‘Kaja, please—’
‘Let it go. You were able to stop me back when I was crying on that toilet at school. You’re not going to again.’
She shoved him towards the cockpit.
‘You’re right. It is my fault,’ Mats said. ‘And you know why? Because I didn’t give a shit about you.’
She stopped at the locked cockpit door, aiming the pistol right at his chest. Mats could see the keypad next to the peephole that Kaja claimed she could use to open the door.
‘All I cared about was my reputation,’ he said and kept lying. ‘Publicity. “Star Psychiatrist Saves Schoolkids!” That was the headline I wanted.’
Kaja nodded. She was squinting, probably now suffering from impaired vision, a common effect of nicotine poisoning. Her pulse would start to slow next and possibly even cause respiratory paralysis. ‘That’s exactly what Amelie said.’
Of course she had. She had used the very same lies to lure you in.
‘And she was right.’ Mats deliberately switched to a disrespectful tone. ‘I filled you full of pills, but I didn’t care about the truth inside your head. You want to end your life. And it has to be spectacular, because you need to open people’s eyes to the fact that our lives are simply not worth living. Right?’
‘Exactly.’
I overlooked it.
She had suffered from the usual dark teenage visions. Normally harmless, temporary as they were. A gloomy phase that hit most along with puberty and vanished again. But sometimes the morbid fantasies became firmly entrenched, say, after some traumatic event, such as the death of a relative. Or a friend’s suicide. It had been that way with Kaja, and Mats had failed to see it.
‘By talking you out of your death wish, I was acting no better than a priest wanting to convert a gay person to straight.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ Kaja held the gun tighter, her hand shaking. ‘You’re only making me madder.’
All the better.
‘There’s only one single person on board who deserves to die. And that’s me.’ He lowered his voice. Downright swore to her: ‘I used you, Kaja. I didn’t listen to you when you were trying to tell me how terrible the world is. Prescribed you meds that repressed your true self.’
Mats fixed his gaze on Kaja. Ready to finally overcome his own worst fear.
‘End it,’ he pleaded.
He stepped nearer, so close he could have stuck his index finger into the barrel as she raised the gun higher and pointed it directly at his head.
Half a metre away. She couldn’t miss from this distance.
All the better.
She was still saying ‘get out of my way’ when Mats threw himself at her. He sensed no pain. Just an intense burning sensation, as if Kaja had scalded him with coffee too. A busted loudspeaker droned inside his ears, the shot’s echo reverberating like some distorted church bell, its pendulum inside his head striking the top of his skull.
Copper, Mats thought and realised that all those know-it-alls could go screw themselves. It might contain only iron but blood sure as hell did taste like you were sucking on a penny, so any comparison was perfectly apt.
Only the part about eternal blackness wasn’t right.
It was more like a grey, with tiny bright spots. The size of pins, a liquid fog seeping out from behind them.
And with the fog came the cold.
And with the cold, nothingness.