Ch.28: The Confrontation

I grab the scalpel from the tray table.

It’s small. A #15 blade. Aris used it to take my eye. Now I’m going to use it to take his life.

The darkness is total. The backup generator is dead, the mag-locks are disengaged, but the Fortress shutters are still down. The basement is a tomb.

I can hear them.

The soft, tactical shuffle of boots on concrete.

They are in the utility room. Thorne is in there with them.

I crawl to the door. I push it open.

The utility room is chaos.

I can't see anything, but I can hear the violence. The grunt of impact. The snap of bone. The wet thud of bodies hitting the floor.

"Contact left!" a voice shouts.

*Muzzle flash.*

A stroboscopic burst of light illuminates the room for a fraction of a second.

I see Thorne.

He is fighting three men. He is bleeding from a cut on his forehead. He has lost his gun. He is swinging a heavy wrench he must have pulled from the generator.

He connects with a helmet. *CRACK.* The man goes down.

"Get him!" another voice yells.

I crawl into the room. I stay low. Below the sightlines.

I have to help him. But I am weak. I am slow.

I see a pair of legs in front of me. Tactical pants. Heavy boots.

The man is aiming a taser at Thorne.

I reach out.

I slash the scalpel across the back of his ankle. I aim for the Achilles tendon.

The blade bites deep.

The man screams. He collapses, dropping the taser.

Thorne hears it. He spins around.

"Elena?" he shouts into the dark.

"Behind you!" I scream, my voice a ragged croak.

Another flash of light. A flashlight beam cuts through the gloom.

It hits me.

I freeze. I am on my knees, covered in blood, holding a scalpel. My face is a ruin of bandages and raw meat. I look like a monster from a nightmare.

"Jesus Christ," the guard whispers. He lowers his weapon for a split second, paralyzed by the horror of what I have become.

Thorne doesn't hesitate. He tackles the guard. He drives his knee into the man's chest.

"Move!" Thorne yells at me. "Get to the stairs!"

I scramble up. I lean against the wall.

The way is clear. The three guards are down. One unconscious, one writhing in pain, one pinned by Thorne.

We can make it.

We stumble into the hallway. Thorne grabs my arm, supporting my weight.

"I got you," he pants. "I got you, El."

We reach the stairs.

Light floods the stairwell.

The door at the top opens.

Aris stands there.

He isn't alone. He is flanked by two more guards. And he is holding a shotgun.

"Detective," Aris says. His voice is calm, terrifyingly reasonable. "Step away from my wife."

Thorne pushes me behind him. He stands between me and the gun.

"It's over, Aris," Thorne says. "I sent the photos. The department knows."

"They know nothing," Aris counters. "They know a frantic intruder broke into my home and attacked my mentally unstable wife. A tragedy."

He racks the slide of the shotgun. *Click-clack.*

"Drop the wrench, Detective."

Thorne hesitates. He looks at me. He calculates the distance. Twenty feet. Uphill.

Impossible.

He drops the wrench. It clatters down the stairs.

"Let her go," Thorne says. "She needs a hospital."

"She is in a hospital," Aris smiles. "My hospital."

He gestures with the barrel.

"Bring him up," he orders the guards.

The guards descend the stairs. They grab Thorne. They kick his legs out from under him. They zip-tie his wrists.

They drag him up the stairs.

Aris looks down at me. I am huddled at the bottom of the steps, shivering in the cold.

"And bring... *it*," he says, pointing at me with disgust.

The guards come back for me. They don't zip-tie me. They don't need to. They just grab my arms and drag me up the stairs like a sack of laundry. My bare feet bounce against the steps.

They drag us into the foyer.

The lights are back on here. The backup generator for the main house must be separate.

The brightness hurts my eye.

Aris stands in the center of the foyer. The broken front gates are visible through the monitor on the wall, but the front door is sealed shut by the shutters.

"You really are persistent," Aris says to Thorne. "I admire that."

He walks over to Thorne. He pistol-whips him with the stock of the shotgun.

Thorne grunts, spitting blood onto the marble floor.

"You're done," Thorne wheezes. "Halloway signed the warrant. The cavalry is coming."

"Let them come," Aris says. "By the time they cut through those shutters, this will be a crime scene. A home invasion gone wrong. The heroic husband defending his family."

"They won't believe you," I whisper.

Aris turns to me.

"Won't they?"

He reaches out and rips the bandages off my face.

The pain is blinding. The air hits the raw nerves.

"Look at her," Aris says to the guards. "Does that look like a victim? Or does that look like a monster who carved her own face off in a psychotic break?"

The guards look away. They are uncomfortable. Even paid mercenaries have limits.

"I have the medical records," Aris continues. "The history of instability. The self-harm. And now... the violent attack on her own husband."

He points the shotgun at Thorne.

"And her lover," he adds. "The rogue cop who broke in to help her escape her treatment."

"You're insane," Thorne spits.

"I'm a storyteller," Aris corrects him. "And I control the narrative."

He raises the shotgun. He aims at Thorne's chest.

"No!" I scream. I try to lunge.

A guard holds me back.

"Say goodbye, Detective."

Aris pulls the trigger.

*BOOM.*

The sound is deafening.

A gunshot rang out. I watched on the monitor as Thorne fell.