AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“If all this is true,” I say, “then Victor will have to show at some point. Why send Nora if he didn’t plan to come himself eventually?”
“For your sake,” Niklas says, “I hope you’re right. Because Nora can’t get you out of here by herself or with someone as inexperienced as the Stone siblings.”
“Why do you keep saying me, Nik? He’s doing this for you, too.”
“Just watch the screen, Izzy.”
And that’s what I do.
14
Nora
Twentieth floor. It feels different here than all the floors below, cooler as if the air has kicked on. And the lights appear brighter, though it could just be my imagination too. But there’s definitely something different about this floor.
The three of us make it to the end of one long stretch of the hallway when just as we round the corner, a bullet strikes the wall half a second before my head was to pass it.
“Shit! Shit-shit-shit-shit!” I crouch low at the corner; Osiris and Hestia press their backs against the wall beside me, guns ready in their hands.
“I think it’s safe to say they’re somewhere on this floor,” Osiris says.
“Probably.” I stick my hand around the edge of the wall and into the hallway just long enough to hear another shot; a bullet strikes the wall in front of me, burying into the plaster. “And now we know in which direction, at least.” And thankfully, that one, in particular, is a bad shot, or else I might’ve just lost a hand.
“You got a plan?” Osiris asks.
“No,” I say and roll fast across the floor and into the hallway, gun firing in the direction of the shooter at the same time. I strike the operative, and he drops dead at the end of the hall. “But let’s go anyway,” I shout. “Because we don’t have time to sit here and come up with one!”
“Should’ve had one before waltzing into this fucking deathtrap of a building!” I heard Hestia say behind me.
We hurry down the hallway, and before even making it halfway, two more operatives round the corner out ahead, bullets sailing the distance to meet us. I fall and roll forward and fire two shots. Osiris drops to his stomach and lies flat, his gun pointed out ahead of him, firing three shots quickly. We take out both operatives, but not in time to save Hestia from a stray bullet, and she’s hit and collapses against the wall.
“Oh fuck! Oh fuck, I’m hit! You let that bitch get me shot!” Bright-red crimson glistens and pools on the white-tile floor beneath her. “Don’t you fuckin’ leave me here!” She tells her brother.
Osiris reaches for her arm, intent on dragging her along with him, but the second his hand collapses around her elbow, another stray bullet from the opposite direction buries inside her temple, killing her instantly.
“No! Nooo! Fuck this!” Osiris releases his sister’s arm and just starts firing. He empties his gun into the shooter that killed Hestia, then reloads clumsily, barely getting the clip out of his pants pocket in time.
More shots deafen me as he moves past in the direction we were heading before, and he fires with reckless abandon at the operatives coming toward us.
“Muthafuckas!” He empties the gun again, then fumbles in his other pocket for more.
“Osiris! Get down! Get down, you idiot!” In a crouched position beside the wall, I try to grab him by the pants and pull him back, but he moves out of my reach.
As he continues onward, more shots pierce my eardrums, dropping more men ahead of us and a few more behind us. I take out one coming from behind Osiris, whom he doesn’t see in time, but I save my damn bullets for the most part. Osiris can do what he wants. I knew when bringing him here that he and his sister were careless and could not be controlled or even reasoned with when in a rage, so there’s no use in trying to reason with or stop him now. If he dies, he dies; at least he’ll have taken out several operatives for me before he checks out. It was all part of my plan anyway, even if at first only subconscious. It wasn’t until I realized that Victor Faust had used me that I gathered it was precisely what I was doing with the Stones.
We make it to the end of the hall, and suddenly all is quiet again. I can faintly hear a cell phone buzzing against the tile floor, probably in the pocket of one of the dead operatives, but it’s all I can hear. Well, that and Osiris breathing like he just ran a marathon in a rage.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I ask him while reloading my gun, snapping the magazine into place. “Can’t avenge your sister if you’re DEAD.” I rise into a stand and get ready to round the corner again.
“It ain’t vengeance,” he says and pauses to catch his breath; his dark eyes swirl with…well, vengeance. “She was stupid enough to get herself killed, so it’s her own damn fault.”
I say nothing and let him believe that lie.
“Let’s go!” I turn the corner and am met with more gunfire. I know I’m running out of bullets—Osiris will run out before me—but I have to use them or die. Unlike Osiris, I fire with precision, making sure every bullet counts. One. Two. Three more men I take out before I feel a pinch in the middle of my thigh. The pinch spreads beneath my skin, deep in the muscle, to become a searing pain, and the leg betrays me. I see the floor rising to meet me before I realize I’m falling.
Another pinch strikes me in the shoulder, but this one becomes searing pain more quickly than the first gunshot wound. It’s enough that I lose motion in my entire arm; my gun falls from my hand and slides across the smooth floor, well within my reach, but I can’t move my arm to retrieve it. I try with my other arm and get it into my hand, finger on the trigger, but there’s no one left for me to shoot.
The sound of gunfire has stopped, leaving only my heavy breathing and the shuffling of my clothes against the floor as I crawl, though to where I have no fucking idea.
