“What is your plan after this?” Cartier asks, still not taking the gun. “You want to stay with Mayhem?”
“I don’t know, Cartier. I haven’t thought that far ahead. Now, can you fight?”
She nods.
“Good.” I shove the gun into the palm of her hands. “But still take this. The people we will need to fight through are the very ones who trained me all of my life.” We begin walking down the corridor and toward the stairs that lead up into the drop hole to climb out from. I stop, turning to face her. “And not that I have to explain myself to you, but being a part of Midnight Mayhem showed me a life that I didn’t know existed. Patience may have taken away my humanity, but Midnight Mayhem showed me a family. I liked it there. Every second that passed, I felt myself start to” —I run my tongue over my bottom lip—“feel things. Between us…”
“By things, you mean for Kyrin and Eli?”
“And Saskia and Maya. It’s not who made me feel, it’s the fact I could finally feel something.” I jump up onto a bar and swing my body up through the manhole, pushing myself up and scanning the room to make sure no one is in there. Reaching down for Cartier, I pull her body up and close the manhole.
“So, what’s the plan, Satan?” Cartier asks ingenuously, as if I should know what the fuck I’m doing.
“Ah…” I narrow my eyes on the exit door, checking if it’s unlocked. “I don’t know, but I need to get to Kij.”
“And Kij is…” Cartier asks as I pop open the door and peek around the corner.
“The one who stole you.”
“But why?” We begin making our way down another corridor that leads to an elevator. I swipe the key card over the little computer and we both step through when the doors separate.
“It doesn’t matter right now. Right now, we need to get to him.”
“To kill him?” Cartier asks, as we both begin tying our hair up into a pony.
“No,” I say, taking the card out of my mouth and watching the numbers climb. I push on Kij’s level again, just like I had done earlier. “We can’t kill him. We need him as a hostage to get off this fucking island.”
I bring my finger up to my mouth when the beeper sounds. “Hello, state your name before access, please.”
I run my tongue over my bottom lip and grin into the speaker. “I’m Bear.” My voice is clothed in perfect disguise, as if I really were her.
“Sorry,” the office girl stutters. “State your birth name.”
My eyes land on Cartier. “Dove Noctum Hendry.”
Cartier’s face pales as she turns her body completely toward me.
“Access granted.” It beeps again and the green light turns red as the elevator continues up.
“Are you fucking kidding me? She is dead!” I didn’t know you could whisper and yell at the same time until just now.
“No,” I say, pulling the pistol out of my lace panties. Thankfully, my robe manages to stay on despite the tie being delicately wrapped around the neck of the corpse downstairs. “She’s not—” I check the chamber before glaring back at her. “And she is not the same person you all know. Literally. So don’t even try to spew your bullshit.”
The doors part and I crack my neck, raising the gun up in front of myself. “Mmmm, my friend Chaos. How I have missed you.” I point the gun at the receptionist and squeeze the trigger, before popping a bullet at the three guards who are standing outside Kij’s office door.
Cartier follows behind me slowly as I kick his office doors in with my red bottom Valentinos. Kij has his back turned to us, his hands buried in his pockets while he watches the ocean down below. “Did you know that when your father and I created Patience we had a vision?”
“Huh, I bet,” I say, flicking the gun to the door so Cartier can stand on watch. “Let me guess.” I pick up the AR that one of the guards had while keeping my eyes on Kij.
I’m well aware of how very fucking dead we both are if the soldiers all fly up here guns blazing. Two against one hundred aren’t very good odds. “Your visions included rape, torture, mutilation, grooming, murder, incest, human trafficking—hmmm, am I forgetting anything?” I slow my pace toward him. “Oh, yeah!” I knock my temple with the end of the barrel. “—turning girls into real-life commando dolls who do your dirty work and make you look good while we do it.” I fall onto the chair opposite his desk just as he finally turns to me. “You make us look irresistible, but train us for murder, right?” I should be asking myself why no one has come up here to save Kij, but I don’t. I’m too caught up in my simmering rage to touch any reality.