It’s so horribly, awfully obvious.
He was right.
I’m out of time to prove to him that we’ll be okay in the end.
We will not be all right. Love doesn’t conquer all.
Men swarm down into the basement, too many to count, a swarm of black shields and weaponry. They’re multiplying, shouting. My question is swallowed up in the storm of noise. Something loud explodes in the next room, toward the cell, but nothing heats or burns. A flashbang? I discover I’ve put my hands over my ears and I’m too late.
My entire skull rings with the noise.
Elijah’s shadow falls away from me.
He’s falling, too. There are so many people, too many people, and they’re coordinated. They knock him down and he gets back up. The bathroom is too small to fight in, far too small. The rim of the sink presses coldly into my back. I’m afraid to let go of my ears in case my brain spills out, but I do, I do, because I have to reach for him.
I get a fist into his t-shirt.
It’s ripped away.
A frustrated scream I can’t hear scorches my throat, fear corroding the raw flesh. They’re kicking him. Killing him. How is ever going to survive this? He won’t, not unless—
I lurch forward and throw my body down over his. There’s a chance if I can hold on.
There’s a chance.
I can’t hold on.
How many people have crowded into the bathroom? Six? Ten? Four hands dig into my skin. I don’t know what I’m shouting as they drag me away. I get one arm hooked through his. It comes to nothing. My nails rake across his bicep, leaving red trails behind.
He’s hidden from me by the black outfits and combat gear and I feel something like vertigo. Something like the disembodied horror of losing a tooth. They’re dragging me, carrying me, toward the stairs.
I’m not going to get back to him. If they take me out of here and I die, I won’t be able to get back to him.
I let myself go limp, the full weight of me pulling down toward the floor. My heel catches on the stairs and it sends a bolt of pain up through my leg. At least I have contact with the bottom step and I dig it in.
Sounds filter through the ringing in my ears. One of the men, cursing me out steadily and fluently. Knuckles meeting someone’s cheekbone. The grunt as a punch clears the air from someone’s lungs.
And a high, keening cry.
Me.
I’m the one making that noise, and it strangles itself into words. They’re having to work for this. A detached part of me is proud that I’m putting up a fight, even though it hurts like a motherfucker. There’s no way I haven’t undone all Elijah’s careful healing. Even that doesn’t hurt as much as being separated from him.
He’s still fighting, but they’re piling on now with me out of the way. “Leave him alone,” I shout, a hot tear dripping into my mouth.
Leaving Elijah alone is not on the agenda for the day and anger screws itself into my spine. They’re monsters. They’re monstrous. There are too many hands and arms to keep track of. One of those hands rises and comes down to meet the side of Elijah’s head and I scream again. A black-clad arm locks itself around my neck and pulls. I claw at body armor and get no response.
He drags me up two more stairs, his partner huffing beside him. It’s a narrow space and I kick out again and again, trying to sink my heels into their shins, into the steps, anything. Anywhere.
Elijah falls again and the metallic anger is replaced with fear the color of his blood. It’s red like paint, red like pretend, but it’s real enough to stop my heart.
We’re almost to the top of the stairs now and an animal cry tears itself out of me. I don’t want to lose sight of Elijah. I want to keep my eyes on him for as long as possible. In the process I manage to wedge myself against the wall, one man’s hand pinned underneath my shoulder.
For a moment we’re face to face.
I can hardly make out his features through the haze of my tears. He’s half hidden under a tactical helmet, dark glasses covering his eyes, and if I could rip those glasses off I would. Letting go of his arm to do it isn’t an option.
My only option left is to beg.
It cracks me open, having to do this, but what wouldn’t I do for Elijah?
Nothing. The answer is nothing.
“Please,” I sob at my blurred reflection in his glasses, then swallow the crying like it’s broken glass. I set my teeth. “Please don’t do this. You’re killing him. Your friends are killing him. You could make them stop.”
His arm tenses under my hand and then he moves, too fast for me to fight him off. His fingers lock tight around my biceps. I’m caught in a trap now, a trap of my own making, goddamn it. This man’s options are practically unlimited. He could lift me straight upward, he could throw me over his shoulder, he could throw me back against the wall hard enough to knock me out.
I freeze in place. “Let me stay with him. Please, please, let me stay with him.”
The corner of his mouth turns down and that single, tiny movement makes my whole body thrill with hope. There—a crack in the armor. Please, please, let it be enough to let me reach the man beneath the hard asshole facade. I can see him. He’s so close. This man must be someone’s husband. He must be someone’s father. Someone’s son. He must still be those things even while he’s leaving bruises on my arms.
“Please. I can’t let him die.”
His mouth returns to its stoic line. Hope snuffs itself out in my heart, weak as a candle in rain. A sob balls itself up at the back of my throat. He’s gone. The moment is gone. In the bathroom, a fist connects with Elijah’s face and his head snaps back. I see it out of the corner of my eye but it might as well be playing on my own personal movie screen.
The man who has my life in his hands gives me a sharp tug. Elijah disappears behind the black shirts. He’s gone, he’s gone, and as much as I twist, as much as I fight, as much as I hurt myself, I can’t get him back in sight.
“Forget you ever knew him.” The voice in my ear is as rough as the sound of his boots on the ground. It’s the sound of the end of the world. “That’s the best advice I can give you. No matter what happens next, he’s already dead.”
11
Elijah
The interrogation room where I’m going to die is the least impressive place I’ve ever seen.
They’ve taken it straight out of a B-movie set with its drain in the floor and its cinder block walls and ungodly fluorescent lights. No, of course that’s not true. The movies stole from this room. What’s that saying about art imitating life?
I’m doing a pretty good imitation of dying. This room is doing a pretty good imitation of a morgue. And these guys could be doing an autopsy of all my life’s mistakes. They could be. They’re busy, though.
Three guys in a room, me tied to a chair, and oh—here comes another one.
Another fist, I mean.
It connects with the soft part of my gut and I’m past the point where I can stop making noise. That’s one thing the movies never get right. Those guys are always crying too early or too late. I’m not going to cry, but I will grunt and cough.
It’s not some tough guy routine. It’s just that I used all my tears up early in life. Look at me, getting all poetic in my last moments. The thing no one ever tells you is that a man can be aware of his own death for a cruel amount of time before it happens.