35
“Hells Revenge cooks in my heart, Death and despair flame about me!”
Emanuel Schikaneder, Libretto of The Magic Flute
“March. This is it!”
How fitting, I thought, as the first angry notes of the Queen of the Night’s aria filled the dome. A vengeful rant and a promise of death: I almost felt stupid for not having foreseen that Gerone would pick that particular scene for his grand finale.
March sprang from his seat and whispered into a tiny mic concealed under the lapel of his tux, sending a signal for Ilan and the Taco Delta team to go ahead and blow up the filtered water tanks.
He took my hand and practically hauled me up from my own seat. “Island, we’re moving!”
Across the Poseidon Dome, the soprano’s voice gradually rose, and those terrible, grandiose F’s tore the air. They rang in my skull as we ran down the stairs to the orchestra, sharp like the dagger the Queen wielded.
We reached the ground floor and raced toward the stage in the dark. A rush of adrenaline surged through my veins when cold wetness splashed my feet. The water. No one had noticed yet, and the soprano kept singing, each note higher than the previous, until the aria ended, and a round of applause thundered in the hall. On the stage, however, the singers looked down at the orchestra in confusion. It was a woman’s ear-piercing shriek that started the commotion. The singers and musicians snapped out of their shocked daze and ran away, some back to the wings, others hurrying up to the doors without even taking their instruments.
The water was now rising fast, and the spectators panicked in their turn, scrambling up from their seats. I heard a child’s cries. There was nothing I could do, and in that moment, I felt shitty that the whole thing was my idea, and that these people were experiencing what might turn out to be the biggest fear of their lives. March and I were less than twenty feet away from the stage, trudging ankle deep in a pool that shimmered and undulated across the orchestra’s floor. We dodged countless tuxes and wet dresses; some bumped into my arm, and I hissed through the jolts of pain.
“Stay close.” March took my hand and pulled me to him, shielding me from the last spectators running away.
All around us, lazy vibrations and metallic moans indicated that security had regained control of the elevation system. Waves crashed against the dome; we were rising back to the surface. Relief washed over me, so intense that my knees grew weak for a second. A strange peace fell onto the hall as we reached the orchestra pit. There too, instruments had been abandoned, and glitter from the stage decor floated across the water’s surface.
March helped me up the stage, and I ran toward the giant black lotuses that had bloomed earlier around the Queen of the Night. The petals were made of velvet-lined plastic, and pleated golden tulle in their center made for a seedpod. I carefully lowered myself inside the biggest flower, and my feet met something hard.
“Help me; there’s something inside,” I said to March.
Shredded tulle flew in all directions as we uncovered what seemed to be a giant black sphere and heavy-duty four-hundred-ampere cables underneath we couldn’t easily reach.
“I think it’s the cannon, but I don’t know how to cut the power. I can’t see where the cables go.”
I crawled closer to the sphere, battling the waves of pain shooting up my wrist. God, if this thing went off and fired high-intensity ultrasounds directly in my face, I’d probably be howling in agony and begging for the sweet kiss of death in seconds. That’s the sort of LRAD they use against protesters who stand dozens of yards away from the device. Now imagine being nose-to-nose with it . . .
March helped me out of the flower.
I gestured to the deadly boom box we’d just uncovered. “We need to cut the power and disassemble it. And we need to do it fast. Gerone isn’t stupid; the cannon might be connected to its own generator.”
“All right, I’ll warn Erwin’s team.”
As he reached for the tiny mic in his lapel, splashing sounds reached us, coming from the orchestra. We both looked down to see Sabina, whose silk sheath dress left little to the imagination now that it was half-drenched. She rolled frightened eyes at the lotuses onstage. “Is it there? The cannon?”
“Yes. We need to get away from here. Where is Dries?” March asked.
She wiped tears from her eyes with her forearm. “He went after a man.”
Alex . . . ? I frowned. “Who? Did you see him?”
“No.” She sniffed. “Dries said he’s a little shitstain.”
Yup. Alex all right.
March forced a smile on his lips. “Come on, Sabina. We can’t stay here.”
She extended her hand to him. “Yes . . . we need to find Dries.”
I nodded. “Yeah, we—”
The ultrasound wave hit me like a freight train, the unbelievable power of the vibrations twisting me into knots. Over the agonizing pain in my skull and the nausea boiling at the back of my throat, I saw that March and Sabina had collapsed too in a similar fashion.
March called my name, reaching for me, hauling me up. I didn’t answer. There was no time, and I could barely stand. I thought, We need to see where he is. It’s the only way, and that’s when I remembered the infrared glasses I’d put back in my clutch when leaving the box. The bag was a few feet away—I’d dropped it when climbing inside the lotus. I wrenched my hand away from March’s and went to my knees, grabbing at the bag.
I struggled to bring the glasses to my eyes. Was I hallucinating those cracking sounds around us? I prayed I was. In the deserted concert hall, all it took was one look. High above us in the backstage scaffolding, a bright spot moved, the glowing heat of several bodies. I pointed the direction to March and screamed at the top of my lungs, “Up . . . there!”
Never had I been so glad to be dating a former hit man. I saw his arm rise, aiming at the shadows moving in the scaffolding. A series of shots cracked over the powerful hum filling the dome. I registered a muffled groan. Above us, something fell down, clanking repeatedly against the scaffolding’s steel. And, blessed be Raptor Jesus who no doubt guided March’s aim, the pain stopped. Footsteps shook the metal structure right before the bullets started raining.
“Island, stay down!”
March’s command was superfluous—while Sabina threw herself to the ground with a scream, I curled into a ball behind the black lotuses, feeling in sadly familiar terrain. Yet, for the first time, I wasn’t scared. I was under an unbelievable amount of stress, and enough adrenaline pumped in my veins to trigger a heart attack, but I wasn’t paralyzed by the same sort of immediate fear of death I’d always experienced until now. Somewhere along the way, over the past six months, I had toughened up.
In between two rounds, I saw March run toward the scaffolding’s stairs and find shelter a few yards away from it, behind one of the fake walls enclosing Princess Pamina’s bedroom. In the dark, shapes moved, shooting in March’s direction as they climbed down the stairs.
I figured my day wouldn’t get much worse anyway—still hiding behind the biggest lotus, I pulled out my gun. Cocked, unlocked. Panting fast, I raised my arm and took a series of blind shots toward the bunch of shadows I assumed to be Gerone’s men. I entertained no hope of hitting anyone, especially given how my arm shook each time I pressed the trigger. I just wanted to distract them long enough for March to get up those stairs and teach them why both Erwin and the Queen appreciated his services so much.
As expected, as soon as I as started emptying my magazine their way, loud shots strafed toward me. I covered my head reflexively when bullets crashed into the lotus I’d been shielding myself behind. Velvet and glittery shredded tulle flew all around me. If these idiots managed to ruin Gerone’s cannon, we’d at least be able to call it a night. Someone smart shouted for the men to stop shooting at the lotus. Right afterward, a new pair of footsteps clanked on the boards of the scaffolding. March had managed to get up there.
I saw a guy wearing the Poseidon’s teal uniform fall from the scaffolding and crash onto the stage in a pool of blood. I heard fighting and several rounds of automatic fire, before a second body fell down the stairs. I figured that for these guys, it must be like in those horror movies where some creepy space creature is waiting in the dark for an opportunity to snatch you and spit back a body part in front of the camera. I’m pretty sure that’s how some of them must have felt as March progressed up the stairs . . .
I could no longer see him, but, crawling a couple of feet away from my hiding spot, I made out two bodies wearing black fatigues resting on the scaffolding’s first story. I prayed he was still doing fine and eating people up there. My gaze locked on that thing I’d seen fall earlier, a small black device, a phone maybe, still resting on one of the steel boards—March had been perhaps a little too busy to pick it up. I tightened my grasp around the P99 and took a shaky breath. In the orchestra, Sabina still sat huddled between the first and second row, while up there, her crazy ex was getting ready to crush us all under an approximate seventeen thousand tons of water. Possibly with that very device . . .
When the gunshots paused, likely because each side needed to reload, I scuttled all the way to the stairs leading up the scaffolding. If March ever noticed me climbing over the renewed fire exchange, he didn’t shout for me to get down like I feared he would, which would in turn give away my location. It was only when I reached the first floor and found myself shrouded in darkness and standing among dead bodies that around the P99’s grip, my hand started shaking. I swallowed and steadied it.
The board I stood on couldn’t be more than thirty feet long, and at the end, a blue hue filtered, coming from the night sky outside the dome. I glimpsed my goal, which rested a few feet away, on the edge of the board. I crouched down and listened, still as a sparrow. Metal clanked above my head, the noise barely perceptible. Whoever it was, they were at least two floors above me. I crept forward and struggled to grab the black object with my left hand—yep, that hurt, but I didn’t want to let go of the gun I held in the right one.
The device did look like a phone, but the screen was fingerprint locked, so no way to find out if I could use it to at least call my dad. I tucked it in my bustier and made my way back to the stairs. The gunshots had stopped, but I didn’t like this new silence. I needed to find March.
As I'd feared, on the second story, I found several dead bodies, some wearing the same teal polos as the Poseidon’s personnel. I was about to proceed to the third and last level of the scaffolding, but I froze. Fifteen feet above my head, I caught the dangerous whisper of March’s voice, speaking to someone.
“Have you ever met him? What can you tell me? Speak. Or die.”
A chilling synthetic voice answered him. “You can’t kill me. Pio already did.”
Gerone. I climbed the first steps as silently as humanly possible. Around the gun’s grip, my fingers were clammy.
“Maraì? Not a lab accident then?” March asked in that stony, remote tone I knew he reserved for clients.
When I was close enough to see him, March’s fingers clenched, save for the index, which he shook slightly in a no gesture. Relief flowed through me as I realized he knew I was here. Had probably known all along, in fact. I stayed hidden. At his feet, bathed in the bluish hue coming from the glass, an indistinct mass rested, wearing a blood-soaked tuxedo. The man raised his head. I jerked in surprise when a human face appeared, framed by wavy gray hair. Not Gerone? No, it had to be a silicon mask, because nothing was moving on that ageless face, even as the robotic voice echoed again, ghostly.
“He knew what was in my report,” Gerone said. “I showed him, told him. But it was always the money, the production costs, all against hypothetical risks. I taught him the difference between hypothetical and zero.” He was shaken by a series of hiccups I realized were in fact uncontrollable laughter. “Surely now you understand that difference too.”
“Are you saying he caused your accident?” March prodded.
A whizzing sound fought its way out of the mask. “He locked me in the test chamber.” With a sigh, he seemed to calm down. “He didn’t even have the courage to finish me. He ran away when security arrived, like a coward. How glad he must have been that I couldn’t speak anymore, couldn’t move for months.”
“But you took the settlement money.”
“That was his mistake. Without it, I would have never recovered.” His chest heaved a few times. He was laughing again. “I would have never been able to convalesce in Pretoria.”
March’s spine straightened. “Where you met Anies.”
“Him,” Gerone corrected. “We don’t say his name, and you shouldn’t either. Although it doesn’t matter much in your case.”
“Why serve him?”
“Have you ever been near him?”
There was not a trace of admiration to be found in March’s voice as he answered, “I have.”
Gerone’s body relaxed. “I met him at the clinic one night. He never even told me what he was there for. My mask wasn’t working very well then, but he was interested in my work. We spoke for several hours.” He paused. “It was like being near the sun.”
Burning bright, attracting those around him, reducing them to ashes. Yes. Although I had never met Anies, I could imagine him as that sort of man. Solar, in the most dangerous way.
Gerone was breathing hard, but none of what he might possibly be feeling was conveyed by the computerized voice. “He brought me back to life. He gave me strength and purpose.”
Strength and purpose. Why did that sound suspiciously like the kind of motto a Lion could have lived by? Alex’s words back in Krvavica played in my head. He’s gonna fuck you up . . . Maybe it wasn’t just his accident. Maybe Anies had groomed Lucca Gerone and “fucked him up.”
March knelt by Gerone’s prone body and picked him up. “You’ll tell that to my good friends at the CIA. I’m certain they’ll understand.”
Gerone panted. “You’re wasting your time.”
No, he was. Anyone who knew March would have been aware that he wasn’t the kind of guy you stalled or derailed with words. He secured Gerone’s body in his arms and turned around. At last our eyes met, and I managed a smile when I got visual confirmation that he was physically okay. The blood on his shirt wasn’t his, and while the crease-free technology had been defeated by the events of the night, we would leave this place alive, and it was all that mattered to me at the moment.
I pointed at the phone in my bustier. “I wanted to get this.”
“Thank you. Let’s go. I want to get you and Sabina out of here. Then I’ll look for Dries.”
I nodded, my throat a little tight. No lecture on the risks, no demands that I never do that again. For the first time since we had met, March and I were equals. Just equals.
When we reached the stage, Sabina was waiting for us. No doubt having noticed the absence of gunfire, she’d gotten up from between the seats and ventured closer to the lotuses to examine Gerone’s sound cannon too.
At first, she didn’t react, fooled by the silicone mask. With a pair of sunglasses, he could have been anyone; maybe we’d even walked past him in the dome, totally unaware. The eyes though, they were wrong, like the eyelids didn’t crease around the eyeballs in a natural way. That’s what must have tipped her off.
She ran toward us, a sob breaking her voice. “Lucca!”
A pang of sadness squeezed my chest; she still wouldn’t give up on him. She took a step toward us; her eyes were wide with distress. “Is he dead? Is he dead?”
“No,” March said. “But he needs medical attention.” He laid Gerone on the stage, checked something on his watch, and spoke a few words in the speaker hidden in his lapel, apparently asking Ilan and the Taco Deltas to join us and pick up Gerone.
For the first time, I was able to take a good look at the wound Gerone was clutching on his chest. It looked bad; blood oozed from the bullet hole, overflowing between his knuckles in dark rivulets. Sabina climbed on the stage and approached him with cautious steps.
She knelt by his side. “Sta andando tutto bene, Lucca.” It’s going to be okay, Lucca.
A whizzing sound came from under the mask, and his upper body shook quietly. He was crying, mourning, but no sound would come out. “Volevo a rimanere per sempre. Mi ferisci.” I wanted you to stay forever. You hurt me.
She wiped tears from her eyes. “Lo so, ma ti ho perso. Mi ha ferito anche.” I know, but I lost you. It hurt me too.
All of a sudden, Gerone started convulsing. Sabina pressed her hands on his wound with a desperate sob, and I too thought he was dying. I panicked, but when he kept going, I realized that this was in fact uncontrollable laughter.
The computerized voice rose. “Knock, knock.”
Sabina looked down at him with a mixture of relief and confusion.
“Knock, knock.”
March’s eyes narrowed, and my index curled around the P99’s trigger, sticky with sweat. “Stop that, please. Save your strength for the police.”
“Knock, knock.”
None of us had the time to ask who’s there. Two gunshots ricocheted in the concert hall. I crouched reflexively; March yelled for Sabina and I to get down. But it was too late. Between her breasts, a large red rose was blooming already. She collapsed on Gerone with a gasp, her mouth working in vain.
Before I could even process that there was at least one shooter remaining in the concert hall, March had grabbed me and thrown us both off the stage and into the relative security of the orchestra pit. Pain shot in my wrist as I landed in cold water, surrounded by floating purses vomiting makeup, tissues, and opera tickets. He dragged me into a corner, gun in hand. I’d lost my own weapon in the fall, but it was not what worried me. Next to me, March’s breathing sounded fast and ragged.
Two shots. One that killed Sabina, and . . .
I checked his tux jacket frantically. There was a dark hole on his side. My heart rammed against my ribs. The jacket was supposed to be bulletproof! What kind of ammo . . . ?
March clutched the wound and gasped. “Stay down, biscuit. Erwin’s men are almost here. It’s going to be all right.”
No, this time, I wasn’t sure it would be, because the blood spreading on his shirt . . . it was his.