Ch.38: Oxygen

My world has shrunk to a pinhole of light in a sea of grey.

The corridor is filling with gas. It curls under the door, a white, heavy fog that tastes like bleach and burns like acid.

I am coughing so hard I think my ribs will crack. My eyes are swollen shut, streaming tears that feel like fire.

I look at the monitor on the wall.

Thorne is in the furnace room. He is on his knees by the door.

He has ripped the control panel off the wall. He is twisting wires together, sparks flying as he tries to short the lock.

"Come on," he screams, his voice muffled by his shirt. "Open, you son of a bitch!"

He connects two wires.

*ZZZT.*

A flash of blue light. The panel smokes.

The door doesn't budge.

He slams his fist against the steel. "No!"

He looks up at the vent. The gas is pouring in faster now. The room is turning white.

He is running out of time. I am running out of time.

I lean my head against the cold metal of the blast door. I try to breathe shallowly, sipping the air, but every breath is poison.

My lungs are filling with fluid. Pulmonary edema. I'm drowning on dry land.

I close my eye.

I think of Lily. Her laugh. Her sticky hands.

I think of the day Aris proposed. The lie.

I think of the diamond in my stomach. The cold, hard proof of my failure.

*I'm sorry,* I think. *I tried.*

Then, a sound.

A heavy, mechanical *clank*.

Not from the monitor. From right behind me.

The blast door sealing the corridor from the main house.

It shudders.

I open my eye. I squint through the fog.

The manual override wheel on the other side is turning.

Slowly. Jerkily.

Someone is opening it.

Is it Aris? Coming to finish the job? Coming to watch me choke?

Or the guards?

The wheel spins faster. The gears grind.

The door groans. It lifts an inch.

Fresh air rushes in. It hits the gas cloud, swirling it like a storm.

I gasp. I drag my body toward the gap.

The door lifts a foot. Two feet.

A figure slides underneath.

It isn't Aris. It isn't a guard.

It is a woman.

She is wearing a silk evening gown, torn and stained with soot. She is wearing a gas mask—a heavy, industrial respirator that covers her entire face.

She stands up. She looks at me.

She is holding a keycard in one hand.

She walks over to the control panel on the wall. She swipes the card.

**OVERRIDE AUTHORIZED.**

The blast door behind me—the one trapping me in the corridor—starts to rise.

The blast door to the furnace room—where Thorne is dying—clicks open.

Thorne bursts out, coughing violently, his shirt pressed to his face. He stumbles into the hallway, collapsing against the wall.

He looks up. He sees the woman.

He raises his hands, ready to fight.

"Wait," I croak.

The woman turns to us.

She reaches up. She unbuckles the straps of the gas mask.

She pulls it off.

I stare at her.

It is my face.

bruised, battered, peeling at the edges... but my face.

Isabella.

She takes a deep breath of the tainted air, then coughs. She looks at me with eyes that are no longer vain or cruel. They are just tired.

"You were right," she whispers. Her voice is rough. "He doesn't care about us."

She holds up the keycard.

"I took it off the guard I knocked out," she says. "It opens everything."

She looks at Thorne, then back at me.

"Get up," she says. "We're leaving."

I stare at her. I can't believe it. The woman who stole my life is saving it.

But then I see her other hand.

The hand that isn't holding the keycard.

It’s holding a gun.

She raises it. She points it at Thorne.

"But first," she says, her voice hardening. "We have to kill him."

She isn't talking about Thorne.

"We're going to kill Aris," she says. "And you're going to help me."

She stood there, looking like me, holding our lives in her hand.