Riley: Emperor and Knight
For a moment all I can do is gaze at him. I can’t believe he’s actually here. His posture’s straight; his eyes are steel. He’s perfect. I finally turn my head from Jack and glance back at Daemon. He’s smiling, but I can see a new level of rage behind his eyes.
“Jack," he drawls. "What a pleasure to have you here with us. You are, unfortunately, interrupting me. I was just about to fuck this ugly bitch you sent me. I assume this is an emergency if you're here in person. Has there been some interruption to our plans?"
Jack’s loose and relaxed. I don’t know how he looks so calm. He smiles as if he’s just heard something stupid and amusing, something from the mouth of an idiot. “I’ve worked for you for a long time. Done well for you. That’s right, isn’t it, Daemon?”
“Of course, Jack.”
“Let me have the girl. That’s all I want. I’ll bring you ten others and all my money and any subservience you require of me. Think of it as a beneficence—like an emperor would bestow on a peasant. She’s of no real use to you. It’s just a little foolishness that’s gotten into me. Just throw me this one girl and things will carry on as they’ve always been.”
“Can’t do that, Jack,” Daemon purrs, and for some reason, just from that, it suddenly dawns on me that we’re not dealing with some powerplay. We’re dealing with a man who is afflicted with real moral insanity.
Daemon isn’t worried about losing face in front of his men by giving me up. He isn’t worried for any political reason. He truly doesn’t understand how he could give up something which is his, even if he doesn’t want it. And he does want me, in spite of his insults. He can’t fathom that everything in the world doesn’t belong to him.
The rage in his eyes is as clear and cold as it would be if Jack had asked to kill his entire family and rape his mother.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Jack says.
“I’ve become very bored here, Jack. And I’ve waited too long for a new girl.”
He gestures to the man next to me and he begins to lift me up by the arm and lead me away. Daemon starts to stand.
“You try to take her and we all die in this room, right now.” Jack’s dropped the pretense of pleading and reasoning. His voice scares even me now.
Daemon smiles and sits back down.
“I'm going to fuck this girl now. You're going to turn around and get the fuck out of here, and never meet me uninvited again. No other man on this earth would get a second chance from me, Jack. I expect you to be grateful."
“I can’t, Daemon.”
“Why not?”
“I’m in love with Riley Lark.”
Daemon considers him in mad disbelief for a long time.
“You’ve gotten very, very stupid,” he says coldly.
Daemon starts to raise a finger but Jack says, “Don’t do that, Daemon.”
“Why not?”
“Because if you tell them to shoot, I’ll still be able to get you before they get me.”
“You don’t have a gun, Jack. They took them from you when you stepped onto this rig.”
“Yeah,” Jack draws out the vowels and smiles. “But your men left me alone with Victor, out in your outer chamber, and I punched him in the throat and smacked his head against the wall. Then I took his gun. It’s tucked behind my back right now. It’s a nice gun. I had it for a while, actually. Black and gold. Big clip. Real clean shot. It could punch right through you even if I get one shot off. And if I see any of your guys here so much as twitch, I’m gonna take that shot. And don’t think I’m not watching those two behind me.”
Daemon flattens his hand, telling his men to freeze.
“You’re bluffing.”
“Call him up.”
Daemon punches the intercom. “Victor?”
“That’s all. Cut it off.”
Daemon lets it go and listens for a response. None comes and he settles back into his chair. “How did you get so stupid?”
Jack shrugs. “I think I was always stupid. I just needed Riley to remind me.”
“This girl’s going to die now because of you. Just like your mom. Just like your men. She might’ve survived if you’d left her with me. I was just going to rape her until I got sick of her. I might’ve even let her live after that.”
“You underestimate how repulsive you are.”
From the look on his face, I’m pretty sure no one’s ever spoken to Daemon like that.
“You think you can somehow atone for everything you’ve done? Imbecile. Even if it was a single day, you couldn’t wipe it clean with a lifetime of pretty deeds, and you’ve worked for me for years. Think of the crimes you enabled. Think of the crimes you’ve committed. Think of the innocent lives that you shoved your way into and ruined. For profit. For nothing. You’re a monster, Jack. I think if your mother came back to life tomorrow and saw what you had done, she would kill herself.”
Jack nods. “That’s probably all true.”
Daemon's enjoying taunting and tearing at Jack, but he's also stalling. He doesn't want to risk a gunfight while he's in the center of the room. Even he's not quite sure how fast Jack is. He thinks Jack will back down—he can't believe that he'd give up everything for something as foolish as love. It's inconceivable to him. That's why he let in Jack in the first place. He's a materialist and a pragmatist, and he assumed he was dealing with someone else like him. He didn't realize that Jack's turned back to a dreamer. That something broken in him has healed.
For all his tactical power Daemon failed to read Jack. He failed to account for any possibility of love and redemption.
My heart’s racing. There’s a roaring in my ears. I want to reach out and wrap Jack in my own soul and protect him from the lead waiting for him in these men’s guns.
“You think this girl could ever stomach you? You’ve done revolting things to her. You think there’s any redemption or forgiveness for what you’ve done to her? Think of what you would do if another man did that to your daughter or wife. You would kill him. You would be enraged if he ever found forgiveness.”
I can see that it hurts Jack, somewhere deep behind his eyes. But he only nods. “That’s true, too.”
“You’re a stupid, quibbling pig; you’ve let idiocy and delusion cloud your mind because you were too weak to face the real world anymore.”
“No, Daemon. I finally realized how weak you are. You’re so scared to believe in anything that you strip the world of things that are there but too subtle to see.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Love, Daemon. She taught me to believe in love again. And courage. And justice. And truth.”
Daemon looks like he's never heard something so stupid, and it's filling him with even more rage as if Jack was vehemently insisting that the earth was the shell of a giant turtle. He can hardly comprehend it.
“We are atoms assembled into meat, Jack. Sentient meat, dragging ourselves along a ball of mud, consuming each other,” he says calmly. “Love, all of those things: delusions of weak fools and women. Patterns in the mind that have no true correlate in the world. Lies. Unprovable.”
Jack shrugs again. “I choose to believe. I love her all the same. It’s more than a thought. It’s more than a feeling. It’s something sublime. You don’t think it exists because you’ve never experienced it. I pity you for that. I forgot, but Riley showed me again. She showed me how wrong I was.”
“What is this? You’re here for me? You want some revenge?” There’s just the faintest tremor of desperation in Daemon’s voice. He’s starting to realize that something’s truly changed in Jack.
“No, not for you—this isn't about you. I'm here for her. I was wrong, Daemon. I thought I could break her, but she's defeated me entirely and now I'm hers. Her vassal, her servant, her slave. She can do with me what she will." His eyes—bright and alive—return to me and he kneels. "Would you like him to die? You only need to speak a word."
“You think she's some princess, and you're a knight. You've lost your mind.”
I'm not sure if I've ever seen something so beautiful in the world as Jack kneeling there before me.
I smile back at him, tears in my eyes. I feel certain all of a sudden that this is the last time we’ll see each other on this Earth. We’ll die here then, together. Fear nearly overwhelms me, but I speak the words.
“Kill him.”
“You’re going to die here, Jack, if you listen to her.”
“Better to die a good man—just for a moment—than to live as a beast."
“You’re fast, Jack. But even you can’t kill eleven men in time.”
Jack glances down at his watch, then up to my eyes.
“No. But maybe I could get ten.”
I close my eyes and open them, telling him I understand. He’s been stalling. He’s waiting for something.
And then there’s a sound like a thousand thunder cracks. It slams into us and hurls us all to the side like an earthquake.
There was an explosion somewhere on the rig. Jack must’ve had a bomb on a timer.
He draws so fast I don’t even see it. The gun’s in his hand and launching fire into the room.
The man next to me raises his rifle, takes a bead on Jack, and I throw myself into the back of his knees. He crashes into the floor.
“Stay down—get to the wall!" Jack yells. I tug the pistol out of the man's hip holster, flip the safety, and squeeze the trigger before he can get back up. A red mist explodes. Daemon's behind his desk. The man on the far side of it is aiming at Jack. I raise the gun and squeeze the trigger again, and his head snaps back. Halfway down the room, a ceiling support juts from the wall. It's just enough for us to squeeze behind. I scramble for it on my hands and knees.
I see something punch into Jack, then something else, and red mist sprays out behind him. I scream but keep moving. And he keeps his feet and brings his gun back up, hurling more fire across the room. I reach the wall and throw my back against it.
They’re all concentrating on Jack. I see one of them trying to get behind him and I point the gun and squeeze the trigger until the slide locks back and it stops firing. The man falls and doesn’t move anymore. I count how many are left then duck back behind the corner. Jack makes it to the wall and crumples. He leaves a smear of blood where he slides down.
I want to say “Oh, Jack,” but instead I whisper, “I’m out of bullets.”
His face is pale and covered in sweat. He grins. "Hey, kid. Did you see how many were left?"
“Three.”
He checks his clip—nearly empty—then winks at me. “No problem.”
Daemon’s remaining men are emptying clip after clip at the corner we’re tucked into. There’s a pause as they reload, and Jack pops out and fires two shots into Daemon’s desk.
“Jack…”
“Just taking out his com and panic button, dear.”
He stumbles a little as he ducks back, but he takes a deep breath and looks at me, and he’s steady again. One guy tries to move around and flank us while the others are laying down fire, and Jack picks him off with a shot.
They go quiet for a moment. Jack silently tugs the slide on his gun back, then lets it loudly snap back into place. He says, “Fuck” just loud enough for them to hear. There’s a half moment’s pause and then one of the men runs and slides into view, firing. Jack pushes his body in front of me and fires back. A bullet punches into him—I can feel it. He stumbles back into me and I catch him, but the man falls limp.
Jack wrenches himself up, pops around the corner, and fires another shot. I hear a body hit the ground. Jack falls back against the wall. He’s too pale. Even his lips have gone colorless. I grab him and try to lower him gently.
“You did it, you did it!” I whisper to him. Please, Jack, stay alive. You have to stay alive.
He shakes his head. His eyes are sad. “You have to run, Riley. Daemon’s still behind his desk. You…”
And suddenly all the life goes out of him and he slumps against the wall.