killer instinct - || h.s. ||

83

DOUBLE UPDATE!
read chapter 82 before this one.

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" nothing good starts in a getaway car "

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aurora astor.

My own death doesn't scare me.

No, I don't think it has for a long while now, but those I love?

God, that's my greatest fear.

I don't think I could continue to bear it. This curse of mine trickles to my fingertips like a Midas touch, wilting at every life I've learned to love. But I'm set to prove it wrong for once.

I know what I'm walking into. I know how this ends, and there's no going back now.

I didn't possibly have the kind of time to be afraid right now — afraid of this never-ending situation, afraid for my best friend only being put through this because of me, or afraid for the reality where Harry doesn't have anyone to protect him.

My phone incessantly buzzes in my hands, cutting deep into my soul with every ring of his that I allow to pass me by. It takes the last of my resolve to shut off my ringer, leaving the silence deafening.

Maybe this was selfish of me in a sense, maybe I should have waited to figure this out with him — beside him. Maybe there's a reality out there where I didn't run, but this is it now.

No matter how long I hold my breath in this car, listening to the roar of the engine beneath me as Louis allows the time for that fear to consume him beside me, it suffocates me just the same. No matter how I attempt to rewind the tape, all it does is pause.

Lou's car skids to the curb with the uncoordinated brashness of his foot hitting the brake. And he shuts his car off, nearly going flying out the door for his girl but I yank at his arm while simultaneously snapping myself out of my daze.

I force myself to breathe again.

"We don't have a plan." I voice the only weak concern in me, the broken part of my subconscious pleading for me to find one more thing to add to the reasons to back out of this.

His eyes blow out, ashy hair spilling in every which way as it practically falls over his brows. "How could we possibly have a plan for this shit, Rory?" He rebuttals. I bite my tongue, "I don't give two fucks about what we have to do. I just need her back, okay?"

I frantically nod, stumbling out of his car onto the curb of this haunted sidewalk with my city a distant eulogy — death chants with my name lingering on its lips.

And that very same warehouse this all started with stands rusting before me. The broken streetlights offer nothing but the starlight polluted by city lights and before us looms the warehouse. The sudden eerie atmosphere lays over us, crawling through my skin and bringing rise to goosebumps across my body.

I glance down at my phone, reading off the blaring numbers that scream: 5:45 AM

"Let's go." He tugs at my elbow, and I swallow thickly as I tuck my phone into my pocket.

As our soles tap against the pavement, canceling out the space between us and what lies within the walls of this building. My chest shudders with my exhale, our pace quickening as Lou drags us around the side.

The place in itself is just utterly silent.

My eyes dart around, the sunlight breaking through the horizon aiding me as I assess the building for figures in its broken windows, sudden movement, or even cameras of any kind. But the abandoned warehouse that we've roamed before stands veritably still.