I hold my head in my hands. What have I done? I’ve lost the stone, Clark is kidnapped, or dead, which I can’t even bring myself to consider, and I’ve allowed all these people to be killed and captured. It’s so much worse than anything I’ve ever allowed myself to imagine. But I don’t know how to stop her. I don’t know how to fly in there and just shut her down. She was more powerful than me before, and though I’ve certainly learned a lot since we last tangled, something tells me she’s learned more. Ben breaks into my thoughts. “Here’s the thing though,” he begins, pointing at the TV screen again. “I don’t think she’s there anymore.” He sits forward squinting at the screen, one finger placed contemplatively on his chin. My head snaps up.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, at first, it was like she couldn’t get enough attention, you know? She takes over this section of L.A., she sends out a note proclaiming herself King, she kills a hostage, she kicks a helicopter out of the sky, she drops grenades on the LAPD and FBI – all in the first 24 hours – but now, she hasn’t shown her face in the last, almost 48 hours. I really don’t think she’s there,” he looks up at me.” Why would she leave?” I ask. They shrug their shoulders and we all turn back to the television. There’s nothing new to report though, it’s the same repeating cycle of footage since I first came in the room. Liesel says what I’m thinking, probably because she knows I’m afraid to say it out loud.
“Do you think she has Clark?”
“She must, it’s the only thing that makes sense,” I say, as if any of this makes sense, and because I will lose my mind if I even think about him being dead for one more second.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to fucking kill her,” I say, simultaneously thinking it and meaning it for the first time.
•
When I come to this time I play possum for the better part of two hours. It’s excruciating to stay perfectly still like this, and is maybe the most patient I’ve ever been in my entire life. Lying there, pretending to be a corpse, a tiny slit of my left eye open and watching Adrian watch me, which he’s not as diligent about as I would have expected. I try not to think about how beautiful he still looks to me.
Eventually I half-cough, half-choke and feign my rebirth. I’m feeling pretty strong. Not like I should be, but I can feel my body working its way back from the brink. I sense it’s pretty pissed at me for how I’ve been treating it. Whatever – it’s got me, I’ve got it, it’s about all we’ve got – I don’t suppose it’s going to betray me at this point in the game, it’s the one thing that won’t.
“Welcome back,” Adrian says with a smug look.
“That was mean,” I say.
“I could have just left it in there,” he says, waving around a tire iron caked with my congealing and partially dried blood. “I wonder what would have happened if I’d done that? Maybe we’ll have to see next time.”
“We can see; I doubt it will kill me. My body’s got a great survival instinct.”
“I can’t disagree with you. But I think I’ve got a way to get rid of you for real when I’m ready.”
“Oh yeah?” I look down at the floor, pretending to busy myself with rearranging my stiff limbs. I don’t want my face to give anything away if he says anything legitimate.
“Like I’m gonna tell you,” he says.
I sigh, feigning disinterest. “How long was I down that time?”
“About the same.”
Jesus he’s dense. That means my healing time was nearly cut in half. If I can stall him on giving me the next dose of drugs, maybe I can avoid a third time hitting the mat. I concentrate on healing myself in the form of cleansing my blood, which I’ve never really tried before and is difficult enough without making small talk to distract my would-be killer. It’s all much harder than it sounds.
“Has it ever occurred to you that there’s something worse than killing me and something that could potentially benefit you more, well, more directly at least, than simple revenge?” I ask. He looks genuinely perplexed. I sigh and spell it out for him. “You don’t think the government might be interested in something like me? Might be interested in paying someone to bring me in? You could single-handedly stop the chaos is Los Angeles, be a hero to the city, and simultaneously solve dozens of open homicides. I’m sure the government would be more than happy to ship me off to some underground lab where they can run tests on me until I die. In fact, I think that works out on the revenge tip pretty well too.” I watch him pace the floor, seemingly deep in thought. It’s whole minutes before he speaks again.