by J D Jacobs
Reggie looks at Jeanette and considers it. “Once the Fuging Bracelet is put on you, you can still survive and live your life. You just live it in a lot more pain than you normally would. For her, she actually contracted the Cozmin, so her Fuging experience has been a lot more painful than if she were healthy and had the Fuging Bracelet forced on her.”
“We can’t leave her in here. We’ll give her a choice.”
Reggie nods and walks over to her cell’s door. I follow behind him but stay outside of the cell. Jeanette swiftly looks up at him, terrified as to what he might do to her. “Jeanette, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you,” Reggie calmly tells her.
“What do you want with me?” Jeanette asks, her voice impassive. “You’ve done enough.”
“We’re giving you an option,” Reggie begins. “You can either leave this lab with us, or I can switch the bracelet’s color and let you egotone.”
She sits on her mattress and weighs her options. “If I lived, would I still feel like this?”
Reggie pauses. “Unfortunately, yes.”
“Then kill me,” she answers, almost instantly. She’s absolutely content with her choice.
Reggie nods, then squats down to grab her wrist. Before he switches the magenta bracelet’s colors, Jeanette stops him.
“Will it hurt?” she asks, realization scaring her one last time.
“It’ll be over in an instant,” Reggie tells her. He then waits for her confirmation to proceed, and she softly nods her head. He then twists the Fuging Bracelet over to cyan, and Jeanette falls over on her mattress. Reggie then quickly pulls out a pocket knife and makes sure she won’t come back as an egotoned.
“That had to be done,” Reggie says as he stands up and looks down at Jeanette’s body. “She deserved better than her last few days gave her. Jaden, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me quite yet,” I tell him. “Right now on the surface, there’s a flying eagle that is circling the amber glass, looking specifically for me. There should be two hazmat suits in my room in the Grandsmont Hotel. That’s how we’ll safely get you out of this city.”
“Polly says her back hurts!” I hear a man shout into the outside speaker box as he frantically enters the room. “Dr. Reginald! Something catastrophic has happened outside! Please hurry!”
Reggie and I both trade concerned looks, and we follow the man onto the streets of Avvil. It seems that every Avvil citizen is out on the streets, and like before, everybody is fixated with the amber glass and what’s going on beyond it. But this time, people are screaming, frightened, panicking at what meets their eyes.
I follow their dreaded looks to see Abbi, again, flying in circles. This time, however, she does so from underneath the Avvil glass, the amber light sparkling off of her robotic wings, even from a distance. Above the Grandsmont Hotel is a hole in the amber glass that had just been punctured. And out from the hole pours down a streamed waterfall of lightly green-tinted air. From a distance, I can see people running in a frenzy away from the hotel and away from the deadly fog that’ll soon begin building up at the hotel’s base.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Reggie gapes, awestruck. He turns to me. “What’s the plan now?”
“Plan stays the same. We’re heading straight for that gas.”
35.
We sprint by people who match our level of urgency, running from the falling Cozmin gas just to delay their deaths a few more hours. Reggie and I run toward the hotel, hoping to reach it before the virus hits the ground. There should be suits either in mine or Jenkins’s room: one suit for Reggie, one for Sabrina, then make it to the elevator across the city without any of us dying. That’s quite a task.
“Exactly why are we running to the Grandsmont?” Reggie calls out to me as we run.
“To get protective suits. There should be some on the sixth floor.”
“Aren’t you scared the Cozmin will get us?” Reggie yells at me over the surrounding commotion.
“You may be, but I don’t get scared of the Cozmin,” I tell him. “I’m immune.”
“You’re what!?” he asks me, wondering if he heard correctly.
“Immune.”
“Immune? To what?”
“Immune to the Cozmin. I’ve been immune to the Cozmin since the Cozmin became the Cozmin.”
“How!? That’s impossible!” He looks at me like I’m both the stupidest and smartest person on the planet.
“Beats me. I’ve been asking that for months.”
“Do people know this? Does Mr. Ricardo know this?”
“I’m pretty sure he does.”
“How could he not mention that to me and Lucas? If we would’ve known there was somebody immune to the Cozmin, Lucas and I could’ve worked with you and made great strides. We could’ve found a cure. We would have found the cure, there’s no doubt.”
The stampede of hysteria from the Avvil citizens grows louder and fills our eardrums. I think Reggie realizes that not only did Ricardo have Reggie and Lucas do whatever he wanted done, but he kept them from reaching their full potential. Reggie and Lucas could’ve very well found a solution if Ricardo simply allowed them to.
Abbi detects me running and swoops down to me. She flaps her wings to keep up with Reggie and I as we run, and I extend my hand to pet her metallic wing. Her feathers are wet from the outside rain, and water lightly splashes on us as she hovers by us. It’s good seeing an old friend again. Reggie, on the other hand, must be debating if the gas is making him hallucinate instead of killing him. A robotic bird and an immune kid? I know how confused he feels.
We’re just a second late to the Grandsmont. I see the green fog slightly begin to encase the front door of the Grandsmont Hotel. “Hold your breath,” I shout at Reggie seconds before we run through the fog. I cover my mouth as all three of us sprint and duck are way in the hotel. “Do you think it… the gas, it… it…”
My legs turn into jelly. I look back to Reggie as I try to stay on my feet. Reggie’s grunting and digging his fingers into his temple. I don’t see much more after that. I fall over and pass out.
…
I wake up, my body bouncing. Something is digging into my back. I open my eyes to see Reggie carrying me down a hallway, Abbi flying right over his shoulder.
“W-what happened?” I mumble. I must’ve passed out from the gas. Yes, I’m immune, but I forgot that a large and condensed amount of the Cozmin gas knocked me out a few times when I was in Westwood. Even if that fog wasn’t as strong as the gas leaking from Westwood’s wall, it’s stupid of me to completely forget about that.
Reggie stops walking and sets me down in the middle of the hall. “Thank God, I thought you were dead,” he tells me, his voice much slower. “I felt a pulse; I know that as long as there’s a constant pulse, people can’t egotone.” He cringes and grabs his cramping stomach. “We took the elevator to the sixth floor,” he struggles to say through a constrained whisper. “Isn’t that where you said the suits were?”
“Yeah, but… How are you alive? I saw you grab your…” I drowsily begin asking, but I then notice the magenta bracelet around his wrist. This bracelet has “Reginald” written across it with a marker. “When did that get there?”
“The Cozmin got me,” he admits with a crushed smile. “I put the bracelet on while you were knocked out. Luckily, I keep a Fuging bracelet with my clean blood in it with me at all times, just in case I ever needed it. Now I need it.”
“But doesn’t that… doesn’t that mean you’ll die?”
“No. The bracelet doesn’t kill me, it…” He clinches his eyes shut to withstand a wave of pain. “It’ll instead suck the energy out of me until I wish I was.”
I’m stunned by his words, but I quickly stand up. “Let’s get out of here then. We have no time to lose.”
I pace down the hall with Reggie slowly staggering behind me, looking for Room 608 with the bin full of suits. I reach the door and tug on it, but it’s locked. I step over to my room, hoping to
God that it’s unlocked. Before I pull the handle, I hear Reggie grunt again, and I watch him throw his back against the wall and fall to the floor.
“You okay?” I rush over and ask him.
“Just… get the suits,” he barely musters. I’m hesitant to leave him in the hallway, but this shouldn’t take long. With Abbi on my shoulder, I approach Room 607. The doorknob turns.
There’s company waiting for me.
“Haha!” a hefty man holding an axe erupts from the living room couch as he notices me entering the door. “Mr. Ricardo told us that you might come back here to get you one of those suits!”
“Yeah,” a thin, roguish woman holding nunchucks chimes in, “he said you also may have had something to do with that thing behind you knocking a hole in our glass. By the looks of it, I’d guess he was right.”
“So he gave one of you an axe and the other nunchucks? Wonder which one he likes more?” I mock them as I hear Abbi’s eye zooming in on the two in front of us. They step closer to me after my remark.
“This won’t take too long,” the woman sneers.
I prepare to fight as the two step closer to me, but in all reality, I don’t stand a chance. I consider running, but I can’t just leave Reggie in the hall. I really need Abbi to attack one of them, but she just continues zooming in on the two. My only chance is to stand here and hope for some kind of magic to happen.
Wait a second. Magic.
“Enough!” I yell out with as much made-up authority as I can pull out of thin air. “You’ll give me those suits or I’ll end you just like I ended those two in the Arena!” Please, don’t call my bluff. Please, do not call my bluff.
“You’re bluffing, kid,” the man calls out from across the room. “That was luck. You can’t do it again.”
Great. Now what? “You’re questioning me? Really!? That’s hilarious. Nobody ever questions me!” I throw my hand up at the man like I did in the Arena, but Xander doesn’t pop up to save me like last time.
“What a fluke!” the woman says with a villainous hunger in her eyes. “Never seen a kid look any more stupid!”
“This’ll be fun! We might even cook your bird up in a stew and feed it to you,” the man warns, preying toward me. Before the two have time to react, Abbi leaps from my shoulder and tackles the man, her unexpectedly powerful force knocking him to the ground.
While the woman watches her colleague fall, I spring onto her, trying to pry the nunchucks from her. As we wrestle around, a bulking shadow towers above both of us. The hefty man quickly escaped Abbi and is now raising the axe above him to send soaring to the ground, waiting for his perfect shot on me.
“Liz, get out of the way!” As the woman and I rip each other’s hair out in order to avoid the man’s swing, the man gets blindsided and slammed on the ground. At first I think it’s Abbi, but I hear furious fists being thrown into the man’s face. Speaking of Abbi, she flaps down toward the woman and begins pecking at her head. The woman’s hands rush to protect her head, and I get out from her grip. I then rush into the bedroom and grab the two suits that Cody and I used last week.
As I re-enter the living room, I see the woman in a fetal position, attempting to shield her head as Abbi drills her beak into the woman’s arms. Her forearms are already doused in blood; her form of protection is no match against Abbi.
On the floor next to the couch, I see Reggie violently throwing his fists into the man. The man doesn’t retaliate or even try to defend himself. I wonder if he’s already been beaten to death. On Reggie’s wrist, I see his Fuging Bracelet that has been switched to a cyan color. He’s fully egotoned now.
“Abbi, let’s go!” I call out. Abbi stops tormenting the woman and flies over to me. I pick up the axe as I head out, thinking it could come in handy if any more of Ricardo’s men ambush me. I take one last look at Reggie before I close the door behind me. He sacrificed himself so I would have a chance of making it back home. He was so close to a better life. What a brave man. And yet, another man’s death that could’ve been avoided if I would’ve never came to Avvil.
But there’s a comforting perspective with Reggie’s death: he turned his Fuging Bracelet on. He decided, in his last moments, that he wanted to go out on his terms. I feel that while he was sitting on that carpeted floor, watching what was going on in Room 607, he was satisfied with the thought of using his bracelet to finally fight against Ricardo instead of obeying him. I hope Reggie’s last breath was taken with gratification in his heart.
I head up the stairwell with Abbi flying ahead of me. I bypass the velvet rope leading to the twelfth floor and see the rope ladder hanging against the wall with the thirteenth floor’s door open. I approach the ladder and try to figure out a way I can climb the ladder while also holding onto the two suits, two masks, and the axe. Abbi notices how full my hands are and digs her talons into my shoulders, her sharp talons acting like hooks as they poke through my skin. I give a constrained shriek when she does this, but as my legs lift off the ground, I’m shocked to learn she’s going to carry me to the door. This way may be excruciatingly painful, but it’s extremely helpful.
She plucks her claws out of my flesh once my feet hit the thirteenth floor. I rub my shoulders to ease the pain, and my fingers are soon wet with blood. I wipe my hands off on the carpet. The hall is empty and the doors are shut; I just pray that Sabrina is still alive in the twelfth room.
I take a deep breath before I open her door. Relief overflows as I see her curled up in her bed. The shocked expression on her face once she sees me is warming. I drop the suits, masks, and axe and run over to hug her. Her long, soft hair in my hands brings me into a world where we’re the only two.
“You’re alive!” she whispers in my ear, her voice trembling.
“I told you I’d be back.” I embrace her to tell her I meant my words.
“What’s going on out there?” she worriedly asks, her fingers rubbing against the back of my neck. “The bird that just broke Avvil’s glass is right behind you.”
Abbi screeches, showing her early disapproval of Sabrina. “Look, it’s a long story, I’ll tell you on the way home,” I say, grabbing her shoulders and looking her in the eyes. “I need you to put this suit on now. We need to get out of here.”
“Okay,” she says as she picks up and identifies the new suit and mask. She then turns to the axe next to the suits. “What’s that for?”
A part of me had forgotten about Ricardo. He very well could still be on this floor, and he could barge into Sabrina’s room at any minute. I bend down to pick up the axe. “I’ll be right back.”
“What?” she asks, lost. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to make sure Ricardo isn’t still on this floor. Stay here,” I tell her, my words rigid.
“You’re nuts if you think I’m letting you go after Miguel on your own!” she exclaims.
“Please, Sabrina. Wait here. I’m just going to check his office; he probably isn’t even in the hotel anymore. I’ll be right back.”
“And what if he’s in his office? Why can’t we leave now and forget about him?”
A part of me wishes I would’ve went to Ricardo’s office before I visited Sabrina, but another part of me wants to listen to her. Why can’t I simply avoid Ricardo’s office altogether? Why do I have to go looking for him and risk both mine and Sabrina’s life?
The answer is pretty simple: because he doesn’t deserve to be ignored. He must be punished.
“I’ll be five minutes, tops.”
I don’t give her a chance to argue with me. I take off down the hall and turn down the perpendicular corridor. Sabrina stays at her room, while Abbi hovers her way toward me and perches on my shoulder. With the axe gripped in my right hand, I walk toward the double doors and push them open.
36.
His office is empty, his mahogany furniture vacant of all but dust. Makes me wonder if anyone had ever sat in those guest chairs before. Through the open doors leading to his large patio sits M
iguel Ricardo, his back turned to me as his legs hang off the balcony. As I cautiously walk across his office and to the patio, I see two glass tumblers with their bottoms filled with dark liquor set by him. Placed on the ground next to Ricardo is a pistol and a folded-up letter.
“Come to watch the end of Avvil with me, zorro?” he calls to me without turning around. A cigar burns in his left hand. “Have a drink with me.”
I stay still, white-knuckling the axe. “How’d you know it was me?”
“Many reasons.” He slowly turns around to face me. “For starters, as I can correctly assume by the freak bird that’s perched on your shoulder, you had something to do with flooding our city with the Cozmin.” Abbi screeches loudly in my ear at Ricardo’s mention of the B-word. I don’t try to calm her. “But more importantly, you have two promises to keep: save the girl and give me what I deserve! So if I had to guess who would waltz their way toward the deadliest virus in human history and come barging into my office, I’d bet my life that it’d be El Zorro Feo himself!”
“I told you that you’ll get what you deserve,” I taunt him, stepping further out into the open balcony. The patio is exactly like I remember it, except that the red wheel that was used for my Atonement is still out here.
“And I will. I even made it a lot easier for you.” He nods toward the pistol. “Point that gun at me and pull the trigger.”
I stare at the gun, disoriented. “You’re giving me your pistol for me to kill you with? Do you think I’m stupid enough to believe that you didn’t do anything to it?”
He bends down, pulls the magazine of the pistol out, and shows me the inside of it. “One bullet. Just like I told you before. There’s been one bullet in this gun for a long time. All you have to do is point it at me and watch me fall in the Arena below us.”
He picks up the pistol and tosses it at me. My heart drops as the pistol hits my hands. He taps the bottom of his tumbler to the rim of the one he poured for me, then takes a swig of his liquor.
