Chapter Thirty-Four - Rory
I realize I’m on a stretcher.
It didn’t fucking work! I want to cry right now. I wanted to go out a hero, saving Five from their trap, and it didn’t fucking work!
I begin to choke, and then Blondie’s face is right up next to mine. She’s running alongside me. “You’re fine, dear. We can’t afford to lose you,” she coos in my ear. “So I saved your life. Your man did show up, but he’s burning back there.”
Smoke is filling this… this tunnel we’re running down.
“What did you do?” I croak.
“Took care of things, dear. That’s all. Now be still. We’re almost to the car and you’ll be fine when I get you back to headquarters. I gave you the antidote. You don’t get to die unless we say so.”
So I’ve heard.
I struggle. If you can call it that. My whole body is weak from whatever it was I swallowed along with that wafer. I’m tied down, anyway, my wrists and legs strapped to the gurney they’re pushing me on.
I hear gunfire behind me. Bullets ping off the walls, cracking the concrete blocks and sending up a spray of dust.
“Hurry!” Blondie barks to the bodyguard.
“Five!” I say, sobbing. “Five!” I scream it louder. “I’m here!”
Her hand clamps down on my mouth, covering my nose. She’s gonna fucking smother me!
I bite. My teeth find her flesh and she pulls back, screaming. A hard slap hits my cheek with such force, I see blinking lights in the darkness that threatens to take over again.
The smoke is so thick now, the one gasp of air I manage before she clamps her hand down again is nothing but soot.
I struggle again. The binding on my right wrist is loose enough to slip my hand through, and one hand is all I need.
I grab that bitch’s hair and pull. The gurney slips to the side when she falters, and falls to the ground.
We stop, gunfire still pinging off the ceiling.
Five is back there. He’s firing to miss. To slow us down. To give me a chance to fight back.
I reach over, fumble with my other wrist binding, just as the woman starts shooting back.
She’s not aiming for the walls or the ceiling. She’s aiming for Five.
I sit up, desperate to save him. She will not kill him. I will never allow that to happen. I grab for her gun as she shoots, knock it loose from her grip, but it falls into my lap, and she’s there, reaching for it.
We struggle, her hands in my hair—she’s fighting like a goddamned girl.
I don’t fight like a girl. I fight like a Shrike.
I grab her head the same way I did Frank and smash her face into my knee.
She falls over, blood gushing out of her mouth and nose.
The bodyguard grabs me, but I have that gun. And I’ve shot a gun with my daddy so many times before this night, my fingers know just what to do.
I pull that motherfucking trigger and take his face off.
Everything stops in that moment. There’s an echo of my gunshot. There’s thick, black smoke billowing up from behind me. And then… nothing but silence.
Fuck.
I snap out of my daze and reach down for the bindings on my legs.
“Rory!” Five calls from down the tunnel.
“Five!” I yell. But I choke on the smoke.
The heat is intense now too.
“Five!” I try again.
There’s a thundering behind me as I get the last binding loose and fall over to the side of the gurney. My legs give out, weak from the poison I swallowed. And I collapse to the hard ground.
The thundering turns into a barrage of boots running towards me.
“Five,” I call again.
“Rory!” he calls back. “Where are you?”
“I’m here,” I say, but it’s so weak, I know he can’t hear me. He can’t see me either.
I look for the woman, expecting her to be right beside me, but she’s gone.
A set of red taillights appears through the thick, haze of smoke up ahead.
She’s getting away!
I begin to crawl towards her car.
“Rory!” Five bellows.
“She’s getting away!” I scream it as loud as I can. “Don’t let her get away!”
I’m still crawling toward her receding headlights when Five finds me.
He wraps me up in his arms, kisses me over and over and over. On the head, on the cheek.
Someone says, “We need to get out of here. The House is gone. We’re underneath the neighborhood now, and the whole block is about to go up in flames.”
I’m picked up. Carried at a run by Five.
And I have never tasted anything sweeter than his kiss on my lips and the fresh, clear air when we finally make it outside.