Michaela didn’t have much time.
It hadn’t taken long to go through McKittrick’s plans. Unfolding the stolen documents one by one, she’d known in the space of five minutes what he intended for all that emotion. There was even a timetable. The man was that meticulous. He’d worked it all out.
Getting into the facility had been so easy that a lot of people would be getting into trouble once this was over. There was no sign of any guards. The security cameras gave her blank stares. Ten minutes of walking under their gaze and still no one had come to stop her. McKittrick had planned everything well. He just hadn’t planned on her.
The water treatment facility was much as she’d imagined. There was lots of concrete, steel stairs that clattered as she climbed or descended, and brightly coloured railings. There were large tanks and machines that were in a perpetual roar of noise. There were hooks with ear mufflers hanging from them.
God help her, she was nervous. She was hot and she was sweating and all she wanted was to skip to tomorrow to find out if her plan had worked.
She had the blueprints in her hands. They were complicated, but she was able to decipher them.
Her phone lit up. Davey again with some hard questions. She ignored it. She’d already listened to one voicemail and thrown up at what he had said to her.
All of the lights were on. She wondered if they were ever off. The city’s thirst for water never abated, and its grime and its waste never stopped flowing in the other direction. This place never let up.
She heard McKittrick long before she saw him. There was the sound of creaking metal and the smell of magic in the air. The man was using his power to lever the stiff access hatch open, and was finding it slow going. The wound in his shoulder wasn’t helping, the man holding his arm stiff to his side.
Michaela stopped to take a breath and rally her nerves. She wasn’t too late. Hurrying away, she didn’t stop until she was certain that McKittrick wouldn’t see her. She made the call, perhaps the most life-changing phone call of her life, and headed back.
McKittrick jumped when he noticed her watching from the doorway. He had only just managed to lever the hatch open onto the flow pipe that washed out into the drinking supply. Barrel after barrel of concentrated grief stood behind him, the result of all of Michaela’s hard work, ready to infect millions.
Dropping what he was doing, the man’s fingers began to work as he readied a spell and Michaela ducked back out the door.
‘I just came to talk.’
‘Are you alone?’
‘I’m alone. You killed my friend.’
McKittrick laughed, a nervous, desperate bark. ‘What did you think was going to happen? You broke into my home.’
‘You didn’t have to kill him.’
‘You didn’t give me a choice. You didn’t need to involve him. This was between you and me.’
‘He helped me because he was my friend. Do you remember that? Having friends?’
‘All I remember is a lot of people who turned their back on Melissa when she needed them most. As far as I’m concerned, they were just as guilty as the people who hanged her.’
‘And sending their leader to prison wasn’t enough? You had to kill her too? And now this? Will it ever be enough?’
The man didn’t reply; she could hear his questions fighting to be asked first.
‘I talked to my mum. She’s not doing it. She’s helping Karina. We figured it all out. Karina said she regretted what she did to your wife, that she shouldn’t have left her like that.’
‘A bit late for that, isn’t it,’ snapped McKittrick. ‘You tell that bitch what I’m doing. Then we’ll see if she’s changed.’
‘What you’re doing is wrong. No one deserves what you’re about to do. And Melissa didn’t deserve what was done to her either. No one deserves any of this.’
‘That’s just it, isn’t? No one deserves it. No one’s at fault. But it’ll all change one day, they keep saying. Why? Because they’re making flyers? Another television debate? Another fucking march?’ She could hear McKittrick moving again, the grind of grit under one of the barrels as he moved it towards the pipe. ‘But then there’s trouble, and, oh no, they can’t help us. They have to pick their battles. They stood by and they let my Melissa hang. Worse, they denied her. They denounced her. They rewrote her. Everything she did, they turned into deceit. Well, now they’ll finally know how it feels. You can’t make them see, you can’t make them hear, but this will reach them, it will go right inside them and turn them inside out. They’ll finally understand.’
Michaela had stepped out into the doorway again. McKittrick was struggling under the weight of the barrel, rolling it as best he could to the open hatch.
He noticed her reappearance but didn’t move to stop her, his uninjured arm straining to keep the barrel upright. In his left arm he held her gun, doing his best to keep it pointed in her direction.
The moments the gun barrel swung towards her felt like an electric shock, but she stood her ground.
‘There’ll be riots,’ she pleaded. ‘Suicides. I tried what we made. And I don’t know how you’ve been standing it all this time because it knocked me out. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sleep.’
‘I didn’t have a choice.’
‘But no one out there will have one. They won’t have your memories of Melissa to cling to. They’ll be grieving and angry and they’ll take it out on one another. People are going to get hurt. And even after it wears off, they won’t know why.’
‘They will. I’ve already written the message. They’ll all see.’
Michaela shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘You think you’re going to stop me?’
‘I already have. They’re on their way.’
‘Who?’
‘The police. I’ve told them everything. Might be time for you to get away, but… there definitely isn’t time for you to tip all this in the water. Especially since I would try to stop you.’
McKittrick had frozen, his face paling so much it was almost blue. ‘But you’re complicit. It’s just your word against mine. Everything we’ve done together, there is no evidence that—’
‘I know.’
‘They’ll hang you right beside me.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ She tried to keep the fear from her face. She didn’t want him to see it.
McKittrick burst into tears. He flung the barrel to the side, the lid popping and liquid grief sloshing across the floor, staining the concrete. The stink rose in the room, enough to make a pit open in Michaela’s stomach, the world turning to greys as her other emotions were crushed.
She had to cling to the door frame to steady herself. Concentrating on the feel of the cold stone under her palm, she told herself that what she was feeling was artificial and would pass.
McKittrick threw himself against the wall and slid down it, unaffected by the concentrated emotion pooling around the room. His brain had been swimming in it for years already. The gun sagged in his lap, pointing to the ground.
Despite the grief welling up inside her, it was hard to be moved. ‘You might not understand this, but I’ve lost people too. I’ve lost more than you can imagine. But you don’t get to poison people. You aren’t the hero here. I might have felt sorry for you if we’d met a year ago. But you’re a blackmailer, a murderer and a terrorist. Your grief doesn’t justify what you’ve done.’
‘And I suppose that makes you the hero, does it?’
‘I’m just making my own choices.’
There was the sound of voices coming from the distance. The sound of people shouting instructions, of boots heading their way.
‘Oh god.’ Tears spilled down Michaela’s cheeks. She fell against the door frame and slid down it herself, making sure that she kept her hands where the police could see them.
Popping the pellet into her mouth again, she reached out to her mother. She tried to tell herself that she had saved a lot of lives. But as the police spotted her, it was hard to take solace in that. She had a long journey ahead of her and she could only hope that it didn’t end in a short drop.