jerked in surprise when a human face appeared, framed by wavy gray hair. Not Gerone? No, it had to be a silicon mask, because nothing was moving on that ageless face, even as the robotic voice echoed again, ghostly.
“He knew what was in my report,” Gerone said. “I showed him, told him. But it was always the money, the production costs, all against hypothetical risks. I taught him the difference between hypothetical and zero.” He was shaken by a series of hiccups I realized were in fact uncontrollable laughter. “Surely now you understand that difference too.”
“Are you saying he caused your accident?” March prodded.
A whizzing sound fought its way out of the mask. “He locked me in the test chamber.” With a sigh, he seemed to calm down. “He didn’t even have the courage to finish me. He ran away when security arrived, like a coward. How glad he must have been that I couldn’t speak anymore, couldn’t move for months.”
“But you took the settlement money.”
“That was his mistake. Without it, I would have never recovered.” His chest heaved a few times. He was laughing again. “I would have never been able to convalesce in Pretoria.”
March’s spine straightened. “Where you met Anies.”
“Him,” Gerone corrected. “We don’t say his name, and you shouldn’t either. Although it doesn’t matter much in your case.”
“Why serve him?”
“Have you ever been near him?”
There was not a trace of admiration to be found in March’s voice as he answered, “I have.”
Gerone’s body relaxed. “I met him at the clinic one night. He never even told me what he was there for. My mask wasn’t working very well then, but he was interested in my work. We spoke for several hours.” He paused. “It was like being near the sun.”
Burning bright, attracting those around him, reducing them to ashes. Yes. Although I had never met Anies, I could imagine him as that sort of man. Solar, in the most dangerous way.
Gerone was breathing hard, but none of what he might possibly be feeling was conveyed by the computerized voice. “He brought me back to life. He gave me strength and purpose.”
Strength and purpose. Why did that sound suspiciously like the kind of motto a Lion could have lived by? Alex’s words back in Krvavica played in my head. He’s gonna fuck you up . . . Maybe it wasn’t just his accident. Maybe Anies had groomed Lucca Gerone and “fucked him up.”
March knelt by Gerone’s prone body and picked him up. “You’ll tell that to my good friends at the CIA. I’m certain they’ll understand.”
Gerone panted. “You’re wasting your time.”
No, he was. Anyone who knew March would have been aware that he wasn’t the kind of guy you stalled or derailed with words. He secured Gerone’s body in his arms and turned around. At last our eyes met, and I managed a smile wh
en I got visual confirmation that he was physically okay. The blood on his shirt wasn’t his, and while the crease-free technology had been defeated by the events of the night, we would leave this place alive, and it was all that mattered to me at the moment.
I pointed at the phone in my bustier. “I wanted to get this.”
“Thank you. Let’s go. I want to get you and Sabina out of here. Then I’ll look for Dries.”
I nodded, my throat a little tight. No lecture on the risks, no demands that I never do that again. For the first time since we had met, March and I were equals. Just equals.
When we reached the stage, Sabina was waiting for us. No doubt having noticed the absence of gunfire, she’d gotten up from between the seats and ventured closer to the lotuses to examine Gerone’s sound cannon too.
At first, she didn’t react, fooled by the silicone mask. With a pair of sunglasses, he could have been anyone; maybe we’d even walked past him in the dome, totally unaware. The eyes though, they were wrong, like the eyelids didn’t crease around the eyeballs in a natural way. That’s what must have tipped her off.
She ran toward us, a sob breaking her voice. “Lucca!”
A pang of sadness squeezed my chest; she still wouldn’t give up on him. She took a step toward us; her eyes were wide with distress. “Is he dead? Is he dead?”
“No,” March said. “But he needs medical attention.” He laid Gerone on the stage, checked something on his watch, and spoke a few words in the speaker hidden in his lapel, apparently asking Ilan and the Taco Deltas to join us and pick up Gerone.
For the first time, I was able to take a good look at the wound Gerone was clutching on his chest. It looked bad; blood oozed from the bullet hole, overflowing between his knuckles in dark rivulets. Sabina climbed on the stage and approached him with cautious steps.
She knelt by his side. “Sta andando tutto bene, Lucca.” It’s going to be okay, Lucca.
A whizzing sound came from under the mask, and his upper body shook quietly. He was crying, mourning, but no sound would come out. “Volevo a rimanere per sempre. Mi ferisci.” I wanted you to stay forever. You hurt me.
She wiped tears from her eyes. “Lo so, ma ti ho perso. Mi ha ferito anche.” I know, but I lost you. It hurt me too.
All of a sudden, Gerone started convulsing. Sabina pressed her hands on his wound with a desperate sob, and I too thought he was dying. I panicked, but when he kept going, I realized that this was in fact uncontrollable laughter.
The computerized voice rose. “Knock, knock.”
Sabina looked down at him with a mixture of relief and confusion.
“Knock, knock.”
March’s eyes narrowed, and my index curled around the P99’s trigger, sticky with sweat. “Stop that, please. Save your strength for the police.”
“Knock, knock.”
None of us had the time to ask who’s there. Two gunshots ricocheted in the concert hall. I crouched reflexively; March yelled for Sabina and I to get down. But it was too late. Between her breasts, a large red rose was blooming already. She collapsed on Gerone with a gasp, her mouth working in vain.
Before I could even process that there was at least one shooter remaining in the concert hall, March had grabbed me and thrown us both off the stage and into the relative security of the orchestra pit. Pain shot in my wrist as I landed in cold water, surrounded by floating purses vomiting makeup, tissues, and opera tickets. He dragged me into a corner, gun in hand. I’d lost my own weapon in the fall, but it was not what worried me. Next to me, March’s breathing sounded fast and ragged.
Two shots. One that killed Sabina, and . . .
I checked his tux jacket frantically. There was a dark hole on his side. My heart rammed against my ribs. The jacket was supposed to be bulletproof! What kind of ammo . . . ?
March clutched the wound and gasped. “Stay down, biscuit. Erwin’s men are almost here. It’s going to be all right.”
No, this time, I wasn’t sure it would be, because the blood spreading on his shirt . . . it was his.
36
The Good Suit
“Help! Help! Otherwise I am lost! Selected as offering to the cunning snake.”
Emanuel Schikaneder, Libretto of The Magic Flute
The shooting had stopped. Huddled in a corner of the orchestra pit, crouching in cold water, we could see shadows moving in the first and second tiers above us, curtains shivering as more shooters took position.
March breathed deeply through his nostrils. “Seven men at least. Probably more.”
I moved closer to examine his wound. It seemed too low for his lung to be at risk, but the blood wouldn’t stop, soaking his hand and his shirt, and I had no idea what to do.
“But they can’t . . . we’re in a blind spot, right?”
“No. Second tier, all the way to the right, in the last box. He’s locked on us.”
I craned my neck and spotted a dark shape hidden behind the box’s balcony. All of a sudden, it was as if the water we were sitting in had turned icy. Goose bumps erupted all over my body.
“What’s he waiting for?”
March glared in the direction of the hidden sniper. “A clear shot.”
Because of me, I figured. They wanted to get rid of March, but they’d never dare to take the winning shot with Anies’s “little princess” in the way. I scooted closer, embracing March, so close our foreheads touched. The blood felt warm and sticky between us, dampening my dress. We were looking in each other’s eyes, and for a second, everything else blurred around me. Even that asshole waiting up there didn’t matter so much.
I touched his cheek, the skin clammy under my fingertips. “They won’t dare. They’ll never dare.”
In March’s earpiece, someone spoke, and his eyes lit up. “Island. Erwin’s men are moving; the Queen sent a team too. As soon as they enter the hall—”
“We run?”
“Yes. Be ready.”
Second’s ticked on the dial of March’s watch. His brow was low, knotted, his eyes half closed as he pressed on his wound and waited. I couldn’t stand to see him in pain like that.
“How long?” I whispered.
“Fifteen seconds.”
As if on a cue, all around us, the lights died in the concert hall. We were in the dark, the eerie green glow of emergency lighting outlining the abandoned music stands and shimmering on the surface of the water.
Ask me to explain Donnie Darko’s plot, and it’d probably clearer than the two minutes that followed. The Taco Deltas announced themselves with two loud detonations and a burst of blinding light—grenades, very likely—followed by a tangle of red laser beams swiping in all directions.
Over the ringing in my ears, I heard March shout, “Island, now!” My legs jerked and moved automatically, scrambling in ice-cold water, even as the deafening rattle of automatic rifles echoed all around us. March’s hand let go of his side and clamped painfully around my shoulder, sticky with blood. He pulled me across the orchestra pit and toward an alley between the seats. There were voices barking orders in the dark, several screams all forming a white noise in my head. I only focused on my legs, on March’s hand, on running, in spite of the ache in my muscles and the fear squeezing my lungs.
At some point, we crashed through a small padded door, and there was light again. Chandeliers above our heads, librettos floating all round us on the water. We were in the hallway circling the orchestra. Behind us, gunshots still crackled, getting ominously louder. March collapsed to his knees with a groan, and the water around us turned pink. He swallowed hard, each intake of air a tremendous effort. “You need to keep going . . . Ilan is waiting for us at the helipad. I’ll join you there.”
“No! I’m not leaving you.” I struggled to fling his left arm over my shoulders and help him back on his feet, my own pain an abstract, remote sensation. Dammit, I wished he was lighter. “Come on!”
March croaked. “That’s not what we agreed—”
“Fuck the agreem
ent!”
I was shaking, but I welcomed the weight of his body: as long as it meant he could keep walking, I’d do anything, cheat exhaustion until we were both safely away from that fricking dome. I’d worry later about what kind of additional damage to my wrist the purple cast concealed. For now, I trudged onward, completely drenched and in a near trancelike state.
There was a flight of stairs leading down to the mall; I led us to those because I didn’t trust the elevators in this place. Against me, March’s chest heaved with comforting regularity. He’d be okay. We could do this. The first tiki huts and palm trees came in sight and beyond them the water wall near which the promiscuous flutes had been arrested earlier. We’d be outside in a few minutes.
Halfway across the mall’s first level, March stopped us. The fingers of his right hand tightened around his gun. “Wait.”
I went perfectly still, listening to the silence, barely troubled by the sounds of water flowing and the distant hubbub of the last boats and helicopters evacuating.
March let go of me and stood straight with a grunt of effort. “Show yourself,” he called, his voice rising and echoing over and over in the deserted mall.
I looked around in panic. Behind the water wall, a blurry silhouette appeared.
“What a night, Mr. November.”
Alex. Shit. I should have guessed that if we hadn’t found him, he would find us.
Without so much as a blink, March pushed me to the ground, steadied his arm and fired three shots at the water wall. Alex’s shadow vanished instantly, leaving the bullets to crash into a glass balcony past the fountain.
New gunshots cracked in the air, which narrowly missed March. I crawled toward an information kiosk to find shelter behind its large stand. He crouched by a tiki hut, blood spilling on the floor’s pale marble at his feet. I breathed through my nose and bit my lower lip hard not to cry. He couldn’t go on much longer like this. We needed to get out of here, fast.