Another disappointment.
My every instinct screams at me to take him out: head, throat, heart. But the image of Agatha’s face surges before me, reminding me—
I did everything The Reestablishment asked me to do.
I did what I thought I had to do, and in the end my sacrifices were worthless. My life, worthless. Darkness breeding darkness breeding darkness, all this blood on my hands giving birth to more bloodshed, the mutilation of my soul leading to the mutilation of others, my life gone up in flames only to set fire to the world.
I blame myself.
I thought it was smart to choose the lesser of two perceived evils.I thought I’d be rewarded for aligning myself with the obvious victor; I was naive enough to assume I might one day be offered immunity by a tyrannical regime. I took shelter in the arms of an open enemy, doing their bidding even as they starved and tortured my family—even as they slowly stripped their own people of humanity in the name of security. Cruelty rebranded as freedom, torture rebranded as justice, horrors exported to perpetuate horrors all in the interest of absolute control. An oblivious populace living in the palm of an all-powerful hand, easily crushed.
For all my efforts, Clara will never be safe.
I failed my sister. I failed myself. There’s only one path left to set this right, and in order to fix things I need to be able to walk out of here alive. I need to get back home as soon as possible. That means I need to kill Kenji.
But I don’t want to be this person anymore.
I don’t want to live in fear of my hands, my head, the collapsed star that is my soul. I don’t want to live every day only for the promise of death.
The problem is, I don’t know how to stop being this person.
“I don’t want to kill you,” I say to him. “I just want to get out of here. I don’t need your help to escape. I don’t need anything from you. I just want you to let me leave. Let me leave so I don’t have to kill you.”
Kenji closes his eyes and sighs.
“All right, fine,” he says. “You can come out now.”
“What?” I hear the click before I understand, and my heart sinks as the cold barrel of a gun presses against the back of my head.
“Drop the weapon,” James says quietly.
I let it slip from my fingers,and it falls to the floor with a resounding clatter. Kenji limps over to it, scoops it up with his good arm, and hauls himself over to me. Suddenly, I’ve got two guns to my head. Front and back.
“You got the manacles?” Kenji says to James.
I can feel him shake his head. “I’ve only got zip ties.”
“That’ll work for now.”
I stand there, staring into the distance as James ties my hands behind my back, trying not to think about the feel of his skin or the warm, electric graze of his fingers against my wrists, so gentle with me even now. Of all the ways I dared to wonder what it might be like to touch him, I never thought it would happen like this.
Kenji pulls the glass cylinder from my pocket, holding it before my face with a knowing look.
“What’s in the vial, Rosabelle?” he says. “Planning a massacre?”
My eyes close, horrors upon horrors crashing down around me. Images of Clara crowd my head. Reminders of a night still unprocessed, threats still unresolved.
No matter what I do, I lose.
“Warner is prepping a cell for her at supermax,” says Kenji. “Can you handle getting her there? She’s a flight risk. You’re going to have to take the tunnels.”
Supermax.
Maximum-security prison.
“Yes,” James says darkly. “I can handle it.”
The molten fury of his voice whispers across my skin, sending chills coursing through me. I still haven’t seen his face. I have no idea what he’s thinking.
