Dying Light

by Kory M. Shrum

  Gloria follows me inside and into the apartment and slides the deadbolt into place.

  “This room is bugged,” she says.

  “No, Nikki has special privileges.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Gloria looks wholly unconvinced.

  I think about the sex. Granted, we haven’t been able to as much as we’d like lately, given the hectic nature of work, but we’ve had enough that I shiver at the idea that I did it on camera for whoever happened to be on duty.

  “The bathroom,” I tell her and her face alights with recognition. It is our best option.

  Gloria and I step into the bathroom and shut the door behind us.

  “What’s going on?” I ask her.

  She presses a finger over her lips and turns on the faucet. Then she reaches into the shower and turns that on too. We slide down onto the floor together, and even with all the white noise created by the running water, she whispers.

  “We have to wait for our backup before we break into The Needle.”

  “You said it was impossible. It was designed to be not broken into.”

  “There’s a way. I’ve started to see it while I draw, but I keep getting interrupted.”

  “So draw,” I say, squeezing her knee. “I know you can do it.”

  She spares me a smile. “Jesse will be okay.”

  My heart hammers. “Are you sure? She just killed four people.”

  Gloria looks at the shower, considering the diamond-shaped pattern of the curtain. “Casualties are unavoidable.”

  I grab her hand and say something I’ve wanted to say for months. “I’m sorry about your brother, Gloria. I’m so very sorry.”

  Gloria’s gaze falls to her lap. She runs one hand over her short hair before her fingers curl and she scratches her scalp. “Micah made his choices. I made mine.”

  I hug her. I think she’ll stiffen in my arms or clam up, but she accepts my hug, clasping her hands behind my back and returning the squeeze.

  “While you draw, I’ll pack up, okay? Then we’ll get out of here.”

  “We should try to be gone before Tate wakes up.”

  “Is Jeremiah really that bad?” I ask.

  “You didn’t know he has NRD.”

  “No,” I admit, though I’m not surprised to find that Jeremiah kept secrets. On most days, I feel like everyone is keeping secrets. Even me. “Is this the part where you tell me he is secretly partis too?”

  “No,” she says. “He is something else.”

  “That sounds so ominous. What is he?”

  “I’m not sure.” Gloria pulls herself to a standing position, straightening slowly as if her knees are unsure of themselves. “I draw him in the corners of my pictures sometimes.”

  I frown. “That’s strange.”

  “It is,” she agrees, turning off the shower and tugging the curtain back into place. “But that’s where I see him. I don’t know what it means yet.”

  “Do you think Caldwell is working with another A.M.P? Is that why he’s still able to dance around us so easily?”

  “He might have one,” she agrees. “They won’t be as good as Micah. Or me.”

  At the mention of her brother’s name, the blood slows in my veins. “Did you read Brinkley’s journals?”

  “No.” Gloria pulls open the bathroom door and leads us out.

  “You can tell by the way Brinkley writes about you in the journals, you were close. Losing someone close to you—”

  Gloria stops in the middle of the hallway. Then she turns and meets my eyes. “Brinkley made his choice. He did what he thought was right. You can’t ask any more from a person.”

  There is a finality to her statement and I can’t ask more.

  “So tell me about our backup.”

  “I am not allowed to mention them by name. It was agreed upon.”

  I choke on curiosity. “But I’ll meet them, right?”

  She smiles. “You sure will.”

  Chapter 32

  Jesse

  Here I am, back in the freaking needle. Talk about two steps forward, four steps back. I walk up to the large windows and look out over Lake Michigan.

  We can ride all the way to the ocean.

  Lane’s blue eyes were bright when he said this, what seems like a century ago.

  Yes, I think. Take me far away from all this bullshit.

  But we didn’t go to the ocean that night. Or the night after or the night after that. We just went home.

  The fear that Lane has finally called me, but that I can’t get the call because I have no cell service up here, creeps in again. Another, more cynical voice says, No way. He wouldn’t pick this one moment to call. He avoided you for two whole months and your cell service was just fine. Get over it. He’s done with you.

  He had a hundred moments. A thousand. He didn’t choose to call then, and he sure as hell isn’t calling now.

  I sink down onto a sofa and note how quiet this place is. From here, I can’t hear Winston snoring. When we got back, I found him curled up in Maisie’s bed, in the crook of the girl’s arm. Traitor. One belly rub and he’ll give it up to anyone.

  Caldwell said he’d be back, that he had to “check on something.” I don’t care. I’m a little curious why he hasn’t killed me yet, or at least tried, but that curiosity is little more than a bee buzzing in the back of my head.

  I’ve killed four people.

  Have you ever killed anyone? I asked Brinkley once.

  Have you ever eaten a donut? he asked in return. Sometimes you can’t get around it. Even if you’ll regret it all your life.

  “Is that what you would say now?” I ask the purpling dawn on the horizon. No one answers.

  Gabriel appears, his wings open as if he’s just landed. He tucks them into his back and they disappear, making him look like a beautiful man in an expensive suit.

  “I killed four people,” I say, pressing my hands to the cold glass. I watch the white crests rise and fall between my fingers.

  “Nearly 200,000 died today,” Gabriel says, mimicking me. He presses both hands to the glass too. “You were not responsible for that.”

  But I am responsible for these four. What if they have families? What if someone is finding out right now that I killed the person they love most in the world?

  “You did nothing wrong.”

  “How can you say that? Of course it’s wrong.”

  Gabriel shows me the blackened city. The world is in ruin. Building façades crumble. Smoke billows up into the gray sky. A sulfuric wind tears at what remains of the rubble.

  “You have the power to make it right.”

  Chapter 33

  Ally

  I listen to Dr. York’s voicemail for the third time and frown.

  “—haven’t heard from her in a couple of days and so I was just wondering if Cindy was with you. It isn’t like her to miss a seminar without talking to me first. If you could give me a call back and let me know if she’s just freelancing with Jesse, this old man would sleep better tonight.”

  I stretch out on the living room sofa as my mind runs several scenarios: Cindy dead by Minli or Monroe’s hands. By Caldwell’s. Cindy overtaken with power, half-crazed and wandering the streets of Nashville.

  I call the hospital and leave a message for Dr. York who isn’t available. I apologize for not knowing where Cindy is and ask him to call me back if he gets ahold of her.

  That’s four partis that are missing—five if I count Jess. Is this Caldwell’s doing? It has to be, but why? Has he killed them? Or is he detaining them like Jesse?

  The intercom by the front door buzzes, and I see Nikki’s face in the tiny screen. “Al?”

  I get up from the sofa and cross to the door.

  “Al,” Nikki says, because she can’t yet see my face in the intercom.

  I press the button that will carry my voice up to the control room. “Hey.”

  “What is Jackson doing?” she asks with a curious smile. I can see the contro
l room behind her, large monitors blinking blue.

  Gloria is sitting at the two-person dinette set to the right of the front door, drawing with a towel thrown over her head.

  “So there are cameras in here.”

  “Nowhere important,” Nikki says.

  “For your sake, I hope not.”

  “I promise. But seriously, what is she doing?”

  “She’s viewing. She doesn’t want anyone to know what she’s drawing, so she’s covered herself.”

  I glance at Gloria. The baby blue towel shivers with the motion of her hand moving beneath. The towel’s tag scratches at the tabletop.

  “How can she see?” Nikki asks.

  “She doesn’t need to look at the page. She can just draw whatever she sees in her head. Kind of how we can type without looking at the keyboard.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Did you call just to ask me what she was doing?”

  “No.” Color fills Nikki’s cheeks. “I need you to come up here.”

  “Is that an order?” I ask, grinning.

  She returns my smile. “It’s a polite request. The crew up here is minimal right now, and I need to tell you some things.”

  My heart quickens. I glance at Gloria again and the quivering towel. I can leave her, can’t I? She usually draws for hours at a time. I’ll be back before she’s finished. I make a point not to look back at my laptop, where I have several windows open in a search for more information on Paul Kellerman, a name I’m trying to rule out from Brinkley’s list.

  I force a smile. “I’ll be right up.”

  The screen goes dark. I find a notepad and scribble a message for Gloria. I put it on the kitchen table so that it’s the first thing she’ll see when she pulls the towel off her head.

  I close my laptop and slip out of the apartment. The elevator is empty and the halls quiet. Either everyone is out of missions, or catching some sleep. On the 64th floor, I step off the elevator and walk to the end of the hall. I stop just before a large metal door but don’t knock. The camera twists down to look at me. Its large robotic eye dilates, taking me in.

  I wave and some mechanism in the door clicks.

  I push it open and step into the control room. It’s big and airy in here, a lot of space to move around. The monitoring stations are pushed to the far walls, leaving a large space between the computers. This setup is essential, given the traffic that comes through this room on any given day.

  Despite the volume of bodies the room is used to, Nikki wasn’t lying when she said the crew was minimal. Apart from Nikki, I count only five other heads, each watching their own cluster of screens. I walk up behind her and place one hand on the small of her back. I count her vertebrae, making it to six before she turns and wraps her arms around my waist.

  She places a kiss on my neck, and I feel myself go soft inside.

  “How’s everything?” My voice is a little deeper than usual.

  “It’s dying down. It was chaos an hour ago, but that’s passed. Everyone is fine as long as they know what they’re supposed to be doing.”

  I picture them, Jeremiah’s tactical units, small teams like the one I joined in Nashville, where I met Nikki. They’re out there now, looking for the missing or injured people created by Caldwell’s relentless search for power.

  “Have you learned anything else?” I ask, hopeful as I clasp my hands behind her back.

  “She’s in The Needle with Maisie, Caldwell’s wife Georgia, and probably Caldwell himself—seeing as we can’t clock him on any of the other cams right now.”

  One big happy family. Jesse must be losing her mind.

  “He’s manipulating her.”

  “It’s pretty easy to see that’s her soft spot. Family and you.” Nikki takes another step toward me. “I don’t blame her.”

  “You wouldn’t risk everything to save me.”

  She wraps her arms around me again. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  As soon as she says it, I know what’s coming. My heart speeds up, afraid.

  “I love you, Al.”

  “No.”

  Nikki laughs, a terse little snort. “No?”

  “We’ve only been dating for a couple of months.”

  “I’ve been in love with you since I first saw you, a year ago. You’re all I think about. When I picture the future, the after of all this, I picture you. A cabin in the woods somewhere. Two huge dogs and maybe a kid, because I know you want one. But only if it’s cute and has this little button nose.”

  She reaches up and brushes the end of my nose with the tip of her finger.

  “You don’t know enough about me to know if you love me.”

  She tilts her head, a hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I know you’re unfailingly kind. Considerate. You look out for people and put them first. You’re fair, with a good sense of justice. You take things seriously and care about the work you do.”

  Too seriously, Jesse would say. I take myself too seriously.

  “You’re smart and resourceful, not to mention hot as hell. That alone is enough to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  The rest of my life with you.

  I stumble back and hit the control panel. The screens go fuzzy for a moment until Nikki pulls me up and touches a few buttons.

  “I’m not proposing.” Nikki laughs. “Breathe.”

  “I—”

  I what? I don’t know what I want to say. Not, I love you too. Certainly not that.

  What can I say instead? Something about after?

  When I think of after I think of Jesse. Always Jesse. I’ve been by her side since we were eleven. At ninety, I want to look over and still see her there. Frankly, I think Jesse will be a hilarious old woman.

  Nikki reaches up and tucks my hair behind my ears. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” I manage to say. I release a short laugh. “You just surprised me. I didn’t realize this is what you called me up here for.”

  “I called you up for a kiss actually.” She flashes another sweet smile. “I was hoping to squeeze one in.”

  She leans in for the kiss but I step back. I can’t kiss her right now. I need to think about this. Then I remember something. “You never told me there were cameras in our rooms. I walk around naked.”

  She smiles again, though this time it’s strained. I think she’s expecting the lecture that is sure to follow. “I love that about you.”

  “Maybe I don’t want whoever the hell is working the controls to see me naked.”

  “We don’t record the apartments. And the chance that someone was staring into the room the moment you went to the kitchen to get some juice is really low.”

  A thought occurs to me. “Are you the one who installed the cameras?”

  It was her apartment long before I moved in. When we came to Chicago, to Jeremiah’s headquarters, I assumed that I would get my own room. I assumed that if they couldn’t accommodate that request, I’d be fine sharing with Jesse. We share beds so often that it would hardly put me out unless the bed itself was twin. Jesse thrashes in her sleep sometimes.

  But then Nikki surprised me.

  Stay here with me, she said. It’s one of the bigger apartments. There’s plenty of room. And I like to think of you here, in my bed, even when I’m away.

  It had been very sweet at the time.

  Another thought surfaces.

  “The man who came to check the ventilation was not a repairman,” I say. “He was installing the camera. You installed it after I moved in with you.”

  “Al—”

  “You lied to me. I can forgive that, if you don’t keep lying. Why did you have the camera installed?”

  “It isn’t what you think.” Her face grows red. Her eyes slide away from mine and back to the monitors. She pretends to survey the footage, but I know better.

  “Then explain it to me,” I say. “You said I have a good sense of fairness. I’ll understand if it’s a good reason. Just be
honest.”

  She doesn’t look away from the screen, her chest rising in a controlled inhale.

  “I wanted to know if Jesse ever came to the room,” she says at last.

  “You’re jealous of Jesse?”

  “Shouldn’t I be?” she asks. Her voice hardens.

  “We aren’t,” I lower my voice, “secret lovers, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  She exhales. “I know.”

  “Because you’ve been watching me.”

  “I’m the only one who has seen you naked. I promise.”

  “It’s not that, Nick.” I bite off my words as my voice rises. A few of the other people watching the monitors glance my way, but no one moves to do anything. I drop my voice. “It’s the idea that you didn’t trust me.”

  “I do trust you.”

  I fill in her thought. “But not Jesse.”

  She searches my face but doesn’t say anything.

  “You said you understood that Jesse and I are a package deal. I won’t sleep with her. I promised you I wouldn’t do that, but you can’t make me change my feelings. That’s not how it works.”

  Her eyebrows round and her gaze falls to her hands. “I know. I’m trying. I’m really trying. But it’s hard loving you this much and only getting a little back.”

  Then it isn’t love, I think. Because I love Jesse no matter what. I’d go to the bottom of the ocean to get her, if that’s where Caldwell put her. And it doesn’t matter if she never kisses me again, never touches me, never completely quits that self-centered jerk, Lane. It doesn’t matter, because my feelings aren’t based on what she does or doesn’t do for me.

  “What are you thinking?” Nikki asks, a panicked expression on her face.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Is that all you called me up here for? Because I need you to give me access to Jesse’s apartment. We want to move her stuff before the building goes down.”

  Nikki punches a few keys. “The door is unlocked, but before you go, there’s one more thing I need to tell you.”

  A few more punches of the keys change three monitors. One monitor shows an aerial view of Chicago. Another couple of punches and the streets and buildings go black before erupting in an array of colors.