My hands have fallen away from him to rest at my sides; I’ve given up.
The pressure in my head feels like it’s going to spray pieces of my skull everywhere in a matter of seconds. So, it takes me longer than it should to realize that my arm is resting on something bulky and rough. I can picture it suddenly: durable canvas with the LINA’s name stitched in bright red, the letters fraying a little from frequent handling.
The tool kit.
I fumble, my fingers numb and nearly unresponsive, until I manage to lock on to the textured plastic handle of a tool. A screwdriver.
With the last bit of energy I have, I haul my arm upward and toward the side of Reed’s face, pointy end of the screwdriver out, aiming for his temple.
The strike doesn’t have much force behind it, but I feel the metalblade scrape sideways past something soft, meeting minor resistance that gives way, until it’s stopped by a solid wall of what feels like bone.
He screams, and his hands vanish from my neck. “My eye!” He half crawls, half falls off me.
Rolling over to my side, I suck in air, coughing and choking, each breath slicing through my raw throat, like inhaling shredded glass.
“I can’t see! I can’t… you bitch!” Reed sounds closer to hysteria now, never mind that he can’t possibly know whether I’ve blinded him or not, given that it’s as dark in here as it ever was. “I’m going to… you’ll pay… it’s just the beginning…”
As he continues mumble-shouting, I haul myself to my hands and knees and crawl away from him, my damaged throat pulsing like a second heartbeat but still functional.
I have to stand. I have to run.Wehave to run.In his current condition, I have no doubt that Reed will kill me if he gets another chance. Kane, too, if Reed comes across him.
Dizziness washes over me the second I’m mostly vertical, and I have a moment of swirling vertigo, intensified by the darkness. I can’t see if I’m falling, which way is up or down, and my body is sending me panicked signals about the ground coming up fast.
I thrust my hand out, automatically, seeking something to hold on to.
My fingers brush over rough fabric, warmed by human skin beneath.
I jerk back before my brain clicks in. Reed is behind me, still ranting beneath his breath. And the ghosts I’ve encountered—so far anyway—don’t hold body heat.
Kane.
I reach out again, finding his back and then his shoulder. I follow the line of his arm down to his hand, to his familiar calloused fingertips.
It is him.
My relief is so powerful it almost chokes me. A lump swells in my throat, and tears of pain roll down my cheeks.
Just as before, he won’t take my hand but allows me to take his. So I do.
And we run, me pulling him along, as fast as I can, in the dark. It feels like running out in blind faith, knowing there’s a drop-off into nothingness but not knowing where.
Every step feels like our last one.
I’m frantically trying to remember the gentle curve of the corridor, the exact position of those decorative tables.
I find one of them painfully with the edge of my hip; as I stumble past, the vase of dried and dead flowers wobbles on its base and falls, with a crash as loud as an explosion.
Behind us, Reed’s mumbling cuts off with a snarl. Pounding footsteps ensue. And pursue.
Fuck.
Limping now, I tug at Kane to keep moving. The broken glass crunches beneath our feet, giving Reed our exact location. If he’s coherent enough to listen for that and figure it out.
But the darkness ahead of me is getting lighter, I’m sure of it. Though, not as bright as it should be, given the number and intensity of the lights I saw Diaz’s team setting up.
We burst past the retracted bulkhead doors onto the landing for the Platinum Level, near the spiral staircase to the atrium below. The empty pedestal that formerly heldGrace(orSpeed) at the top of the stairs is a welcome and familiar landmark.
And about the only one.
