Her breaths are coming short and fast now, wheezing a little on the exhale. Her skin has gone waxy around the mouth. The edges of her vision are probably starting to blacken; I’ve seen that look enough times. But she still has time.
I move around behind her chair, unplug the landline from the wall, wrap the coiled cable neatly around my hand. She hears the click and flinches.
“What was that?” she asks, panic sharp again.
“Tidying,” I say. “No one to call, remember? You said it yourself – they’ll send more. Eventually. The Director will want answers, especially when you don’t check in for your nightly little tête-à-tête. He’s going to get such a show.”
“The…others…” she says, words slurring. “They’ll kill you when they see what you’ve done.”
“Mm.” I come back to stand in front of her, checking the scrawl on my wrist. Logins, questions, names. Enough to keep me busy. “Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on who gets to narrate first.”
Her head lolls against the back of the chair. She’s slipping. I give her face a brisk little slap. Not hard. Just enough to sting. Her eyes fly open.
“Stay with me,” I chide. “We’re almost at the lesson’s moral.”
Tears spill over again. “Please don’t leave me here,” she whispers. “Don’t…” Her voice shreds. “Don’t let me die alone.”
There’s a beat where something in me wants to say I know what that fear tastes like. I swallow it.
“You won’t be alone,” I say instead. “You’ll have all your men with you. They’re just in more pieces than you’re used to.”
She lets out a broken sound that might be a laugh, might be the start of a sob. It doesn’t matter. Her body is shutting down one system at a time. Heart’s still working. Lungs are still dragging. Brain is still trying frantically to file this somewhere it can live with.
I lean in close, so my lips are almost at her ear.
“I have to go,” I tell her, cheerful as if I’m ducking out of a boring meeting. “My men will be here soon, and, like I told you, every day’s a school day. I’ve got a lot to learn before they show up.” I straighten, smoothing her hair back one last time. “You rest. Think about your answers. I’ll be reading and poking around inside your brain.”
She tries to grab my wrist as I step away, fingers closing weakly around air.
“Kay—” she starts, and whatever was going to follow dissolves into a wet cough.
I hop back up onto the cabinet opposite, just long enough to take in the tableau. Blood. Bandage. Woman. Chair. Camera light blinking its patient little eye. Then I slide down, turn my back on her, and pad down the corridor towards herotheroffice, the one she thinks I don’t know about – silly girl – armed with her login, ready to read her files, meet her Director.
Behind me, the building breathes around her.
Ahead of me, the world opens.
A LEASH THAT DOESN’T NEED TO BE SEEN TO BE BELIEVED
Alkaline - Sleep Token
Ghost
We reach the machine.
Its rotors idle like a great mechanical bird breathing, impatient. The smell of aviation fuel threads into antiseptic and salt air and something faintly electrical, until it all becomes the same thing: departure.
Nightshade puts a hand on the fuselage with a tenderness that would be absurd on anyone else. He stares at the cockpit glass and for a heartbeat his face empties – no smile, no snarl, no worship. Just a man holding onto metal because it’s the only solid thing between him and the void.
Then he climbs in.
Honeymonster swings in after him and holds the door frame as if it’s a habit, as if he’s bracing the world so it doesn’tfall apart. Bones slides opposite, knees braced. Snow sprawls and immediately starts tapping a rhythm against the bulkhead with two fingers, like he can’t stand silence unless he’s the one composing it. Hatchet sits beside me and doesn’t look at me at all; he stares out through the open door at the dark.
I know – without knowing how – that he isn’t seeing the night.
He is seeing a girl in a hoodie too long, laughing like she could outrun anything that tried to catch her. He is seeing the moment she turned a locked door into a suggestion.
He’d die for her,Donnelly says.You would too. Wouldn’t you?
