room.
That’s when I see Greta.
She sits up in bed, startled, staring at me in fear.
Her mouth drops open, on the knife’s edge of a scream.
One sound from her could give me away, which is why I stare back, my eyes saucer-wide, silently begging her to stay quiet.
I mouth a single word.
Please.
Greta’s mouth stays open while Leslie hurries past the door. She waits a few more seconds before finally speaking.
“Go,” she says in a hoarse whisper. “Hurry.”
54
I wait to move until Leslie pushes open the door two rooms down. Smoke pours from the room, gray and heavy, filling the nurses’ station. I use it as cover while heading down the corridor. With each passing step, the pain seems to calm. I don’t know if it’s actually going away or if I’m just getting used to it. It doesn’t matter. I just need to keep moving.
And I do.
To the corridor’s end.
Through the door left open by Leslie.
Into Nick’s apartment.
I close the door behind me, remembering how heavy it is, using a shoulder to nudge it back into place. When the door is finally closed, I spot the deadbolt in its center.
I slide it shut.
Satisfaction swells in my chest, although I harbor no illusions that Leslie and all the rest are now trapped. Surely there’s another way out of there. But it will certainly delay them, and I need all the time I can get.
I hobble onward, exhaustion, pain, and adrenaline dancing through me. It’s a heady mix that makes me dizzy.
When I reach Nick’s kitchen, the whole place seems to be spinning. The cabinets. The counter with its wooden knife block. The doorway to the dining room and the night-darkened park outside the windows.
The only thing not spinning is the painting of the ouroboros.
It undulates.
Like it’s about to slither right off the canvas.
The snake’s flickering-flame eye watches me as I shuffle to the knife block on the counter and grab the biggest one.
Having the knife in my hand chases away some of the disorientation. Like the pain, it lingers, but at a level low enough to push through. I need to escape this place. I owe it to my family.
I look at the photograph still clutched to my chest. When faced with the decision to take those pills, I saw their faces and knew what my choice had to be.
To fight.
To live.
To be the one member of my family who doesn’t vanish forever.
I keep going, out of the kitchen, back into the hallway, where thin strands of smoke have started to make an appearance. Here the noise of the fire alarm is distant yet audible. A system separate from the rest of the building.
The sound fades slightly as I head down the hallway. At the other end is Nick’s study, the bookcase at the far wall still open. Beyond it is 12A. The study. Then the hallway. Then a way out.
Doors within doors within doors.
I stagger toward them, oblivious to the smoke, the pain, the exhaustion, the dizziness. My sole focus is the bookcase in the study. Reaching it. Passing through it. But as I approach the open bookcase, I feel a sudden heat at my back.
I whirl around to see Nick standing in a corner of the study.
In his hands is Ingrid’s gun.
He lifts it, aims it my way, and pulls the trigger.
I close my eyes, wince, try to spend my last second on earth thinking about my family and how much I miss them and how I hope there’s some way to see them in the afterlife. In that fraught, fearful darkness, I hear a metallic click.
Then another.
Then two more.
I open my eyes and see Nick continuing to pull the trigger of the unloaded gun. Like it’s a toy and he’s just a kid playing cowboy.
I don’t try to run. In my condition, I won’t get very far. All I can do is lean against the bookcase and contemplate Nick as he smiles, pleased with himself.
“Don’t worry, Jules,” he says. “I can’t shoot you. You’re too valuable.”
Nick takes several steps toward me, the gun now lowered.
“Over the years, my family has received a lot of money for people like you. It’s ironic, I know. That you, who’s so worthless on the outside, is worth so much on the inside. And that people who on the outside offer so much have inside of them things so useless that they must be replaced. You think that what we do here is murder.”
I glare at him. “Because it is.”
“No, I’m doing the world