Shit.
“Mark!”
“Son,” my father urges from the doorway. “Your wife is strong. She will be fine. Get inside before you go down with the ship.”
Cursing, I stride quickly through the door, helping my father pull it closed. The electronic click of the lock is music to my ears.
“We should be safe in here,” Vas assures everyone.
“Should be?” Andrei frowns.
“Well,” Vas smirks grimly, “we haven’t exactly tested it out before.”
Andrei chuckles.
Then the last few bombs detonate.
Hindsight is a bitch. In the early days of construction, we implanted explosive devices into the major fault lines of the building so that if worse came to worse, the building could be reduced to a pile of ash and rubble. Along with any evidence.
Not that I was careless.
No one outside my organization knows about those devices. There are only a handful of men who are aware of them. One of them has to be the mole.
Fuck.
The vault rumbles and shakes as steel and concrete rain down on top of us. For the first time in years, I pray. I pray that the vault holds under the weight of the upper building’s collapse, and I pray that my wife manages to get free of the collapse zone.
I am not a religious man, but in that moment, as the lights flicker and stall, leaving us in an embankment of darkness, I pray to whoever will listen.
twenty-three
A sharp sting of pain radiates through my chest as I come to.
My eyes flutter furiously, like butterflies trapped in a glass cage, fighting against an invisible weight. I cough and sputter, the pain increasing as I struggle to take a breath. My chest feels like it is caught in the grasp of a boa constrictor. The cracks in my lips split even wider, blood pooling in my mouth as a hoarse cry rises in my throat.
Fuck.
It is like someone has pressed the mute button on the controller. The only sound I can hear is the ear-piercing ringing that tears through my head, sounding like one of those ungodly mosquito tones. Slowly, I manage to open my eyes, the invisible weight pressing against them slightly dampened by my fierce determination to live.
Dust and debris have settled over my unprotected face. I lift my equally dusty hand to wipe at it, being mindful of my injuries, but it is like trying to wipe away mud with more mud. It just becomes worse.
A low keening whine spills from my lips unbidden as I struggle to move the weight of my own body. My chest heaves in ragged sobs, tears spilling down my dirt-marred face as I crawl through several feet of debris toward the still body of Kristian, my guard. He is half-buried in the building’s wreckage, his dark face covered in a heavy layer of white dust.
I reach out with a shaky hand to check his pulse.
Nothing.
He is dead.
The old me would have become numb. Would have curled up in a ball and let fate take over.
The old me is tired of war. Matthias isn’t gone, again, and this time it looks like it will be permanent.
The King. The Ruler. Fallen to his enemies.
There is no surviving that explosion.
No false death. No miraculous comeback.