I got ice in my veins,
blood in my eyes.
Hate in my heart,
love in my mind.
•••
We find out pretty quickly that Luke's motor skills are not ideal.
He only takes a few steps out of the room before he stumbles and almost falls, and Michael has to catch him before he can hit the ground. He's wincing, a look of discomfit and pain on his face.
"Your bones are still weak." Michael sighs, and Luke brushes him off. He runs a hand through his ratty hair, twirling the knife he got off Ares in his other.
"I'm fine." Luke says, setting his jaw. "But I still think this is a bad idea."
"You think anything that isn't suicidal is a bad idea." Ivy retorts, standing in front of us all with a hand on her hip. The gun is still in her belt, along with more bullets thanks to Ares's dead body. There was also another pistol, which Michael picked up immediately. It rests in his free hand. Luke got all of the daggers and blades off of the dead guards belt and made a makeshift sheath, but it's still half the size of his original one.
"Well, technically this is suicidal." Luke says, as we continue to move forward. "We are literally walking into a giant death trap. Every guard in this place is expecting us now."
"I'm not worried." Ivy responds. She's gone full machine mode, her stance rigid and strong, gripping the sword Michael gave her with white knuckles. Her face is expressionless. Luke stops walking again, swaying a little.
"Ivy, if you're just doing this to get back at me, it's not worth it." He says, pain laced in his tone. He sounds so, so tired. "I can handle this myself. I want you guys to get out of here alive."
Ivy stops, before turning around slowly to face him. She's scarlet. Here we go.
"Look, Luke, I don't know if you realize this, but this massive fucking mess you've gotten yourself into has collateral damage, and you're out of your damn mind if you think you can clean it all up alone." She steps closer to him with every word, until she's literally inches from his face, boring her eyes into his. "You're a good fighter, but you can't slash your way through this one. It's too big. So shut the hell up and let's just get this done."
Ivy steps away from him, fuming. If it were possible there would be smoke coming out of her ears. I did expect this eventually, but not so soon.
"Ivy..." Luke whispers, reaching out to her. She turns away. "I'm so sorry."
"Sorry doesn't bring Xavier back." She replies quietly.
She might as well have shot him. His expression falls into something I don't think any of us can retrieve him from, and his eyes redden around the edges, but he doesn't cry.
The mention of my late best friend has a lump forming in my throat, but I swallow it down. Luke has served his punishment. There is nothing I can do about it. Zay was never one to hold grudges and I know he wouldn't want me to now.
"Guys, we need to keep moving." Michael mutters, pushing past us to keep walking. After a few moments of silence, the rest of us follow.
The cool air of the hall sends goosebumps up my arms and back, ghosting over my bare stomach and shoulders. The axe is a heavy weight on my belt, but I clutch Luke's knife instead of it. For some weird reason, it feels more secure.
The hall seems endless, and we walk for a solid five minutes before finally coming to its end. It's end being two small but heavy looking wooden doors, glazed in red with large bronze handles.
"Weapons on the ready." Ivy says, adjusting her grip on the sword in her hand. The gun rests on her belt. "We have no idea what could be behind these doors. Once we get out there's no coming back."
Luke shifts his weight, hiding his wince as he arms himself with two knives from the makeshift sheath on his belt. I don't know how he expects to fight, but then again, I've seen what he's capable of. I slip his knife down into my pants, right on the curve of my hip, and pull the axe out of its loop. If there's forty guards behind this door, I'm going to need some firepower.
Jess and Ashton have formed a united front, standing shoulder to shoulder with their weapons out and ready. Michael is beside them, his expression stony, holding his gun and waiting. He gives Ivy a nod.
Ivy takes a deep breath, readies herself, and slams her foot into the center of the doors. They creak loudly as they swing open, and I hold my breath, only to release it in one quick puff.
There's a small hallway on the other side, stairs marking the end of it. In the center of the hallway stands three red-suited people, one woman and two men, unarmed. I'm too shocked to do anything, and apparently, so is Ivy. These aren't soldiers. They look like business attendants.
The woman is the one who speaks first.
"Ivy Stone and company, I presume?" She says, eyeing us, fighting stances and all, with distaste. "I must say, I expected a bit more."
"I'll give you a bit more." Ivy retorts, starting forward, but Michael stops her with a hand on her arm.
"We are not here to fight." The woman continues. "We are here to deliver a message. It would be in your best interest to listen."
"It would be in my best interest to kill you and keep moving." Ivy replies, her sword still raised. Michael's eyebrows are furrowed. He's studying the three Asians with a weird sort of curiosity.
"What message?" Michael says, ignoring Ivy's comment. He's stepped forward. "From who?"
"Madam Superior would like a word with you all, and has agreed to let you all walk out of here free if you cooperate." She eyes Luke warily. "Even the traitor."
"And why the hell should we do that?" I ask. I'm definitely not liking this.
"Because if you do not, I have two dozen hidden snipers in every pathway you could possibly take, ready to fire their rifles at any sign of life. The elevators are shut down without key access. The vents have been gassed. There is no other way you would be able to reach Madam Kieran or the outside." The woman deadpans, and Ivy tenses. "So I suggest that you do."
Michael leans in close to Ivy. "Your plan sucks."
"How do we know you aren't lying?" Ivy asks, but her tone is that of giving up. She knows we're screwed. She's good, Michael's good, Luke is good, but not that good. We are out of options.
"If Madam Superior wanted you dead she would have done it already." The woman says. "Now, surrender your weapons and we can begin."
We all hesitate. Jess is the one that walks forward first, handing over her shortsword. Ashton copies her, then Michael, then me. I hand over the axe, but remain totally conscious of the dagger still in my pants. I will not take that out.
Ivy and Luke are the last ones to give in, tossing their weapons carelessly into the arms of the woman's assistants with grim looks on their faces. When we're done, the woman nods, and smiles so fake I could slap her.
"Now." She says. "Follow me."
****
Thirty minutes of walking later, and we have reached the elevator.
Our weapons are handed off to officials, and more guards decide join the party. I watch as the woman scans a card over the panel, activating the doors, and the new men pile in with us. There's got to be at least six. When the chamber starts moving, I ball my hands into fists and try to resist strangling one of them. They stand between me and the others, not allowing any of us to have any close contact with each other. I can barely even seen Luke through the large red clad back in front of me.
We end up on the same floor we slaughtered the thirty guards on, the one with the throne room. The bodies have been cleared out and the portraits taken down, but there is still blood on the hardwood. I try not to slip in it as we make our way to the hallway containing the throne room.
I feel more and more like a prisoner as the seconds go by. The guards have surrounded us, guiding us forcefully along until we reach the throne room doors. The woman enters a code into the panel, and a few seconds later, it swings open.
The room is beautiful.
I didn't get a good glimpse of it the first time, since I just stumbled through, but now I get to drink it all in. The left wall is pure glass, a window shining down on the city below. The right is a mosaic of screens, each showing what looks like different parts of the world, of the continents. Two large bird wracks sit on opposite sides of a large throne, empty but taunting. As for the throne, a woman occupies it, and when she turns to look at us I swear my heart stops beating.
Nasim Kieran is fiercely beautiful, with long black hair and a silky red dress. Her eyes are half moons, her skin dark and rich. A ruby rests between her thick eyebrows, perfectly shaped and arching.
I hate her.
The sheer force of seeing her sends thousands of pounds of anger and hatred raising down on me. This is the woman who killed my family. The is the woman that killed everyone.
"Hello, soldiers. Survivors." She says, leaning forward in her throne to get a better look at us. "Please, come in."
We do. Luke is glaring at her with an expression so smoldering I'm surprised she doesn't burst into flames.
"I know you are all confused, and angry." Nasim continues, and if there weren't four massive guards standing behind me, I would lunge forward and wrap my hands around her throat. "I understand completely."
"You understand?" I snarl, the hysteria seeping into my veins, setting every nerve on fire. I am powerless to stop it. "You slaughtered billions of people. Innocent people." My family's faces run through my head over and over again. The tears stream down my cheeks, but not the sad kind. The rage kind. I'm starting to shake. I feel Luke's hand wrap around mine, but it doesn't help. I jerk it away.
"It was to prevent the genocide of the world population." The woman replies, her voice like bloody silk. "That of which I will explain to you, if you would let me."
"Whatever makes the blood of billions feel clean on your hands." Ivy says, her words like ice. The Asian Superior stands, and walks with elegant grace down the steps of her throne to face us. She is even more beautiful up close, with sharp features and silky hair. I want to throw up.
"As I am sure most of you are aware of, Jason Warner was a rather charismatic man." Nasim continues, ignoring Ivy's comment. "Charismatic enough to win an election of ten candidates, I might add. This charisma was a cover up for intense and deliberate manipulation."
"Tell me again why we should be listening to this at all?" Luke says, hatred laced into every bit of his voice.
"Because I can make one order and have all of your precious friends put into separate cells next to yours, and force you to watch while they experience the same pain." Nasim says, her thick eyebrows raised. "Any other questions?"
Luke looks like he could skin her alive. I would help him.
"Warner was, as historians would put it, the modern day Charles Manson of politics." Nasim continues, eyeing us all carefully. "Through careful and intricate influence, he was able to become not only the Superior of North America, but also the leader of the most dangerous cult ever known to human kind. This cult, which I am sure you know of now, is known to few as the Alibi Organization of the Secret Services."
Luke's breathing stutters a little. The AOSS. A cult. A secret society.
I have managed to control my breathing, but my throat is still on fire. The tears have slowed down but refuse to stop. This time when Luke takes my hand, I let him.
"The AOSS was created as a foundation for the new world order that Jason Warner believed in." She says, her heels clicking on the floor as she paces in front of us. "Those who joined joined for life, and in return were promised fortune beyond comprehension: the first citizens of a new world, one created with a massive golden throne reserved just for the man himself."
"This is bullshit." I laugh breathlessly, my head too clouded with anger and hatred to register anything else. "She's just trying to save her own ass."
"Alexandra.." Luke whispers warningly, his hot breath in my ear.
Nasim stops pacing, and walks over to me. She leans in close, inches from my face, and I well up a good wad of spit in my cheek. "My ass doesn't need saving. Do you honestly think I would have had you willingly brought here if I didn't think I could subdue you?"
I let the spit go. It lands squarely in the center of her forehead. She doesn't flinch, but I catch a glimpse in my peripheral vision of a guard reaching for a dagger. She holds a hand up and stops him.
The Asian Superior wipes the spit from her forehead with a gesture of distaste, and of course there is a guard readily available with a rag for her to wipe her hand off. Satisfaction cauterizes my nerves. For now.
"Many people, of course, backed Warner up." She continues, purposely not looking at me. As if I am nothing, beneath her. I clench my open fist. "He has hundreds of followers across the country, and the numbers only grew overtime. He had eyes and ears everywhere, technological bugs in every city, built into every bank and courthouse and streetlight. He knew everything, saw everything."
"What the hell does this have to do with you obliterating an entire nation?" Ivy asks, her jaw clenched. Nasim tuts.
"If you people would just let me finish..." She scowls, before waving a hand. "The point is, the AOSS became virtually indestructible. Destroying it would mean destroying North America. I did not think it would come to doing such a thing, but it did." She sighs. "Warner had a plan. He believed that the only way the world could be reformed was by starting over completely. He and his followers built a bomb, one similar to the ones we used, but formed through thousands of smaller parts stretched across a massive scale. If activated, this bomb would destroy everything and everyone on this planet. Warner and his followers would reside in the bunkers until the carnage faded, and rise to take over the new world."
"He was so desperate for a new world order he wanted to kill everybody?" Jess asks, exasperated. "That's ridiculous. It can't be true."
"I wouldn't say desperate. Insane, maybe." Nasim says. "The point is, he was set in this plan and built the bomb in the year after he was elected. It was scheduled to detonate the day I released my missiles. Hours after, in fact."
"There had to be another way." Luke says, swallowing hard. "There had to be. You can't justify-"
"I only found out about Warner's plan the morning of." Nasim interrupts him. "I had no time."
"Then make time!" Ivy says, throwing her hands up. One of the guards moves closer. "Capture Warner! Do something-"
"Miss Stone, what you are saying is impossible. He had followers nationwide covering his tracks. Guards watching his every move. It was difficult enough to find out the time, there is no way I could have formulated something that fast." To my complete and utter shock, Nasim Kieran actually sounds sad. Not outwardly sad, but the kind that goes down deep. The kind that tears a person apart from the inside. I can see it in her eyes, but the rest of her face is grim.
"I don't understand." I say, my voice much more steady then before. I'm still furious, heat blasting through my body, but for some reason my muscles have gone strangely calm. "If Warner was your target, why did you kill so many people? Why not just the bunkers? The missiles destroyed everything, killed everything, my family-"
"I know all about your family, Alexandra Lilian Blake." Nasim says softly. "And I am terribly sorry. But you didn't listen to what I said earlier. Warner had bugs everywhere. It would be impossible to pick the millions of them all off separately. Besides, even if we did kill him, the AOSS would carry through his beliefs and release the bomb anyway. It was a lose lose situation. Destroy the whole nation, or destroy the whole world."
My heart is slamming up against my ribcage. She's right. I know she's right. All the dots connect. The cult members refusing to give up their cause, the bunkers, the symbols, the tattoos. Everything makes sense, but it does nothing to lessen the knot twisted up in my chest.
"So you spiked the radiation molecules to destroy all technology." Michael says slowly, his forehead creased in thought. Out of the four of us, he is the most calm. "But why the mutants?"
"I needed to have insurance that there would be no survivors." Nasim replies, her dark brown eyes shining with sadness. "I couldn't afford any member of the cult to live at all, and I didn't want anybody innocent to suffer. I obviously failed."
I grit my teeth. The woman in front of me slaughtered my family and billions more. She slaughtered children, animals, ecosystems. I know she did it to prevent even more destruction, but her reasoning is blocked by one massive red wall. That wall is rage, pent up and boiling from the weeks out in the wreckage.
Speaking of walls, Luke suddenly tenses, going rigid all over. He's staring at the screens on the wall next to us, specifically, the top center. It shows what appears to be a field, stretched out wide across the horizon, with a beach in the distance. Hawaii.
However, it's not the beautiful countryside that's got Luke's attention. In the center of the frame, looking around as if he is looking for something, stands a man in a black suit and blue tie.
Our sudden break away causes everybody else to turn to the screens, and the silence that follows is deafening. My throat goes dry. I can't breath. It's an AOSS member. Alive. If I'm right and those cameras are live, everything Nasim did was for nothing.
"Yes." Luke mutters, his voice that terrifying calm that he takes on when he's really angry. "It looks like you did."
My mother. Dead. My brothers, my sister. Dead. My father, Dead. For nothing.
"That's impossible." Nasim Kieran whispers, her eyes blown wide. She's gone completely still, staring incredulously at the screens before her. Even the guards don't seem to know how to react.
"I shot my own mother because of those bombs." I choke out, my voice shaking. The fire of the rage has taken over me, and it's all I can do to refrain from giving completely in. "I put a bullet through her damn skull, and you did it all, for nothing."
I'm trembling all over, the same wild adrenaline I got from the elevator fight washing through me. The knife in my pants feels like a barbell. My fingers twitch towards it.
The Asian Superior doesn't respond. She's too shocked, staring at the screens with a horrible expression on her face. She isn't looking at me.
I can't think straight. Everything is a high red fuzz. I let go of Luke's hand in favor of clenching my fists, digging my nails into my palms and reopening the old crescent wounds.
I glance back at the guards behind us. None have guns, the one firearm is held by the last royal attendant, standing resolute a good ten feet to the right of Nasim.
A memory surfaces. Before Ivy whipped forward and blocked the bullet that would have killed her, she had turned to Michael and nodded.
I look to her now. She's eyeing me with concern. I don't say anything. I just nod, slow and deliberate. I watch the recognition in her face, see the dilation in her irises.
Then, everything seems to switch to slow motion.
I'm lurching forward, my arms moving without my consent and ripping the knife from my pants. At the same time Ivy is grabbing a dagger from the belt of the guard behind her with lightning speed and whipping it in front of her. Luke slams his head into the man behind him, before taking his sword and slitting the others throat. The gun goes off, Ivy deflects the bullet, and I take two large steps forward to jam the knife straight into Nasim Kieran's throat.
I will never understand how people can say that revenge doesn't make you feel better.
I will never understand, because as I feel the tip of the blade slicing through tendons and muscle, severing the chord to her brain and her spine, it feels like I'm cutting away my own pain. I watch the surprise flare in her eyes, see the life flicker, the blood spurting out from her lips. When she falls to her knees, I only twist the knife in deeper.
"This is for my family, you son of a bitch." I say, before wrenching the blade out and letting her crimson fan over me. She hits the ground with wide eyes, trying to speak but choking on her own blood. Her hands come up to her throat, but it's too late, and I watch the life leave her eyes with satisfaction coursing through my veins.
I'm so caught up in the moment that I barely notice the chaos around me as the others fight off the guards. I force myself to pry my dripping fingers from around the knifes handle, and it falls to the floor, the clatter ringing in the huge room.
"Alexandra!" Luke yells, and I slowly turn my head to look at him. Blood is splattered over his shirt, he's holding one of the guards' knives, walking towards me with the others in tow. All of the Red suited men that came in with us are either dead, or unconscious, littered across the floor. "We have to go, before they send in more."
His eyes trail down to Nasim Kieran, and the remaining color drains from his face. His dagger lays beside her, covered in blood, the lion carved into the hilt glaring at us with red eyes.
"Luke's right, we need to go." Ivy pants, shoving past us to walk towards the back of the throne. She's carrying two katanas, almost identical to the ones she had before if it weren't for the red handles. She must have gotten them off one of the guards. "There should be something we can use back here. Come on."
My hands shaking, I bend down to pick up Luke's knife again. He lays a hand on my shoulder. I swallow hard, giving the dead body of a woman who killed billions one last look, and move on to follow her.
•••
so that happened
can we just
anywho i hoped you liked this chapter!! im sorry if some of it seems a little rushed im a stressed out bean trying to juggle school college history and writing at the same time bear with me. this is the beginning of the roller coaster y'all things are about to get wicked
hope you guys have a good week. PLEASE VOTE AND COMMENT YOUR THOUGHTS!!
see you soon and stay rad.
xoxo
~Camryn