“Someday, when they’ve taken everything from you and you have nothing else to offer—when they’ve grown tired of catering to that over-inflated ego—they’ll turn from you, Checkmate. You will fall, and you’ll pay dearly for what you’ve taken from me.”
She’s silhouetted in the open doorway, the light only illuminating her features as she flinches. My heart clenches as I look at her—only now seeing the heaviness in her posture, the distance in her expression. She wraps her arms around her torso, and for one fleeting moment, the sadness she so carefully hides rises to the surface.
I want to ask her to look at me, to let her see straight into my fractured soul as I take back every word, but I don’t have the right. Because that’s the problem with someone truly seeing who you are—they know exactly the ways to hurt you most.
Then she’s gone, lost in the light, and I can’t bring myself to follow her.
“Happy anniversary, Checkmate.”
3
KAYE
FOUR YEARS LATER: NOW
Ialways knew I would meet a messy end. I’m just not sure I really understood what that meant.
Death always sounds so glorious in the old myths and tales. Trial by combat. A hero’s death. Valhalla. That was never going to happen in New Malcolm, but I wasn’t about to let a little thing like that stop me.I was a hero—I had a destiny.
I was a fucking idiot.
So I closed my eyes, stuck my head in the sand. Prayed when that inevitable bullet buried its way into my skull, it would be quick.
I never expected the finger pulling that trigger to belong to someone I loved.
My lungs ache, nose burning with the pungent aroma of sweat and piss. There’s nowhere for the scent to go in my narrow hexahedron cell made of reinforced cement and iron. There were five of us stuffed in here two nights ago, packed closer than sardines in a can. Now I stand here alone, bearing the weight of that horrible freedom.
Hushed voices sound outside my cell. They keep the others out there—the heroes broken in the battles that brought them to this place. They babble and shriek; eyes peer at me from the dark corners they’re chained in. A name lingers on their lips like a dying star. A broken promise.
A curse.
Checkmate.
I’ve kissed hundreds of babies. More photo ops with the mayor than I can count. Been given the key to the city—twice.Fans screamed my name—police and EMTs shook my hand! A free drink at any Starbucks in the city any time I wanted it. As if any of it meant anything.
Keys rattle in the distance and silence crashes over the cells. Which unlucky soul has he come to claim tonight?Clack, clack, clack, clack.Patent leather shoes, new enough to squeak, pace the cold pavement, halting just beyond my cell. I press myself flat against the wall behind and hope it is enough.
A kick sends the door flying inward with enough force to shatter bones, but not mine. Not this time. My eyes sting in the harshness of the sudden light, and a mammoth of a man steps forward. His forest green suit is pressed with immaculate precision, stick-straight creases up his legs. He’s stocky, well-muscled. A bit like a boulder. His eyes shine with a dull, glassy light. A shark’s eyes.
“Where are the others?” I choke, my vocal cords smoke-choked.
He clasps the chains manacling my wrist with his meaty hand. Fine hairs crisscross the puckered skin around his digits. I force my heart rate to slow. He’s going to take me, and that’s fine. The cell leaves little room to move, let alone fight, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t eager for the culmination. For all of this to just be over.
My head pounds as soon as we start to move, a growl tearing through my stomach and seeming to echo off the walls. My equilibrium pitches as he yanks me into a narrow corridor.
Part of the speech I always gave to rookie heroes repeats in my head:Fight, flight, or freeze. Your body will choose one, and it will be the difference between life and death.
Once I would have said fight, no question. That was when my cells weren’t consuming themselves for calories. My balance falters. Bile crawls up my throat as I fall, my knee gouging itself against a sharp defect in the floor.
“Get up.” The green suit jerks me to my feet by the chain, and I spit on his shoes.
He backhands across my left cheekbone, gold rings ripping at my skin. I hope the blood colors my teeth as I smile at him. Hope I look feral, rabid. Not some lamb led to slaughter.
A sting bites the tender skin on the side of my neck. I suck down a curse as the needle withdraws.
“What was that?”
It takes effect quickly. Everything takes on a softer glow, the edges of my vision blurring until it becomes one solid lump of gray. My pounding head eases into a blissful numbness, my limbs growing heavier until I can’t feel them at all.
