Page 100 of Five

Chapter Thirty-Four - Rory

I realize I’m on a stretcher.

It didn’t fucking work! I want to cry right now. I wanted to go out a hero, saving Five from their trap, and it didn’t fucking work!

I begin to choke, and then Blondie’s face is right up next to mine. She’s running alongside me. “You’re fine, dear. We can’t afford to lose you,” she coos in my ear. “So I saved your life. Your man did show up, but he’s burning back there.”

Smoke is filling this… this tunnel we’re running down.

“What did you do?” I croak.

“Took care of things, dear. That’s all. Now be still. We’re almost to the car and you’ll be fine when I get you back to headquarters. I gave you the antidote. You don’t get to die unless we say so.”

So I’ve heard.

I struggle. If you can call it that. My whole body is weak from whatever it was I swallowed along with that wafer. I’m tied down, anyway, my wrists and legs strapped to the gurney they’re pushing me on.

I hear gunfire behind me. Bullets ping off the walls, cracking the concrete blocks and sending up a spray of dust.

“Hurry!” Blondie barks to the bodyguard.

“Five!” I say, sobbing. “Five!” I scream it louder. “I’m here!”

Her hand clamps down on my mouth, covering my nose. She’s gonna fucking smother me!

I bite. My teeth find her flesh and she pulls back, screaming. A hard slap hits my cheek with such force, I see blinking lights in the darkness that threatens to take over again.

The smoke is so thick now, the one gasp of air I manage before she clamps her hand down again is nothing but soot.

I struggle again. The binding on my right wrist is loose enough to slip my hand through, and one hand is all I need.

I grab that bitch’s hair and pull. The gurney slips to the side when she falters, and falls to the ground.

We stop, gunfire still pinging off the ceiling.

Five is back there. He’s firing to miss. To slow us down. To give me a chance to fight back.

I reach over, fumble with my other wrist binding, just as the woman starts shooting back.

She’s not aiming for the walls or the ceiling. She’s aiming for Five.

I sit up, desperate to save him. She will not kill him. I will never allow that to happen. I grab for her gun as she shoots, knock it loose from her grip, but it falls into my lap, and she’s there, reaching for it.

We struggle, her hands in my hair—she’s fighting like a goddamned girl.

I don’t fight like a girl. I fight like a Shrike.

I grab her head the same way I did Frank and smash her face into my knee.

She falls over, blood gushing out of her mouth and nose.

The bodyguard grabs me, but I have that gun. And I’ve shot a gun with my daddy so many times before this night, my fingers know just what to do.

I pull that motherfucking trigger and take his face off.

Everything stops in that moment. There’s an echo of my gunshot. There’s thick, black smoke billowing up from behind me. And then… nothing but silence.

Fuck.