Bound to Ashes (The Altered Sequence Book 1) (30 page)

No, he means Jules... I want to throw up.... “She’s gone.” And never have words hollowed me so badly.

“Good,” he says. “You’re doing my job for me.”

Every inch of me, shaky and bleeding and sore and broken, wants to rise up and snap Heydrich in two. It’s my only choice, the only thing I can do.

I catch him by surprise when I fly to my feet and land a punch right in his mouth. He staggers backwards, clutching his face, the whites of his eyes shining crazily in the dim light. I advance.

Another strike thrown, and another, one more, always one more. I have strength for one more, one more to break him. For the rest of my life I will try to break him if I can. In this moment, it’s the only future.

I grab him by his shaggy hair and throw him against the panel across the room.

It takes him a second to get up. I can breathe, finally. Hot blood trails through my hair down the back of my neck.

He stands, remarkably fluidly, like a wild animal, sure-footed and strong. He wipes blood from his mouth and spits. “Strike a nerve,” he wheezes. “Eh, E4? She your sweetheart or something?”

Every word that comes out of his mouth—

“—unnatural—”

—I want to grab his throat—

“—created, not born—”

—shut him up—

“—can never be a real person. Our bodies, our minds, our emotions, everything’s a figment, an imitation, a biological computer program, we can never be truly human.”

His second wind comes before mine and he’s got me by the shirt collar, his fist—

My back slams against the far panels and my breath leaves me, I rise up but his hand is faster, slamming me into the glass screens over, and over, I lose count, god, I’m gonna die, he’s gonna kill me, he can’t, I won’t—

He drops me. There’s glass in my face. Sparks rain over me and dance on the ground. I blink away the blood in my eyes.

“You know, they said physically, I was ideal. But they, those humans that made us that thought they were gods, they said mentally I would never be able to fight. They said never. But you know, I like to think they had what was coming for them. Those ‘gods among men’ succumbed to a virus of the mind, so who are they to say who’s mentally unstable?”

My thoughts coming out of his mouth... what kind of monster thinks that....

“We’re better than them,” he says, standing over me. “So we have to die.”

“So kill yourself.” I spit blood at his feet. Worth a shot.

“In time,” he laughs. “Unless you’d do me the honors....”

Is he really egging me on? Is this even happening? I wish I could scream, but there’s too much blood in my mouth.... I take a deep breath and feel it gurgle in the back of my throat. Like an animal full of bullet holes.

I get to my feet using the panel as a brace. He just stares at me, almost fondly, like he’s admiring his handiwork. I gently touch the side of my face and instead of bloody skin I feel hard, jagged shards. Behind Heydrich, I can see my rifle lying across the room.

If he wants to die so badly then I might as well oblige him. But this twisted bastard will put up a fight.

And hell, I’ll die either way, might as well go for it. So I take a deep breath.

He has no idea.

The fire sends him sprawling backwards. It’s the biggest plume of fire I’ve ever created, ever had the courage to create. He’s waving his arms, patting himself out, voice rising and falling in keening panic. I rush past him and grab the rifle, turn and fire.

The fire dies down, it didn’t catch him as much as I thought, but the bullet catches him in the shoulder. His body’s limp and he just rolls with the impact. “Ow,” he says simply, grinning through bloody teeth. “So that’s what makes the E’s different from the S’s,” he says thoughtfully. “Experiment. Standard. I’m just standard.”

“This isn’t about you,” I spit, squinting through sweat and blood. “Fucking get over it.”

To this he just laughs and takes a few steps backwards. “No, it is about me. It’s always been about me. I started everything, you know. Without me, you’re nothing. You’re nothing.”

I fire again, but miss, my eyes throb— I wipe away the blood with one hand.

He leans against the panels now. His hand hovers by the broken screen, the one he broke with my face. “I was the one that started the revolt. I meant to kill you. And everyone else, you know. It was the only thing I could do to prove to those fake gods that I am worthy, I am capable, I am perfect. The perfect soldier. They may have made me but they had no say in what I am. Killing all the others, all the other ‘perfect’ ones, what else could I have done to show them? But you lived,” he takes a moment to laugh incredulously, “you actually lived! You and all your little fucked up friends! And I couldn’t— can’t— leave my job undone! Ask no questions, take no prisoners! I have to finish the job!” He glances behind him at the screens showing the white halls. He turns around and hits a switch— the two screens flicker to show another portion of the halls.

The portion that Ashton and the others are in.

All breath leaves me and my blood goes stale. The rifle slowly weighs down my arms— the screen, what is he doing, how does he know—

“Take no prisoners,” he repeats, pressing a key on the panel.

It’s silent. That’s the worst part. That small click of the key, the last sound, everything is silent now.

It’s like a nightmare with a fisheye lens. I can see the entire hallway split between the two screens. It’s not the hall we found the ladder in, it’s one of the other halls. Empty. Spotlessly empty. Except for the machine, the scanner, the cleanser, slowly moving. Shifting into position. It’s in front of the door, the only door in the hall, blocking the only exit. It can’t be moving. Must be a trick of the distorted lens... it has to be... I glance at Heydrich and he’s just grinning.

The hallway turns red. Ashton and the others look to their left, at the light, their faces alight in terror, they run— the light follows— I can feel my every vein swelling, every part of me frighteningly alive and shaking and weak— they run, but the scanner is on them. They disappear between the screens. From the left screen, they run from the light, but they don’t reappear on the right. The light scans across the empty hallway, and then back again, and it folds up again in its original resting place.

Nothing moves in the hall. Not now, not for the eternity I stare at it.

“There,” Heydrich says, but fuck if I’m gonna let him finish.

The gun weighs as much as a feather and I slam the barrel against his stupid, smiling mouth, he just lets me push his head back as he laughs and laughs and laughs and—

Before I pull the trigger I see green glass and red blood and a clenched fist flying at me.

I drop the gun. I stagger backwards. I can’t help it. I curl in on myself. No, he didn’t— he did—

My eyes can’t see what’s in front of me, only a blinding hotness, white burning fire, coming from me, but not my mouth, my chest—

And Heydrich is screaming, his hand and arm coated in fuel, he throws the burning glass shard to the ground, the glass gets blurry around the edges, the same fire melting his flesh. Melting mine.

My back hits the wall. I look down. Oozing out of me, it’s burned my jacket and shirt away, flared up and dimmed down, burning all the fuel at once, the jagged hole in my chest right above my sternum, that bulge usually there is gaping and open and charred and still searing and eating through me—

My hands leave small gashes as I try to dig away the fuel. Flinging it away, throwing it to the floor, my breathing too fast but not fast enough, what if I breathe it in, will it go into my lungs, did he puncture my lungs—?!

Laughing.

He’s laughing.

I look up. He’s bent over holding his arm at the elbow, like trying to keep venom from spreading up his arm, ugh, his arm— you can see his finger bones through the burnt-off skin. His face is open and grinning and laughing because he has nothing else to do.

“That’s more fucking like it!” He cries.

I’m going to die.

My hands are on fire. Little islands of fire burn on the ground, dotting the ground like living sparks, burning up my fuel. I can’t feel my chest anymore. Is my brain frying itself trying to block out the pain? What is the cold sensation radiating from my core...?

And Heydrich is leaving. He’s throwing open the door on the other side of the room and half-falling out it, scrambling down metal stairs into darkness. He’s running and going to do something to the dome like Alessandra said and no, Alessandra, Ashton, he—

I grab the rifle and my legs can’t carry me fast enough to the door. The metal stairs on the other side lead us into a huge metal chamber, rusty red and empty. The door behind me sucks itself shut. Below, in a chamber stained with rust, is Heydrich. He pries open another door, a huge circular hatch. When it opens a massive sucking wind nearly pulls me off the stairs— I grab the rails with one hand and vault off it. My feet hit the ground hard and it would have hurt if Heydrich didn’t need to die. I pound after him, through the huge door, through the metal wall, I catch him running off. Coward.

Inside the next area, it’s lighter than the other rooms. I feel my pupils contract into slits. There are trees. And filtered, dappled moonlight spread across the grass in front of me.

And the shape of a scared man darting between the trees.

Every step I take crunches dead leaves and grass. My strides are long but I won’t run. I won’t stoop to his level. I’m not a coward. I don’t kill people when they aren’t looking or unarmed just because I have some fucking agenda or some stupid quest to get even against people who are already dead.

We clear the trees and he’s lit up by the moonlight, alone, running, skeletal arm waving uselessly. He trips. And falls.

And I’m right there standing over him, pointing the rifle at him, staring down the barrel.

“Just do it,” he coughs and sputters, that smile permanently etched on his face.

I’ve probably got about 25 rounds left in this cartridge.

I fire every one of them into Heydrich’s motionless body.

Every time I think to stop, the pain in my chest throbs, so I keep going. The shots can’t fire fast enough.

Now the grass is more red than green and the rifle is hot in my hands and I throw it as far as I can— it disappears into the inky night.

I take several steps back, away from his lifelessness, and fall to my knees. It could be exhaustion, or blood loss. I look up into the black sky. I feel the cold breeze. I smell the rich scent of live earth. I look down at my hands, maybe to reaffirm that this is all happening and not just a nightmare.

The others aren’t coming. They aren’t coming to save me. They’re just piles of ash. I’ll be here, forever, kneeling in the grass, alone except for the wind and trees.

I crumple into a ball and scream at the earth.

The sound falls upon no ears. As soon as I hear it, it stops. There’s no echo I can pretend is another person. There’s only me, the last one, bleeding out in a field, and no one will come. My body will never be discovered. No one will care. No one’s left to.

My breath is still heaving like I’ve been running. My hand hovers around the hole in my chest for no reason. My blood is still warm, and pouring, soaking my jacket and shirt. I’m still alive, I guess.

My feet pick themselves up and I start walking.

The muscles feel like weak stems of flesh, no willingness in them, only autonomous movement. Like an insect. Not knowing why it moves, or eats, just programmed to.

Trees pass. And rock piles many times my height, the moon cresting over them, staring down at me.

My feet touch water and they stop. It’s cold, like mountain runoff, especially cold when my knees sink into the pebbly soil.

My reflection reminds me that everything actually happened. I hate it.

My right eye is swollen and bloody, the side of my face where Heydrich smashed me into the monitors is cut up and raw. Chunks of glass stick out and glint in the dim light. My throat is red and oozing, and below that the hole in my chest stares like an empty eye socket. It stings. Something possesses me to take off my burnt-up jacket and peel off my soaked shirt. Under the dried blood, the skin is black at the edges of the wound, and streaks of reddish swollen areas halo around it. I stare at it, that black hole above my heart. Why am I not dead yet? What cruel joke is this, that I’m the last one alive, the one that has what he doesn’t want?

All my muscles tighten and I form a miserable heap in the slow-moving river, sobs threatening to break me apart. The river takes my blood and tears away.

My face is inches from the cold glassy water. I could just lean forward three, no not even three, two inches and just let the river take the rest.

My practical survival mind surfaces. Live, it says. Our animal brains want to go on and drag our emotions in the dirt behind it. Why am I thinking about my backpack? The single can of food, the spare clothes? What does a dead person need with those? Why do I feel like I need to go get it? Not like I remember where it is. I don’t even know where I am. But who cares, anyway?

I look down at my hands. Still there, though burnt and swollen. There’s no trace left of the bandage on my hand. I don’t think I’ve ever been burnt by anything before.