part0021

I ease myself upright. Pause for a split-second before opening my good eye. I’m on the floor, beside the stage with the pole in the main room. My right hand is trembling. I try to make a fist, but it’s cramping too much to allow it. My T-shirt is back on my body and stained with blood.

What the hell is going on?

I look around. All the doors in here are closed. There’s no sign of anyone. Everything has been removed from the walls.

I look behind me. There’s a pair of legs standing there. They’re nice. I follow them up. Ruby is stood, tied to the pole in the middle of the stage. Her dress is torn and stained with blood.

I get to my feet, which is a slow and painful process. I can’t physically stand up straight. I hunch over, hugging my battered and beaten torso with one arm. Gradually, I reach up with my other and start working on her restraints. Her hands are bound above her head, and it hurts as I stretch to reach them. I go up on my tiptoes and lean over, trying to gain extra height and take some pressure off my ribs. Doing so puts my head and shoulders an inch from Ruby’s face. As I fumble with the rope, she momentarily rests her head on my shoulder, in the crook of my neck.

“Jesus, Adrian—you look like shit,” she says.

I smile. “Thanks.”

“What did she do to you?”

I manage to get her hands free. She places one gently on my face and smiles before bending over to untie her own ankles. I practically collapse back down onto the stage, thankful I’m no longer on my feet.

“Until I passed out, she was beating the crap outta me,” I reply. “After that, who knows?”

She sits beside me and places a hand on my leg. “I… ah… I heard everything she said in there. Kinda hard not to. You know she was just trying to get inside your head, right? You can’t believe her, Adrian. The things she said… they weren’t true.”

I scoff. “Weren’t they? They made a lot of sense. She sure convinced me, anyway.”

“Well, speaking as someone who would happily describe themselves as one of your loved ones, I can confidently say she’s full of shit! You can’t allow yourself to think like that. All the good you’ve done for this world, even when you had no reason to… she doesn’t know you. Not like I do. Not like Josh did. Don’t let her break you, okay?”

I smile weakly. “Thank you.”

I’m not sure I completely believe her, but I appreciate the sentiment all the same.

She wipes some blood from my face. “So, were you really on camera?”

I nod. “Yup. Over a hundred million viewers last time I saw the screen.” I make very weak, very sarcastic jazz hands. “Yay… I’m famous again.”

“Do you know why she didn’t kill you?”

“No idea. Not complaining though. But I… I think I might need medical attention.”

“I think you’re right.” She nudges me playfully and gets to her feet. “Come on, let’s get out of here. We need to lay low, regroup, figure out our next move. It’s a blessing they didn’t kill us, but you have to believe the entire Kazawa family will be hunting us now.”

I push myself upright again, remaining slightly hunched to ease the pain shooting through my body. I see sympathy in Ruby’s eyes. I see her struggling with seeing me hurting so much and not being able to help. But then I see her attention move to something else. Something behind me.

I frown. “What is it?”

“Um… we should go. We should go right now.”

“Why? What’s—” I look behind me. Against the wall beside the door Ruby came out of earlier are two barrels. Big, rusty, forty-five-gallon things. Stuck to the side of each of them is a block of C4 and a timer, counting down. I squint, trying to focus through my one good eye to make out the numbers. We have about eight minutes.

I let out a heavy sigh. “Oh.”

“Come on!” she shouts, heading for the door that leads to the exit in the alley.

She rattles the handles, pushes and pulls against it, slams her shoulder into it…

“Try the others,” I say to her.

She dashes around the room, going through the same routine with the other three sets of doors. Each time, the same result.

I look back at the bomb, then at Ruby. “Wait, aren’t you good at disarming these things? Remember North Carolina a couple of years ago? You literally saved my ass when your ex-boyfriend strapped a bomb to my chair.”

She sighs. “Yeah, but that was two years ago. I’m a little rusty. Besides, I can see from here at least two failsafe triggers on those things. I wouldn’t have a clue how to safely disarm something that complex. It’s not worth the risk tampering with it.”

“Well, we gotta do something!”

“Don’t you think I know that? But all the doors are locked shut. I can’t bust them open. You damn sure couldn’t, in your condition. All the weapons have been taken from the walls. There isn’t another way out. We’re… we’re trapped in here.”

Out of habit, I look around the room, taking in every detail, doing what I can to process it in what’s left of my conscious mind. A million questions all at once. A million ideas on how to get out of here.

My gaze settles on the bomb in the far corner.

Just under six minutes now.

I drop to my knees. Partly because standing is simply too much to ask. Mostly in defeat. The realization that there’s no way out of this room hits me like a wrecking ball.

Ruby crouches beside me and puts her arm around me.

“Come on, Adrian. I know you’re hurt, but we have to—”

She frowns, taken aback. “What?”

I turn to look at her, a weak smile on my face. “Don’t you see? We’re done.”

“Hey, come on! We’ll find a way out. We just need to focus.”

I take her hand in mine. Squeeze it. Rub my thumb over the back of hers tenderly.

“We’re done, Ruby. Look around. Miley didn’t let me go. She didn’t choose to leave me alive. She tortured me in front of the world and then basically buried us both beneath a building, next to a large bomb that neither of us can disarm.” I hang my head for a moment. When I look up at her again, I feel a tear form in the corner of my eye. “This is where it ends.”

“What? No!” She springs to her feet and starts moving around the room, looking high and low in all directions, as if urgently searching for her car keys. “There has to be a way. There has to be!”

I watch her, feeling more pain in my heart than I’ve felt in a long, long time. She turns in slow circles. Each time she faces me, I see a little more hope has gone from her eyes. I see the sad reality hitting home.

She begins to cry. Tears flow freely down her face as she kneels in front of me, resting back on her heels and taking both my hands in hers.

“I’m so sorry…”

“This is all my fault. I left the race with Ko. I encouraged you to take Mia… Miley… home. This is because of me.”

“Are you kidding me? This isn’t your fault, Ruby. Neither of us did anything wrong here. Miley was playing me from day one. She’s been planning this for five years. The other night in the bar, when I stepped in-between her and those two assholes… that was a set-up. This whole thing has been one long game to her.” I think for a moment. “I guess this is my fault. My fault we’re here. My fault you got hurt.”

She places a hand on my face. “They didn’t hurt me, Adrian. Not really. Roughed me up a bit, but I’ve taken much worse off better people than these assholes. Don’t worry about me. But you need to stop blaming yourself. This is not your fault, okay?”

“Yeah, it is. It all comes down to me. You heard what she said. Everything I do costs the people I care about. When I was tied up, I realized I had to die to give you a chance to live. It was the only way, and I was prepared to do it. Hell, I was happy to. Because she was right. About all of it. But that doesn’t matter now, I guess. Everything that’s happened since I killed Trent’s son has led to this moment. To us being trapped down here together with…” I glance over my shoulder at the bomb. “…three minutes to live.”

She leans forward, resting her forehead against mine. I feel her shaking as she sobs. This is the most human… the most non-Ruby I’ve ever seen her.

Breathing hurts. I guess the upside is that won’t be a problem much longer.

To think, my entire life, my journey of violence and death… it all led me here. Everything I’ve done. Everyone I’ve lost. It was all to bring me to this moment. Beaten beyond belief. Broken beyond repair. And right now, I’m closer to Ruby than I’ve ever been or will be again.

I move back and place my good hand on her chin, lifting her head, so she’s looking into my eyes.

I smile, trying to show as much strength for her as I can. “For what it’s worth, in my last moments, there’s no one I’d rather have by my side than you. Thank you for being here for me, Ruby. I couldn’t have got through the last two years without you.”

She smiles back but says nothing.

“I honestly didn’t think it would end like this, but then, there’s something poetic about going out in a blaze of glory, right?”

“You’re an idiot,” she says, smiling back.

Time slows to a crawl. It’s as if I can hear the seconds tick by on the bomb. I stare into Ruby’s eyes. Her emerald orbs are still full of life, despite what awaits us both in the next two minutes. I see them glisten with tears waiting for permission to fall.

She takes a breath. “Adrian, I… if this is really it, I just want to say that…”

We rest our foreheads together again, kneeling in front of each other, holding each other as we wait for the end.

We part. We smile. A tear rolls down both our cheeks.

“I love you,” we say in unison.

We laugh and move closer. I don’t feel awkward anymore. If the last thing I ever do on this earth is kiss Ruby, I’ll consider it a life lived well.

Our lips are millimeters apart. I hear her catch her breath. I close my eyes.

My eyes snap open again. I grimace and close my right one, forgetting the pain. We lean back, frowning at each other.

“What was that?” she asks.

“I dunno. It sounded like it was coming from—”

The main doors burst open, almost tearing from their hinges. The influx of daylight from the corridor is blinding. The silhouette of a figure standing in the doorway slowly fades into focus.

I shake my head with disbelief. “Ichiro?”

I go to stand. Ruby jumps to her feet to help me. Ichiro rushes to my side to do the same. I glance back at the timer.

Eighty-seven seconds.

“We gotta go. Now!”

Ichiro looks at the bomb. “No shit.”

With an arm resting over each of their necks, we move as quickly as we can out of the room and along the corridor, toward the hidden exit to the underground club. Ruby and Ichiro are practically dragging me.

I’m trying to count in my head.

Maybe sixty seconds left.

We make it outside. It’s bright but cold. No idea what time it is. I don’t know how long I was in there.

We all struggle up the steps. Turn and quick-step to the street.

About forty seconds.

Ichiro’s car is waiting. Without hesitation, Ruby dives onto the back seat. I fold myself into the front. The lack of space actually helps, as I’m forced to ball up, which alleviates a lot of the pressure on my broken ribs.

Ichiro gets in behind the wheel. Fires it up. Speeds out into traffic, narrowly avoiding a collision.

We get to the end. Take a left, running the red light.

We head down the first right, already lost in the sea of daytime traffic and chaos that flows through Tokyo each day.

A thunderous explosion rings out behind us. I turn in my seat and see a thick, black plume of smoke billows toward the sky. Cars screech to a stop. People on the streets run in mindless directions, screaming.

I glance at Ruby, who’s lying across the back seat, staring blankly at the roof of the car. She’s breathing fast. No doubt relieved to be alive.

I turn back around. Rest my head back against the seat. Focus on my breathing. As slow as I can. As deep as I dare.

I lift my left arm and place my hand on Ichiro’s shoulder.

“What the hell took you so long?”

He laughs his trademark belly laugh as he navigates the streets, steering around cars stopped haphazardly by the explosion.