by S. T. Abby
“You’re supposed to fight for the truth. Not fight for the corrupt,” the Saw voice says from behind the mirrored mask.
Everyone exchanges wide-eyed horror as the video continues playing.
“Be careful of the eyes you never see on you,” the voice adds, bringing up a new screen with familiar faces.
Director McEvoy rushes in, his eyes panicking when he sees himself on the screen talking to Johnson ten years ago inside Delaney Grove.
“You helped make this mess, you clean it up!” McEvoy barks, pointing a finger in Johnson’s face. “Get rid of the evidence. Get rid of any reports involving those kids. And destroy anything linking us to this godforsaken town.”
Everyone’s eyes snap to the director who scrambles to unplug the overhead monitor. But another one just comes on.
“And what about my team? They’re already trying to get this out,” Johnson hisses.
“I’ll handle them,” McEvoy growls.
Everyone swings their gaze to a horrified director, and he turns and bolts out of the room, probably running all the way to his office.
“Get this down!” he shouts somewhere in the distance. “Find out who is doing this!”
Hadley smirks as I close the door and open the blinds so I can keep an eye on everyone. Someone will probably come to me now.
“Don’t worry,” Hadley says, grinning over at me. “I made it look like those files were put into the system by Director McEvoy himself. It’ll have his IP address all over it. It can’t be traced to us.”
The screen inside Craig’s office flips from the heat signatures to a wide shot of the town, just as music starts playing.
I glance over, seeing Johnson walking inside town hall from a different camera angle, and my eyes flick back to the girl dressed in black leggings and a red tank top as she stalks through town, armed to the guild.
“Disturbed,” Hadley says with a smirk.
“What?” I ask, entranced by the fierceness I can finally see in those haunted green eyes.
“Disturbed. Down with the Sickness,” she says. “The song. It’s almost perfect.”
Lana pulls out a mask, a red one with black lines over it, and she tugs it on.
“Why a mask?” I ask, confused.
“I don’t—”
Before she can answer that, the monitors outside the office change over to a news station with a breaking bulletin that has been leaked from an informant inside the FBI—who is probably Hadley pretending to be McEvoy. It’s the same video we were just watching, minus all the graphic scenes involving Victoria, Marcus, and Robert Evans.
My eyes flick back to the monitor near me that has Lana moving through the empty town streets, heading straight for town hall.
Knots form in my stomach, and my mouth goes dry as I watch her take her time.
On another screen, I see one of the deputies look up at one of the speakers playing the song that’s on a loop, and he says something I can’t hear as he turns back and heads inside the building.
Another steps out, looking at it too, and I hear him yell for them to call the sheriff.
By now, I think Lana has already killed him, considering his absence and hers for so long.
The last deputy steps back in just as Lana rounds the corner, less than a block away from the building now. She reaches back, grabbing her backpack, and she tosses it to the sidewalk next to the building when she reaches it.
My eyes move to the screen in the main room, watching as the newsroom pulls up live feed from Delaney Grove, and my heart sinks when I see Lana on there, tugging out a shotgun.
I see her pump it once, then back against the wall beside the door. Her chest inflates and deflates rapidly and harshly, then she cracks her neck to the side before kicking open the doors.
The screen on that TV doesn’t change, but the one near us does, and I watch as all the deputies swing their surprised gazes toward Lana. She fires without hesitation, and my stomach roils as a half a head explodes from a deputy’s body before he can even reach for his gun.
Immediately she pumps the shotgun and fires again, this time blowing a hole through another’s chest.
It’s like the room catches up and their shock wears off, as everyone grabs their guns at once.
Lana dives and slides across the floor, firing with the shotgun again, and nailing a deputy in the waist.
“So she’s also a great shot,” Hadley says with no emotion.
My heart is hammering in my chest, and I flick my gaze to the news, seeing it still just showing the angle from the outside as they report on the craziness that is Lana and Jake’s revenge against the world.
Everyone is just staring, watching like we’re not supposed to do anything. Everyone is too stunned to even react as they hear the blasts of gunfire in rapid succession, windows crashing and blowing out with the force of the gunfire.
My eyes drop to our private viewing screen, and I see as Lana slides across the floor, tugging her mask off. Apparently the mask was just for the news, and she doesn’t care who sees her inside there.
Which means…
“She’s planning to live,” I say on a tight breath.
“Then why the hell would she walk into a room full of trained officers?” Hadley growls, furious as Lana ducks and rolls across the floor again, tossing her empty shotgun aside and pulling out two glocks.
She fires rapidly, hitting the hordes of men wearing badges. One tries to race the door, but it doesn’t budge, as though it’s been locked.
Another tries to dive out the broken window, but he stops, his body convulsing as he drops. Somehow they set up an electric field, making their station a prison.
“Shit,” Hadley hisses as Lana flips over a desk, landing on top of it as she fires and flips back over to duck behind another desk.
My heart is flipping worse than her agile body. Everything in me demands I go save her, but I’d never make it there in time. It’s killing me to have to watch her go at all of them alone.
“Oh damn,” Hadley says on a breath as I go to open the door, making it easier to hear everything going on outside us.
“What?” I ask, needing to stop myself from watching Lana tackle an entire army on her own.
“The town is on fire,” Hadley whispers, pointing to another monitor.
A screen flips again to show three unconscious deputies, along with three unconscious people lying on top of each other in the back hatch of a SUV far away from the fire line.
The fire looks to be moving toward the town, spreading around the maze-like structure in a perfect circle, as though an experienced fire burner is controlling the directionality of the flames.
“He knows how to burn shit. Now I’m really turned on,” Hadley whispers to herself as I move back behind her.
“They’ve been planning this for years, him longer than her probably,” I say as I force myself to look at Lana again.
She’s pinned against a corner, smiling as they fire at her in rapid succession. The bullets can’t reach her unless they get another angle, but they can keep her pinned there until they can finally shoot through the steel.
“She looks…happy?” Hadley says, swallowing hard.
It’s like she has a death wish, which would mean she might not have been wearing that mask to keep her identity safe from the world because she’s going to live in it.
“What if she only wore that mask because she didn’t want anyone linking her to me?” I ask on a pained breath.
Hadley’s breath catches, but I fight back the emotions, refusing to give up hope that Lana plans to live.
She flips back from the corner, spinning as she fires her guns simultaneously again. By some miracle, not a single bullet connects with her, but her aim is almost dead on as she puts a bullet in four heads before diving behind another desk.
She flips the desk, and she kicks it into a deputy, who falls down in front of her. Then she grabs him, jerking him up to his feet, and using him as a human shield for a brie
f second as she fires at two others.
She’s pushing them back. For some reason, she’s advancing, and they keep getting closer and closer to the basement door.
One finally rushes into the basement, and she drops her shield when a bullet goes through the man and cuts into her shoulder. I blow out a breath of relief when I see it’s nothing more than a graze. Jake even zooms in on it, as though he’s freaking out as much as I am.
He zooms back out as Lana fires over the top of the desk, keeping them corralled toward the back.
“Call in the national guard! Call in every-fucking body you have!” someone is shouting into the phone from outside the office we’re in.
The one who ducked into the basement comes running back out, his eyes wide and panicked as he shouts something to the others I can’t understand amidst the gunfire.
Something changes. They start advancing, risking their lives in the open instead of staying shielded as they fire on her hard.
She ducks, covering her head as one grabs a MK 47 and fires rapidly.
She slides toward the front, crawling, but suddenly her head throws back and her mouth opens for a scream as blood spatters from her leg.
“No!” I shout, racing out of the room, rushing toward the exit.
I’m shoved at the chest, the man guarding the door who has been eyeing me.
“You’re to stay put,” he growls.
“Let me by!” I snap, reaching for my weapon, but Leonard crashes into my side, grabbing my hand before I can.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he snaps.
“They’re going to fucking kill her!”
He jerks me back, dragging me toward Craig’s office again. His face pales when he sees our private monitor.
“They’ll lock you up. There’s no way you’ll even get there in time,” he hisses, slamming the door as his eyes turn back to the monitor.
Johnson emerges from the sheriff’s office for the first time since Lana showed up. He comes up behind her, firing rapidly as she drags herself in between two desks.
I see the fear in her eyes turn to anger as she loads her guns again. She pulls out a knife, and I watch as she jumps to stand on her one good leg and throws the knife. Johnson’s eyes widen seconds before the knife sticks into his forehead, but the gunshots ring out faster, and I watch as her body jerks and drops, the bullets hitting her.
“No!” I shout again, slamming my fist into the wall as my heart caves in on itself.
Then I look at Leonard.
“The chopper. Get me to the fucking chopper now!”
He shakes his head slowly. “Even if we could get to it, it’d be too late, Logan.”
My stomach rolls and my heart implodes in my chest as I slide down the wall, gripping my head as everything in me turns to stone, weighing too much to move. Tears burn against my eyes as I watch Lana weakly climb across the floor, firing again at the deputies.
I can’t watch.
I can’t watch her die.
Chapter 15
I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.
—Voltaire
LANA
Pain shoots through my body, and my hearing is nothing more than a constant roar of never-ending gunfire.
I cry out as I tie off my leg to help stop the bleeding. My chest and back ache with the amount of bullets that have pounded into the vest, but they didn’t break through. My shoulder burns from the graze, but it’s overshadowed by the bullet that passed through my hand earlier.
I wrap my hand next, struggling with shaking hands as I fight through the pain. Jake’s voice comes through my earpiece, and I take a breath, firing back at the men behind me.
“You have to get the fuck out of there, Lana! They know about the basement!”
“I can’t,” I say through strain, shooting around the corner and clipping a guy in the knee. He falls, his MK 47 spraying bullets wildly as he collapses. A stray bullet hits one of the other deputies, but not enough to kill the fucker.
“You have to!” Jake barks. “You didn’t come this far to fucking die!”
I refuse to let the tears fall as I jerk my head back in time to avoid a new onslaught of bullets. The desk barrier I’ve built won’t continue to hold back the bullets. The three pushed together will only stop them for a little while longer.
“I need to talk to him,” I say quietly, choking back a sob as I try to stand up, only to fall back down again when my leg hurts too much to cooperate.
“No! You’re not fucking saying goodbye, Lana. I’m not letting you talk to him. Get out of there! The charge can’t be stopped and you know it. It’s a fail-safe. You have nine minutes and fifty-four seconds.”
I bang the back of my head on the desk, my vision clouded by the tears teeming in my eyes. I stare at the door in dismay. Those twenty feet seem so much farther with the never-ending spray of unrelenting fire.
They’re harder to kill than I was expecting. Not as cowardly as we’d predicted.
We’ve been so right about everything else.
“I love you,” I say to Jake, biting back the pain as I twist around to fire more.
“I’ll hate you if you die,” he says angrily.
I hear the tears in his voice, taste his pain from here.
“The fire is coming, Lana. Nine minutes exactly now. Get. The fuck. Out of there.”
“Remember that time when we were kids and we found that stick of dynamite in your father’s basement?”
“Don’t, Lana. Don’t fucking do this!” he begs as the tears start to leak from my eyes.
I fire blindly just to keep them from getting closer, lifting the gun up.
“You told us it was too dangerous to mess with, but I convinced you it’d be fun. Marcus and you tried to stop me, but I refused to listen.”
“Damn it, Lana! Get out! Get out now!”
I try to stand again, but I cry out in pain as I drop to the ground one more time. I blink away the tears, blowing out a breath as I continue to stave off the pain that would overwhelm me otherwise.
I wish I hadn’t turned my nose up at the grenade suggestion Jake made a few months ago now.
But I still wouldn’t be able to get out of here in time. It hurts too bad. My leg refuses to move, and without the speed it prevents, it’s pointless.
“You wanted to study it, but I just wanted to blow shit up,” I say, laughing humorlessly.
“Don’t,” he whispers.
“So we blew up that old barn outside of town. I lit the fuse and threw it, and Marcus covered your body with his when it exploded. The explosion never touched me, but the force of it slammed into my back like a solid wall, throwing me across the field. We had no clue it was that powerful.”
“Stop,” he says again, even as I hear a motor roaring in the background.
He should be on his way far out of town by now.
“You explained it to me later. Explained what happened. I was sore for about two weeks. We laughed. It was a brush with death like we’d never experienced, and the adrenaline stayed with us for days. Every time I ached, a jolt of adrenaline shot through me with the memory.”
“Please stop,” he says again, his voice barely a broken whisper.
“You were always right. I was always reckless. I should have listened to you,” I tell him through strain.
“Get out,” he hisses.
“Don’t cry for me, Jake. I’ve survived because of you. You kept me alive,” I say through strain, still firing blindly over my head to keep them pushed back.
“You don’t get to fucking say goodbye!” he barks before the line goes dead.
“Goodbye,” I whisper.
With my wrapped hand that is throbbing with pain, I weakly try to dial Logan. It’s a struggle, but I finally manage.
He answers immediately.
“Please be you,” he says as though he’s in agony.
“I love you,” I say into the earpiece, still firing in the background.
“No. D
on’t do this to me. Fight, Lana. Get out of there. You can do it. I know you can. I’ve seen what you’re capable of.”
Just hearing the genuine plead in his voice is breaking my heart.
“You showed me what living was like again. I’d forgotten,” I say softly, hoping he hears me over the rapid firing squad in the background.
“You’re the only reason I’m still breathing right now, Lana. Don’t give up. Not now. Not after all you’ve survived.”
Tears start pouring freely from my eyes as I close them, letting the sounds drone on.
“You’re a survivor too,” I whisper. “And you make the world a better place. Don’t ever stop.”
“Lana!”
He shouts as I hang up, closing my eyes again, while still firing behind me.
Something loud explodes from somewhere, sounding like a new range of gunfire. I’m too weak to hold my eyes open.
I know Logan is watching.
I know Hadley is too.
I force myself to open my eyes at the nearest camera hole, but it’s just a black hole with no reflective spark…no longer watching me. I brought my bag with my entirely new identity; it’s lying just outside and waiting for me to retrieve it.
There’s an ATV waiting for me to zip through the woods where the fire hasn’t made it.
I was going to get on a plane and meet Jake where we promised to meet.
I was going to live.
There were so many other ways of doing this, but deep down, we both knew this was me tempting death to reunite me with my family. I thought I was okay with that.
Too late did I realize I still wanted to live.
Too late did I realize I’m not ready to die.
I cry out in pain as I struggle to no avail to get up once again, tears streaming down my face. But I’m stuck here, pinned down. There’s no escape.
I’ll die with them.
My eyes flick to the camera holes around me, all of them blacked out with no sparkle, meaning they’re cut off.
It’ll be a tragic, poetic ending that will immortalize all I’ve done.
At least no one has to watch the end.
Suddenly there’s a face in front of me, and more tears leak out as I see my brother.