How could he have been so stupid? He should have known it was her from the way she wailed, and from the kiss that Connor blew her. Lev stands there, petrified with disbelief . . . And then the world comes to an end.
* * *
Blaine still stands at the end of the hall, waiting for someone else to go first.
"Hey! Who are you? What are you doing here?" a guard shouts at Blaine.
"Stay back!" Blaine says. "Stay back, or else!"
The guard pulls out his tranq pistol and speaks into his radio. "I got an Unwind loose up here. I need backup!"
"I'm warning you," says Blaine. But the guard knows exactly how to deal with an Unwind loose in the Chop Shop. He aims his tranq gun at Blaine's left thigh, and fires.
"No!"
But it's too late. The impact of a tranq bullet is more effective than any detonator. Blaine and the guard are instantly incinerated as the six quarts of liquid explosive coursing through Blaine's body ignites.
* * *
Mai hears the explosion. It shakes the entire storage room like an earthquake. She doesn't think about it. She can't. Not anymore. She looks at the detonators on her palm. This is for Vincent. This is for her parents, who signed the Unwind order. This is for the whole world.
She claps once.
Nothing.
She claps twice.
Nothing.
She claps a third time.
The third time is the charm.
* * *
The moment Risa sees Lev standing below, on the red carpet, an explosion rips through the north wing of the Chop Shop. She turns to see the entire wing crumble. "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"
"We gotta get out of here!" yells Dalton, but before he can make a move, a second explosion roars beneath them, sending the air-vent caps shooting skyward like rockets. The roof beneath their feet cracks like thin ice, and the entire roof gives way. Risa plunges with the rest of the band into the smoky abyss, and in that instant all she can think of is Connor, and how the band never got to finish playing his farewell anthem.
* * *
Lev stands there as the glass blows past him. He sees the band fall as the roof collapses. A howl builds up inside him, escaping his mouth, an inhuman sound born of an agony he can't describe. His world has truly ended. Now he must finish the job.
Standing there before the ruined building, he pulls out the sock in his pocket. He fumbles with it until he finds the detonators. He peels the backs, revealing the adhesive, and sticks them to his palms. They look like stigmata, the nail wounds in the hands of Christ. Still wailing his agony, he holds his hands up before him, preparing to make the pain go away. He holds his hands up before him. He holds his hands up before him. He holds his hands up before him.
And he cannot bring them together.
He wants to. He needs to. But he can't.
Make this go away. Please, somebody make this all go away.
No matter how hard he tries, no matter how much his mind wants to end this here and now, another part of him—a stronger part of him—refuses to let him clap his hands together. Now he is even a failure as a failure.
God, dear God, what am J doing? What have I done? How did I get here?
The crowd, which had run at the sound of the blasts, has come back. They ignore Lev, because there's something else they see.
"Look!" someone shouts. "Look!"