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MINA
There’s so much blood. I’ve never seen so much blood in real life. And somehow this feels different than Matsumoto, because this time there are consequences I have to think about. Some people deserve to die, yes, but most evil people have someone who loves them. A mother, a wife, a child.
When you take a life, you aren’t just taking that life, you’re taking lives of innocent people who had nothing to do with any of it. Except that even though they’re dead, they still walk and talk and look like you and I. They still pass you on the street, offer pleasantries, drive in rush hour traffic, and buy overpriced coffee. But they aren’t truly alive, not anymore.
The conference room is locked. Brian bangs on the door. “Open this door!”
“Brian!” I hiss. “He’s just a scared little boy. You think he’s letting the boogeyman in?”
Brian fires shots into the door and kicks it open.
When we enter the room, the boy is hiding under the table as though we can’t see him, trying not to cry too loud. But of course we can both see and hear him. I look out the floor-to-ceiling windows, for a moment distracted by the view. You could almost reach out and touch the fireworks, and you can just make out lights from the parade below.
The kid’s sniffling from under the table draws me back.
“I have to get him out of here,” I say.
Brian puts a hand on my arm. “No. I have to call a cleaner.”
I don’t have to ask what he means. I’m not an idiot.
While Brian usually does his own clean up, it’s a lot of bodies, a lot of blood, and there’s no way we can clean it up with a parade still going on outside. Plus we didn’t prepare for this. It was supposed to be a clean job from a distance. And there are emergency vehicles all over the place down there. Police, fire trucks, ambulances. It’s a big outdoor event with explosives after all.
Except our fireworks won’t be going off tonight. We were supposed to be well away from things when the building blew, and now there’s this mess.
A burst of bright green and purple light goes off just outside the window, and the boy cries harder.
“Hey, I need to order pizza for a large party,” Brian says into his burner phone. A pause. Then he speaks again. “There are 18 of us.”
I mentally count them up in my mind. But he’s right. Eighteen. Really there are 21, but only 18 of us are dead. Everyone but me, Brian, and the boy.
“A lot of pepperoni, yeah.” Brian disconnects the call.
I don’t want to know what pepperoni means. I pull out chairs from the table and sit on the floor, motioning the boy to come out. He shakes his head furiously at me. He thinks we’re going to kill him, too.
“If we wanted you dead, the table wouldn’t stop us, kid,” Brian says, which only makes the boy wail more.
“Nice,” I say, glaring up at him. Brian has no bedside manner and has clearly never spoken to a child in his life.
“It’s okay,” I say in a soft voice like I’m trying to coax a kitten out of a tree. “No one wants to hurt you.”
I motion for him to come out, and when he finally does, I guide him over to the far side of the room and sit him so he’s facing me and one of the massive floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the fireworks display.
“I-I wanted to see the f-fireworks from high up. M-my dad said I could c-come.” With all his crying and sniffling it’s hard to make out his words.
I’m so angry. I know this kid’s dad is one of the bodies outside this room. Why would you bring your kid to some secret crime meeting? But he’s young, and they probably would have talked in code.
“Are we going to have pizza?” he asks me, guileless brown eyes looking up into mine through his tears. He looks so much like a tiny version of Brian that it makes my heart hurt.
“No, sweetheart. We’re going to wait just a while, quiet like little mice, and then I’m going to take you to someone who can take you home.”
“Is my daddy coming, too?”
I can’t stop the tears. He’s just so young. I don’t think he fully understands what’s happened, and that his dad isn’t going anywhere with him ever again.
“No, he can’t.”
“But why not?”
