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The medics freeze and look at Vonnegut with worry and confusion. The older man, who was about to attach the IV, looks at me.
“But he needs—”
“I do not care what he needs,” I demand and nod my head at Izabel. “Now help her, or you will also need medical attention.”
Still, the three look to Vonnegut for confirmation, and he gives it to them.
The medics switch gears and hurry to help Izabel instead.
Vonnegut smiles.
“You see,” he says. “That is why you are so valuable—you miss nothing.”
I do not respond. It seems, despite being twins, there are many differences between him and me, one being his need to talk while I prefer the silence.
“You wanted to make sure the IV wasn’t full of poison,” he says, and he is correct. “You knew, just by their willingness to put the fluids from that IV bag into me, that there was no way it contained anything more than electrolytes.”
“Finish the story,” I tell him, still trying to distract him and Lysandra.
Vonnegut continues to ramble on about the many times they could have captured Izabel and Niklas but decided against it and why. He telling me anything at all is just a distraction—we are both trying to distract the other, but I doubt he knows that I, too, am playing the same game.
I glance at James Woodard, the first time I have made eye contact with him since I arrived, and he immediately understands.
Vonnegut can no longer find any position on the floor that is the least uncomfortable; he struggles and then gives up and lies down on his side instead.
“Can’t I at least give him a chair?” Lysandra puts in.
“A chair will not make him more comfortable,” I tell her. “But I would like you to sit in one and shut your mouth.”
Lysandra’s fists clench tightly at her sides; the flames in her eyes that, I admit, are similar to mine burn so violently I know she would kill me in an instant if she could reach a gun.
I nod toward the nearest chair, and she sits after another second of raging anger that makes her fists shake. And she closes her mouth, but for how long?
I focus on Vonnegut, never having taken the gun off of him once since I entered the room. My arm should be tired by now, but I have too much adrenaline running through my veins like high-octane gas to notice.
It is odd to finally see his face and know the man who leads The Order. And even more bizarre—surreal even—to know that his face looks exactly like my own.
I look at the medics working on Izabel lying on the gurney—the IV has been positioned inside her arm, and fluid drips from the bag. EKG stickers have been pressed to her chest, arms, and legs, and the machine performs a diagnostic. She is so skinny and pale; her hipbones jut out like jagged rocks, and it kills me to see her in such a state. I keep telling myself, as I have done the past few weeks, that it was necessary, that everything had to be timed perfectly. I kept trying to convince myself that I had to leave her here and that I could not abandon my plan and attempt to rescue her sooner. Every day when I turned on my laptop or my phone and watched the live feed of her and Niklas inside that room, I witnessed how they got weaker, emaciated, and delusional; I tried to tell myself that they could get through this, that they would survive.
Perhaps I was wrong.
Now, I am fearful that I am too late.
Focus on the threat…
James Woodard, who has been working with me behind the scenes and relaying messages to me for the past three weeks, stands in the same spot closest to the elongated window overlooking the city; his gun still on Lysandra. Like those installed in hotel guest rooms, a decommissioned air conditioner sits beneath the window, mounted on the wall.
Woodard carefully drops the cell phone he had just stealthily used to send a text message back into the hidden pocket of his suit jacket.
“Tell me, Victor,” Vonnegut’s voice brings me back into the moment, “has the outside world shown you enough? Are you ready to return to The Order, where you belong?”
I hear the central air conditioning system kick on quietly.
“I find it difficult to believe,” I begin, “that rejoining The Order will be a simple process with no repercussions.”
Vonnegut shrugs. “Well, that goes without saying. But you will live; Izabel Faust and Niklas Fleischer will live. You will be in a position almost equal to my own, and Niklas will also be promoted.” He shrugs again and purses his lips on one side. “Seeing as how Izabel was never a part of The Order, has no official training, and would only be a distraction for you, she will be relocated. She will be given a chance to live the simple, normal life she was denied when her mother took her to Mexico many years ago. Her protection and safety assured.”
There is no such thing.
