by Drew Avera
Chapter 22
The wind was blowing an unseasonably cool breeze when I stepped out of the palace. I wasn't focused on the wind, but it was the kind of thing that grabs your attention away from whatever else you’re focused on at the time. Perhaps a storm was on the horizon, it was hard to tell when you lived in a coastal city, and the weather can change in minutes. I cracked my neck as I walked, still trying to relieve the stiffness in my body after my long slumber. What can I say other than the fact that I really needed that sleep. I felt more alert and more alive. The food helped a lot as well.
I turned the corner on my way to the hospital and I could see rioting in the streets. Some businesses had their windows knocked out by rocks from pissed off pedestrians crowding the streets. Someone should intervene, but what would be the point? These people will still die once the magnetic field completely decayed. If it wasn't going to be oxygen deprivation then it would be from a series of asteroid impacts that will take place all over the planet. I shook the thought out of my mind and kept walking. My mission was in front of me. I had to kill Thom.
The sky grew darker with each passing step. I was starting to enjoy the darkness; it was feeling more like home than I had felt in a long time. I guess I should be concerned by that thought, but I wasn't. The hospital appeared at the end of the street in front of me. The lights lit up every side of the building creating a kind of torch in the sky that beckoned the weary to come to it. It beckoned me.
I walked in through a rear entrance and headed straight for the elevator. Not a single soul was in sight. I walked into the opened door of the elevator and pressed the button for Thom’s floor. The elevator rose and then stopped at the fourth floor and I went straight for room four twelve. I entered the room without knocking. This was not a social call. Thom looked up at me with a look of fear on his face. It was apparent that he thought that I was dead. He must have realized that the shoe was about to be on the other foot.
"Serus," he said with a tremble in his voice.
"Hello, Thom. What's with the sour look on your face? Is it after visiting hours?" I asked.
Thom scrambled up from the hospital bed and tried to reach for his gauntlet. He wasn't fast enough. I jumped across the room and grabbed him by the back of the neck and hurled him at the window. With the rush of adrenaline coursing through my veins I was able to lift him completely off the ground. The impact of his body against the glass caused it to splinter in a spider web effect.
Thom groaned as he stood up on the other side of the room. "Serus, I can explain," he said.
"Explain what?" I asked. "How can you explain betraying a friend by having his sister abducted? How do you explain having your friend set up to be tortured and killed for a lottery ticket? Didn't you realize that I was on the side of taking down the Syndicate and using their tickets to save all of the people I cared about?"
The look of his face showed his regret. It was too late for that. Now was the time for reckoning. Now was the time to finish what I had started. I jumped over the bed and grabbed Thom by his throat. I clenched my hand around it as tightly as I could. Thom struggled against me. The lack of oxygen to his brain was making him weak. The longer I looked into his wide eyes the angrier I became.
He betrayed me and let my sister fall into the hands of my enemy! With that thought running through my mind I slammed his head into the window. The thud of his head connecting with the glass caused a satisfying crunching sound. He betrayed me by alerting the Syndicate of where I was, allowing me to be abducted and almost killed. I slammed his head into the window again. I could see the life escaping him as I gripped his throat harder. Blood began running out of his mouth and eyes. It must have been from his brain swelling inside his head.
I looked at the man who I had trained to be a policeman. I had taken him under my wing. I had made him a part of my family when things had gotten bad with Kara a few years ago. I had trusted him and he betrayed me. I put everything I had behind the next motion that I made. I felt the hate boil over. Every part of my body leapt with the anxiety of what I was about to do, but I was powerless to stop myself. Rage was taking control and was in the driver’s seat. I lifted Thom up by his neck and drove him through the window with every ounce of strength that was in my body. The window shattered from the hit and for a split second I made eye contact with him for the last time. In that moment I met his black soul that was so consumed with selfishness. He was not the man that I had known. He was a monster just like me. I saw him as such before I released my grip. He seemed to float in the air for an eternity before gravity regained control of Thom's body. I watched him fall fifty feet down to the street. We never lost eye contact with each other until his body impacted the ground below. His head split open and splattered blood that formed a pool of red that was oozing all around his body. I starred for a moment to see what I had done. My heart should be breaking, but I was glad that this part was over. Glad that I had reconciled his betrayal of my family. Satisfied that I could now save Kara with the lottery ticket that had belonged to Thom.
I moved away from the window as people began to gather around Thom's body on the street below. I walked over to the night stand next to the bed and grabbed his lottery ticket and his gauntlet that had been lying out in the open. I stashed the ticket into my breast pocket along with my communicator and carried the gauntlet in my left hand out of room four twelve. It was clear at this point that visiting hours were over.
