Jarod and Miss Parker spent more time than was strictly advisable on the stairwell landing, finding many ways for their mouths to say 'I missed you' without using words. Unfortunately, the fire consuming the Centre sub-levels would not press pause and twiddle its thumbs just for them. All the while, smoke trickled through the cracks in the door to sub-level twenty-four.
Two sharp cracks like the retorts of a pistol made them jump and break apart; a moment later, the glass in the skinny window above the doorknob shattered. The door buckled outwards in a brutal twisting and rending of metal, and the flames consuming SL-24 breached the stairwell.
"Raincheck," said Miss Parker with a gasp. Jarod swore and swiped at his sleeve, where a spray of sparks had burrowed through the fabric into the flesh of his shoulder.
"This is…." He looked up and shook his head. "I don't get it. I don't understand, the sprinklers on SL-24 should have engaged by now. The fire alarms are sounding, but the sprinklers are unresponsive and the containment doors aren't shutting. It doesn't make sense. I've been sweeping each floor for anyone left, trapped or injured, but without help or more fire retardant equipment, I can't help but think I might have missed someone."
"The fire alarms are only going off because I triggered a fire drill."
"You—!" Jarod laughed. "That clarifies things a little. Not a lot, but a little." He sobered. If the alarms hadn't gone off, this would have been so much worse. Thank you. I… would not have done well with all those people on my conscience if they hadn't evacuated in time. It's bad enough as it is."
"The Centre's burning. It could be worse," said Miss Parker, hoping to divert him from thoughts of culpability. It wouldn't help them, and it would drag her down too if ever she thought to ask herself why, exactly, the sprinklers and containment doors might be unresponsive.
He ran a hand through his hair and glanced at her. "Why are you here, by the way?"
Spotting Sydney and Raines on the security cameras felt like hours ago and a thousand miles away. Still, it was ostensibly her purpose for being down in this hell-hole to begin with.
"Broots and I found Syd," she said. "He's OK. Or at least, he looked alright on the security feeds."
Jarod's face lit up, transformed by profound relief.
"That's, that's good. I was thinking he might have — but he's alive, that's wonderful. Where is he?"
"We tracked him down to somewhere between sub-level twenty-one and twenty-seven, most likely confined against his will. Raines is with him."
"Well, he's not on any floor below this one," said Jarod. "Not unless he's in the walls. I checked for any sign of life."
"And he's not on SL-21, I checked that floor. That leaves twenty-two and twenty-three."
As they climbed the stairs with a renewed sense of purpose, Jarod's words came back to Miss Parker. Not unless he's in the walls.
"That's where they said you died, you know," she said.
"Hm?"
"In the walls. They said you lost your way, fell down a shaft, broke your leg and suffocated on fumes."
Jarod paused for long enough to throw a look of alarm over his shoulder, one that flickered into a more typical smug grin before Miss Parker was sure she'd seen it.
"Does that sound like something I'd do?"
"Mistakes happen."
They reached the landing for SL-23. Jarod turned to face her, all trace of humour gone.
"Not today. Not to us. Today, we get this right." He tried the door handle. Locked.
Miss Parker snorted.
"You jinxed us."
Sub-level twenty-three was slowly filling with smoke. It trickled in through the ventilation grates like water through a hairline crack in the hull of a boat. The rehabilitation team had responded to the emergency by trying to brute force their way into the elevator shaft. Meanwhile, circumstances had forced Sydney, eminent research psychiatrist for one of the nation's top think tanks, into the role of a mime.
"We need—" He beckoned towards his body. "—to get down—" He spread his hands out across a horizontal plane. "—down on the floor." He pointed downwards.
Raines shook his head.
"No, thank you."
It was one of Raines's favourite phrases, along with "hi", "how are you", and "get Jarod", because it came out automatically without any hesitating or groping for words. It got used a lot, even when he might actually mean 'yes'.
Sydney lowered himself to the floor, keeping his eyes on Raines all the while.
"Look, I'm doing it too. We need to escape the smoke. He pointed up at the smoke and coughed theatrically. "It's dangerous."
"No, thank you."
"Fine, go ahead and suffocate," said Sydney from his spot on the floor. "Stubborn bastard." Annoyingly, Raines likely wasn't in danger of asphyxiating anytime soon; with his own mobile source of oxygen, he might be safer than most.
Raines was spared the choice between capitulation and a well-deserved death by carbon monoxide inhalation when a door at the end of the hall banged open.
"The exit! The exit to the staircase! Quick, it's open!" yelped one of the occupational therapists from outside Raines's room. Her words were answered by a stampede of feet past Raines's doorway. By the time Sydney crawled over to Raines's bedroom door and poked his head out, the hallways were deserted and the staircase beyond echoed with the shouts of the rehab staff climbing to the surface two stairs at a time.
"Jarod," Sydney said. His words came out hoarse. "Jarod… and Miss Parker! You're alive, you're both—" He fought towards them through the smoke, his head hunched to duck under the worse of it. When he looked up and squinted through the smoke, Jarod was staring at him with wild, stunned eyes. Sydney threw his arms around him in a desperate, untidy hug. He held his almost-son against him to reassure himself that it wasn't a dream, and also to calm the tremors running up and down his body. He was right, goddammit. Jarod was alive!
Jarod hesitated a moment before returning the hug. He burrowed his face into Sydney's shoulder, and Sydney thought he felt Jarod's grin through the fabric of his shirt.
"I was looking for you," Jarod muttered. "I searched as much as I could without getting—"
"And you found me. Thank you," said Sydney, heading him off at the pass. It wouldn't help anything to start self-flagellating now.
Miss Parker restrained a smile with some difficulty. Glimpses of Sydney and Jarod together outside of old DSAs were rare and had historically been grounds to report Sydney to the Triumvirate. She hadn't expected the faltering in Jarod's body language, given their thirty-year-long history as surrogate father and son. Sydney had a lot to answer for.
"I won't say you're the last team-up I expected to spearhead a rescue attempt for Raines," said Sydney. "But you were near the bottom of the list."
"We're here for you, idiot," she said. "Raines can choke on the ash of this haunted house for all I care."
"Jarod," said Raines, still perched on his bed, blind to the smoke tickling the summit of his scalp. "Get Jarod."
"'Get Jarod'?" repeated Jarod. He narrowed his eyes. "You're two steps behind, Raines, she did that already. Are you — Raines, look at me." Jarod's eyes roamed over Raines's form: the way his mouth drooped slightly on one side, allowing a bead of drool to escape; the way one arm held pinned against his body, immobile and useless; the confused look in his eye.
"Jarod," said Raines again. Bizarrely, he was smiling. What was wrong with him?
"You had a stroke," said Jarod. "Left hemisphere, middle cerebral artery?"
"What?" said Miss Parker. "A stroke?"
Sydney nodded. "It seems to have happened not long after you commandeered that Centre helicopter in Philadelphia. Bluntly, he's not doing well. It's only been a couple of weeks, but it was a pretty severe stroke."
Her thoughts spun. This was worse than Raines's pseudo-spiritual rebirth some years ago by several magnitudes. She could not seem to decide how to feel. How was she supposed to exact revenge on Raines on behalf of Catherine Parker if karma had seen fit to strike first? And it had struck hard. This hobbled version of Raines was difficult to reconcile with his previous self.
Had he gotten off easy? Or was this exactly what he deserved, cut off from all the bits of his brain that made him Dr William Raines? One way or the other, she wished she'd been the one to drop the blade over his neck.
"On Mr Lyle's orders, I've been down here trying to get him functional," Sydney continued. He looked from Jarod to Miss Parker and back. "I've been down here for long enough that I almost started believing the rumours. Lyle even tried to convince me you were—"
"Something, something, greatly exaggerated," said Miss Parker, cutting him off. "We need to get out of here, fast. Raines will only slow us down. It's not the death I would have chosen for him — a vat of boiling oil would have been best — but I'll take it."
"We're not leaving him," said Jarod.
"Jarod."
"Miss Parker," he returned, with the same warning tone.
Her fingers twitched and her lips thinned into an angry line.
"This man… this monster killed my mother. He contributed to your kidnapping and imprisonment for thirty years. Would you really ask me to put all our lives at risk to save him?"
Jarod nodded, as if the question hadn't been rhetorical.
"Yes."
Miss Parker seethed, but all the time, a little smile hovered at the corner of her mouth.
"Unfathomable," she muttered. The little hidden smile hadn't left her face since she'd pulled off Jarod's firefighter mask down on SL-24. Sydney caught the smile and gave her a curious look.
"You could say the same for me, Miss Parker," he said.
She squinted at him. "What are you talking about, Sydney?" She was not in the mood for rhetoric.
"I contributed to Jarod's imprisonment as well."
"Good point," she said, her words clipped and unforgiving. "Should we leave you down here, too?"
"We're not leaving Raines," Jarod said again. "He's harmless now. He might be harmless for the rest of his days. That's a little too close to murder for my tastes."
"Then you tell me, genius," said Miss Parker. "How are we going to get a recent stroke survivor up twenty-three floors' worth of stairs before the place burns down arou — augh!"
There was a sound like a firework erupting, and a spatter of something warm and wet hit her full in the face. She sputtered and wiped at her face; her hand came away red.
"What?" she stammered, scrubbing at the blood with her sleeve. Her question was answered before she had a chance to finish. Jarod had staggered sideways, holding a hand clamped around his left shoulder.
Over by the stairwell exit, Lyle winced and sucked in a breath through his teeth.
"Yeesh," he said. "That shot went wide. Y'know, Parker, I think my arm's gone numb since you tied me up. But I did get you, didn't I, Jarod? Where'd I get you, the bicep?"
Lyle squinted through the smoke at his captive audience, a pistol in one shaking hand. His manic, rage-blown eyes flicked from face to weary face.
"Deltoid," Jarod grunted. He readjusted his fingers over the wound and Miss Parker glimpsed a deep cut along the muscle. The bullet had grazed him, likely just barely missing Miss Parker herself.
Lyle shrugged. "I'll make sure the next one doesn't miss. I'd hate to see you turn up topside and prove me a liar."
"No, I don't suppose that would look good for you," said Jarod. "Your subjects are growing restless. I guess that's why you told everyone I died?"
"To save face," Miss Parker finished. "Or just to get your rocks off, who knows? Lyle, you little prick. You're like the cat who came back," Miss Parker said, exasperated. She'd had enough of her brother butting into all her assorted clandestine meetings. Though she planned to have it out of Jarod why he hadn't bothered to tell her sooner that he was alive and kicking, on the other side of things, she didn't give a damn about whatever twisted logic had led Lyle to create the lie of Jarod's death. It was just the sort of psychological warfare her brother would wield to ruin her day. "You just couldn't stay away, huh? Jesus fucking Christ, Lyle, you've been beaten twice in the past day alone. When will you learn to stay down? You've lost."
Lyle frowned theatrically, pantomimed looking at the gun in his hand, and grinned.
"Lost? Lost? Who's got the gun, again? Who's trapped in a burning hallway?" His voice rose in pitch with each word. He wasn't wrong. Flames had breached sub-level twenty-three and were climbing the walls like the grasping hands of the damned. The smoke gathering on the ceiling had grown dense and black. Lyle gritted his teeth in an attempt at a triumphant smile. "From where I'm standing, I'm not the one who's lost."
"Well," said Jarod. He was looking a lot steadier on his feet; taking advantage of Lyle's distraction, Sydney had ripped off a long strip of cloth from a spare set of scrubs and used it to secure the fresh bullet wound. Jarod ticked the points off on his fingers. "You're hemorrhaging allies. You've alienated all your international buyers and murdered the hand that fed you. Your company is burning around you. If we're keeping score—"
"I'll be alive by sundown," Lyle snapped, his anger escaping its moorings for a wild moment. "Which is more than I can say for you. Do you know what you've done? Do the rest of you know what he did? When you asphyxiate on smoke, you can thank him for it."
It was not the dropped-shoe moment Lyle wanted it to be. No shocked gasps of betrayal, no face-heel turns. Jarod had explained to Miss Parker as he picked the lock to SL-23 that the fire had resulted from his attempts to purge the Centre's physical records on SL-26 and -27. He'd expected the fire containment systems to manage the issue when the flames got out of control, but it hadn't happened. No alarms, no sprinklers, no blast doors. Nothing. Coincidentally, this had happened soon after Broots ran the salted bomb hard reset.
Jarod shrugged. "I've done worse," he said. He stepped neatly three feet to the left, guiding Miss Parker along with him with a hand on her shoulder. A moment later, a smoking ceiling tile hit the ground right where they'd been standing.
Lyle eyed the fallen tile and looked up warily through the smoke obscuring the rest of the ceiling. He jerked his attention back to the group, ready to fire on anyone grabbing for the gun, but none of them had moved.
He gestured at Sydney with the gun's muzzle. "Syd's always trying to tell me you're a teddy bear, really, underneath it all. He still remembers you as a four-year-old, so there's reason to suspect bias. Still, I figured you'd at least blink at the prospect of killing Centre employees."
Jarod's expression stilled. The first true signs of fear flitted across his features.
"The levels beneath this one are empty," he said. "I made sure of it. Nobody died."
But something in Lyle's face told Miss Parker otherwise. What did he know?
"There wasn't anybody down there, true," said Lyle. "Then that old CentSec director, what's his name—"
"Harvey," whispered Miss Parker. A fierce ache thudded into her chest. Not Harvey.
"Yeah, that's right, Harvey! Thanks, it was on the tip of my tongue." Lyle grinned. "Harvey was told this was nothing but a drill, so he went down to the lower sub-levels to ensure everyone was following correct fire drill procedure. He probably didn't expect to encounter a real fire. I stepped over his body when I went down to sub-level twenty-six looking for you, Jarod. I sure hope the smoke got to him before the flames did, 'cause… eesh. By the time I stumbled on him — literally! — he had some real gnarly burns all along one side of his body. Don't think he had any fingers left." He shook his head. "And I've always heard such glowing testimonials about his work ethic."
Silence greeted his words. There was no way around it. Jarod had killed Harvey, by all accounts a sweet, generous man.
"He had a daughter," said Miss Parker. "She just started playing rugby at school."
And a dozen other reasons, she was sure, that the world was worse off without Harvey in it. She hadn't really known him, but without hers and Jarod's plan, he might still be alive.
"You're lying," said Jarod, but for once he didn't sound very confident.
"I'm not."
She couldn't explain why, but Miss Parker believed Lyle. Lying about Jarod's death made sense, in a twisted way. But here and now, Lyle intended to kill them all. There was no reason to lie anymore, and especially not about this.
She looked over at Jarod. He hadn't moved. You killed Harvey, she thought in his direction, testing the waters to see if she blamed him for this. She couldn't. They had both put Harvey in the line of fire, her as much as him. She had inadvertently shut down the fire containment protocols, she had told Harvey it was only a fire drill when she knew there was smoke somewhere down in the sub-levels. She'd co-authored the plan. She was the one who'd kept her allies in the dark as she dropped down her very own grief spiral.
Her allies…
A horrible thought struck her.
"Broots — what did you do to Broots?" she said. "If you hurt him—"
Lyle huffed out a laugh.
"I don't know why you're pretending to care now, you certainly didn't when you left him alone with me. He'll swallow pretty much anything you spoon-feed him, won't he? But, eh. He'll live." His mouth shrugged. "For now. When I'm done down here, of course, he's a goner. But he's got some time left. If he's smart, he'll run. If he's even smarter, he'll give up."
The smoke was so thick it had begun to obscure Lyle's figure at the end of the hall. Overhead, the lights sputtered and flickered into darkness, leaving the group lit only by the light of the mounting flames. A nearby support pillar let out an almighty crack and a cloud of sparks erupted into the air, too close to Miss Parker for comfort. What she wouldn't give for that firefighter's mask of Jarod's, but it had been lost when the door to SL-24 exploded. She swerved to avoid being burned; Lyle, apparently mistaking the movement for an escape attempt, had the gun on her in an instant.
"Ah-ah," he tutted, shooing her away with the pistol's muzzle.
"This is ridiculous," she said. She leaned into the wall to steady herself. "What's the plan here, Lyle? Try to keep us at gunpoint for long enough to watch us suffocate? You'll choke along with us. The Centre is finished."
"From an arson attack and some server wipes? You think that's enough to ruin the Centre?"
"Lyle!" Miss Parker bellowed. "Shut the hell up and drop the damn gun, now. We can hash out how resilient the Centre is when we're topside. You'll kill us all if you don't let us leave — not just us, you too! I never figured you for suicidal, Lyle."
Lyle shook his head, smiling all the while.
"No, I'm walking out of here." He jerked his chin towards the door to Raines's bedroom. "All of you, get in the room."
Nobody moved.
"Or you'll what?" said Sydney. "That's certain death. I'd rather die out in the open, thanks."
He sounded like an old general facing a firing squad. A flood of affection for her old friend surged through Miss Parker's chest.
"Move!" shouted Lyle, and aimed a warning shot over their heads.
It might have been the bullet that did it; on the other hand, it might simply have been providence. Regardless, another burning tile chose that moment to dislodge from the ceiling and plummet to the floor. Lyle was not as quick as Jarod, and the tile hit him on the shoulder. One corner of the tile had burned down to a glowing ember, which broke off on impact and hit Lyle on the inside of his right thumb.
He shouted in pain and shook his hand frantically. The gun bounced out of his grip. Miss Parker seized her moment.
"Stay down this time."
She thundered forward like a linebacker and threw herself into her brother's gut. Both of them crashed back into the threshold. A bone-deep crunch reverberated through Miss Parker's body and for a wild moment, she thought she must have crushed either Lyle's ribcage or her own. But no, it was the threshold itself. Shards of masonry cascaded around her. Already weakened by fire, the door frame buckled, crumbled…
And fell.
Before Miss Parker could gasp, the surrounding wall caved in and an avalanche of glowing, smoking rubble buried both brother and sister. A sudden, all-encompassing, crushing weight surrounded her. She opened her mouth to scream, but the force of the weight had pushed all the air out of her lungs at once. She wasn't even granted the mercy of unconsciousness, though the pain alone should have been enough. At the last moment before the wall came down, she'd shielded her head. She wished she hadn't; oblivion would have been a comfort.
The worst part was the embers. The weight was terrible, but it was a chronic, dull pain; the embers were a different story. Without oxygen, much of the fire responsible for toppling the wall had sputtered and gone out. The embers persisted, and she was burning. Not all over and all at once, but slowly and in patches here and there, dozens of maliciously chosen spots all over her body pushed to a point past pain. Not how a match burns, but how lunch burns when left too long in a pan over high heat.
Distantly, she heard voices beyond the smoking mass of plaster, brick, wood and fibreglass.
Jarod first, frenzied and terrified: "No!"
Hollow sounds reverberating through the masonry. Someone was digging.
Sydney's voice came next: "Jarod, st — Jarod, stop, you'll bring it down on the rest of us. She wouldn't—"
The words made little sense, but she clung to them as evidence of a world outside this sudden hell.
Something… organic lay flush with the back of her hand. Skin. With effort, she moved her hand bare millimetres back and forth. Like a wave hello (goodbye?), to see if it would raise a response. None came.
Lyle is down here with you, she remembered, shrinking back from the eerily still presence. There are worse things down here than embers.
Her consciousness narrowed to a vanishing point and for an unknowable span of time — two seconds? An hour? — she knew nothing, felt nothing, saw nothing. Then, a sensation of fingernails scraping against her wrist. A hand closed on her arm. On instinct, she grabbed back. Someone was pulling at every inch of her within reach, swiping away handfuls of grit whenever his fingers failed to find purchase. Her body breached the rubble by degrees. Pulling, pushing, new fresh agonies as almost-extinguished cinders rediscovered oxygen and flared to life once more and ate away at her skin.
As much as possible, she focused on the hand grasping hers, the hands pushing her pain away from her bit by bit. She didn't notice when the last of the rubble was pushed off her legs. According to her misguided nerves, the burning coals were still pressing against her skin. She did notice, however, when she was pulled against something soft and firm — Jarod. Jarod was everywhere around her, arms encircling her, carefully avoiding pressing against the burns. He muttered something indistinct, over and over again.
When her senses and awareness rushed back into her body, she noticed two things in quick succession, one after another.
First: pain. She'd been flayed alive, she must have. Flayed alive and had an elevator dropped on her head. It was the only explanation.
Second: Jarod was reaching across her towards the remaining rubble. Like he had more work to do. Miss Parker caught his arm, her fingers smearing sooty marks across his skin.
"Don't," she said, half-word, half-cough.
"But he's your—"
"He would have killed us all. Don't you dare."
Jarod didn't argue, though he stiffened slightly. It wouldn't sit right with him, she knew. He wasn't the type to kill someone by neglecting to help them. Hell, he wasn't the type to kill someone at all. But then again, he hadn't. Miss Parker had been the one to topple a damn wall on Lyle. Miss Parker had been the one to kill him. She should have felt something, anything in the face of that fact, but she didn't. She only felt a minute amount of relief that if they had to die, at least they wouldn't die at the hands of Bobby Bowman.
Jarod stared for a long moment at Lyle's unmarked grave, running his knuckles up and down Miss Parker's forearm. She buried her face in his shoulder, hiding her stinging eyes from the smoke.
"Killed us!" shouted Raines. Miss Parker looked up from where she sat cradled in Jarod's lap to see Raines pointing a trembling finger at the exit to the stairwell.
What used to be the exit to the stairwell, that is. When the wall had collapsed, the masonry had buckled at its most vulnerable point. It had obliterated the doorway and with it, their only clear exit off of sub-level twenty-three. Limited though he was in the capacity to communicate, Raines's accusation was clear. Miss Parker's tussle with her brother had stranded them in the Centre's burning dungeons.
You killed us.
Around the assembled group, shoulders slumped and eyes glazed over as the reality of the situation set in. Smoke was overtaking the sub-level; Miss Parker couldn't see more than five feet in front of her. They had seconds, not minutes, before her needling headache turned into complete oxygen starvation. Nothing life-saving could be accomplished in seconds.
"Well," said Sydney. He coughed once, politely, managing unfailing dignity even while his lungs filled with carbon monoxide. "At least we'll suffocate before we burn. That's some small consolation."
"You should write commencement addresses," Miss Parker croaked. She eyed the rubble obscuring the doorway. "I'm not about to give up that easily."
She clambered out of Jarod's lap and skidded to her knees next to the ruins of the exit. Ignoring the glowing coals searing off her fingerprints, she began to dig through the doorway.
For a moment, Sydney and Jarod just watched her. She supposed she couldn't blame them — there wasn't nearly enough time to dig through. She only knew that, to her mind, dying while trying to escape death was infinitely preferable to giving up.
Jarod crouched next to her and started tugging at the corner of the collapsed threshold. She shot him a wobbly smile and pushed aside two slabs of plaster balancing near the top of the heap, ignoring her growing headache. That done, she used her hands as spades to dislodge several chunks of concrete — and froze. There was a tuft of hair sticking out from the rubble, right where the concrete had been.
Jarod noticed her pause and looked over.
"What?" he said.
She shook her head and yanked a wad of insulation out from the ruins. The heap shifted, and just like that, the hair vanished once more.
Ding.
Jarod jerked his head around towards the sound.
"Is that…?"
From somewhere around the small of Miss Parker's back, some sharp-edged something spat and hissed. She picked it out and shook it: her walkie-talkie. She depressed the talk button.
"What?" she said.
From the walkie-talkie's dented speaker came the tinny voice of Broots, his words coming in fits and starts, like he was bracing against an unseen weight.
"Miss Parker!" he said. "Please tell me I got the right floor. I've been trying to figure out from these unlabelled security feeds where you are — did I get it right? I think I see figures in the smoke on SL-23. Are you on SL-23?"
The elevator. He'd sent down the elevator. He'd fixed whatever fault had flummoxed the thing three floors up, and sent it to their rescue.
"Broots, I could kiss you on the mouth," said Miss Parker. Broots sputtered incoherently on the other end, but she paid him no mind. "Yes, yes, we're on SL-23, you beautiful idiot! Get us out of here." She stuffed the walkie-talkie back under the waistband of her pants. "Get on the elevator, everyone. Now, go!"
"Keep your heads as close to the ground as you can," added Jarod. They didn't need telling twice. Mutely, Sydney wiped at his eyes, looking like he didn't quite believe things had turned around so fast; he'd been crying silently, watching them work. The group — Miss Parker, Jarod, Sydney and Raines — shuffled down the hallway on hands and knees, the eldest bringing up the rear as Sydney steered his charge in the correct direction. The elevator had been open for mere seconds, but mere seconds was all it took for it to fill with smoke. Miss Parker grabbed the threshold and pulled herself along the floor, into the elevator.
"Get a move on or the train is leaving without you!" she shouted. Her words were angry, but her chest was bursting with a flood of fierce joy. Yes, yes, goddammit. This place is not taking me with it.
Broots's voice came through the walkie-talkie again.
"I can see on the feed that someone is in the elevator. Christ, it's so hard to see. Let me know when to floor the gas pedal, I don't like the look of how close those flames are."
The second Sydney tugged Raines's trailing left foot into the elevator, Miss Parker punched the talk button.
"Gun it, Broots," she said.
He gunned it.
Broots must have disabled a half-dozen security measures to force the elevator from SL-20 to SL-23. The doors didn't even close before the elevator rocketed upwards so fast that it pressed them all against the floor.
Miss Parker reached out blindly, found Jarod's hand and squeezed. He squeezed back.
And then, just as abruptly, they stopped. A chorus of groans filled the space as inertia kept them all flying for another foot or so before gravity brought them crashing down. Miss Parker was thrown sideways, knocking her shoulder against the wall.
All the while, she refused to let go of Jarod.
The smoke poured out onto the ground floor. Somebody coughed. It was Broots.
"Hey, guys," he said. Miss Parker squinted up at him, cringing under the harsh light of day. Broots gave her an uncertain smile, his eyes flicking from one sprawled figure to the next: Sydney on his back, holding a hand to his brow; Raines, face-down and unconscious, the tubing from his oxygen tank tangled around one leg; and Miss Parker and Jarod, still holding the other's hand in a white-knuckled grip. His gaze hovered a micro-second longer on this last image.
"We did it," whispered Miss Parker. She wasn't ready to get up. She looked at Broots. He seemed to be holding himself oddly. "Right? We did it, right?"
Broots didn't respond immediately. Miss Parker wiped at her eyes and blinked up at him; on second glance, not only was he holding himself oddly, but there were also funny shadows on his face, like he had applied eyeshadow with only an infant's understanding of what eyeshadow was for. He was watching Jarod, his face flickering through a dozen expressions before landing on relief.
"You're alive," said Broots. A small, breathy laugh escaped him. "When did — Jarod, we thought you were—"
"Dead, I know. I'm not," Jarod grunted. He hadn't summoned the energy to rise from the elevator floor either.
Broots jerked in surprise, perhaps realizing that he'd been staring. He looked around at the rest of the elevator occupants.
"You're all alive!" He paused. "Um. Is Raines alive?"
Sydney reached over and prodded Raines's carotid with two fingers.
"Alive," he grunted after a moment.
"You're all alive!" Broots repeated.
"We're alive and the Centre is dead." Which was a ridiculous thing to say in a Centre elevator, surrounded by Centre employees. Nevertheless, it had never felt more true. A slow smile split Miss Parker's face in two. She erupted into hoarse giggles. "It's dead, the wicked witch is dead." The giggles faltered. "He's dead."
She'd killed her brother. The alternative had been death, yes, but that didn't make it easier to face. They'd come into the world minutes apart. He'd never had Catherine Parker. If Raines had flipped a coin and taken the other 50/50 choice that day, she might have turned out just like him.
Her laughter turned into a coughing fit, and she curled onto her side to hack the smoke out of her lungs.
"He…?" asked Broots.
"Lyle," wheezed Jarod.
"Oh. Oh!" Broots scratched at his hairline. "He's dead? Oh, wow, OK. OK."
Miss Parker got to her feet with loud reluctance. It was surreal, being yanked out of that suffocating hell — then, seconds later, here they all were. Standing in the open air, as safe as one could ever be on Centre grounds. Raines, still unconscious, required the combined efforts of Sydney, Jarod and Miss Parker to pull him out of the elevator and into the entrance hall, Weekend-at-Bernie's style. Broots did not move to help.
Over by the main entrance, a cheerful clamour heralded the return of the Centre employees, presumably all confident in their assumption that the fire drill was now over. A couple of them hesitated on spotting the form of Raines draped over the shoulders of his underlings.
"No, no! Everyone, turn around. Go back outside!" shouted Sydney, but his voice was too hoarse to carry over the hubbub of returning staff.
"Centre staff! This is CentSec." If a dead-on-her-feet Miss Parker could do nothing else, she could still yell like a champion. "Turn around and exit out the main entrance. You are not permitted back within these walls until given the go-ahead by a representative of my team."
A brave individual at the back of the group spoke up.
"Willie from CentSec said—"
"Willie is out of the loop on the current situation. Leave, now."
With that, the tide of employees receded, though not without a couple of backward glances — some resentful, some suspicious, some merely curious.
Miss Parker ducked out from under Raines's arm, letting Jarod take over. She looked back at the elevator. Broots still stood by the open doors, watching Jarod and Sydney carry Raines to the main entrance.
"No, of course, don't bother giving us a hand, it's only dead weight," she said, making half an effort at sarcasm. Then she drew nearer to Broots and wished for the power to take back her words. Close to, the odd shadows on his face resolved themselves into an ugly mass of bruises lending his features new, irregular dimensions, and his side… why was he holding his side?
"Yeah, sorry. Are you alright?" asked Broots. His voice hitched when he spoke.
"Am I alright?" she echoed, stunned. "Broots, what — was this Lyle?"
Broots looked down at himself. There was nothing much to see south of his shoulders, save for a tear and some scuff marks on his shirt. He readjusted his hand around his ribs.
"This? Oh, uh, yeah," he said. "Some of his guys broke a couple of my ribs once they found us in the server room." He frowned. "You look surprised. Are you really surprised?"
Was she? Did she have the right to be surprised?
"When I—"
"Because you knew what would happen when you left me in the server room," he said in an explosion of agitation. "You said so yourself. Lyle was going to have me shot, did you know that? Gun against my head and everything. He was about two seconds from—" Broots's face crumpled. His lip twitched convulsively for a moment, before he wrestled it under control. "Don't get me wrong, I'm happy you found Sydney and Jarod. And… Raines, I guess? But."
He didn't finish the idea.
"… But?" Miss Parker prompted, though she wasn't sure she wanted to hear the rest. If she didn't, though, the yawning gulf between them would become too wide to bridge.
Broots's jaw clenched and he took a deep breath through his nose. There was a flint edge in his eyes, something stony in his expression.
"But I didn't deserve that. I'm not a load of caltrops you can dump in front of the enemy to slow them down. I'm supposed to be your friend."
He was right. He was completely right. Yet, looking back, she couldn't figure how she would have done anything differently. Still, some words needed to be said.
"Broots, I'm sorr—"
"Don't."
He hobbled away. Miss Parker didn't stop him. Maybe she would, when she had a genuine apology to give him.
She looked down at herself, taking stock of the damage from her adventures in the dungeons. She looked like she'd been in a wrestling match with a chimney sweep. And the burns, the burns were everywhere.
Focusing on her appearance of all things — this sort of inane observation was her mind's best defence kicking in once again, twisting itself around mundanity to cope with the monumental. She'd killed her brother. There was no way around that.
She shook herself mentally. Mundanity, that was the thing. There was plenty of time to process all that. For now, a change of clothes. At the very least, it wouldn't hurt to avoid attracting undue attention. She nipped into her old office for a fresh skirt suit.
It had only been a few days since her forced career change, and the promised investigation might well have been shoved to the side after the mass murder of the Triumvirate. They might not have had time to clear out her old office. Sure enough, the office was exactly how she'd left it, including a closet hung with a couple changes of clothes for those long nights picking apart Jarod's latest clue. She chose an inconspicuous black set with a skirt that fell past her knees. It was a strategic choice, in light of the burn to the back of her calf. She'd been ignoring its screams ever since Jarod had pulled her from the wreckage of the threshold on SL-23.
Towelling down and changing from shredded rags into business professional revealed smaller burns here and there, drowned out by the larger, deeper burns on her bicep, leg and…
She caught her reflection in the mirror and paused halfway through the act of buttoning up her blouse. There was a burn on her forehead, just shy of her hairline. She'd known it was there, not being able to ignore the signals sent back to her brain that her head was on fire. We're being cooked alive, they said with unshakable certainty. Why aren't we doing anything about it? These signals still didn't prepare her for the sight of the angry red wound, long and skinny and raw and stretching across her forehead from her hair part to just above her right ear. She bent closer to the mirror and traced the perimeter of the wound with the barest touch.
"Miss Parker, do — oh." Jarod had tracked her down. "Sorry," he said, though he sounded too distracted to be truly sorry. Miss Parker didn't react, only glanced up quickly, then back to her reflection. Jarod stepped back as if to leave, to allow her privacy while she finished dressing.
"I don't think of myself as a vain person," she said. "But. These are gonna leave some marks." She let out a harsh exhale and looked up again to see Jarod hovering in the doorway, apparently reluctant to leave. She pressed her lips together. "Worth it, though. Good riddance to the monstrous bastard."
She tugged at the hem of her skirt, which didn't quite cover the burn to the back of her leg. She could conceal the other major burns with any outfit with full-length sleeves, though this was a mixed blessing. It didn't matter how soft the silk of her blouse was, it was sandpaper rubbing up against the burn on her bicep.
Jarod stepped around the desk and took in her new collection of burns with a clinician's eye.
"They'll heal," he said. He sounded certain. She needed certainty, just then. "It'll take time, but I'll help you."
There was never any question that they'd try again to go their separate ways. Jarod would help her, and she'd help him. Nobody else was qualified.
"So. What's happening out there?" she asked, jutting her chin towards the door. She took her time with her remaining shirt buttons, deriving no small pleasure from watching Jarod's eyes flick down to her fingers' work every few seconds. She swept her hair back with a practiced swipe of both hands, but her fingernail caught on the ragged edge of the burn to her forehead and she hissed in pain. A couple of hairs had stuck to the blistered flesh.
Jarod didn't answer. He drew a gentle fingertip along her hairline to clear her hair from her face and pressed a kiss just short of the burn's edge, soft and quick. He took her hand in his, turned it palm-down and dropped another kiss on her knuckles, on the edge of a burn marring her index finger. A third, below her collarbone; a fourth, on the inside of her elbow. Dozens of embers had left their marks all over her, like a constellation branded into her skin by the death of the Centre. There were worse things in the world to commemorate.
Miss Parker laughed, low and soft.
"That's going to take you forever."
"Hm, then it will," said Jarod.
Miss Parker couldn't think of anything to say to that short of laughing at him, which would make her a hypocrite. So instead, she kissed him. The building around them was burning to the ground from within, but she refused to be hurried. She took her time mapping out his mouth, memorizing how his lips moved. She'd know him as well as he knew her, if she had anything to say about it.
The back of her thighs knocked against a hard edge behind her — Jarod had backed her into the desk.
"Up," she panted, because she had been reduced to single words only. "Damn it, up."
She didn't need more words than that. Jarod scooped her up with a hand under each thigh and helped her onto the edge of the desk. He took a moment to map out the minefield of burns on her thighs with his fingertips, like a pianist practicing finger placement for the next few measures of a sonata. He paused, his thumb grazing the hem of her skirt.
"Do you — would you like—?"
"Yes, already, please."
Then her skirt was bunched up around her hips and her underwear was tugged aside to make room for Jarod's hand, Jarod's fingers, Jar — oh, Jarod's wonderful fingers. Miss Parker reached back and braced herself on the desk with one splayed hand, her breath coming rough and ragged as Jarod dismantled her from the outside inwards. Like a puzzle box, she thought as her thighs fell further open, and the thought made her snicker aloud. Like an intricate puzzle box. To stifle her laughter, she pulled his face up to meet hers again for kiss after heady kiss. His fingers never stopped.
"Glad I could amuse you," he said wryly, when he seized a moment to come up for air.
"Your — ah! — your arson attack is gaining on us every second we spend here. Everything is amusing right now."
His hand stilled. Miss Parker almost shouted in frustration — she'd been so close.
"Should—"
"Don't you dare stop," she snapped, and tugged ineffectually at his pants. "You're too in your head. You should feel this, too."
Jarod pushed her hand away.
"There'll be time for that later—"
"Will there?"
It was difficult to imagine a later, in this moment.
"Yes," he said, with no room for argument. He crooked his fingers, making her gasp. "All the time in the world. For now, I need to concentrate."
She almost imagined she could smell the smoke, though the fire likely hadn't yet passed sub-level nineteen. The urgency kept them both clothed, ready to straighten their hems and refasten their buttons at a moment's notice. Miss Parker's free hand skittered up and down his torso under his shirt as she kissed and nipped and sucked and noted his response each and every time. She had to know him, after all. Maybe better than he knew her, and wouldn't that just show him?
Jarod was more deliberate, canvassing her throat with his mouth inch by inch before travelling ever downwards.
"Ah!" she hissed. Just as she'd been avoiding his gunshot wound, he'd done his best to avoid the burns — but mistakes happen. Jarod drew back, alarmed.
"Are you OK?"
"Ask me later. Or better yet, stop asking."
He did.
He brought her to the brink again and paused for just long enough to allow her to float back down to Earth. Again and again, to the edge and back. He seemed to sense the exact moment to stop, without her making a sound. She shoved against his shoulder with the heel of her palm and laughed.
"I should have known you'd excel in frustration. God damn it, Jarod, you fucking tease."
But like many things, it was worth the wait.
How long does it take an adult to forget the rush of excitement associated with being let out for recess? At their core, the employees of the Centre had never really forgotten. They'd shuffled around in assigned huddles for the first ten or so minutes, waiting for the all-clear to go back inside. When it never came, the groups bled into each other and spread out across the grounds. Some unearthed granola bars from their pockets and indulged in a snack. Others lounged on the hoods of their cars in the open-air parking lot, soaking in the drabs of heat before summer came to a close. Still others embarked on meandering treks through the walking trails which wound around the back of the building.
When Sydney and Broots stepped out through the main doors, they were immediately accosted by a short, mustachioed man in a safety vest.
"What's the latest word?" he asked urgently. "Can we go back in? My team needs this afternoon, we have three separate projects due by Wednesday. Three. Do you think they'd notice if we went back in early?"
Sydney and Broots looked at each other in alarm.
"You shouldn't—" started Sydney.
"You can't go back in," said Broots. "I'm hearing the fire alarms are for show, just to get everyone out of the building as fast as possible. There was a major security incident, maybe an—" He stammered to a halt and looked to Sydney for help.
"An active shooter," said Sydney.
"Yes!" said Broots, sounding a little too excited by the prospect. He quickly picked up steam. "Uh, yes. An active shooter. A belligerent ex-employee who… well, don't tell anyone, but I figure he was driven to it by all these missing staff. He doesn't want to be next."
"Next?" The mustache quivered in revolted fascination.
"I mean, you got me, what does that mean? Next? But I get it. Things have been weird, right?"
The man nodded sagely.
"Very weird."
Broots wasn't done. "It's a real fiasco. This guy, he wiped the employee records to cover his tracks, so they can't even track him down. And Lyle — did, uh, did you hear what happened to Lyle, Syd?"
A woman who had been hovering at the periphery of their conversation stepped closer, unable to resist.
"Something happened to Mr Lyle?" she said.
Privately, Sydney thought Broots was doing pretty well on his own without his help, but he graciously stepped in.
"Yes, he took some gunfire, I believe. They're not sure he'll make it."
"Oh my God," said the woman, equal parts horrified and delighted.
Leaving that news for their expanding audience to chew on, Broots and Sydney extricated themselves from the crowd.
"Why did you tell that man not to tell anyone?" said Sydney, once he could be certain they were out of earshot. "I would imagine hearing that the Centre no longer has the means to track down employees would be empowering news for many."
"I know that guy through a work buddy on SL-5," said Broots with a shrug. "Mouth like a sieve. Mind like a sieve? He never shuts up, is what I'm saying. If I tell him not to say anything, he'll tell the world."
The rumour mill continued to churn. It wasn't too much longer before people started breaking off from their groups and hurrying towards their cars with identical expressions of determination on their faces. Sydney would be surprised if they ever intended to return.
Another rumour that floated to the surface was the fact that nobody had called the fire department. At first there had been some debate, but after all, it was only a fire drill. It's not as if there was a real fire. Yes, if the active shooter were real, that was probably a job for the police — but didn't the Centre prefer to take care of things in-house?
Better to leave it alone.
Jarod and Miss Parker stepped out from under the roof of Centre Headquarters for the last time. They stepped out of its shadow and into the sun. With her shoulder pressed against his, Miss Parker felt tension leak out of Jarod's body by degrees, then all at once.
They should have bummed a ride to the airport from the first passerby who still recognized Miss Parker's authority. It would have been the sane thing to do. Instead, they loitered around Centre premises, waiting.
Waiting.
For what? The Centre was dead.
They wandered down to the shore, took off their shoes and socks and sat on the rock beach. They had hardly made themselves comfortable when the crunch of pebbles underfoot announced the arrival of intruders. It was two women in pantsuits, recognizable as employees Miss Parker had passed in the hallways regularly, though she couldn't come up with their names to save her life. They might have been accountants. The maybe-accountants looked as though they might walk around them, but at the last second one of them took a more thorough look at the respective profiles of the Centre's murderers and rubbernecked to a standstill.
One of them whispered to the other. "Is that…?"
The second woman raised her voice.
"Are you Jarod?"
Jarod looked up. His brows furrowed.
"Yes," he said warily.
"Oh, wow. I must have got my wires crossed, I thought you were… well, it sounds silly, but I thought you were dead," said the first woman.
"He was!" said the second, cheerfully. Miss Parker realized on second glance that, far from being an accountant, this second woman was the morgue attendant she'd encountered when dropping in on Jarod's (evidently fabricated) cremation. What had her name been? Ashley? It didn't matter.
"What?" said her friend.
"Well, obviously he wasn't, really. But that's what everyone was saying."
The first woman returned her attention to Jarod, looking him over as if he were the statue of David, some curiosity in a museum. "I'm over here wondering if I should ask you for an autograph, isn't that silly?" she said.
"Yes," said Miss Parker, deadpan. To her deep regret, the two women shifted their attention to include her as well as Jarod.
"Miss Parker! You're out here too, that's so crazy," said the second woman, the one she'd encountered in the morgue. "I fell for that rumour about you being dead, Jarod, but you can hardly blame me. I was skeptical at first because people say you're some kind of genius, but then I ran into Miss Parker yesterday and, well. No offence, Miss P, but you've looked better. That clinched it. I've never seen anyone look so—" She brought herself up short, whether because she realized what she was saying or because she noticed Miss Parker's glare and summoned some self-preservation instincts. "Um. Well, you look much more cheerful today, that's nice."
"… Thanks."
She sensed Jarod's eyes on her, but she didn't look round at him.
"You know, it's weird," said the morgue attendant, because apparently she really didn't know when to shut up. "I always figured you two were like… enemies, I guess? But it's just business, I gotcha. It's nice that you get to walk around outside now, Jarod. I heard they wouldn't let you do that before, that seems a little harsh. Are you, what, are you escorting him, Miss Parker? Weird sort of detail for CentSec head."
The first woman elbowed the second.
"Amber!"
"What? I'm just asking."
"That's enough questions," said Miss Parker. "Shoo now before I think of a reason to send you two down to the Renewal Wing."
They scurried off without another word exchanged, looking appropriately intimidated. Their departure created a new, more comfortable silence, nothing but the crash of waves, the shrieks of seabirds overhead, and the distant hubbub of employees enjoying an unexpected afternoon siesta from underground nose-grinding.
When she could stand it no longer, Miss Parker spoke.
"I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to start accepting — hell, believing that this could be over." She drew her knees up under her chin and hugged them against her body. "Or even that it will be over soon. Lyle was right, a monster like the Centre can't be taken down just by some blundered arson and a couple of server wipes. The Centre is bigger than data and a building."
"Yes," said Jarod, carefully. He was trying to stay calm, she could tell, but there was a surreal gleam in his eye, like a runner within arm's reach of the finish line. "It is, but not by much. The Centre was a building, data, and people. Lyle lost the people when he went off his rocker, terrorizing the staff and having dissenters silenced. Once people realize he's gone, along with any means of tracking them down…" His voice dropped to a murmur, as if he couldn't quite believe his luck. "They'll scatter."
Miss Parker's mouth bent into a skeptical grimace.
"That's a lot of guesswork. This won't be enough for me to stop looking over my shoulder." She leaned her cheek on her knee and looked down at her hand, where her fingers were intertwined with Jarod's, anchoring her to the Earth in this wildly surreal moment. "Still. I hope you're right."
"I hope so, too." He grimaced. "We did… the right thing."
He said it as a statement of fact, though she heard it as a question. She frowned.
"Of course we did."
"Did we?" His voice didn't quite break, but it was a near thing. "I want this to be over so badly I don't even trust that I'm seeing things clearly. I killed someone today. And I'm happy. I'm not happy he's dead, but I can't… I can't regret this. There might be more people we missed, who got trapped underground, who I murdered, and I'm sure that will hit me like an avalanche tomorrow, but—"
"I know," she said, and she did. Harvey had been a good person in a bad job. A better person than her, probably. It was a betrayal to feel so hopeful at the death knell of someone good. Hell, it was bad enough to feel hopeful at the death of someone horrible.
She closed her eyes. It would be a long time before she'd forget the sight of Lyle's hair sticking up through the crumbled mortar on SL-23. If she ever did.
"Are you OK?" asked Jarod.
"I will be."
The sub-levels had been burning for hours before the windows above ground began to leak tar-black smoke, visible even from the shoreline. Miss Parker's legs were numb from hours sitting in the same spot; beach pebbles had imprinted indelible patterns into her calves. The two of them were turned away from the water and towards headquarters, like concert attendees waiting through the opening act for the headlining performance.
Shortly after night fell, the first flames appeared. The fire gained new purchase on life with the discovery of a plentiful source of oxygen, and within minutes the Centre was a dancing silhouette of reds and oranges and yellows against an inky backdrop. Sirens wailed in the distance — some passerby had doubtless noticed that the standoffish think tank down by the water was going up in smoke.
The sirens would arrive too late.
Jarod cried. He curled in on himself and sobbed, his shoulders shaking as relief and grief for a stolen life poured out of him. Miss Parker let him cry. She watched in silence as flames consumed the Centre, her childhood playground and lifelong bane. Somewhere amidst the chaos, her father's office collapsed with a terrific grinding sound and fell through the ground floor into so much detritus. When Jarod's sobs had run their course, Miss Parker lifted his face towards her and kissed away his tears, mingling them with her own.
When the firefighters arrived fifteen minutes later, the children of the Centre were gone.
fin.
