Tinnitus.
The unsuppressed shot in the confined stairwell, the breach charge, and Varro’s shotgun blast inside the concrete junction. A faint, dark trickle of blood is leaking from her left ear canal.
“Stay here,” I mouth, exaggerating the movement so she can read my lips. “Stay.”
She nods, understanding the physical command if not the words. I watch her lean back against the concrete pillar, sliding down until she’s crouching on the floor. Her arms tighten around her knees to make herself as small as possible. She’s dissociating, checking out of the nightmare.
Fine.
“Watch her,” I order Varro.
A sneer twists my lips as I turn and limp toward Kirill. Each step sends a fresh, tearing jolt of agony through my shoulder. The floor feels like it’s shifting beneath my boots.
I force myself to focus entirely on the physical pain, using it as an anchor to keep from passing out.
Kirill looks up as I approach. To my disgust, he smiles.
It’s a gruesome, awful sight. His teeth are stained red.
“The great Cassian Drazic,” he wheezes. “You look like shit.”
“I’m standing,” I say. “You’re not.”
I stop in front of him and glare down. He took a high-caliber round straight to the gut. It’s a slow, excruciating death.
I kick his wounded leg, hard.
The violent motion tears at my own ruined shoulder, sending white-hot needles stabbing straight into my neck, but I keep my face completely blank.
He cries out, curling in on himself.
I draw the spare pistol from my belt with my right hand, level the muzzle at his stomach, and press the cold steel directly into his bullet wound.
He screams, a high, thin sound that cuts off abruptly as he runs out of air.
“I heard your comms in the kitchen,” I snarl, twisting the gun barrel deeper into the raw, ruined flesh. “I know the Judge sent you. Give me the exact parameters.”
He gasps, his eyes rolling back in his head as the shock waves hit his system. He’s fading fast.
“He said burn it all down,” he hisses, his voice barely audible over the wheeze in his lungs. “Erase you... recover any evidence... bury the whole mess.” He shifts his heavy gaze past my legs. Toward the pillar. Toward Iris.
“And the girl?” he rasps, coughing a thick splatter of blood onto his chin. “He didn’t care. Said she’s been with you too long. If she catches a stray… it’d be a necessary sacrifice.”
Rage burns through every vein in my body. I look back over my shoulder.
Iris is crouched by the wall, ten feet away. Her eyes are locked on Kirill. She sees his bloody lips moving. She sees me leaning over him with the gun dug into his gut.
But her expression is completely confused.
She can’t hear a word.
The ringing in her ears is a physical shield, protecting her from a truth that would destroy her. She doesn’t hear that her perfect father ordered her death.
I turn back to Kirill.
He’s grinning. He knows what he revealed, and he thinks he found a nerve.
“She doesn’t know,” he wheezes, his red teeth bared. “Daddy’s little girl thinks he’s a saint?—”
