Steven James - The Rook

There’s one person, maybe two.

Eliminate the greater threat first.

I put three bullets into it, shattering the device and sending it tottering back into one of the quarantine tanks, where a steamy sizzle of water told me it hadn’t been designed to be waterproof.

“No!” Melice roared. I leveled my gun at him, but I could see I was too late. He’d drawn on me and now fired, a bullet ripped into my left thigh, and the impact sent me sprawling back down the stairs, tumbling, spinning, reeling, crashing to the bottom.

“Raven, I’m waiting,” Riker yelled. Fire had crept into his voice.

“Three minutes.” Tessa needed to come up with a plan.

But she had absolutely no idea how to get away.

I stared at the ceiling, trying to gather my wits and mentally separate myself from the pain coursing up my leg.

I’d been shot, the water was up to Lien-hua’s waist. I needed to save her and I needed to do it fast.

I inspected the gunshot wound. The bullet had entered the front and exited the lateral side of my quadriceps. Missed the bone. Missed the femoral artery. I’ve never believed in luck, but at that moment I was tempted to start. I might be able to walk, but it would be dicey and very painful. I pressed one hand on the entrance wound, the other on the exit wound. You need to find a way to control that bleeding.

“No,” Melice was raging from the deck. I imagined him fondling the shattered device. “No. No. No!”

Good. So he could feel pain after all-the pain of having all of his hope snatched away. I wondered if experiencing pain was all Melice had dreamed it would be, but by his furious cries it sounded like the pain of slaughtered hope wasn’t exactly a dream come true.

It was never pain he wanted, but freedom from a painless hell.

“You’re dead, Bowers!”

My gun. Where was my gun? I’d dropped it. Yes. But where?

You dropped it when you jerked backward. When you hit the side of the stairwell.

It might be on the deck, I hoped not. I scooted around the corner from the stairs in case Melice or Shade decided to come down to finish me off. I scanned the area for my SIG.

Nothing.

Then I looked through the glass at Lien-hua and saw her tugging at the grate, and I realized my gun was lying at the bottom of the acclimation pool. A SIG will fire even when underwater, but it was too far away. She couldn’t reach it. “Hey, Bowers.” A razor blade cut through Melice’s words. “I’m coming for you and I’m gonna kill you slowly, but first I want you to watch her die. That’s your reward.”

Weapon. I needed a weapon.

If only I’d called for backup before I left the hotel!

Assess the situation: I had no phone, no gun, the water would be over Lien-hua’s head in a matter of minutes, and I’d been shot.

Before I could do anything I needed to control the bleeding.

I scanned the area and saw the wet suits hanging behind the stairwell.

Neoprene is waterproof, it’ll seal off the wounds.

If there was a weight belt with the wet suits, I might have a chance.

As quickly as I could, using one hand I dragged myself around the stairs. With every movement deep jolts of pain flashed through my leg. But I kept moving. I had to.

After flipping four wetsuits aside, I finally found a neoprene weight belt hanging on a hook. I dumped the weights from it and cinched it around my thigh, not tight enough to be a tourniquet but snug enough to act as a pressure bandage. The bleeding eased.

I could think again.

I clicked through my options in my mind. None of them were good. Melice has the strategic position. Even if you make it up the stairs, he’ll shoot you on the spot. If you try to get to the car to go for help, it’ll take too long, Lien-hua will drown.

From the other side of the glass, Lien-hua fingerspelled “Hurry,” then flashed the sign for “I need you.”

“I’m coming,” I signed.

I pulled myself to my feet, and, with my leg rebelling against every step, I shuffled through the doorway to the foam fractionator tower that rose past the offices on the deck above me.

Access. There was access to the husbandry area. Then I grabbed the ridged edge of the tower, and with my left leg hanging as dead weight, I began to climb.

“Two minutes,” yelled Riker.

Tessa scanned the bathroom. Toilet paper. Toilet. A single lightbulb in the center of the room. No mirror, why wasn’t there a mirror? There should have been a mirror! Paper towel dispenser.

Toilet plunger. Bath towel draped over a towel rack. She looked under the sink for some kind of cleaning chemicals that she could splash in his face. Nothing.

The ceramic lid of the toilet?

She checked again-a floor-mounted model, no lid.

Wait. Towel rack.

Yes, maybe.

She threw off the towel, grabbed the bar of the rack. Wrenched at it.

But it held fast. It must have been anchored into the studs.

C’mon. C’mon. There must be something. There has to be.

She could maybe hit him with the plunger, but she wasn’t really strong enough to hurt him, so that’d just make him madder.

Tessa emptied her purse into the sink. She had to have something in here that she could use as a weapon. She had to!

So: a stubby pencil, her notebook, a stick of gum, a flash drive, the big bottle of antibacterial soap from Riker, her iPod, some lipstick and mascara, her wallet, some loose change, a small bottle of the lotion she’d been smearing on her scar, a pocket-sized dictionary.

She heard movement from the other room. Maybe he was coming for her.

“I’m not hearing you getting ready.”

Tessa reached over and flushed the toilet. “Just a minute, already!”

She tried to make her voice sound confident.

This can’t be happening. It can’t be.

But it was. I climbed with fire in my fingers and hatred in my heart. I could feel the tangle of rage and fear, the constant struggle. The dark currents welling up, calling my name.

Anything to save Lien-hua. Anything.

Vowing to save her whatever it took, I climbed.

Lien-hua kicked with all her might but only managed to gouge the shackle into her Achilles tendon and send a searing clutch of pain rocketing up her leg. The grate didn’t budge, the chain didn’t break.

It wasn’t going to break. There was no way it would.

You’re going to die. Right here. Right now. At the hands of the same man who killed Chu-hua.

Hope fleeting.

Fleeting.

Maybe she didn’t want to live. Maybe it was better if she died.

Freedom or pain?

Pain.

Death.

The two flowers. Lien-hua, the lotus. Chu-hua, the chrysanthemum. Both snipped from the stem by the same man.

Yesterday Lien-hua had told Tessa that she’d seen too much corruption to believe in purity, in enlightenment. And it was true.

We can’t rise above who we are.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” she whispered to the ghostly memory of her sister as the water rose above her chest. “I was afraid, afraid of the water.”

Bruised petals.

The arrangement will never be the same.

No, we can’t rise above ourselves.

But what had Tessa asked her? What had she said?

Can someone else lift us? In that moment the question brought its own answer and from deep inside her bruised heart, Lien-hua prayed, cried out to the God she wasn’t sure was there. Begged him to lift her from her past, from herself, from the stinging regrets she’d been carrying since June 17, 1999, when she found her twin sister floating facedown in the family’s swimming pool.

“All right. That’s it,” yelled Riker. “I want to play with my raven now.” And then he dared to quote Poe, “‘Only this, and nothing more.’”