Too late.
Too late Thea reached for the headphones on Ethan’s head, some sixth sense moving her hand.
Too late because Ethan’s smile disappeared and then it all happened so fast she wasn’t able to move quickly enough. The veins in his temple and neck bulged, even his eyes bulged, the capillaries in them bursting as froth started to form on his lips.
Only then did Thea manage to knock the headphones off.
Too late.
A single trickle of blood crept down from the corner of one eye. His body stilled.
She couldn’t find the strength to move and someone was pulling at her arm and shouting at her, but she couldn’t focus on them because she still couldn’t take her gaze away from Ethan.
The trickle of blood changed course slightly, made its way determinedly towards his cheek.
There was a ringing in her ears as if a bomb had exploded and she knew people were talking but the sounds were fuzzy and she couldn’t stop looking at that trickle of blood, now slowly making its way across his cheek and down towards his ear.
Everything. Needed. To. Stop.
Noise smacked at her.
‘We’ve got to go!’
Then Ethan’s body was moving away from her. Which was odd. How was it doing that? But she realized that her feet weren’t on the floor either and that someone had picked her up, put her over their shoulder and she was being carried out.
An air pressure bubble popped inside of her. She kicked and she screamed. They couldn’t leave Ethan there, on that dusty floor, his head lolling to one side, blood coming from his eye. It was open, staring at her as if he was still alive, accusing her. Why did you let this happen to me?
She screamed and choked and gasped and was thrown into the back of a car, knowing the thunking sound she heard were the locks clicking into place.
Time disappeared for a bit. Rage filled Thea; she’d never felt anything like it before, didn’t even know she could feel something like this: this heat of anger. She kicked out against the Plexiglas that separated the front passengers from the back, kicked hard, her feet thudding in a satisfying way again and again against the plastic, smearing it with the soles of her trainers. She slapped her hands against the windows and cursed, streams of words she’d never used before, screaming until she was hoarse, kicking and punching and yelling until, at last, the rage left her limp and sweating in the back seat.
She could see Rory and Kyle at the front, Kyle driving. Not once did Rory turn to her. The car was some sort of four-by-four – big, with monster wheels that ate up the snow without any effort. Moses pretended to sleep in the seat next to her.
The silvery edges of her vision pulsed in time to her heartbeat. Her chest heaved and she tried to get her breathing under control. Now the anger had dissipated, she tried to think. Not of Ethan. Not yet. The only way she was going to get through the next few hours was by resolutely not thinking about him and the lifeless stare that was now imprinted in her memory.
This didn’t feel like rescue anymore.
Rory. Had he known what was going to happen to Ethan? He hadn’t turned to look at her once since he’d thrown her in the car. She remembered the way he’d glanced at her just before it had happened, how he had reached for the headphones, but not fast enough.
She remembered how Kyle had taken over.
Kyle. His little wave, his Eighties hair and smooth, cultured voice. The one driving the car this very minute. Could she believe anything that Rory had told her? Could they have killed Ethan through the discs, a remote-controlled death switch – just as he’d feared? But why not kill her too?
The car braked suddenly, with such force that Thea jolted forward on her seat, nearly going head-first into the Plexiglas. Moses slithered down next to her, crumpling into the footwell. It seemed that Kyle and Rory were having an argument of some kind; she couldn’t hear it because she’d just realized the Plexiglas was something else entirely, something soundproof. Kyle thumped his hand against the steering wheel.
She wished she could lip-read.
They seemed to have reached some sort of impasse, glaring at each other. Then Rory’s shoulders hunched and he crouched forward, his head in his hands. Was he crying? Thea couldn’t tell. From where she was sitting, she could only see the back of his head. Without warning, he reared back up and struck the dashboard with his fist. Kyle shrugged and calmly took the handbrake off, getting the car moving once more.
Thea needed Rory to look at her. But he wasn’t going to.
In a way that told her more.
So, when they neared the Centre but didn’t go straight to the front, instead skirting around it, towards a back entrance Thea hadn’t even known about; when she saw who was stood waiting for them, her flaming red hair a warning flag: she knew.
She knew she’d been betrayed.