I covered my mouth with my hand, recoiling at what I had just done as I watched her race away. I noticed the gun still lying where I’d thrown it on the floor. I bent down to grab it, a roar of panic sounding in my head. Levelling it at her, I squeezed the trigger until she dropped.
I moved over her and put one more in her head, just to be sure.
Then I tossed the gun to the side, stumbled away a few steps, and very noisily emptied the scant contents of my stomach onto the floor, next to a small table, while the woman’s body still burned next to me.
I took several calming breaths and sat there, shaking, waiting for the relief that it was over to come. But it just… wouldn’t. That was probably the most gruesome, most hideous death I had ever been a part of. I hadn’t known myself capable of that level of… If I could kill someone with that much unnecessary pain and suffering, what was I fighting for? What had happened to the days when Viggo and I had tried to take everyone down nonlethally, promising the guards that we didn’t kill? And over those thoughts, the sight of the woman’s face, the noise of the oxygen getting sucked out of her lungs by the fire, played through my head, over and over—
I shook my head and stopped myself. This train of thought would get me killed. Just sitting here trying to process it all would get me killed. It was survival. I’d acted on instinct, like I had always done in my life when I was in danger, but this time… I had stopped it. I had ended her life before she could suffer any more. I had done what I could. I had…
Desmond. I couldn’t keep wasting time. I had to deal with what I had just done later. I looked up and down the hall, half expecting my enemy to be standing there, watching me. She wasn’t, but she could be anywhere. Wiping the back of my hand over my mouth, I stumbled over to the gun I had tossed aside and picked it back up. Resting against the wall another moment, I looked at the body still burning on the floor, forcing myself to witness the horror of it.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to her. Not that it would help now. The flames on her body were consuming her quickly, but they didn’t seem to be dying down. Grimacing, I ripped off some curtains from the nearest window and threw them over her body, then went back and tore down another set, waiting until I was sure I’d smothered the fire before I could go on my way. As much as my skin crawled standing here, vulnerable in the open, with the horrible sight of the woman I’d killed obscured by ruined curtains, I needed to make sure the fire didn’t spread.
Then I staggered back down the hall, heading deeper into the house. I carefully picked my way through the traps that hadn’t yet been sprung, looking to see whether any had been tampered with. They hadn’t, but the emptiness in the house was eerie. I had no idea where Desmond was. Every corner I turned, I half expected to see her looming in front of me. I checked behind me at every tiny noise.
As I crept into the foyer over the main stairwell, I hesitated, my mind noticing the discrepancy before I could even register it. A foggy haze seemed to be filling up the room, permeating it with the scent of something burning. I turned back toward where I had come from, almost expecting the still burning woman to be crawling her way toward me, but the hallway was deserted. Had I missed something about the fire? Had it caught anyway?
Coming around the banister, I saw that the room beneath me was lit up with a red glow in the area just under the place I’d emerged from, casting long, dark shadows that seemed to twist and writhe in the presence of a moving light source. I took a few steps down the staircase, my heart in my mouth. Then my blood ran cold when I saw the bright orange flames spreading through the left side of the house. Through Tim’s side of the house.
This wasn’t the fire I had put out. This had Desmond written all over it—she had to have set the fire. Probably as soon as everyone had raced upstairs. She hadn’t waited to see if her people had been successful; she clearly wanted me too badly for that.
The fire in front of me roared and crackled, the flames seeming to grow with every second that passed. I thought fast, but each thought felt as though it was coming too slowly. How I could get to my brother and Owen? Desmond knew I wouldn’t leave them if they were still alive. Which meant she had set the place on fire to get me to show my hand—show where I’d been hiding.
I didn’t have a choice. I raced up the stairs, back the way I had come, barely avoiding triggering any of my traps. The haze of smoke behind me seemed to become thicker, darker, even as I ran, drowning out any lingering light. As much as I hated it, it looked like I was heading into the blaze. I switched on my flashlight, my breathing sharpening the ache in my ribs, but even its light seemed weak compared to the diaphanous cloud forming in the halls.
When I reached the servants’ stairs above Ashabee’s secret entrance, I had to throw an arm over my face. The flames were more intense here, starting to crawl up the staircase from the first floor. I leaped past their reaching arms, using the sleeve of my shirt as a makeshift mask.
Adrenaline lending speed to my muscles, I rushed to Jeff’s former chambers, yanking open the secret panel and throwing myself into the elevator leading to the basement. Closing the door behind me, I furiously punched the button, trying to still my nerves as the green light waited a moment before turning on. Good—the fire hadn’t shorted out the wiring that ran this thing yet.
The green light started flashing. Though it seemed to go impossibly slowly, the cage began to descend. As it rattled and whirred, I exhaled sharply, trying to will some calm into my already jumbled emotions. Even after a few deep, clearing breaths, I still couldn’t get my mind in order. Fire was suddenly a huge presence in my life. The woman’s face, the smell of her burning underneath the curtains… Everything seemed to cycle around and around. If the fire in the house got to the electrical system before I was all the way down, I would be stuck here, swinging in a metal cage in an elevator shaft until the house burned down around me. If the controls to the doors that opened up the basement driveway burnt out before I could reach them, Tim, Owen, and I wouldn’t be in a much better situation.
It seemed like forever due to the pain in my squashed limbs, but the elevator ride was less than a minute. I checked my watch enough to know.
When the light finally turned off, I fumbled desperately at the latch and burst out of the stupidly tiny elevator. The depth of the darkness in the basement blanketed my eyes, confusing me, but I managed to reorient myself after a few stumbled steps. The solidity of the basement, even partially collapsed, comforted me a tiny bit. This part of the house was made of concrete and surrounded by earth; the fire would have to burn through a wall of rubble to reach us. It would take a long time—I hoped. No, the more immediate danger, after the worry that the doors would stop working, was that the house would collapse on top of us and trap us in here.
I stumbled over to where Owen and Tim still lay, their condition unchanged. I studied them closely, and then turned toward the back of the room, my eyes seeking out in the darkness the entrances to the tunnels that led up from the secret room. I could just make out the two Viggo and Owen had explored: the longer one that led out to the fields beyond Ashabee’s house, and the gently sloping ramp that led up and onto the drive. That one was closer to me, the bottom of it barely visible at the edge of the pool of light from my flashlight. Unfortunately, I hadn’t found any vehicles left in the armory during my search for weaponry. That meant I needed to get out under my own power as quickly as possible before the electrical circuits were damaged—and I had to find the car that Owen and I had come here in. Which was out on the driveway, presumably where Desmond was parked, and where she could still be lurking, too. As much as I wanted to take my brother and Owen all the way out into the fields and be away from this awful place, I didn’t have the time, the energy, or a way to get us home from there.
Going out onto the driveway was a horrible plan, but I didn’t have any other options left. I leaned over and wrapped my arms under Tim’s armpits, dragging him a few feet toward the other side of the room and the ramp. Then I heade
d back, and did the same with Owen, dragging his heavier body toward the ramp and then setting him down a bit harder, my breath coming in sharp gasps.
I hobbled over to my brother, took a deep breath, and then repeated the process, dragging both of them, one at a time. I knew it was probably the least efficient way to handle it, but I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving one behind, and then coming back to find his body engulfed in flames. I’d had more than enough fire today—I was done.
The process was agonizingly slow. I had just gotten both of them up the final parts of the ramp, my head spinning, when I caught the first haze of smoke hanging in the air, somehow drifting in from above. At this point, I didn’t know if the dizziness was from the smoke, lack of oxygen, or just sheer exhaustion. I sank onto my backside. My thighs, butt, and back were aching from the exertion, and I was parched, but there was no water. I hadn’t had any since Owen and I had gotten out of the car on the hill. When had I last eaten? Sometime this afternoon. At the moment, I was finding it hard to remember.
All I wanted to do was flop to the cold concrete ground and lie there mindlessly, but I needed to get Tim and Owen out and safe first. I rotated my shoulders and then stretched out my stiffening legs, laying them flat on the ground for a few moments. It helped alleviate some of the aches and pains in my battered body, but not by much.
Then I was up. I found the controls for the hidden exit point and hit the button, my heart in my mouth. I swung around, pulling out my gun, flicking off the safety, and holding it ready with my left hand.
For a moment, nothing happened. I considered the darkness all around me, and a swell of horror rushed through my stomach—what if all the electricity to the basement really was already gone? The little elevator had worked, but it had been a while since I’d gotten out of it. What if I’d gotten this far, only to be separated from freedom by an immovable steel barrier?
The thoughts all shot through my head in the space of a minute. And then the door hummed, revealing a little gap in the ceiling that grew as the door shuddered back farther. I glimpsed the night above the dying lawn along a looping part of the drive away from the house. Relief rolled over me, but my eyes probed the shadows as the door opened, looking for any sign of Desmond. Then I risked climbing partway out to see if I could spot her lying in wait—there was almost no way she could know this was where I would be coming from. As my eyes came up level with the lawn, I became aware of the red glow from behind me, contrasting the deep, dark shadows.
There was no sign of Desmond in my immediate range of vision, no glitter of eyes, dark shadows, or glints off weaponry in my line of sight. But a vehicle parked some ways away from Owen’s car must have been hers… and it was still here. I scanned the area again, paying close attention to any overlooked detail. Maybe she thought I was still inside? At the very least, she was probably camping by one of the doors, looking toward the mansion… I had an advantage in that she was unlikely to be looking out into the grounds for me.
I’d been resisting the idea, but now I had to turn to the house, and I paused at the sight. Half of it was on fire—the half we were just coming out from under. The rest of it was still intact, seeming strangely whole, as though nothing had gone wrong there at all. The heat from the blaze touched my cheeks, and little wisps of ash floated through the air.
I continued to search for Desmond among the various lawn ornaments, looking withered and unkempt by now, but I couldn’t see any sign of her. Satisfied, at least for the moment, I headed back down to retrieve my first charge. I started with Tim, and moved him out among some ornamental bushes a few feet farther away, back from the house and the fire, completely clearing him from the hidden driveway. Then I went back to grab Owen.
It took considerably longer to get the man’s unconscious body the rest of the way up the slope, especially as I was constantly checking over my shoulder, paying attention to every time my neck prickled and every sound around me. When I finally had him hidden, I fell back on the grass, my chest heaving and sweat making my clothes stick to me. I let my breath catch, coughing periodically when I got a small bit of smoke. After a couple of minutes, I picked myself up off the ground. I had to find a way—one of the cars—to get them out of there.
I moved toward the two vehicles sitting on the drive, slowing to a stop when I took in the full extent of the flames devouring Ashabee’s house. They were magnificent and terrifying, spilling from the double doors at the front, the giant, opulent manor taking on the form of an angry monster erupting from the ground. I shivered, thinking again of the guard’s burning face, then forcing myself to think of the house instead: all the time we’d spent here, disgusted by the unnecessary grandeur, continually nagged by the figure who headed the house, a brilliant Patrian weapons designer who also happened to be bigoted and abusive… Even with all the pain that had gone on here, the disgust I felt for Ashabee, I had never pictured it ending like this.
I felt the weariness building up in my body again and promised myself I would move in just a moment. For now, I stood and watched the manor as it burned.
8
Viggo
I pushed up the drive, noting the two cars in the driveway, drawing nearer to the lone figure who stood back a ways on the looping driveway, watching the house burn. Red reflected off the patches of Violet’s scalp, shining brightly under her crop of ever-growing hair. I had already exhaled in relief, preparing to stop, when I saw someone step out from the bushes just to Violet’s right.
It took a moment for me to register the gun the person carried in her hands.
Slapping my foot on the gas, I angled the car toward the figure. Even through the windows, I heard the crack of gunfire—Violet turned, her head flicking toward the figure, and then she was falling, toppling to the ground.
“NO!” I roared, my fists clenching the wheel, my foot trying to stomp even harder, even though the gas pedal was down as far as it could go. The headlights cut over the figure, and I caught a glimpse of Desmond’s eyes going wide as we barreled down on her. She flung herself right, away from the car, but by then we were almost upon her, my rage overshadowing all sense of reason.
It grabbed control of my body, working with the muscle memory and my reflexes. My hand shot down, grabbing the emergency brake. I swirled the wheel one way and then ground the emergency brake up, locking up the wheels. The right rear end slid around, straight into Desmond’s path of escape.
I heard the thunk as the side of the car impacted her body, a dark part of me feeling a savage rush of satisfaction to know I had hit her. Then it was gone, and my foot was on the brake, bringing us to a shuddering halt. I frantically threw open the door, practically slipping on the dew-slick grass as I rushed over to where Violet lay.
My mind was going wild, unable to cope with the thought of seeing her lifeless, broken form lying on the ground. Not again, not again, not again, it screamed, the thought trying to force its way out of my vocal cords and into the night in a primal howl.
I clamped it back, dropping to my knees next to Violet’s still form. Her eyes were closed, her face and body lax. I stared at the bullet holes, unable to comprehend their perfection and the lack of blood. All I could see was death clinging to her, while Ms. Dale’s words rattled in my ears.
Then Violet coughed, her eyes snapping open wide as she tugged at something bulky under her shirt. Frowning, I lifted up the edges, and saw the bulletproof vest resting on her skin—and the two bullets lodged in it. I carefully eased my hands up under her shirt to her shoulders, releasing the nylon tabs that held the top of the vest in place, and then the ones at her sides. Violet gasped again, giving me an appreciative nod as I carefully pulled the vest off.
I knew exactly how she felt: getting hit with a gun from such a close range was the equivalent of getting kicked in the chest by a horse. But she was alive. God, she was alive.
“Desmond?” she asked, her breathing ragged. She held out a hand to me, and I gently hoisted her up into a sitting position.
Ms. Dale’s voice carried over the sound of the crackling fire. “Still alive, but unconscious—I think. Should I get back in the car and hit her again?”
Violet gave me a concerned look and then carefully pulled herself to her feet. Her knees and legs were shaky, so I climbed to my feet with her and wrapped my arm around her shoulder. She held me around my waist, and together, we picked our way across the yard toward our car. Ms. Dale was standing on the other side, a healthy distance from Desmond, her gun still trained on the other woman.
Desmond lay curled sideways in the grass, her body looking like it was trying to go two ways at once—her front curled up, her legs splayed out. Her left leg was bloodied and lay at a not-quite-natural angle. Her eyes were definitely closed, but whether she was faking unconsciousness or not, I wasn’t sure.
“I found her gun and patted her down,” said Ms. Dale from where she was standing. “But honestly, it would just be safer for all of us if we put a bullet in her.”
I looked down at the scene before me, feeling my blood curdling. This woman had just shot Violet without a second thought, and even looking at her was making the anger pump through my veins. But I hadn’t been trained to give in to the rage that boiled in my blood. I had learned as a warden to evaluate the situation fully.
“We… shouldn’t,” I said.
“Viggo.” Ms. Dale’s voice was sharp, and she didn’t lower her gun from where it pointed at Desmond. “Don’t do this mercy thing. Now’s the best chance we’re ever going to get to take her out once and for all. She’s dangerous. Too dangerous.”
“It’s not that. She has information,” I insisted. “We can get her in a position where we’ll make her talk. Take her in now, while she’s unarmed and unconscious.”
The Gender Plan Page 6