Riley: Fracture
I feel the words rushing past my lips before I realize what I’m saying. “Jack, just go. Leave me. I’ll…I’ll be fine.”
He grabs my arm. His eyes burn. “Shut the hell up and listen to me. You stay behind me, do you understand? No matter what, you stay behind my body. If I go down, you don’t stop to check on me. You don’t stay. You run like hell. There’s way too many of them out there. We’re not going to be able to take them down. Everyone is going to die here. Our only chance is to make it to the boats. If I go down you, go for the boats and don’t look back. If they catch you, make sure they know who you are—tell them Daemon will pay for you. Tell them Daemon will pay anything for you. Just stay alive.”
He punches a message into his phone and then hides it in a panel in the ceiling. “They’re jamming the phones right now, but once they leave that’ll send a message to Wyatt and Darien. I told them to come for you, okay? You just stay alive until they can find you or negotiate for you.”
Jack’s putting on a brave face for me, but I see just the briefest flicker in his eyes as he says it. I can see he thinks that if they get him, they’ll kill me, too. I can see he thinks that we’re both probably going to die here. And he’s staying with me anyway.
I feel a sob rise in my throat. Suddenly I don’t care about everything he’s done. I don’t even care about last night. I just want him to live. I just want him to be okay. “Jack, just go. Get away—you can escape and find me later!” I try to lie. “If you get away then you can come back for me!”
“Just shut the hell up, Riley.” Then, calmer, even with everything that’s gone wrong between us, “I’m not fucking leaving you here. I would never leave you.”
He checks his gun. “If I hand you a gun, it’ll be ready to fire, okay? Just keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. Then just point it at what you want to hit and squeeze the trigger. And don’t shoot me in the back. And don’t shoot at all unless I go down and you need to get away, okay? Don’t put yourself in the line of fire. You stay the fuck behind me, no matter what.”
Jack holds his gun beside him, partially concealed against his leg. The armored men are gathering people into the central courtyard of the compound.
“Why are they going along with them?”
"They still think they're SWAT. It's just what you do when the police show up with this amount of force—let them arrest you and then let Jake Compton and the rest of the lawyers break you out later. Clean. No one gets shot. No one gets charged for killing cops. New Dawn's rounding them up now so they can shoot them all at once—no resistance."
Jack presses the door to our room open and we step out. We start to move along the walkway three stories above the courtyard; two men in black SWAT armor round the corner. Up close I can see tattoos running up their necks.
Jack’s done that thing where he shrinks himself down to the size and character of a normal man. He shuffles a little and meekly nods his head as they start to yell at us to get on our knees.
“When I move, you hit the floor,” he breathes back to me.
“Get the fuck on your knees, motherfucker!” one of them yells.
“Oh gosh, oh gosh, sure!” Jack mumbles, bumbling forward and raising his one hand. He stumbles to the right slightly so that the two men are in a row, the leading one blocking the firing line of the one following him.
Jack moves so fast that they don’t quite register what’s happening. Neither do I. All of a sudden his gun is in front of him, level with the man’s neck. It erupts with fire and a pink mist explodes out of the back of man’s head. Jack hit him in the small gap in his armor between neck and helmet.
I drop to the ground like he told me.
The second man gets two shots off, but Jack grabs the first and uses him as a shield. He fires three more times and the second man goes down.
Jack’s hands are flying over their bodies. He rips the vest from one and throws it around me. The courtyard has exploded into motion. Shots start going off.
Jack rips the assault rifle from the dead man’s grip. He goes to the edge of the railing and launches fire into the courtyard. The armored men are gunning down the Amontillados’ people, but Jack’s distraction from the railing is allowing some of them to fight back and get away. He empties every clip that the two men have on them. Everyone from both sides scatters. Skirmishes erupt down below.
Fire and grenades start raining into the third floor.
"Move!" he commands me. He throws the other man's vest around himself, strips both of them of their handguns, clips, and grenades, and follows after me.
A grenade lands just behind us and Jack tackles me, hard. We just make it around the corner as shrapnel lances past us. He lays over me, crushing me and covering my body with his own. My ears are ringing and my heart screams. I’ve never felt such intense fear and panic in my entire life.
Jack yanks me up and drags me after him. Two more men come up a set of stairs and Jack fires. They both drop. He pulls a grenade and tosses it past them then pulls me past the stairs.
We reach the end of the walkway. Jack hops over the railing and drops down, hanging off it like he's doing pull-ups. He scans the next level down then pulls himself back up. "Step over!" My stomach turns at how high we are—easily forty feet above the ground. Far higher than any high dive I've ever been on. But survival's kicked in. I step over. "Take my hand."
I feel nauseated and hesitate for just a moment. He looks me in the eyes. “Riley.”
I take his hand. He lowers me down and swings me onto the second floor then drops down after me. More men are coming up and Jack quickly pulls us into the shadows underneath the stairs. “Cut them off!” one of the men is yelling, and they pass us by and move to the third floor. I see the bodies of two more men, killed by the grenade Jack threw.
We move down the walkway and Jack kicks in a door to one of the second-floor rooms. It has a window that's facing a small side area off from the main courtyard. It's twenty feet down but empty. He rips a sheet from the bed, wraps one end around my hands, and lowers me out the window. "Don't lock your body, let yourself crumple and roll."
I feel like my heart’s going to explode, but I go without protest. He lowers me as far as the sheet reaches and then lets go and I crumple into the ground. It hurts, but nothing breaks or twists. Jack’s out of the window before I’m even up, and his body seems to hang in the air for a sickening amount of time. He hits the ground with an awful crack and collapses, but he’s up in an instant and moving. I follow after him.
The entire compound is a thunderous cacophony of gunfire and explosions. I can’t process that this is actually happening. The air is filled with gunsmoke and the smell of blood and what could only be, I realize, burning human flesh. It’s incomprehensibly horrific. My focus is narrowed by a desperate need to survive. My world becomes a small square on Jack’s back. I cling to a strap on his vest, using it to support myself, and stumble after him.
When you think about violence, guns, and extraordinary situations, you think you'll handle yourself like you're in an action movie. But I don't. I can't. I don't have any training in this. It's all I can do to force myself to move. I want to curl into the smallest ball possible or beg Jack to just find a room to let me hide in. But I don't. I trust him. I follow him.
We weave through the lower level of the compound like the mythical Daedalus and Ariadne in the minotaur's maze. Jack takes us around buildings, through rooms, over fences. He seems to know it like the back of his hand.
We've almost made it to the water—the ocean wind is getting stronger—when a man steps out on our left. His gun goes up and I can see all the way down its barrel. For that half second, I'm certain that I'm going to die. He pulls the trigger. Jack steps in front of me and the bullets punch into his chest. I let out an anguished scream and he stumbles back. But it's as if there's some force around me that stabilizes him. He catches himself before he touches me and in the same motion raises his gun and fires twice. The man goes down.
“Jack—”
"Move!" he gasps. I can see agony on his face, but he loosens his vest and carries on. We reach the hill leading down to the bay and the open sea beyond. For a moment I feel as if I can breathe. Then I spot the five men at the end of the docks.
Jack leads me off the path and into the dunes. The sand works against us and makes it hard to walk, but it also makes us silent. I follow him, low and as quiet as possible.
Jack checks his gun then tucks it away and pulls out the two others that he took from the first two men. He hands me one. “If I go down, you head for the boats. Kill anyone who gets in your way.” He explains to me how to start a motorboat, but it feels almost impossible to follow. My mind is fogged by terror and I have to force myself to focus. I just keep thinking, stupidly, Jack, please don’t die.
The men guarding the docks are alert but not alert enough. Jack pulls the ring on his last grenade, holds it for what seems like far too long, and then tosses it up in a lazy arc. It explodes mid-air, right in the middle of the group. He pops over the last dune and the gun blazes in his hand. The men are screaming. Some are trying to get up. Jack empties the whole clip into them and tosses the gun aside. A final man rises and Jack whips out his first pistol and fires until the slide snaps open, empty.
We’re done. They’re all down. We race for the bodies and the walkway to the docks.
And then a shot cracks across the beach from behind us. Jack goes down.
A choked scream escapes me and I fall on him without thinking, trying to protect him. Jack shoves me behind him and pulls a body up, a flimsy makeshift shield between us and the direction the shot came from.
His gun lays empty and useless in the sand a few feet from him. I realize the body doesn’t have any weapons on it. I can’t see anything within reach that Jack could use.
A man is walking cautiously towards us. I remember the gun Jack gave me and reach for it, tucked in my belt, but then the figure speaks.
“Come on out, Jack, and I’ll spare you and save the girl.”
I know his voice. Where do I know his voice? He’s close enough now. I can see past his visor. Byron Kent strides across the sands.
I feel sick to my core. Byron’s here. Byron’s a real cop. That means…all those men Jack just killed…
I flash back across the whole scene. They didn’t open fire first. They didn’t kill anyone. They were arresting people in the courtyard. It was Jack who started shooting up on the third floor. Jack opened fire on the men down below. They were defending themselves. I let Jack convince me they weren't SWAT because, what, a few of them had tattoos? Because they weren't following some made-up standard procedure he claimed they should be following? What do I know about standard procedures?
I almost shot some of them. I let Jack shoot them. Maybe he’s telling the truth…maybe…some explanation…But I can’t believe it. They’re in police gear. They’re doing a sting on a major criminal organization, exactly like police should be doing. Byron is here. Why else would Byron be here? I can’t think. I’m still in shock from the firefight and slaughter. If Jack hadn’t opened fire, if Jack had let us be arrested, dozens of people on both sides would still be alive.
Of course. What other stupid lies did I believe? That Jack was willing to sacrifice his own life to save me from some shadowy, criminal super-cult? No, he must’ve needed to get to the boats the whole time—they must be the only way off the island. The window escape from our room must’ve not really been a possibility for him. He just kept me as a bargaining chip—for this very situation, in case he got pinned down.
It all flashes through my mind in an instant. I want to scream at the world. I beg myself to believe Jack, but I just can’t.
“Riley, give me the gun,” he says. I have it right there, tucked behind my back. I love Jack, but I can’t let him kill an innocent man.
I throw the gun away across the sand.
“He’s unarmed!” I yell at Byron. “Please, please don’t hurt him.”
I raise my own arms up but Jack shoves me back down behind him and the body. “Riley, stay the fuck down! I don’t care what else you do, you stay the fuck down and run for the boats when this is done.”
“He’s a cop, Jack! I know him!”
“Just do it!” he screams at me. “You have to listen to me, please!”
“Listen to the girl, Jack. You’re unarmed. It’s over.”
Byron has an assault rifle, and it’s still carefully trained on us.
“You think I can’t reach my gun and kill you before you get a good shot off?” Jack says. Even with everything, when he speaks to Byron, he sounds as nonchalant and amused as he did taunting those skinheads back at Club Six.
“That gun’s empty, Jack.”
“Is it? Or did I empty the clip then add one more into the chamber right before you clipped me?”
Byron's progress falters for just a moment then he carries on towards us. "You're fast, Turner. But no one's that fast."
"You have no idea how fast I am," Jack says and springs forward. The body in front of us had one weapon I didn't see, and Byron didn't see it either: a small knife strapped to the dead man's leg. In one motion Jack draws it out as he lunges towards the gun. Byron fires where he thinks Jack is headed—a dead-accurate shot. But Jack's pivoted away. The knife flashes and flies from his hand like a lightning bolt. Byron lets out a strangled cry as the blade buries into his shoulder. He tries to raise his rifle again but Jack grabs his gun out of the sand and fires a single shot. The slide locks open, empty again. A red mist bursts out from the back of Byron's head and I scream. I'm not sure if it's for Byron or for the dream of who Jack was.
Jack tucks the gun away and strips an assault rifle and belt of clips from one of the bodies.
I get up onto my knees. The beach is deathly quiet. "Fucking bastard!" Tears cloud my vision and stream down my cheeks. Jack doesn't look at me; he stays focused on his work. "Murderer!" A maelstrom of shock, rage, and sorrow crashes through me. I knew all this time, vaguely, that Jack did really bad things. But he just murdered an innocent man in front of me. It feels like the death of everything there possibly was between us. I'd been letting myself believe that Jack was a good man at his core. That he was doing evil things because something in him was fractured. That his soul lay in painful shards but could, maybe, one day be healed.
I can’t believe that anymore. I keep seeing the red mist bursting out of the back of Byron’s skull. Byron wanted to do good things. He wanted to take down something evil. And Jack killed him for it.
“Murderer, murderer, murderer!” I say it to him over and over again. Oh, Jack, how could you? Guilt crashes through me along with the rage. I’m the reason Byron was here. I told him the place. I led him to his death. I led all these people to their death. My stomach turns and I crumple and vomit in the sand. Jack looks at me for a moment—like he wants to come to me, hold me, stroke my back to calm my body. I glare back at him. I don’t think I could stand his touch. “Don’t!”
He stays away and keeps working. One of the armored figures in the sand is trying to struggle up—they must’ve been stunned by the blast but not killed. Jack smashes the butt of the gun into their helmet and they go limp, then he throws the body over his shoulder, grabs my arm with his free hand, and drags me down the dock.
Most of the boats along the long dock are burning, but there are nine slick, black speedboats that are untouched—the vehicles SWAT came in on. Jack picks one with extra cans of gas in it and riddles the others' engines with bullets. The boat roars to life and pulls out. I sit in the back, numb. I dream of finding a gun and killing him, but along with the anger, there's simply an overwhelming sadness.
He lied to me all along. It was all an illusion. He wanted Talia, in the end, not me. And the decency I thought I saw in him was only my own delusion. And now innocent men are dead because Jack wasn’t willing to be arrested.
Once we’re safely out into open water and the island is a speck in the distance, Jack ties the wheel and turns to the SWAT member. Jack’s bound his hands and feet tightly and dumped him in a corner. He rips the man’s helmet off and I realize with surprise that it’s a woman. She’s gorgeous: strawberry blonde hair and delicate, elegant features. Her face is smudged with blood and grime. She stares at Jack with eyes full of hate. For a moment I think it’s Byron’s partner, Ariadne, but it’s not. I don’t know this woman.
“Murderer,” I spit out at Jack again.
“Byron’s fucking lying to you, Riley. That was New Dawn. Byron’s been bought for a long fucking time. New Dawn must’ve been his latest buyer.”
“Murderer.”
“Why would you believe some corrupt asshole over me? They were even in Club Six on the same night—they’ve probably been working with him for months trying to get to me!”
“Murderer!”
He turns to the woman. “Tell her who the fuck you are!” he orders her.
“We’re cops, asshole.”
“Lier!” he puts the rifle to her head. “Tell her who you are or I’ll blow your brains out all over this boat.”
“We’re cops,” she says. I can see terror in her eyes but there’s an defiance that fights it. “You won’t kill me. You want me for something or you wouldn’t have taken me.”
“Ah. A clever fascist. That’s a rare find.” He lowers the gun to the side of her knee. “Fine, I’ll just blow your kneecaps out. You’ll never walk again. And then I’ll tear your face up. You’ll be nothing, for the rest of your life, but a mangled mess.”
The defiance is washed away leaving only fear.
Christie said he didn’t hurt women. Didn’t torture people.
“Stop it!” I scream. “Jack stop it! If you hurt her, if you hurt one more person, I’ll…I’ll throw myself off a building the next chance I get.”
“Tell her,” he says.
The woman’s eyes are steady again. “We’re cops.”
Jack’s body is trembling. I don’t know if it’s rage or something else. He lowers the gun and slumps back onto the other side of the boat. Exhaustion overwhelms him for just a moment, and then he pulls himself straight again. He undoes the vest and drops it to the floor.
“I’m telling you the truth and you’re choosing to believe their lies—because you don’t believe in yourself and your instincts; because you don’t believe in us.”
“I can see the truth with my own eyes. You took me. Used me. Threw me away for Talia. Then you killed innocent men for trying to stop you.” I feel a strange clarity in this anger.
“Talia…” he snaps and then stops. He stares at the floor and then shakes his head violently. He looks back up at me, his eyes cold and sad. “Who the hell did you tell about the island, Riley? I thought I caught you in my office—I thought I caught you soon enough but you saw something. Who the hell did you tell?”