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She waited for horror to halt her, but it wouldn’t.
She waited for morality to move her, but it couldn’t.
“You can’t,” came the voice from behind her, above her, around her, within her. “You can’t, Indy.”
It was Ice, and he was on his knees behind her, his body enveloping hers, his hands prying hers away from Mama’s face, his heart hammering against her back and sending shockwaves of desperate warmth through Indy’s heart, chasing away that coldness, drowning that darkness, bringing her back to someplace where she could breathe again, feel again, see again.
Love again.
And now conscience cut through Indy like a blade. Now horror hit her like a hammer. Now morality moved her like magic.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, curling her blood-stained fingers into fists as she convulsed in horror, shuddered in shame, floundered like a lost animal, shivered like a scared child. “What have I done? Oh, Ice, what have I—”
“She’s still alive,” Ice whispered against her ear, still holding her firmly against his body, shielding her from the shock of her own emotions. “But she won’t be for long if we don’t get the medics in here, probably not even if we do. Either way, we need to move, Indy. Now.”
“No,” came Mama’s whisper. She tried to raise her head, but only managed to cough out a mouthful of thick blood. “Finish it. Please. Finish it.”
Indy stared, blinked, stiffened in Ice’s arms, then relaxed against Ice’s body. “I can’t,” she said softly, gently, carefully, lovingly. “I won’t. I didn’t deserve to die like that. But neither do you. You wanted my forgiveness, and you’ll have it, Mama. Not now. Maybe not for a long time.” She nestled into Ice’s big silent body, gazed down into her mother’s dimming eyes. “But I’ll get there someday, Mama.”
Indy blinked, and now she felt warm tears gather in her eyes, sensed warm love gather in her heart.
Not love for this woman dying before her but for the child dying inside her, the child who’d been trapped in that dying moment for thirty years, perhaps thirty lifetimes.
Ice was silent behind her, holding her close but not pulling her away, like he sensed that something was coming to a close, something was being released, something lost had been found, something malignant had been extracted.
“Thank you,” said Mama, her eyelids heavy now, her voice barely a whisper, her blood almost black without oxygen, but her eyes somehow bright with hope. She took a rasping breath, somehow managed an almost playful smile. “Tell Benson I’ll be waiting for him in hell.”
Now suddenly everything came rushing back to Indy. Everything this woman had sputtered out in a muddled mass of words that were recorded somewhere in Indy’s mind.
She felt Ice stiffen behind her, like perhaps he’d heard all that garbled information and had locked it away in his own drug-enhanced brain, was reviewing it again after Benson’s name triggered its release.
“Ice, did you hear what she—” Indy started to say as Ice got to his feet behind her, pulling her up along with him, steadying her so she could step into her shoes. “She said—“
“I heard her.” Ice held Indy until she got her shoes laced up, then he grabbed his black duffel, scanned the room one more time, finally went for the hotel phone and snatched it up.
Then he dropped the receiver back in the cradle.
Indy frowned. Then she followed his grim gaze.
“Oh,” Indy managed to say when she saw the stillness surrounding Mama’s peaceful body like a shroud. “Oh, Ice . . .”
She felt that nausea rise up like a serpent, but Ice had her by the waist and he was leading her out the front door. They stumbled out into the hallway, and just as Indy opened her mouth to speak she felt Ice’s arm tighten around her waist, his warm breath rustling her hair as he spoke.
“Don’t,” he warned with a confident authority that she desperately needed right now before she unraveled, before she tumbled down that one-way street to guilt and self-loathing, to questioning whether she was a murderer and a monster. “She came here to kill us. To killyou.I told you to shoot, and you did what you had to do, what you’re trained to do. We’d both be dead right now if you hadn’t. You did the right thing, the best thing, the only thing. And right now you need to keep it together, Indy.”
“Easy for you to say.” Indy somehow managed to stay upright as Ice pulled her towards the elevators. “You didn’t just kill your own mother.”
The elevator dinged and the doors opened and Ice dragged her into the empty metal box and punched the button marked LOBBY.
Cold metallic silence enveloped them as the silver doors closed, sealing them into what felt like a time capsule, a spaceship, a portal to a different dimension, a gateway to a greater reality.
“No, I didn’t just kill my mother,” came Ice’s voice echoing off the cold steel walls. “Well, not just now, at least.” He looked at her strangely, and behind his wired eyes she could see the drug ripping pathways through his brain, tearing down walls in his mind, busting open vaults in his psyche just like it had in hers.
Indy frowned as the elevator kept spinning deeper into space, further back in time. The drug made her giggle suddenly, but not because anything was funny. “What does that mean? You didn’t kill your motherjust nowbut maybe you did some time ago? Did you mean to say that?”
Ice stared at her, his lips tight like a wire. His throat moved as he swallowed. His eyes stayed unblinking and wide.
Now his lips slowly parted as if something was forcing its way out, but just then the elevator bumped to a halt and the word LOBBY flashed on the little screen and as the doors started to open Ice slid those sunglasses back over his eyes and grabbed her arm and led her out into the bustling lobby like he couldn’t fucking wait to flee the past, get as far away from his own mind as he could, run like hell from whatever seemed to be hunting him down from the inside, from the dark depths of his own madness, the infinite pit of his own insanity.
