Henri Beck & the Hidden Library | 📖

13

No one said anything for what felt like hours after they fled Sergei and the FBI headquarters. Henri was still struggling to process what happened. Those mercenaries had somehow infiltrated the most secure building in the city and nearly captured them.

Had it not been for Callahan's sacrifice...

Henri swallowed hard. Vivid images of the agent's bloody mouth and lifeless eyes pierced the veil of his heavy mind. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that'd force the haunting pictures out of the dark gallery that was his psyche. Doing so only made them clearer. More real.

Agent Derek Callahan died saving him.

He'd known the man for an hour. Maybe even less than that.

Now he was dead. And for what?

Henri dug his fingernails into the leather armrest as he sunk deeper into his seat in the backseat of his father's Thunderbird. Thea sat ahead of him while Malik guided them through the busy streets of Washington D.C. He didn't know where they were headed, but anywhere was better than where they'd just come from.

Part of him wondered if they should've gone for help. After all, they had been in the headquarters of the FBI. Surely someone else would've been able to help them. But Sergei hadn't arrived alone. What if one of his goons had gotten to them? Or what if another agent lost their life just because Henri decided to approach them?

It reminded him of the Trolley Problem—a wretched thought exercise he partook in often in his ethics class back at Westminster. If he pulled that lever, he'd be at fault for those he put in harm's way. But if he did nothing...

What would happen? The question bounced around the inside of his head like a ricocheting bullet. What if they just stopped running? What if they let Arkangel capture them?

He figured he and his sister would be fine. The same couldn't be said for Malik, though. Sergei said it himself earlier—he only wanted the Beck siblings. Malik was an unforeseen obstacle in his mission. Henri was no mercenary, but he'd taken enough upper-level math and science classes to know what happened to unwanted variables.

He couldn't condemn his new friend to that kind of fate. Especially not after everything he'd done for him thus far. Giving up wasn't an option.

But as he contemplated one of the two remaining paths to take, a pod of squad cars whizzed down the road alongside them. Their blaring sirens caterwauled past, leaving a sense of dread and guilt within his already tightened chest. He hung his head and clenched his jaw.

Involving more people in this mess wasn't an option either.

That left one single solitary path for them to take.

"We've got to do this ourselves," he said abruptly.

Malik lifted a confused brow at him through the rearview mirror. Thea turned in her seat to squint at him.

"What're you talking about?" she asked, her tone tinged with annoyance.

"We have to stop Arkangel from finding the library. But that means we have to find it first."

"Henri—"

"That also means we can't ask anyone else for help."

Thea went silent. Her face softened. Henri's own expression faltered for a moment as the sudden shift in her demeanor rattled him. He glanced at the floor of the car, which was littered with shards of glass from the shattered rear window.

"We watched a man die today. We saw a dead body." His voice hovered above a whisper. If he spoke any louder, it would crack into a million tiny pieces like the glass near his shoes. "I...I can't go through that again."