Brian Freeman - Marathon

She fired again.

Ralston screamed. The bullet hit his leg. The shovel kept coming, but it didn’t clear the ceiling. Instead, it slammed into one of the building water pipes and knocked it free. A fountain sprayed into Serena’s face. She fired again, up, aiming where Ralston had been, but he was already gone. Water flooded around her. It pooled on the floor, hissing as it surged from the open pipe.

She heard footsteps dragging on the floor. Heading away, heading toward the outside.

“Maggie!” Serena called, her ears still ringing from the fireworks shell.

“I’m here,” Maggie shouted back from six feet away.

Serena followed the muffled sound of the voice and found Maggie on her back on the basement floor. They were both drenched by the broken pipe. Smoke clouded around them and made them choke.

“Are you hurt?” Serena asked.

“He grazed my shoulder. Feels like an elephant stepped on it. Come on, we have to go.”

Serena helped Maggie to her feet and let her lean against her. They couldn’t see, and both of them coughed and gagged. Their shoes splashed in the standing water. Serena grabbed her phone from her pocket, and it gave them a faint glow. They navigated around debris back to the main tunnel, and ahead of them, they saw a crack of light at the stairs that led up to Third Avenue.

“Run,” Maggie told her. “Go.”

Serena left her behind and charged for the stairs. She took them two at a time, first the subbasement steps, and then the stairs up to the metal railing at the street. Her eyes squinted into the sunlight. She ran to the corner of Superior Street, and a blood trail on the asphalt led the way. She’d hit him, badly, but he’d already escaped. The Cadillac that had been parked next to Maggie’s Avalanche was gone. She looked up and down both streets but didn’t see the car speeding away.

Ralston was on the run, and he had a head start.

When she got back to the basement stairs, Maggie was already at the top, grimacing and holding her shoulder as she leaned against the building wall. Their faces were streaked with dirt and ash, and their hair was matted to their skin. Their clothes were completely soaked.

“Call Maloney,” Maggie said. “We need to get choppers up and roadblocks back in place. This son of a bitch is not getting away from us.”

Khan saw the face of Dawn Basch at the end of his gun. All he had to do was pull the trigger, and she would be dead. And then the FBI agent would pull the trigger on her own gun, and he would be dead, too, and the nightmare would be over. It was easy. It was the only thing to do.

“Hello, Mr. Rashid,” Basch said to him, in a falsely pleasant voice that made him think: Yes, she is the Devil .

She didn’t blink. She didn’t tremble. He didn’t know if he’d expected her to be afraid, but she wasn’t. He realized she was just like the martyrs who had stolen his own religion. She was ready to die for her cause.

“Go ahead, pull the trigger,” she urged him. “Aren’t you a little bit curious what happens next? Is there really a heaven? Is there really a hell? Pull the trigger, and in a millisecond, we’ll both find out the answer to the mystery.”

Khan tried to keep his hand steady. He wanted to speak, to say something, but his throat was as dry as dust.

“Put the gun down!” the FBI agent shouted at him.

His eyes flicked to the woman by the booth, with the big black gun pointed at his head. Would she fire first? In that instant, would he have time to shoot Basch, or would he be gone?

Did any of it matter?

“Because of you, my wife and child are dead,” Khan murmured to Dawn Basch.

“I didn’t start this, Mr. Rashid. Once violence begins, it’s impossible for anyone to control it. It spreads, it mutates, it evolves. The ripple effects can’t be predicted. It has a life of its own, gobbling up friends and enemies.”

Khan felt tiredness in his arm as he held the gun. The tiredness was in his whole body. “My wife was a good woman. A computer scientist. A hard worker. A mother. An American. My son was innocent. He played soccer. He liked pizza. They were no one’s enemies.”

“Maybe not now, but sooner or later, Mr. Rashid, we will all have to choose. No one is neutral in this war. Think about it. Here you are, with a gun pointed at my head. You made your choice. You’re a terrorist.”

“I am not .”

“No? And yet here we both are, willing to sacrifice ourselves for what we believe in. Go ahead, kill me. I don’t care. Show the world who you really are.”

“I’m what you made me,” Khan told her.

The FBI agent shouted again. “Khan, put the gun down! I’m not going to tell you again. Put it down, and put your hands in the air.”

Khan knew he had to keep his arm motionless. If he so much as flinched, he was dead. He wondered if he had the time to pull the trigger, before the agent saw his finger pulling backward and fired herself.

He stared at Dawn Basch, whose expression was cool. Seeing her, staring into the emptiness behind her eyes, he didn’t want to be like her. He was a man of peace. Killing anyone was against everything he believed. And yet, if he walked away, she would go unpunished. She would never pay a price for what she did to Ahdia and Pak. Her flames would spread far and wide on a trail of gasoline. She had to be stopped.

He couldn’t put the gun down.

He couldn’t betray them.

His eyes shifted to the FBI agent, and his whole soul was sad. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This woman is poison. The only good thing to come out of all of this would be to put an end to her. If you have to kill me, then go ahead. I’m ready to die, but she dies first.”

The adrenaline in Gayle’s veins flowed like a river flooding its banks.

Her arms were rock-steady. Her right hand cradled the Glock, and her left hand cradled her wrist. No mistakes. She had Khan’s forehead on the other end of her barrel, lined up in her sights. He was no more than six feet away, with his own gun inches from Dawn Basch. Gayle’s concentration was centered on his trigger finger. The slightest twitch, and she would blow him away.

“Lower the gun, put it on the table, and put your hands in the air,” she told Rashid. “Right now.”

“I can’t.”

“Look at me, Rashid. Tell me the truth. Do you really want to kill this woman? Is that what you want to do? Is that who you are?”

He stared back at her, as if he wanted to answer. Their eyes met. His mouth opened and closed without saying a word, but she didn’t need words to understand him. This was her job; she read people. She knew what was in their heads. She was the Lie Detector. It should be easy for her to know if he was serious. She should have been able to see the truth in his face, in his body, in his voice. Either he was capable of murder, or he wasn’t. Either he was going to pull the trigger, or he wasn’t.

But her gift failed her. She had no idea. She couldn’t read him; he was a closed book. She felt blind. She knew her head should be clear right now, but it wasn’t. She should be alone in the moment, but she wasn’t. Her past was with her, sitting in the booth next to Rashid.

Officer Kenzie was there.

Ron was there.

Both of them, dead.

A terrible realization overwhelmed her. She wanted to pull the trigger. If Khan gave her the slightest excuse, she would do it. She would fire, the bullet would blast through his brain, and she would have the tiniest amount of vengeance. It didn’t matter who Khan was or what he’d done or hadn’t done. He was the symbol. He was every deluded fool who’d walked into a café and thought that killing innocent people was a ticket to paradise.