Page 45 of Gamma

“It’s a long story, and you’re not going to like it,” I respond, moving forward toward the intersection. “We don’t have time for me to tell it. What you need to do is trust me. Keep Yelena close, and stick with me.”

“I should lead.”

“Don’t get macho on me now, Apollo,” I snap. “One, you’re injured. Two, it’s clear Yelena trusts you—me she doesn’t know. She needs your contact to stay calm, and trust me, this shit is going to get messy. It already is, actually.”

“Clearly.”

I look down at myself—my hands are coated in blood from fingertip to forearm. My shirt is soaked and caked. “Yeah, clearly.” I tiptoe into the hallway intersection, sweeping side to side. The exit should be left, since to the right leads to the rest of the cellblocks. We pass the cell where the girl is—was.

The door is open—someone found my handiwork, clearly.

I point at the doorway. “Donotlet her see in there, Apollo.”

“Why?”

I glare at him over my shoulder. “Should be obvious, looking at me.”

He covers her eyes with his palm, and she doesn’t fight it. Just places her little hand over his, holding his hand in place, letting him guide her steps.

He looks, though, and frowns. “You did that?”

It’s like I left it—dead guard naked face-down, the girl slumped over top of him, the other guard face-down just inside. Blood is everywhere, sprayed on the whole room.

“Yes.” I look away. “Except the girl. I got her wrists free and she snatched my gun from me and did that to herself. Not before begging me to do it for her, though.” I swallow a sob. “I just…I couldn’t.”

His hand rests on my shoulder, and I flinch. “Of course you couldn’t.”

I touch his hand, briefly, and then push it off when I feel something deep inside me respond, shake, soften. “I can’t have you touch me right now, Apollo. I can’t handle being comforted. I need to be…uncomfortable. I need to be angry. If you touch me, I’ll lose the edge I need to get us out of here. Okay?”

“I get it,” he whispers. He doesn’t like it.

“I can’t have your touch because I need it, if that makes any sense.”

He just grunts affirmatively. “I get it.”

The hallway ends at a right turn—I recognize this new hallway from our journey to the cell. I’d tried to follow the turns then, but there were too many and I was still reeling from the violation of being forced to strip naked and pose for a photograph.

I hear a series of gunshots, a pause, a few more, and then a different gun’s report, a different tone.

A female cry of pain. A scream, and several shots.

A male grunt.

I gesture for Apollo and Yelena to stay where they are and get down—Apollo does what I tell him, crouching and hiding Yelena with his body, pistol held close, finger along the guard.

I creep forward to the next corner—the exchange has stopped for a moment.

I hear voices.

Male.

Peek around the corner—four men face away from me, hiding behind open cell doors, two on each side. One of them sees me, shouts, pivots, lifts his rifle, fires.

Rounds zing past me, and one ricochets off the stone, chips stinging my cheek. Another round slices the outside of my ribcage, burning pain slicing through me. I throw myself to the side, spraying a line of shots from one side of the hallway to the other.

It was instinct and desperation, and fear—Sasha would be disappointed in the action; there was no purpose, no calculation.

Only one of my rounds hits a target, but it’s a kill. I slam to the ground around the corner, the breath knocked out of me. I’m on my back, the spare pistol digging into my spine. I’m bleeding from the side, and my face stings.