PART THREE: THE LAST STAND
Chapter Five: Something Good To Die For
Just five hours ago I'd stood here on the hospital steps.
The thought hit home hard. I'd walked out of there with a few scratches, maybe a little nervous, thinking I'd be gone for an hour or so and then I'd be back in Mona's arms.
Now five hours and a whole lifetime later I was back, a mangled mess, giddy with pain and blood loss and tiredness, wanting nothing more than to be leaving this city with Mona.
But I'd made a promise on the grave of my dead family that I would stop the evil that infected New York before it killed any more. And now, standing on the steps of the hospital, in the glow of the light, with the briefcase that could end it all, I faced the most difficult decision of my life.
Mona. Or redemption.
I stepped up to the front desk.
A pretty young receptionist stared up at me in horror. "Sir, are you…"
"Sax!" I cried. "Mona Sax! Where is she?"
The receptionist stared at me blankly for a few seconds, briefly shook her head and then looked down at her computer terminal. She clicked a few keys and then said, without looking up, "Ward six, Main Theatre."
I thanked her and began to walk off. I heard her call over my shoulder that I needed medical help and that she could get me a doctor, but I wasn't hearing her. Instead I was hearing hope, like an angel's song. Mona was alive. Main theatre meant she'd been through triage and probably come out worse, but even if she was on death's door there was still that tiny slither, that glowing light in the clouds.
There was still hope.
The hospital corridors spun out around me like a gruesome ghost house labyrinth. Bodies lay slumped against walls, pale and sick. Occasionally a nurse would lie passed out from exhaustion. The weeping and the pleas for help melded into one awful symphony.
You hold the key, Max, a voice in my head whispered. You can end all this.
I silenced it. No. Mona was still alive. I had no other choice, no more time to reconsider my options. I was going to use that vaccine to save Mona.
You swore on your family's grave, Max. Your family's grave.
"Shut up!" I cried out into the cold emptiness.
An old man stared up at me with red-rimmed eyes, and then stared back into his lap. I mumbled an apology and carried on walking, knowing that the briefcase in my hands was heavier than ever.
And then I arrived at Ward Six, and I slid back the doors to the main theatre, a dim silent room with nothing but the scalpels and medical equipment keeping a silent vigil on the slumped shape in the bed.
Mona was dying. There was no mistaking it now.
Miasma had worn away her beauty. She looked a hundred years old. Her skin, white as cold ice, was so tight against her that she looked almost skeletal. Two low-lidded, red-rimmed eyes stared at me blankly, scrutinising me, wondering if I was real or not. Her hair lay lank across her face, spindly and dry. As I watched, she took a long breath, a rattle echoing in her throat, and then exploded into a harsh single cough that shook her whole body. Blood splattered from her mouth down her saggy hospital gown.
"Mona," I whispered, walking towards the bed. Her weary eyes followed my every move. "It's me. I told you I'd come back, huh?"
One hand, as thin as a claw, reached out and touched the deep gash on my face. "Max," she croaked, her voice as raw as sandpaper. "Max, what…" breaking into a fit of coughing, before ending with, "happened to you?"
Every word was a struggle that she barely succeeded in. The heart monitor beeped an incessant countdown to her death.
"I got the vaccine, Mona," I said, reaching for the briefcase. "I can save you."
"It was AvaMed, wasn't it?" she mumbled, her every word framed in coughs and chokes. "AvaMed were behind it."
"No," I said, opening the briefcase. "West. Senator West."
Her eyes barely registered anything, then grim realisation dawned. "I knew it. They took me to his manor. Injected me with the C-Strain. Said I knew too much. I couldn't make him out, he was just a shadow, but… Mack Luther from AvaMed was there. And that bodyguard of West's."
"Scipio," I replied. "He's dead. So are Luther and Simon Grant."
For the first time something like a smile spread across Mona's withered face. "I knew you could do it, Max. That's why I came to you. When Luther had me in West's basement, he said something about going after your precinct. Said he thought you all knew too much. West said he had Hades on the case. Then he gave me the virus and I passed out.
'I came to in the back of a car in an alleyway somewhere in Brooklyn. All I remember thinking was that I knew the truth about Miasma, and I had to save you. I had to warn you and get you out."
As I reached for the syringe, I felt a wave of hopeless gratitude wash through me so strongly I thought I'd start crying for the first time since Michelle died. She'd come back to save me, knowing she was running out of time. My guardian angel.
"Listen, Mona," I said. "I'm going to save you, do you hear? I've got the last vaccine prototype. I don't know how effective it'll be, but…"
"No!" she cried, so hard that her words were broken off with a fit of coughing so long that she flushed and almost fell out of her bed. "No, Max. I didn't save you from Hades so you could cure me. I did it so that you could end this whole damn crisis. I was the only person in the world, far as I know, who knew about the vaccine. I had to pass on the torch." She giggled, maybe the last time she ever would. "So much for the femme fatale, huh? Seems like I had a heart of gold after all."
I stared at her blankly, incapable of believing what I was hearing. "Mona, no…"
She hushed me.
Instead she reached behind my head with her skinny hands and, with whatever strength she had left, brought my lips to hers. And in those last few seconds the world exploded into brilliant Technicolor fire, blasting away the age and the sickness and the misery, and for just a few seconds I held in my arms the beautiful Mona Sax who I'd met over the corpse of a long dead Mafia hoodlum in the bowels of a forgotten night-club, a thousand years ago. Colour flying through my head, pure ecstasy, pure life, a lifetime flashing through my head and body like white fire.
For those last few seconds, I truly lived.
And then she slumped out of my arms, giving one last guttural cough, blood spilling down her dress.
Dead.
I let her cold, stiff body lie back on the pillows, closed her eyes, and gave her icy cheek a final kiss.
As I reached for the briefcase, a hot tear spilled down my grazed cheek and vanished into the matted wound.
I knew what I had to do. I had something good to die for.
And I knew, on the graves of all the women who had ever meant anything to me, on the graves of all those who lost their lives to Miasma, that I would end it even if that was what it would take.
To be continued…
