It gave out, and his face contorted. “Like the rodents you are, you belong below our feet,” he spat out. Grabbing a random seat’s backrest for support, he launched at me.
But his attempt to tackle me failed as I twisted aside, using his body’s momentum to shove him forward.
He collapsed on all fours, and without a second thought, I struck his back with my elbow. My bones smashed into his vertebrae?—
The nerve running through my elbowexploded.
Tears sprang to my eyes as agony mixed with numbness climbed up my arm, my fingers tingling, pricked by a thousand needles.
Pushing past the throbbing ache, I didn’t give Arlo a chance to get up. I stomped on his lower back, earning a gasp as he flattened on the floor, his limbs unable to hold him up and provide defense simultaneously.
I wanted to use the knife he’d murdered Tarri with to carve her name into his back, turn him into a tombstone, an altar for her, build the foundation for her temple out of his skeleton but, unfortunately, time wasn’t on my side.
So I straddled him. Repulsive heat emanated from his body pinned underneath mine, and it took me a moment to compose myself enough to stay put and not scramble away.
I didn’t want him touching me anywhere.
“Heed my promise, Arlo.” The metal floor abraded my knees as I gripped the edge of his helmet and yanked his head back. “You will become food for worms.”
My knife cut through his throat like butter. Warmth sprayed my fingers, colored my blade, dripped to the floor to join the rapidly enlarging puddle of crimson.
Releasing his head, I sneered, “Say hello to your masters for me.” The appendage struck the pool of his blood, the splash of scarlet coating the seats, immortalizing the end of his life in a painting.
He grew motionless, his death equal to what he’d graced Tarri with.
Returning my knife to its sheath on my bicep, I wiped the sweat off my hairline. Or, more like, diluted it with Arlo’s blood coating my hands and smeared the blend all over my skin.
But if the universe wished for me towearmy kills, I’d gladly do it.
Kicking Arlo’s body one last time for good measure, I savored the crunch of his ribs.
If only I’d had the time… I would’ve brought Gedeon here, asked him to extract Arlo’s bones, and then used the jagged ends to stab every single joint the man had.
But war didn’t wait for you. It kept going on. Like the noise outside: the clatter of a weapon as someone disarmed their opponent, the muffled thunder of a bullet leaving the chamber, the ring as it struck a vehicle, a scream, a grunt, the cycle a closed loop, no beginning or an end, a continuation without a break.
I hopped out of the bus, now a silver shrine for Tarri and a catacomb-above-the-ground for Arlo.
As I landed on the asphalt, a whiff of iron knocked into me, the cloying stench of death penetrating the sourness of sweat and mold creeping up the walls of endless apartment buildings, all a copy of each other, the streets full of them serving as a labyrinth without a path out.
Across the road, the doors to a nutritional bar shop dangled on broken hinges, and a poster from my nightmares hung on a cracked window, the paper glued from the inside of the store. The spiderweb of fractures weaving through the glass distorted the picture, but I’d been subjected to the broadcasted speechesand announcements enough times to recognize the man leading our city.
No. Not our city.
Mine had become Gedeon’s compound and the freedom it stood for.
Ignoring the mayhem ruling in the street, I strode toward the shop boasting the image of our enemy.
A bullet zipped past my ear, so close, the heat burned the shell, but I pushed on.
A wounded soldier grinned at me, a river of red streaming down his chin, but I snapped his neck.
Bodies littered the asphalt, mangled and mutilated, but I jumped over their crooked limbs as if they were tree roots.
As a string of lead cylinders rushed past me, the nutritional bar shop’s door shattered. The wood fragments flew in all directions—a shower of needles. The sharpest of them sliced my exposed neck, and a scorching liquid dribbled down to my collarbone.
Shouts, yells, and bellows followed me as I made my way to the window possessing a poster of the Head of Ilasall, the man not many knew as Peter—the self-made god who’d embedded himself into the top of the government, as immovable as a rock.
As I traced the features of the person who dictated your worth in the city, the spiderweb in the glass carved my fingertip.
