by Aimee Carter
“You don’t have to do this,” I said, my heart pounding. If Daxton caught me, he would execute me for sure.
Muttering something that sounded suspiciously like a curse under his breath, Greyson jumped inside the elevator as the doors closed. “I know I don’t have to, but I will.”
Clenching my jaw, I nodded once, gratefully. It would be easier with someone who knew how to work the equipment.
Seconds seemed to stretch into minutes as the elevator descended, and at last the doors opened. Daxton’s office was only a short walk away, and I raced down the hallway, ignoring my bad foot.
The door was locked, but I had my necklace off in an instant and passed it over the sensor. The red light flashed to green, and I turned the handle, my hands trembling. “I don’t know how to work any of these things,” I said as we both slipped into the office, and I closed the door firmly behind me.
Greyson marched up to the desk and hunched over the screen, his fingers dancing over the array of buttons. I hurried to his side as the screen went white, and a faint ringing sound echoed from the speakers.
“Pick up,” whispered Greyson, and he grabbed my hand. I squeezed back, my heart in my throat. This couldn’t be it. Maybe Daxton was lying. Maybe it was just another twisted game for his amusement. Maybe he’d wanted to see what we would do.
Or maybe it was real, and Knox, Elsewhere, and all its citizens were seconds away from turning into ash.
“Why isn’t he picking up?” I said frantically, my voice hitching. “He’s always in that stupid office. He never leaves. He eats in there, he sleeps in there—”
The screen turned black, and Greyson pressed a few more buttons. “Hold on, I’m trying again.”
The white screen returned, along with the ringing. I bit my lip so hard I could taste blood, and every cell in my body was focused on that box, waiting for Knox’s face to appear. He had to answer. He had to get out of there. I wouldn’t accept anything else.
“It’s pointless, you know.”
I’d been so engrossed in the hope that Knox would pick up that I hadn’t heard the office door open, and as I looked up, I forgot how to breathe. Daxton stood between the two fountains at the entrance, four guards surrounding him—including the ones Greyson had dismissed.
“The drones are two minutes out,” he said. “They’re quicker than I expected, as it happens. But regardless, even if you were able to warn Lennox and the other Blackcoats, they would have no time to escape. All you would do is give them a few moments to ponder the pointlessness of their entire existence.”
I blinked rapidly, and several tears rolled down my cheeks. I didn’t bother wiping them away. Knox and the Blackcoats deserved them. “You’re despicable.”
“I’m a dictator, darling. It comes with the territory.” He motioned to his guards. “Escort them to the couch. I have something I want them to see.” Daxton winked at me. “You won’t want to miss it.”
I struggled as the first guard led me to the sofa and pushed me down. Daxton continued to keep his distance and two armed men between us at all times, and no matter how badly I wanted to rip his throat out, consequences be damned, I wouldn’t have made it five feet.
Greyson sat down beside me, far more cooperative than I had been, while Daxton pressed a few buttons on his screen. “Ah, there we go. Straight from the drone,” he said, and he angled it so we could see.
The image was dark, but a spotlight appeared, illuminating the ground. I couldn’t pinpoint the section, exactly, but I did recognize the uniform gray buildings and straight roads of Elsewhere. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Oh, Lila. You will watch,” said Daxton, and I heard the click of a gun. My eyes flew open. He was pointing the barrel directly at Greyson’s head.
My chin trembled, but I forced myself to stare in the direction of the screen. I tried to look past it and focus on the bookshelves instead, but there was no ignoring the images. There was no pretending this wasn’t happening.
I spotted Mercer Manor, and my stomach twisted as the few bites of dinner I’d taken threatened to come up. The lights were on. They were still there, and they had no idea that they were all about to die.
“And then...the magic,” said Daxton gleefully. Silently the screen exploded into flashes of white and fire, and then everything went black.
That was it. No sound effects. No screams. No indication that tens of thousands of people had just died. Just silence and a blank screen.
Elsewhere was gone.
X
Noose
That night, I stared into the empty darkness, certain I would never be able to sleep again. Though Greyson had given me something to relax, it hadn’t stopped the image of Elsewhere burning playing in a continuous loop in my mind.
It was only after I’d cried myself out and pretended to be asleep that Greyson had finally passed out on the sofa bed. As he snored, I quietly slipped out of bed and padded to the adjoining bathroom, where I shut the door and turned on the sink to drown out the sound of my voice. Taking a deep breath, I sank down in the empty bathtub and touched the silver cuff on my ear. I couldn’t bring myself to take it off, no matter how useless it was now.
“Knox?” I whispered, hoping in vain to hear something—anything. Even just the slightest crackle would be enough. “Knox, if you aren’t faking your death, if you didn’t find a way to protect yourself from the bombs or get out of there, I’m going to find your corpse and kill you all over again. I hope you know that. I hope you know how mad I am at you right now, because—because until there’s a body, I’m never going to be able to believe you’re dead. Not after all the stunts you’ve pulled before. Because that’s something you’d do, isn’t it? Scare the shit out of me like this. Make me think you’re dead. You don’t have to, you know.” My voice broke. “I can keep a secret. You know I can keep a secret. Whatever your stupid plan is, I won’t tell anyone. Not even Greyson. Just—please be there. Please.”
Silence. My throat tightened, and I rested my head against the tiled wall, blinking back tears. He couldn’t be dead. I couldn’t make myself believe it. But even if he was, I would never see a body. Not in whatever was left of Elsewhere. And if he was really gone, I would drive myself crazy for the rest of my life, always wondering. Always hoping.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I should have listened to you. I should have done things your way from the start. I had no idea what I was doing, and I thought you didn’t, either, but—you did. And no matter how much of an idiot I was, you were always looking out for me. But when I finally had the chance to do the same for you, I failed.”
I closed my eyes, picturing the last time I’d seen Knox’s face. Standing together in his suite at Somerset while he touched my cheek, with all the gratitude and apologies that hung between us unsaid. I had to say them now, though. If Knox really was dead, he would never hear them, but I needed to say them for my own benefit. And if he had found some way to survive—if he was still out there somewhere, listening to every word I was saying, then it was worth the mortification. And the broken nose I would give him if I ever found out. Either way, I could never forgive myself for not warning him in time, but I had to make sure the universe knew I’d tried. I had to make sure I knew I’d tried.
“I know you were ready to sacrifice everything for the Blackcoats. I know—I know you’d prepared. But you weren’t supposed to die.” My voice caught, and it took me a moment to clear my throat. “You were supposed to live and see the end of it. You were supposed to make it happen. But it can’t happen without you—I hope you know that. If you’re listening, I know you’re probably itching to say that I could do it, but I can’t. There’s no one left. Lila’s gone. You’re gone. And even if Benjy manages to avoid getting caught, I’m never going to see—” A soft sob bubbled out of me. “I can’t do this on my own, Knox. Please.”
“You’re not alone.” Greyson slipped into the bathroom and climbed into the bathtub opposite me. I shifted to give his long legs room. He looked about as exhausted as I felt, but his eyes burned with determination. “We’ll figure this out together, Kitty. That’s what Knox would have wanted us to do.”
Wordlessly I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Right now, with the images of Elsewhere disintegrating still etched into the back of my eyelids, it was hard to feel even an inkling of hope. But Greyson offered me a pillow he’d brought from the bedroom, and I tucked it behind my head gratefully. I didn’t plan on sleeping tonight, but lying on the hard porcelain with Greyson right there—it was better than getting lost in the darkness. And right now, all I wanted was to find something to hold on to and cling to it with all my might.
We were both all the other had left. And if we were going to make it through this, we had to do it together.
Over the next three days, the government made hundreds of arrests and even more kills as they cleaned out what remained of the Blackcoat safe houses. The stream of faces and names on the news never seemed to end, and Daxton delighted in regaling Greyson and I over dinner with the progress his army had made that day. I kept holding my breath, hoping Knox’s name would crop up—better he be arrested than a pile of ash in the smoldering remains of Elsewhere. But it never did.
On the fourth day, once the government had rounded up every Blackcoat they could find, we gathered in Daxton’s office for the executions. Once again my hair and makeup were done by professionals, and I was dressed in celebratory red with the American flag pinned to my dress. Greyson was forced into a blue suit, and Daxton wore white. It would have been comical if I could remember what funny felt like.
Minister Bradley was there as well, lingering to the side, but always a presence. I refused to acknowledge him, knowing what he must have been willing to do in order to remain one of Daxton’s trusted advisers, and thankfully he didn’t try to speak to me, either.
On a wider screen hung up in front of the Hart family portrait, Daxton, Greyson, and I watched as Blackcoat after Blackcoat was executed on live television in front of a crowd of onlookers in the middle of D.C. Some were mercifully shot in the back of the head. But the higher up the ranks they went, the less merciful they became.
“Ah, Lieutenant George Sampson. I believe you know him personally, Lila,” said Daxton as cameras panned on us, recording every flinch, every wince. I couldn’t hide my grief for those who had risked their lives to bring about a better country. I wouldn’t. Those who had supported us and survived—they had to know that they weren’t alone. “Would you like to say a few words?”
Sampson stared directly into the camera, his chin raised defiantly. I shifted my gaze from the screen to the nearest lens. “Lieutenant Sampson is a brave man whose only crime was to be on the losing side of a war,” I said. “History may remember him as a traitor, but I will remember him as an ally and a friend. Thank you for your guidance and never-ending support, Lieutenant, and thank you for your sacrifice.”
I could feel Daxton glaring daggers into the side of my head, but what was he going to do? He’d already destroyed nearly everything I loved, and Greyson and I had done everything he’d told us to do. Now he would spend the rest of his life parading us around as his pets. The war was over. He had declared victory over the Blackcoats. Any retaliation against us now would only lose him what little public support he still had. Daxton might have won through sheer brute force, but that didn’t mean it was what the public had wanted. We were now an ideal without an army. But we wouldn’t be forever.
Sampson nodded once, confirming he had heard me. The crowd was silent, and at last the ground beneath him disappeared, leaving him to hang. The rope was too short for him to break his neck in the fall, however, and he fought and twitched for several minutes before he finally stilled.
I watched every terrible second of it, my eyes watering, but I refused to break. Sampson had known the risks. We all had. Every single Blackcoat had been willing to die for the cause, and I had to comfort myself with that knowledge.
I was positive that had to be the last of the executions for the day. Sampson was the biggest fish they’d caught, and there would be no more executions until they captured Celia. If they captured her, I told myself again and again. Even with most of her army arrested or dead, she was more than capable of disappearing completely, and I hoped against hope that she wouldn’t try to rescue me. If I were Lila, that would be one thing, but I wasn’t. And I wasn’t worth the risk.
Instead of fading to black while they cut Sampson’s body down, however, the hooded executioner escorted one more person onto the stage. He wore a black bag over his head, and his hands were handcuffed behind him, but I would have recognized him anywhere.
The edges of my vision darkened, and for one infinite, gut-wrenching moment, the world went silent.
No. Not him.
Not him.
“Benjamin Doe, coconspirator and assistant to Lennox Creed, leader of the Blackcoats,” announced Daxton. My insides seized, and I forced myself to breathe steadily. Lila wouldn’t care about Benjy, at least no more than she would have cared about the others who had died on that stage today. I wanted to scream and wrap my hands around Daxton’s neck until he was dead, but we were surrounded by armed guards standing off camera. If I so much as twitched toward him, I would be restrained.
For a second, I considered it anyway. I didn’t care that it would expose me. I didn’t care that I would likely be dead before I was able to leave so much as a bruise on his neck. It would be worth it for the slimmest chance that maybe, just maybe, I would succeed before he could murder my best friend and one of the few people left in this world that I loved more than my own life.
But while my mind whirled with the desire to kill, my body didn’t want to die. My feet remained frozen to the floor, my hands glued to my sides, and though everything inside me screamed to do something, to stop this before Benjy paid the price I should have—and would have—paid a thousand times over for him, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I could only stare at the screen and struggle not to scream.
The executioner pulled off Benjy’s hood. His scruff was days old, his face was pale, and there were deep purple bruises underneath his eyes. But he didn’t look defeated. Instead, there was a spark to him, and he looked out at the crowd. Maybe he didn’t know he was about to die. Or maybe he welcomed it, after whatever torture they had put him through. My insides lurched at the thought of what Daxton must have done to Benjy just to spite me. Just to win yet another battle against me, even from beyond the grave.
I searched for any sign of injury, but whatever the Shields had done to him, they had been careful. There were no marks, no bruises, no obvious sign of abuse. Just my knowledge that out of everyone who had stood on the platform that day, Daxton would have relished Benjy’s pain the most.
“You are charged with treason, conspiracy to commit treason, and war crimes too numerous to name,” said Daxton as Benjy looked up at the screen that must have displayed our faces. “How do you plead?”
“Guilty.” Benjy didn’t so much as flinch as the crowd booed, and instead he kept his focus resolutely on us. I stared back. I couldn’t watch this. Whatever Daxton was going to do to Benjy, it would be a million times worse because of who he was to me. Who he had been to me, as far as Daxton was concerned. But I couldn’t look away, either. I couldn’t let Daxton steal the last glimpse I would ever have of Benjy.
“That makes things much easier, doesn’t it?” said Daxton, and though I refused to look at him, I could hear the grin on his face. “Benjamin Doe, you are hereby sentenced to death.”
For the briefest of moments, I let my eyes flutter closed. All the things Benjy and I had survived together—all the times we’d been so sure we’d lost each other, only to find our way back to one another again. This was it. This was
the end. And I would never get to say goodbye.
We’d fought the last time we’d seen each other. We’d both said things we didn’t mean, and for some crazy reason, we’d both entertained the thought of being able to live without the other. Now he would never know how sorry I was and how much I needed him. Now I would never be able to tell him how much I really, truly loved him.
My fingers twitched toward Daxton, but Greyson immediately grabbed my hand and squeezed it. I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from saying something that would give Daxton the excuse he was waiting for to execute both me and Greyson, but I wanted to. More than anything in that moment, I wanted to destroy his world just like he was about to destroy mine.
I could have. I would have, consequences be damned. He could kill me. He could rip me apart limb from limb. He could cut me open and make my entrails dance while forcing me to watch. I didn’t care.
But I was already about to lose Benjy, who stood on a platform a thousand miles away, far beyond my reach. There was nothing I could do to save his life. Even putting a knife through Daxton’s gut wouldn’t stop his execution now that he had been sentenced, and if I tried, it would only mean putting Greyson’s life at risk, too. I couldn’t lose them both today. Regardless of what Daxton did to me, I couldn’t survive a world without either of them in it.
I was as powerless as I had been standing on top of the Stronghold, watching that missile head straight for Lila’s helicopter. Only this time, I understood exactly what was about to happen.
The executioner prepared Benjy for hanging in the same gallows Sampson had died in only minutes earlier. As they tied the noose around his neck, he continued to stare into the camera, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was staring at me. The only time he hadn’t been able to tell the difference between me and Lila was when he hadn’t thought it was a possibility at all. But now, maybe—
