The Starling Saviour

Chapter 84

'I don't think anything is worse than this, Merlyn,' I narrowed my eyes at him like they were daggers, running my fingers through my hair as I tried to deduce what he was talking about, before I gave up, putting my hands up in hopelessness. 'So go ahead. Try me.'

'You are really going to regret this,' the assassin smirked, but I could see a spark of sadness in his eyes.

Was he going to kill me or something? No, he knew that I didn't care about dying. But what was worse than killing me?

And then it hit me. The people closest to me always got hurt, and Malcolm had always been main offender for that. I just hoped, with all my heart, that I was wrong like I had been with everything else in my life. But I needed to take precautions.

I took a Samurai sword Merlyn had on display in his penthouse and pointed it at him, my anger overcoming any of my other emotions, all I could see being red. I had always been Malcolm Merlyn's puppet; I had been stupid to think that he could've changed so quickly, for he had no humanity left in him.

'I wouldn't be so quick to kill me, Aria,' Merlyn announced with another smirk. 'Do you remember Elliot, your friend Isaac's boyfriend? He gave you a lead on Unidac, did he not?'

'What's your point with this, Merlyn?' I hissed impatiently.

'Elliot is about to return back to his hotel after being discharged from the hospital in his new, shiny wheelchair,' Merlyn started, wearing a particularly nasty smile. 'His room, and the hotel, are rigged with explosives, so if you kill me, they go off with me. Not only your friend will die, but all of the apartments on his block will too.'

'You wouldn't,' I narrowed my eyes to stop myself from crying. 'Oh, wait, you would, wouldn't you? You're even more inhuman than I thought. But I am not setting off the Markov device, I am not a monster like you!'

'Oh no, Aria, you will,' Merlyn seemed to be pretty certain on the future. 'You see, in life, we have choices, choices that will stay with you forever. Like the choice you made when you boarded the Queen's Gambit.'

'How do you know about that?' I asked him quickly, shocked. 'If you knew, why did you sabotage it? If I hadn't have survived, you wouldn't have had me to now set off this device.'

'I didn't know you were going to be on the boat, Aria, not in this timeline,' Merlyn informed me, a real sadness behind what he was saying, acting as if he actually did care for me in his own, twisted way. 'You know I would never want to kill you.'

'But you'll kill my friends?' I shot back at him. 'You'll use their lives to threaten me? You're something else, Merlyn.'

'Perhaps,' he commented. 'But I'm not the only one who will kill hundreds of innocent people.'

'I will not kill them for you!' I yelled at him, on the verge of a breakdown. 'I could never!'

'Then that will be your choice,' Malcolm nodded. 'But Elliot will die. So will Helena, and your sister, Rose.'

'How will not 'choosing' to set off the device kill them?' I was past understanding. 'What is it this time, Merlyn? Black magic? Elliot and Helena may be in this city, but Rose isn't. She's in Central City, and I doubt you can set off explosives six-hundred miles away from here!'

He turned on his computer screen, it showing three different shots of what looked like parts of homes, each shot containing one of the four people Merlyn had mentioned. Elliot was sat on his sofa, watching some TV show, Helena looked like she was making something for her dinner, and Rose was on her phone, chatting about something to the other caller. I observed them all just enough to feel nauseous, their lives on the line all because of me.