The Light
The ladder led to a convenience store.
For real—it took some climbing and squeezing myself into a skinny metal shaft, but a door popped open above me into a basement. A light was on over the wooden stairs, showing a line of freezers against the wall and locked cabinets. I hauled myself up onto the gritty cement floor, my pockets full of magazines, the gun, and the hard drive, all slapping the hole in the ground as I moved. I got my feet under me, felt something sticky when I lifted my shoe—the split bag off to the side labeled as slushy syrup leaking purple crap all over—and kicked the lid back on the hole.
Guess I could’ve ended up somewhere worse. Like a body bag.
I clambered up the stairs and into the store to see a bewildered clerk throw his hands up at the sight of me. Yeah, I was scuffed up, a bit bloody, soaked from the sprinklers, and the tiny lump wedged between my shoelaces might’ve been bits of brain from one of the lab technicians, I guessed I looked scary even without showing him the gun. I waved him off and slipped outside.
Strip mall. Huh.
Chill air iced my damp hair and wind blew right through me as I stood in the dark parking lot. I found my phone undamaged and dialled Nicolette immediately.
A second later she picked up. “There are trucks and people everywhere and I can’t get near—where are you?”
“Uh...” I took two steps back and glanced up. “Mini-Mart Plaza. There’s a donut shop, variety store...”
“Oh. I see it. One minute.”
“Okay.” I stuffed the phone back in my pocket and took several long breaths of the chilly November air.
I was out.
Out.
Out and terrified, strangely. Not just because Fraser could change his mind and come after me—could even hire Zara to come and kill me. No, because I’d been under the directions of others for so long, under their will and orders, that for a brief, terrifying moment, I didn’t know what to do with myself. It wasn’t freedom, not really. I was still on my own mission, still seeing the faces of my kids—still reeling with loathing and guilt every time I realized I didn’t see their faces. But it was a world of options and that scared the ever loving shit out of me.
The cold had really gotten to me, chilling my bones down deep, by the time a dark blue Porsche wheeled into the parking lot and I was shivering from head to toe. She slowed to idle when she reached me and I slipped inside, slamming the door.
I took in a breath of stuffy air, new car smell extra bad. At least it wasn’t burning C-4 fumes.
Nic immediately reached to the dash and got the heat blaring to life and I shuddered, gooseflesh sharpening on my arms. I aimed the vents at my face and let it warm me.
“Are you okay?” she asked softly.
Okay. Okay. I stared out the window, at the cone of yellow headlight cutting over the white from the storefronts, at the pebbled cement and broken bottles glittering to the side, and couldn’t glance at her—couldn’t meet her eyes—because I thought that I might finally break.
Okay.
I swallowed a rough lump in my throat. “Just...just drive. Out of here. Fraser let me go but he might change his mind.” And thank you for coming to get me.
She didn’t press, just shifted the sports car into gear, and it was something that cut more than anything—that quietness, that acceptance, that...that way she just let me be instead of asking or demanding something from me.
She didn’t ask why I sold out Zara and Nate. And there was nothing awkward, nothing...judging in the air. Why? Why me?
My eyes burned and I tried to tell myself it was just the toxic fumes from when I blew up the base. I blinked a few times. Tried to focus. Fumbled around and pulled the hard drive out of my lab coat’s pocket. “I pulled this from Drew’s computer. Can you...do a techy thing with it and see what his files said about me, if anything? About my...DNA and stuff? It might be water damaged but...”
“Sure. It may take a while.”
“That’s okay.” I had time now, right? Sure—time to deal with Sean, and then the Veil, and then the people resurrecting my sister.
Lots of time for medical reading.
I slipped out of the lab coat, lump of ammo and the gun swinging awkwardly, and settled back in the seat as she turned onto a double lane road with a faded yellow strip in the center, heading for the bright, busy glow of the city. I should change the ammo in my gun. And take stock of myself for injury—I did have a healing bullet wound in my chest. And get myself dried off before I had to head back into the cold. And maybe ask Nic to spot me some change and stop at a drive-thru because I was weak and starving. But of course I did the stupidest fucking girly thing I could possibly do.
I started to cry.
My eyes burned and hot tears rolled down my cheeks. My nose filled up with stuff and I had to breathe through my mouth otherwise I’d sniffle and sound totally pathetic. GOD, Peri, you fucking SUCK. I held every breath in my chest for a moment, trying to keep it together, but I ached everywhere and adrenalin was starting to dissipate.
I killed Drew. Cut his throat.
Left Bravo Division. Blew up Bravo Division, that is.
Left my life of the last five years and I had no fucking clue what to do.
The car rumbled over to the shoulder of the road and idled, dust floating in the headlights.
Dust. Dust that billowed in the air over the shopping district in Osaka, as my apartment building collapsed in the distance. All the people screaming, those around me falling to the ground as I lost my grip on myself and became something else—went somewhere else—and everyone around me seizured and bled. Five and a half years had passed and I’d fixed...nothing. Avenged nothing. I spun my wheels, biding my time, all the while I fucking knew no one at Bravo would ever help me.
And all those five years had brought me was distance. Brought me the ability to forget little things about my kids. To be fuzzy on what Ken was wearing the day he proposed. To not remember what the curtains looked like in our apartment or what place was Shinichi’s at the table or what stories I used to tell Hisa before she went to bed. I wasn’t just a terrible person who killed and betrayed people—I was a terrible mother now too. The worst kind of mother.
A mother who couldn’t remember those she was avenging anymore.
“Peri,” Nic said softly and I squeezed my eyes shut. “You smell like blood. Is it yours?”
Fuck. I shook my head.
“What do you need?”
I need to put a fucking bullet in my head once and for all. “I killed Drew,” I whispered. And several others but I decided not to go into the details and horrify her further, even though...even though something told me I could lay it all bare and recount every moment, every life taken, and she’d still sit there quietly with me. “He wasn’t going to let me leave.”
“He was your friend.”
I shrugged and rubbed angrily at my stupid eyes. “I guess.” Friend. Maybe Drew was my friend. Or maybe I’d thought he was, never realizing he was a snake in the grass like the rest of them. Of course a nice guy wouldn’t really work there. I was stupid to even think so. “He looked at me with...with just shock. I’ve killed a hell of a lot of people, face to face plenty of times, and...”
“You have feelings. You’re allowed to—it doesn’t make you less badass.”
I gave a snort of a laugh and my chest ached—it was almost a good sort of ache, though, like working muscles during exercise. I swiped at my eyes with the back of my hand again and stared at the dashboard.
“He was in love with me. Drew. I knew it but...but I couldn’t...”
“Reciprocate,” she filled in.
I nodded. “I just...think I can’t. Ever.” I was opening up to her more than I’d opened up to anyone, talking like I would a counselor though I’d seen a dozen of them over the years and I hadn’t remarked on anything outside of the facts in my file. Why she solicited such a reaction in me, I didn’t know, but it was like my scalp flopped open and she could already see the thoughts inside. “That part in me is...broken or something.” Dead. Blown up in the building with my kids and Ken. Grief was a raw, open wound again, bleeding all around me. I didn’t deserve to be here. Didn’t deserve the breath filling my lungs, the moments that passed. I didn’t even deserve Nicolette’s help, or her quiet, undemanding sympathy.
“I think,” she began with care, vague French accent lilting and sunny, “that sometimes you only realize you’ve been in the light when it goes dark once more. If you seek out that light again, perhaps you’re not entirely broken.”
The words hung between us, heavier as the moments ticked on. I stared absently at the road in the headlights, building up a wall so that I didn’t think right then because if I did, I didn’t suppose I’d like where my brain went. I occupied my hands by wiping a few more times at my face. I sniffled. It was an ugly sound that made me cringe even as a deranged laugh tickled my throat.
“Are your people going to come after you?”
“Dunno.” I blinked a few more times and could finally see out of my stupid eyes. My head was clearing up again, working and turning—or at least as much as it was capable of. “Fraser saw me leave. He doesn’t want me back but he doesn’t make all the decisions. Also...I kinda blew up half the base.”
She chuckled, the sound warm and twisting through the car, wrapping around me, strangely. “See? Still badass. Are you ready to go?”
I wasn’t the one who stopped the car in the first place but I nodded. “Is Zara going to kill me?”
Nicolette switched out of park and rolled us onto the road again. “Would you mind terribly now if she did?”
I had no answer for that.