When Foster steps from behind the beam, gun drawn and aimed, I act.
I go limp like a rag doll. Nelson growls his frustration as he tries to hoist me up. Foster takes his shot. The bullet wizzes pastNelson, just missing its mark. Nelson abandons the fight for a hostage and releases me. He takes aim at Foster.
Grayson is forgotten in the chaos.
He rises up now, the last of his strength concentrated into one final burst. Nelson notices too late. Grayson attacks Nelson, and the gun skitters across the container. I crawl toward it, but by the time I’ve closed my hand around the weapon, I’ve already lost too much time.
Grayson has Nelson locked in a vise-grip, his arm latched around his neck. “The knife,” Grayson says.
A moment—one clear moment—where our eyes meet, and I know what I have to do.
The knife is in my hand. I look for Foster. He’s ascending the side of the container, slowly. His broken arm a hindrance. Steps deliberate, I approach Grayson. His struggle with Nelson is diminishing him further. He can’t restrain him much longer.
I meet Nelson’s eyes and, with a smile, drive the blade into his sternum. He sputters a shocked, incomprehensible admonishment—something with a mutteredbitch. I twist the blade deeper, up beneath his rib cage.
From my peripheral, I glimpse Foster’s hand reach over the top of the container.
Only seconds now.
As Nelson quickly becomes dead weight, Grayson nearly topples over. “I’m too weak…” He trails off.
“I’ll see you soon,” I tell Grayson.
“In hell, baby.” He winks.
I brace my bare feet against the metal and slam my hands into Grayson’s shoulder.
Grayson and Nelson go over the edge together. The momentum knocks me off balance, and I slip on the blood coating the container. “Grayson?—”
It happens so quickly, in a blink.
I scramble toward the edge of the container and look over theside, my hands gripped to the metal like it’s the only solid force holding me together.
I flash back to how fast the predator in the maze dissolved—how, within minutes, I could no longer distinguish his body parts. Flesh and bone liquefied.
Below me, the sodium hydroxide solution churns violently. The fumes sting my eyes, sharp and acrid. A thick film bubbles over the surface, obscuring the carnage unfolding beneath.
Then I’m pulled back. Foster’s thick arm locks around my waist as he wrangles me away from the edge. He’s telling me not to look.Don’t look.
I fold myself against him, my bones weak. Every ache and pain alive and fueling my oncoming breakdown.
“Don’t look, London,” Foster says again. He grunts from the pain of his gunshot wound. “It’s over now. They’re both gone. You’re safe.”
I squeeze my eyes closed. I’m not sure if he’s trying to reassure me or himself. He puts the call in, and within minutes the police arrive, followed by the FBI. I’m soon draped in a coarse blanket, just like the morning I awoke and Grayson was gone.
Death and freedom are sometimes described as one and the same. Death is a form of freedom—freedom from the prison of life.
I aimed to set Grayson free. In the end, I succeeded.
25
WHEREFORE ART THOU
LONDON
Avillain. A hero. And a sacrifice.
That was the missing element—sacrifice—the reason why the story was never complete before. The finality of events tie it all together. The end.
