Ellie

My finger hovered over the send button, trembling. I felt like the president, about to press the big red button to destroy the world.

Except, just like the president, there was no actual big red button to press. For him, it was the nuclear football. I watched a documentary about it, a briefcase with a computer in that can end the world.

My version was slightly less impressive – an open tab, with Gmail running in it. Still, I knew that it would end my world, as I knew it. This email would hit Alexandria like a bomb, sweeping through the corruption, the crime, and the killings like a brush. The only question was whether I would survive the aftermath. I was about to make some very powerful enemies.

I stared at the blinking cursor, and the last two words: "Regards, Ellie." It seems so small, so insufficient in comparison to the story that preceded it. I knew that the thousand word article above it was the best thing I had ever written. I shivered just proof-reading it. It railed against what Alexandria, the city I grew up in, had become. It exposed the corruption, the lies, as well as the filth. And it lay down a challenge. To the gangs, to the police, to the city government – and most importantly of all, the citizens. Because without them, it was all for nothing.

Grow a pair, Ellie.

I pressed send, and the article, along with a folder full of photos that damned Victor Antonov to a jail cell, and a host of crooked cops and city counselors beside, winged its way to a list as long as my arm.

My old employer, the Herald was first.

Then the chief of police – though, since he was incriminated in the evidence I doubted he'd prosecute himself…

All the way up to the FBI.

The cat was out of the bag now, and like chickenpox ripping through a nursery, there would be no putting it back in. But just to be sure, I loaded every single last document into the cloud and shared it online. No coverups. Alexandria had had enough of those.

I shut the iPad, kind of wishing it was a typewriter, because the black slate screen's silent winking off was hardly the round of applause I felt I deserved after that. My fingers were burning. I'd never typed so fast in my life.

"Yeah, yeah," I muttered out loud. "'Nuff fluffin', El. You can celebrate when you get out of here."

The problem was, that was easier said than done. A draft of air brushed against my forehead, the slightest, tiniest movement – but enough, a warning. I thanked whoever was looking out for me up there. The usual Ellie, the one I'd been before all this started, would never have noticed such a tiny change in air pressure. Hell, she had her head so far up in the clouds the only change in air pressure she'd have noticed was the goddamn jetstream! Maybe Roman rubbed off on me, a little bit.

I know I rubbed off on him.

I hoped that I was just imagining things, that I was just on edge – understandable, after the day I'd had. Hell, the year! But that faint, weak hope was torn apart in less than a second.

"Come out, little girl," a wheezing voice called out. A familiar wheezing voice, like a parody of a horror movie kidnapper – both in the way he spoke, and what he said. "Come out, come out, wherever you are…"

I stiffened, pressing myself against the nearest metal rack, every last faint ounce of elation drained away in an instant. I pressed too hard, and watched in horror as I rocked the rickety shelving unit, and watched as it swayed to and fro, and as a cardboard box, precariously balanced, found its weight pulling it inexorably downwards.

I watched, and watched as it fell through the air, almost in slow motion.

And I heard as it crashed to the ground, making as much noise in this quiet, librarian space as Yellowstone erupting.

"I knew you were in here," the fat man wheezed. Because it had to be him – the overweight, creepy officer who'd seen me in the corridor. I knew I was right to distrust him, had been from the start. But smug self-satisfaction would get me nowhere. "Come out, little girl, and I'll make this easy on you. Don't make me come back there, will you, birdie?"

You wouldn't fit… I thought sourly. If ever there was a contrast between two men, Roman and the fat man provided it. And the fat man didn't come out in front.

I stayed quiet, silent as the grave. I'd seen enough horror movies to know how this ended. I'd already made the classic mistake, I sure as hell wasn't planning to make another. I even slowed my breathing, in one, two. Out one, two. In one, two…

I took a step into the corridor between the shelving units, not bothering to hide myself from the bulbous turtle -like security cameras, searching for the right rack. Like the one I'd backed into, many of them were old, poorly-maintained, and ready to fall. Like a rotten, hollowed-out oh in the middle of the forest, it might only take one slight push to bring the whole thicket tumbling to the ground. That was the plan, anyway. I eyed the one to my side carefully, ignoring the incriminating fallen cardboard box, stacked full of yellow legal papers, but dismissed it. The whole bottom shelf was stacked three high with boxes.

No, I needed something top-heavy. Like the fat man.

"Come on," he puffed, sounding closer. "I won't hurt you. I won't even touch you, if that's what you want," he said, his voice dripping with longing. I shuddered at the thought of his fingers coming within 10 yards of me.

My eyes wandered, searching for my get out of jail free card – though, in this case, it was rather more a get into jail card, given where I was currently breaking into. Still, I figured, better locked up than dead.

Jackpot.

I sprinted to the shelf, not bothering who saw me, the cameras or the man chasing me. I was in a race now, a race against time, and time was ticking away. I reached it, tensed my body like an NFL player and drove forward, shoulder-barging it. It rocked, boxes stacked on the top shelf wiggling as the unit rocked from side to side.

"I'm coming!" The plump officer choked, sounding delighted.

I rammed it again, and again, and again –.

"Stop!" He squealed, and I turned my head and I saw him pointing his service pistol at me, held in two hands, shaking. The enamel top button at the top of his navy uniform shirt bulged against the stress of keeping it pulled tight, and in a strange moment of clarity, where the rest of the world seem to slow down around me, I realized that he'd tried to brush the doughnut dust off his collar, only to grind it in. I grinned.

"You're not going to shoot me, Frank," I said, injecting a boatload of confidence into my voice. In reality, I wasn't nearly so sure – so I stopped pushing, just to be certain.

"Frank?" He repeated stupidly. "What –?"

I shrugged. "I dunno, Frank," I said, emphasizing it. It seemed to be pushing him off balance, and I only hoped that his emotional baggage was as unwieldy and poorly distributed as his fat. "You look like a Frank to me. A fat Frank." I said, digging the knife in for good measure.

He reddened, blood surging to his face as he stiffened with anger. Suddenly his gun hand wasn't trembling anymore, and I cursed inside. I seemed to have touched a nerve…

Ah, crap. I thought. In for a penny, in for a pound. I span, kicked the rack as hard as I could, and dived for cover.

It didn't fall. But Frank did fire, and in the confined, concrete-walled warehouse that stored Alexandria's police evidence – tons upon tons of weapons, plastic-backed spent bullets, the seized contents of houses and blood-stained children's toys – in short, the detritus of a city falling apart, it sounded like the world ending.

I scrambled for safety, bashing my knees palms and elbows against the coarse concrete floor, ducking and weaving and throwing myself behind stacked racks of evidence, cursing as I saw that row after row was filled with just flimsy, feeble cardboard boxes. I was no expert, but I didn't think for a second that they would stop a bullet.

"Oh shit, oh Christ," Frank mumbled behind me, sounding like a man on the verge of panic – a man who had realized he'd made a terrible mistake. I'd got my wish, that was for sure – you couldn't fire a weapon inside a police station without someone coming running, even in a police force as incompetent as Alexandria's. The question was, though, whether Frank would double down on his error, and whether that meant that I was in his firing line. I gulped.

A door crashed open, and heavy boots thundered against the hard, cold floor – salvation, if I lived long enough to see it. "Officer, put your weapon down!" A woman cried, and the call was taken up by a dozen more voices, all echoing some variation of: "drop your weapon!"

I made my peace with the consequences, and made a break for it. Breaking into a police station? It had to be a felony – or some other equally terrifying legal term that I didn't have any experience of. Still, it was better than a bullet from Frank's gun.

I sprinted for the door, for the line of armed officers with their weapons drawn, my hands above my head. The heavy police belt weighed me down, and I reached down with my right hand to unclip it. I turned round the final rack with one hand in the air, one on my waist, and waddling at top like a terrified duck. The first police officer I saw, a young woman, perhaps twenty-eight years old, looked as surprised to see me as I was her.

"Put your hands above your head!" She screamed without flinching, in a parade ground, battle-hardened roar.

"It is," I squeaked, hurriedly putting the right one up to join it.

"Get on the floor," she shouted, and I dropped, and then there was a me in the small of my back, and the woman screaming, "you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…"

My cheek rested against the cool concrete, and I closed my eyes.

My work was done.

I just hoped that Roman's was, too.