Betrayed

by Francine Pascal

“We’re not going to die,” Gaia stated plainly.

  The truth was, the girl had more fight in her than Gaia would have ever imagined. Her survival instinct was yet another shot of inspiration. It had given Gaia the slap in the face she needed to shake off the rest of her grogginess.

  She was thinking clearly now. She was assessing the situation. She checked her own stiff limbs, which Loki had of course strapped to her chair as well. She wanted to see if she could locate any slack in the straps this time. But there was nothing. Not a stitch of room to move or maneuver.

  “Gaia,” Heather whispered. “Is that your uncle screaming?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I have no idea,” Gaia replied. She shifted her attention to her surroundings, examining the bare room around her as she tried to locate the origin of her uncle’s incessant shouting.

  The room was yet another indication that Loki had stepped way off the deep end. Gaia knew him. She knew how he’d always cared for the finer things, even if he was never excessive. When he took an apartment, it was always some spacious loft on some posh block in Chelsea or TriBeCa. Even the last time he’d managed to contain her, he’d kept her in some room filled with antiques and objets d’art and fine wooden furniture. But this place…

  This place was an absolute dump. The floors were crumbling—probably from a termite infestation. The walls were only half painted. There were even big gaping holes and dents in the cheap drywall. There was basically no furniture—just the two chairs holding Gaia and Heather, another chair by the filthy windows, and a foldout table that was buckling from the giant crack at its center. Gaia ducked her head out the windows to see the entirety of the world outside, and she could see immediately that they weren’t even in Manhattan. When you could see over the roof of every four-story building for miles, you knew you weren’t in Manhattan. It was most likely Brooklyn. Maybe the Bronx. It was all so completely unlike Loki.

  But it was easy enough for Gaia to do the math. She and Heather were strapped to chairs. He’d already tried to burn Gaia and Tatiana to a crisp. His only mistake there: leaving them the use of their feet so that they could escape. He’d made the necessary adjustment now, simple as it might have been. He’d eliminated potential escape from the scenario. At least, that was probably what he thought. Gaia was still working on it. Though she had to admit…it wasn’t looking good.

  Conclusion: He’d had no need for a pricey loft downtown—no need to fill this crap-hole with outrageously priced antiques. Because he wasn’t planning to stay for very long. Just long enough to finish what he’d started.

  Gaia twisted her head far enough behind her to see them. She could see Josh sitting in the far corner of the room…or was it Josh? It might very well be QR1. Gaia had noticed in both the hospital and the ambulance that QR1 seemed to have lost the patented Josh smile. And he seemed to be brooding over something or thinking something through.

  Once she managed to turn her head to its absolute limit, she could finally see where all the shouting was coming from.

  Loki and Dr. Glenn were face-to-face, and Loki was barking at the doctor like some enraged army general chastising his pathetic new recruit. With the exception, perhaps, of pictures of Charles Manson, Gaia had never seen more clear-cut insanity in a man’s eyes.

  “If you utter another word about that stupid counteragent,” Loki shouted, “I swear to you, I will take this gun from my pocket, place it down the center of your throat, and empty the damn chamber. Not another word.”

  Counteragent. She’d still never gotten a straight answer from Heather. Was there a counteragent? Was there an antidote to the drug they’d given her? But hearing that word fall from Loki’s lips set off a whole other chain reaction of thoughts. Thoughts that culminated in one very simple equation of images.

  Gaia’s eyes drifted back over to Heather’s hands. She watched as they jolted from side to side under the straps, contorting violently for a half second and then lying completely still again. And then Gaia turned back to Loki’s hands.

  His left hand was shaking like an instant replay of Heather’s.

  Gaia might be jumping to conclusions, but she didn’t think so. He took it, too. He took the drug. He took his own demented fearless serum.

  That explained everything. The strange new twists in his body and his character suddenly made perfect sense. Side effects. Just like Heather. Loki had turned himself into a walking side effect. But if he’d injected himself with the same drug, then why were his tremors so much worse than Heather’s? And more important, why couldn’t he be the one who went blind?

  Of course, none if those questions was the most important. The question in Gaia’s mind now superseded all others. It was the same question she’d asked Heather in the hospital. Only now, judging from Loki’s petulant screams at Dr. Glenn, she thought there was an answer to that question.

  Was there a counteragent for the drug that was slowly killing Heather? Yes. Apparently there was, and Dr. Glenn was pushing Loki to take it. So where the hell was it? And how was Gaia going to get her hands on it? Especially considering the fact that she couldn’t even move her hands.

  She looked back at Loki. He was so much worse now. So much worse than what she’d seen in her one waking moment in the ambulance. Now his entire body was riddled with the mild tremors and tics. His eyes, his shoulders, his arms, everything was shaking on and off. Except for his right arm. His right arm was no longer shaking at all but was now as stiff as a petrified rock and tucked to his chest as if it were in a sling. He reached carefully into his coat with his left hand and pulled out that bottle of pills again.

  “Do you really think those are helping you?” the doctor squawked. “Look at you. It’s progressing even faster than I thought. Look at your arm. It’s already in the next stage of—”

  “Shut your mouth!” Loki hollered, shoving his trembling face closer to the doctor’s. He carefully brought the jar of pills up to his mouth and ripped off the cap with his teeth. He tried to pour a few pills into his mouth, but a quick tremor of his arm sent the entire bottle of pills flying from his hand, falling onto the floor as the pills rolled out into every little decrepit nook and cranny of the dried-up wood. “Now look what you’ve done! Never mind. I don’t need them. They’re just hampering my transformation.”

  Loki’s eyes drifted slightly, and he suddenly caught a glimpse of Gaia watching him. His eyes widened with excitement when he saw her. “Ah, you’re awake. Good. Good.”

  He shoved the doctor out of his way and approached Gaia in her chair. Gaia’s entire body stiffened as he stepped within striking distance. Or rather, it would have been striking distance if she had been at all able to strike. Instead she could only stare. She shot daggers and cannonballs and arrows and A-bombs at him with her eyes. But in the end, it was still only staring. Trembling or not, Loki was still in complete control.

  “Yes, I know,” he said, kneeling down so that he and Gaia were face-to-face. “You despise me. You’d love nothing more than to see me dead. You’re probably thinking about how you’d do it right now.”

  A swift kick right to your windpipe. Untie me and I’ll give you a demonstration.

  “Well, Gaia, you’ll be happy to know that I’ve changed. I’ve had a few revelations since we last spoke.”

  “You injected yourself with the drug, didn’t you?” she asked him point-blank.

  His eyes widened with surprise and perhaps even a little admiration. “You would have made a fine agent, Gaia,” he said as his eyes fluttered open and shut and his shoulders twitched. His use of the past tense wasn’t at all comforting. “Yes, you’re right,” he said. “I’ve put a piece of you back into me now. And now we’re more similar than we ever would have been as father and daughter.” Gaia cringed again at the thought of it. With each word his eyes seemed to burn brighter and brighter with that disturbing maniacal glow. Not to mention the exponentially increasing tremors that were making him too hideous and demon
ic to look at. “You see, we’re finally the same, Gaia. All this time you’ve been able to look me in the eye and wish me dead. I’m sure you’ve wished it countless times, haven’t you? You’ve been more than ready for me to just disappear off the face of the earth permanently. Your own father. Well, Gaia, it’s taken me a long, long while, but now I am ready. That is the entire point of today. Because today…I am ready for you to disappear.”

  He reached his trembling hand into his coat pocket and slowly removed his gun. With Gaia unable to move or retaliate, he could take as much time as he needed. But that might have been too long.

  The explosive thud at the door was so loud, even Heather knew where to turn. All heads turned toward the doorway just in time to see the shoddy front door of the apartment kicked in. Kicked down, actually. The entire door ripped from its rusty hinges and fell to the ground in a cloud of black dust.

  And when he stepped through the door with his gun thrust out in front of him, Gaia wasn’t even surprised. She was supremely elated, and relieved, and overjoyed…but not surprised.

  Because she had always known that her father was a survivor.

  Final Family Portrait

  TOM KNEW THERE WAS NO TIME TO wait for backup. Given the situation, he’d had absolutely no choice but to go in guns blazing. He’d counted himself down from three and tried to picture the worst-case scenario before breaking the door down.

  But there was no way he could have pictured this scene. Tatiana’s assailant was standing at the back of the empty room with a man in a lab coat (Dr. Glenn , he was quite sure). Heather and Gaia were both tied to chairs—Heather looking like a bleached white ghost shivering in her seat and Gaia with Loki’s gun dangling in her face. And then there was the matter of Loki’s body…

  The image of his brother was far more horrifying than anything Tom could have concocted in his own head. Loki’s body had fallen prey to some kind of heinous condition. Some parts of his body were convulsing like those of a Parkinson’s patient, and other parts looked positively catatonic. Was he diseased somehow? Was this some kind of deadly reaction to a drug? Whatever it was, it was such a tragically disturbing sight that even as Tom pointed the gun at his head, he actually remembered his real brother for a moment. Maybe it was just the palpable weakness in his shaking body—the reminder that he was in fact human and not just some monster alter ego that his real brother had morphed into twenty years ago.

  But that brief sense of his humanity disappeared just as quickly as Tom looked deeper into his brother’s eyes. Because despite all the painful-looking facial tics and tremors, somehow he was still managing to give Tom that same vindictive grin. It was the simple act of taking pleasure in other people’s pain. That was the quality that reminded Tom of the truth about his brother: that he was in fact a monster. He’d been a monster for years. The only difference now was that he actually looked like one.

  “Drop it!”Tom ordered, moving two steps farther into the room. “Untie those girls right now. Right now! Do it!”

  Loki smiled and stepped away from Gaia, moving instead toward Tom with his own gun at his side. “Tom! Well, I see you got my invitation. But I think you’re extremely confused,” he said with a slight chuckle, moving closer and closer until he’d practically placed the front of his forehead against Tom’s gun. “You seem to be under the impression that I can be scared by your gun. And I find that extremely ridiculous, since I’m no longer afraid of anything.”

  Tom was at a loss here. A complete loss. And Loki had obviously been counting on it.

  “Drop it,” a voice came from behind. Tom felt the barrel of a gun press firmly against the back of his head.

  Invitation, he’d said. I see you got my invitation….

  Loki had sent the memo. This had all been planned. Of course it had all been planned. It was Loki. He’d wanted Tom to spot them escaping just so he would follow them, in this exact rush, without any time to gather backup. Just so he would rush by the thug who was waiting for him in the hall. Waiting for him to walk by so he could move in from behind for the ambush.

  Tom raised his hands as an act of surrender, but he wouldn’t drop the gun. Not yet. He wasn’t prepared to do that yet. He turned his head just slightly to get a look at the man responsible for the ambush.

  Wait…no, Tom assured himself. There’s no way he could have raced around from the back of the room….

  Tom looked ahead of him again. He was still there at the back of the room . The boy from the fire escape. The boy who’d tried to kill Tatiana. The boy Tom had seen shot in the head. This same boy was standing in front of Tom and behind him.

  Twins? Had Loki hired twins? Some kind of sick homage to what he and Tom had lost as brothers? But what about the one Tom had seen get shot? Had there been three of them?

  “I said, drop it,” the boy repeated, jabbing his gun against Tom’s head again. If Tom had had an extra half hour or so, he probably could have figured out the answer to this confounding puzzle, but with the gun still pressed to the back of his head, it wasn’t going to take top priority. Top and only priority was to get Gaia and Heather out of there alive. And Tom certainly couldn’t do that if he were dead. So he did finally drop the gun to the floor. The boy quickly grabbed Tom’s arm and tugged it painfully behind his back.

  Loki gave him another disturbingly volcanic version of a smile. “Yes, you always were on time, Tom. Like clockwork. Thank you for being so reliable. You’re just in time for your execution. But don’t worry, you won’t be alone.” He smiled again—or was it just another hideous twitch? And then he turned away.

  Tom had certainly witnessed dementia in his brother’s behavior before, but this was something else. This was ten times anything he’d ever seen before. This was a total psychotic break. Something or someone had flipped Loki all the way over the edge, and now he seemed to be just…free falling. Mentally and physically. And Tom knew how his brother’s mind worked. If Loki were free falling, then he was planning to take as many people as he could plummeting down with him. Especially Tom and Gaia. The remains of his family.

  Tom kept his eyes locked on Gaia’s. Whatever happened now, he needed to maintain nonverbal communication with his daughter. He knew that as long as she was strapped firmly into that chair, there was simply no move to be made. But if they could somehow find an opening, they’d need to be on their toes.

  Loki walked slowly away from Tom and stopped right at Gaia’s side. He put his jittery left arm around her, letting his gun dangle over her shoulder. “What do you think, Tom? A lovely family portrait, eh? A fearless father and his fearless daughter.”

  “What are you talking about?” Tom squawked. Loki had clearly moved on to pure nonsensical verbiage.

  “What am I talking about?” Loki smiled. “Well, I just thought you might want to get a final family portrait, Tom. Because I’m about to end this pathetic excuse for a family once and for all.” He lifted his gun and pressed it shakily against Gaia’s temple. “Why do you think I invited you here? I just wanted you to witness this historic moment firsthand. Consider the amazing purity of this moment. Here is a girl who is not afraid to die. And a man who is not afraid to kill her.”

  Dangling Carrot

  GAIA COULD FEEL THE WEAKNESS IN Loki’s hand. She could feel him straining just to keep the gun pressed to her head. The side effects were winning out, she was sure of it. She probably could have knocked his entire twitchy frame to the ground with a well-placed snap of her head.

  But there were too many variables. Even if she could head-butt him to the ground, that would still leave QR2 enough time to blow her father’s brains all over the rotting floor.

  She was sure it was QR2 holding the gun to her dad’s head. Either that or Josh himself. Even though she couldn’t see his wrist to be sure, she could see it in the hideous matching sparkle of his white eyes and teeth. He was reveling in sadistic joy at the thought of blasting a hole through her father’s cerebellum, whereas QR1 still seemed to be suffering from a
dour-faced attack of dissatisfaction and frustration over on the other side of the room.

  So how did they get out of this one? Gaia was at a pathetic loss for answers. It was like her most poorly played chess game ever. Instead of thinking ahead five or six positions, she was stuck in her chair, hopelessly racking her brains just to find another move. And so, from the looks of it, was her father. He was just as paralyzed as she was in this miserable stalemate. If he made a move on QR2, it would still leave Loki’s trembling gun enough time to blow Gaia’s head open.

  Gaia could see it now, almost like she’d been given a glimpse of the very near future. One shot would lead to three shots, which would lead to ten. The air of the inevitable was creeping up fast. It wasn’t fear she was feeling, and it wasn’t dread. It was simply something she knew. Loki and his accomplice had gone way beyond trigger-happy. Someone was going to take a bullet here, and she could do nothing to stop it. She could do nothing now but listen to her uncle’s insane, disjointed ranting as the barrel of his gun wavered from her temple to her cheek to her chin and back to her temple.

  “I suppose all revelations are simple, aren’t they, Tom?”

  Her father could only stare coldly and take in every manic word.

  “Yes,” Loki went on, “yes, that is the definition of a revelation, I think. When one realizes how very simple it all is. And I have. I have had such a revelation. And I wanted to share it with you. I wanted you both to hear it, Tom. You and my daughter—”

  “Oliver, you don’t know what you’re—”

  “No, Tom!” Loki bellowed, knocking his shaking gun against Gaia’s head. She clenched her teeth to weather the sting of her vibrating skull. “Now you listen. You don’t speak now, Tom! You’re going to want to hear this. You’re going to want to understand why you’re both dying today—why we can finally put an end to this pointlessly drawn-out battle of twenty-odd wasted years. Don’t you want to know, Tom? Don’t you want to hear my revelation?”