I pushed against the door, desperate to get out, but it didn’t want to budge. I figured that debris from the soldier’s makeshift bomb was blocking the way. I rammed my shoulder into it harder, but it still stayed shut. Locked. Trapped. I thought of all the times Terrance and Richard forced me into the small, cramped room as punishment. With a howl, I ran my shoulder into the door over and over again until I was quite sure it was going to fall off.
And that’s when I hit the door again.
I wouldn’t stop.
Not for anything.
Finally, the door gave. It wouldn’t open all the way, but just enough that I could squeeze through. Once I was out, I realized that several bodies tossed over each other from the force of the blast had been why the door wouldn’t open.
My father had begun his revolution, and these were its first victims.
A hazy and tar-ish smoke filled the air, making it damn hard to see. Gray-skinned men and women fumbled past me searching for release from the acrid air. I was going the opposite direction of all of them. If my father’s man was instructed to blow up the guards, that meant he needed to get to what was behind those doors.
The closer I got to the scene of the crime, the denser the smoke got. Plaster and marble buckled and fell from every direction. I tried to ignore the nausea that consumed me as I walked by countless limbs torn from bodies.
I kept pushing.
A hand grabbed onto my hair and snatched me down to the ground, flipping me over to my back. I raised my arms in front of my face to protect myself. Two hands grabbed onto the front of my shirt.
“Hello, Tessie.”
And karma paid me back for Henry.
George slammed my head against the floor.
Chapter 31
When I came to, George was tying my hands up with rope, fastening me to a railing used by the feeble little man who occupied the office. “Why are you doing this?” I asked groggily, grasping for consciousness.
“Because you’ll get in the way.”
“Of what? Eradicating your species?”
George’s eyes widened slightly. “I see someone has been running their mouth. Let me guess, your other boyfriend? That pathetic little Henry.”
“Harper was the one who told me. You know, the father of the boy you forced me to murder,” I replied between clenched teeth.
“I really have no idea what you’re talking about,” he replied, in the same sickly sweet tone he had used during our time together at Templeton.
I threw my body at him, but the ropes kept me constrained. “You told him what I could do, you sick, twisted monster! Why? Why the hell would you do that?”
“That had nothing to do with you. Why must the whole world revolve around you? You’re nothing. Do you hear me? You never have been, and you never will be,” he sang, tugging on my ropes to emphasize his point.
“James. You needed me to make him hate himself,” I fumed.
George chuckled to himself. His laughter was filled with pride. Pride at how he played us all. “That’s why I convinced your father to send you here. I needed you two to reunite. Cast that spell over him that makes him reckless. Throws out the window every damn bit of logic he has been wired to use. And just when he thinks he can have you, I’d make sure he knew he couldn’t.”
“It didn’t matter to you if Terrance killed me or not.”
George shrugged. “Probably would have been easier if he had, but things worked out well anyways. You killed him, and James murdered two people to foolishly try and save you. And better yet, he enjoyed it. Innocent, holier than thou James. And what it must have been like for him to know his saintly Tess smashed a man’s head in till he was barely recognizable.”
What kind of world does this? Makes us into these things? James’s words haunted me.
I yanked liked a madwoman against the ropes that bound me. George continued to laugh. As he stood up, satisfied there was no way I could get out of the ropes, he patted me on the head. “It’s been fun, Tessie.”
“Why?” I asked. “I don’t understand it. Why would you want to die?” George froze at the door. I could still hear the muffled screams and groans of the injured on the other side. “I don’t know anyone who loves himself more than you do.”
George turned around and walked to where I sat imprisoned. He crouched down so his eyes were level with mine. “That’s the way they made me. To think I was superior. It’s the idea that became both my mother and my father. And then when I shook their hands, found out they didn’t even care, knew I was only a means to an end, that they could kill me with a series of numbers and pushing a button, I made my decision. I would take their army from them. I would let the eastern sector invade. I would prove to them that in the end, I was God.