Page 333 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

Too loud.

Please no.

Please.

Run, run, run, but it’s not fast enough.

Kill, kill, kill, but it’s not good enough.

He slams through the roof door into a storm of downdraught.

Melted snow and grit whip across the concrete. The helicopter is already clear of the Estate, climbing hard above the trees. No markings. No lights beyond the dim red blink beneath its tail.

Lachlan raises his rifle, but there’s no shot he can take that doesn’t risk hitting whoever is inside. And he knows who’s inside.

‘JULIAN!’

The name tears out of him.

He runs after it anyway, all the way to the edge, as though speed might close the impossible distance.

As though he can follow them into the sky.

The helicopter keeps going.

It shrinks against the night.

Lachlan’s rifle lowers.

His knees strike concrete.

For several seconds, nothing happens.

No breath. No thought. No sound beyond the alarm screaming through the Estate and the fading thunder of the rotors.

He was asleep.

Six hours unconscious while they came through his walls, dismantled every safeguard he built and took them from their rooms.

Mimi must have been so scared.

Tomorrow, he’d promised her. Fucking tomorrow.

The leaf necklace beneath her shirt.

Bodygarden levels of super safety.

Something inside him gives way without making a sound.

Lachlan bends forward, one hand braced against the roof.

The other still grips the rifle so tightly his fingers ache.

He stares into the black space where the helicopter disappeared, waiting for it to turn around. Waiting for the world to correct itself.

It doesn’t.

It won’t.