Page 31
Story: Mr. Nice Spy
I lunged forward, my knees hitting the cold stone floor with a crack as I threw my hands in front of me, cupping the air like I was wearing an invisible baseball glove. From the corner of my eye I saw Chan’s expression of horror as he realized he’d get there too late. Of course, that didn’t stop him from trying.
My fingers knocked into the beaker, barely brushing the edge and knocking it farther from my grasp.
“No!” I clutched at the empty air.
But the new trajectory brought it closer to Chan, who moved so fast I finally understood the whole blink-and-you’ll-miss-it thing. One second he was by the canisters and the next he was holding the chloroform. I was holding back a sob of relief.
Holt, however, wasn’t even trying to hold back his rage. Picking himself up off the floor, he launched himself at Chan, six-plus feet of solid bulk aimed like a missile. Chan didn’t have time to do anything else—he tossed the chloroform into the air once more. A soft lob this time, but my stomach went up in the air with it.
“Andee, catch!” It was the only thing he had time to say before Holt was on him. I scrambled to my hands and knees, ignoring Chan’s and Holt’s actions in order to track the chloroform. Chan had thrown it back toward me and away from the two of them, thankfully keeping it from the flying fists and hard elbows. I caught it and gently cradled the beaker to my chest, only daring to look at my mom when I was sure I had my footing.
“Stay with me, Mom,” I called, voice tinged with hysteria. Her head lolled to the side, and her eyes were closed. I wasn’t running out of time—I was already out of it. My mom needed the antidote or she wouldn’t last another minute. It wouldn’t matter if the beaker of chloroform broke. My mom would already be asleep.
Despite the onslaught, Chan had somehow managed to stay upright, and he and Holt were facing off in front of the table of miscellaneous items. The antidote was there, on the far end next to the machine.
Chan swung at Holt, who blocked the punch with his forearm, then reached forward and grabbed Chan by his shirt, pulling him close. Chan tried to break Holt’s grip, but Holt took the opportunity to throw him to the ground instead. I’d always thought Chan was impressively muscular. But next to someone like Holt, who was, frankly, a bit of a tank, it just wasn’t an equal fight. It was like pitting a golden retriever against the X-Man Wolverine, only in this case, Wolverine was one of the bad guys. Holt stepped forward, obviously intending to pin Chan to the ground with his heavy boot. I expected Chan to roll out of the way, but instead he swept Holt’s other leg while he was moving, bringing him down to the floor with him. I was momentarily frozen, stuck watching the two of them like I was paralyzed. Then I realized I wasn’t doing anyone any favors by standing around.
As much as I cared for Chan, I couldn’t focus on him right now. Chan could take care of himself. My mom couldn’t.
My gaze swiveled to the two vials, and I rushed over, avoiding Chan and Holt’s fight, which had moved to the corner. I carefully grabbed the antidote, putting the kill pill solution back in the machine so it couldn’t get damaged in the brawl. I wasn’t about to accidentally mix or drop that one. It was safer in the machine. Then I rushed back over to the table, placing the chloroform there while I searched.
There wasn’t a key in sight.
Panic built up in my chest. Like a firework that had been filled with too much black powder, I was on the verge of combustion with a single spark. Only I was tiptoeing in a minefield of potential combustibles, and one wrong step could set them all off.
Holt must have the key in his pocket. Or somewhere else in the bunker. Like his room? I looked back at my mom. Her expression hadn’t changed at all, but her breathing had. It was slowing down.
I didn’t have time to search the underground tunnels for a key. I rushed to the bars of her prison and attempted to shove the antidote through them, but the slots weren’t big enough for my knuckles to fit through, let alone the vial.
“Mom,” I called out. “Mom! Please, I know you can hear me.” She was still awake, or her chest wouldn’t be rising and falling. But it wouldn’t be long now.
Behind me, Holt got in a blow, and Chan grunted as he landed halfway across the room. Air canisters flew in every direction as Chan crashed into them.
Staggering to his feet, Chan hefted one of the air tanks with both of his arms and slammed it across the side of Holt’s face. Holt reeled back, clutching his jaw and rolling his shoulders like he was a boxer in a ring ready for another round.
The edge of one canister hit the side of the table, causing the valve to twist open and air to hiss into the room. A high-pitched whine filled the space. Air blew my hair back. After breathing in the stale air of the catacombs, it was a shock to my system.
I knew what I had to do.
Wasting no time, I grabbed the canister and rushed to my mom’s side, pointing the air through the bars and directing it at her face. Her eyes fluttered open.
I think I breathed for the first time in the last two minutes.
In and out, that’s all I had to do. Keep breathing. Same as my mom.
I couldn’t get through the bars. But the pressurized air could. It was as close to a nebulizer as I could get.
Holt had me study the aerosolized properties of the kill pill solution, not its antidote. If I was wrong, I’d be all out of options. My mom wouldn’t get a second chance, and I didn’t have any more antidote to try again. But it wasn’t like she had too long left for me to come up with another plan either way. I had to try something, or my mom wasn’t going to make it.
I’d never been much of a gambler. I’d told Chan as much when he taught me poker. But time seemed to slow down, and I could almost hear Chan’s words in my head.
Sometimes you have to take a chance.
This air canister was already running out. So before I could think about the consequences, I grabbed a fresh one and twisted the valve, barely sparing a glance at Chan and Holt to make sure they were still occupied. Chan was unsteady on his feet, wiping blood from his cheek with the back of his hand.
Unstopping the cork from the vial, I tipped the contents of the antidote over the valve where the pressurized air was escaping the canister, effectively vaporizing the formula into the air surrounding my mother.
Or so I hoped.
Turning a liquid into a vapor, especially a different liquid I hadn’t studied previously, wasn’t something I wanted to bet my mother’s life on. But I was out of options.
Like the aerosolized antidote, memories of my mother and me floated to the surface. Her waiting in the junior high pickup line every day after school so I wouldn’t have to ride the bus with the girls who’d bullied me. Her spending all her Christmas bonus one year so I could attend science camp. Always sacrificing and putting her life on the back burner so I could achieve my dreams.
The air filled the space, and I saw my mom breathe it in.
I didn’t have time to process anything more than that before Chan was thrown into me, slamming us both against the bars. We fell to the ground in a heap, a tangle of bruised limbs, my head knocking against the stone floor. Holt was a step behind him, reaching down to grab Chan by the front of his shirt. He picked him up like a limp rag doll, and I raised my head, seeing double images of Chan struggling to keep his head up.
Not good. I’d been so focused on my mom that now none of us would make it out of here alive. My head swiveled back, and I saw my mom’s head finally drop, fast asleep, unable to stave it off any longer.
I stopped breathing—but she didn’t.
I choked back a sob of relief when I saw her chest rise and fall. My mom was sleeping, but she was still breathing.
My Hail Mary had worked.
But I had no idea how to help Chan. Holt was a bear, full of rage after waking up from hibernation. If I stepped in the way, I’d only succeed in becoming his next target. I had to find a method to take Holt out that didn’t involve sacrificing myself to the anger management gods.
My brain whirred in a thousand directions until it landed on a possible solution: the chloroform.
Sure, it didn’t solve all our problems, but maybe it’d act like a pause button. At the very least, it’d prevent Holt from killing Chan for a little longer.
My eyes swung to where I’d left it on the table, panic clawing up my chest when I didn’t see the beaker there. I was still feeling woozy from when Chan had smashed me into the bars, but I could have sworn that was where I’d put it.
Chan moaned and I looked up.
Holt had him in a choke hold, pressed against the side of the lab walls, feet barely scraping the floors. But that wasn’t what made me freeze.
Holt had the other vial in his hand. The vial with the kill pill formula. And he was forcing it down Chan’s throat.
Chan was already struggling to breathe. He had no choice but to swallow.
My scream was feral.
There wasn’t any antidote left. There wasn’t anything I could do. Still, I clambered to my feet, disoriented and unsteady. I’d only taken one hit and was pretty sure I had a concussion. No wonder Chan looked like he had been chewed up and spit back out.
I lurched forward, but I’d barely made it halfway to the table before Holt moved, showing me the vital piece of information I’d missed this whole time.
The reason the chloroform wasn’t on the table anymore was that Holt had taken it. It now sat on the floor by his foot.
One wrong move, and Chan would die.
“Now you see, don’t you, Andee.” Holt grinned and my stomach twisted. “I was always going to win. None of you were going to walk out of here alive. I just wanted you to finally understand how pathetic you were for trying to fight me. You should have taken me up on my offer when I first brought you here. This is all your fault.”
The truth of his words hit me like a freight train. Chan never would have come to the catacombs if I hadn’t told Xander to bring him along. Now he had the kill pill formula in his system, and Holt was a millisecond away from kicking the chloroform beaker so we’d all fall asleep. No, that wasn’t true. He was closer to the table than I was. He’d probably grab the gas mask so he’d be unaffected. Holt really had planned everything out.
How could I have let it come to this? I shook my head and closed my eyes.
“Admit you were wrong.” Holt was practically crowing with his success.
It wasn’t smart, but I couldn’t help it. “You know, you make me sick,” I said. “All I ever wanted was a father. But I can’t believe we’re even related. Let me guess—you’re going to take the gas mask and finish Mom and me off once we’re asleep, like the coward you are, aren’t you?” Because even though my father was a lot of things, I was coming to realize that coward was at the top of the list.
Holt narrowed his eyes, but I pressed on. If I was going to die, at least I’d get the last word in. “Yes, I said coward . Why else would you hide out in the catacombs or sell guns to criminals instead of facing your problems like a real man? Men like Chan, who fight for the things they want even when it’s hard. You think you had things tough? Face the facts. A life of crime is taking the easy way out. You took what you wanted because you felt entitled to it. And now you’re going to kill the people who oppose you instead of coming to grips with why their viewpoints are better. That’s why I called you a coward.”
Holt had a trigger point with his anger, when he crossed over from boiling rage to glacial cool. When he spoke again, his voice was low and even.
“I don’t think I’ll use the chloroform after all,” he said. “The chloroform is too gentle. Not violent enough for my tastes.” He looked at me, eyes hard and piercing. “That would be the cowardly way to kill someone, and I am not a coward.”
Before I could stop him, he pulled Chan’s head forward, then smashed it back on the stone wall.
Holt released his grip, and Chan slumped to the floor, knocked out instantly.
I didn’t even recognize the sound that ripped out of me. For us to make it through everything else, only to fail now—and not just fail, but for Chan to…I couldn’t even think the word.
I lurched forward, tears streaming down my face. This couldn’t be real. I couldn’t have saved my mother only to have lost Chan. I should have done more. I should have killed my father when we’d knocked him out the first time, before we’d left the catacombs, so he couldn’t have hurt anyone else ever again.
I’d only made it part of the way there before Holt turned and pulled his gun on me. I stopped, catching myself on the edge of the table. How he’d managed to get his gun back without me noticing—well, I guess I’d been preoccupied with other things. Now I was the only one left who could stop him, but I didn’t know what to do. I was irreparably broken.
I took in Chan’s still body and memorized his features. The way his hair fell across his face. The half circle of freckles that disappeared into the neckline of his shirt.
But through my blurry vision, I caught on to one other detail.
Chan was still breathing.
I didn’t know how it was possible. He couldn’t have taken some of the antidote before I’d stolen the vials. Holt himself had said that the machine had tested it and not a drop had been missing. So, how…?
My brain was still fuzzy, but there could only be one logical explanation. When I’d aerosolized the antidote and Chan had crashed into me right after, we’d all inhaled some of the formula. Even though Chan hadn’t had the kill pill in his system yet, intaking the vaporized form of the antidote prior to the kill pill must have acted as a sort of vaccine—much like how Holt regularly took the antidote pill daily to prevent people from trying to assassinate him with his own concoction.
Chan and I both were inoculated against the kill pill for at least twenty-four hours.
Holt and I paused, staring at Chan.
Holt must have realized it the same time I did.
He started to point his gun at Chan, and in that moment, I burst into action. I might not have been able to save Chan before, but I wasn’t about to fail him a second time. Holt was too far away for me to physically attack, so I did the only thing I could do.
Reaching across the table, I grabbed the stun grenades and matches Holt had taken from my pockets earlier. I struck one of them and threw it at Holt, clasping my hands over my ears and ducking under the table.
Could he have easily shot Chan in that time? Maybe. But people like Holt always underestimated people like me.
The stun grenade went off like a lightning flash behind my closed eyelids. I could still hear, and feel, the explosion. The primary blast typically caused the most damage, but I’d learned from firsthand experience that secondary blasts could be just as dangerous—the explosion from nearby fragments that got caught up in the first blast. So while the stun grenade didn’t have anything in it that could cause physical harm, there was a reason I’d hidden under the table.
A reason that became evident a second later when the empty test tubes on the table shattered and glass rained down like confetti.
I opened my eyes, head swimming.
I saw the room in imprints of black against blinding white light, a jumble of nonsensical images that my brain couldn’t process. There was Chan, still where he’d been a moment before. I shook my head, feeling like I was sinking underwater. There was Holt, holding his face. There, at his feet, was the chloroform. But it was wrong.
The chloroform bottle was broken.
I barely caught a glimpse of Holt crashing to the ground before I felt my own control slipping away.
Everything went dark.