My head whips back to Frank, and he’s already in the process of drawing his weapon. I dive, tackling him to the ground. He’s slow, and I easily dodge the punch he throws. It’s the dust and rubble that he tosses in my face that costs me my advantage. Blinking, eyes burning, I stagger away. My hip hits the lip of the roof, the wall that separates me from a deadly drop. Frank’s hands are on the front of my shirt. He pushes me backward.
I can feel the hook of gravity, how I’ll topple to my death if he applies much more pressure. I will my feet to dig into the roof. My hands grapple for something, anything, to keep me on this side of the ledge. The only things they find are Frank’s fists clenching the front of my shirt.
And then, without warning, Frank pauses.
I blink away the last bits of dirt to see what’s made him loosen his grip.
Emma.
Emma no more than three paces away with a gun aimed at Frank’s heart.
Her form isn’t great, but she’s close enough to not miss. I think. Her gun hand is shaking, and the corners of her eyes wrinkle as she takes aim. She might not have it in her to pull the trigger. Emma’s a fighter when it comes to saving lives—stitching cuts and setting bones and tending to illness. Saving, not killing. She couldn’t even kill that Order member below. All she did was drug him.
I look toward the stairwell, desperate to find Bree there. The door bangs in the wind.
“Let go of him,” Emma says. Far quicker than I expect him to, Frank caves. I stumble away, rubbing at my burning eyes.
“Now sit on the wall.”
He complies.
Emma moves nearer. One step. Two.
“Doll, you can’t be angry with me,” Frank says. “Not after all I’ve done for you.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Please,” he says, hands held in surrender. “I’ll leave, I’ll do whatever you want, but please show mercy. All I’ve ever wanted is to fix people. I’m not the villain you’ve made me.”
“You’ve oppressed everyone who turned to you for guidance. You’ve murdered people for having their own opinions.”
“You’re looking at it wrong. You and Gray and all these brainless Rebel romantics think the answer is letting people run wild,” he says. “But structure and rules yield order. Too much freedom makes people bored and greedy. They tear one another apart. Everyone would see that if they stopped fighting me long enough to listen. All I do is protect people. My whole life has been spent keeping people calm and safe and—”
“Living in fear,” I say. “Afraid to speak their minds.”
“People cannot be trusted!” A vein bulges on his forehead. “Not with anything breakable and certainly not with the future.”
“Stop it!” Emma shouts. “Not another word.” The gun shakes again in her grip and Frank sees it.
“Put the gun down, doll. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I’m making the demands now.”
He laughs, and she loosens a bullet into his foot like she’s Bree. Like she doesn’t have a thing to fear and will pull any trigger necessary. The same possessed determination I’ve seen on Bree’s face now graces Emma’s profile. It’s the look of a person about to do the unthinkable. Maybe no one is above killing.
Frank swears in pain, jerking to grab his foot, but when Emma brings the weapon’s barrel back to his heart, he goes bone still. A bead of sweat drips from his brow and strikes the dust-covered rooftop.
“Promise all my people can walk free,” Emma says. “Everyone in Claysoot and any other test group. The Laicos Project is over.”
“Done.”
She presses the muzzle to his forehead. “Swear you’ll let your citizens elect a new ruler. Anyone the majority favors.”
“You have my word.”
“They will try you however they see fit, and if by some miracle they let you walk, you’ll disappear. Permanently.”
“Seems only just.”
“Good.” She lowers the gun. “Then this new world has no room, or need, for a person like you.” She grabs him by the ankles and lifts.
It happens both immediately and in slow motion. For what feels like hours he hangs on the brink of death—momentum not yet claiming him—and then he’s toppling. His arms flail out. Shock blows over his face. And he’s gone.
I dart to the low wall, peer over.
Dimitri Octavius Frank is dead, a broken heap at the foot of his headquarters. The blood around his head is as dark as his uniform.
Emma sinks to the ground and unravels. She pushes the gun away. Her shoulders shake. She’s crying—not audibly, just tears.
“Don’t touch me,” she says as I move nearer.
“Emma . . . you just—”
“Don’t.”
With her feet tucked beneath her and the determination gone from her face, she looks years younger.
“Thank you,” I say.
Emma wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand. I should do something, not just stand here watching her cry, but she told me to keep my distance. I feel completely useless. She stares at the gun sitting an arm’s length from her knees, and because I worry she’ll stop talking altogether if I don’t keep her at it, I make my mouth work.
“How’d you find us?”
“Left Sammy in the hospital wing with some nurses. I found the door open in Frank’s office, then followed the blood trail.”
The blood trail.
“Bree!” My eyes dart to the stairs.
“Gray, wait.” I take one look at Emma’s face and know what she’s going to say, know exactly how bad it’s going to be when I enter the stairwell. I race away. Across the roof. To the door.
I drop to my knees at the sight of her.
She’s slouched just two steps from the top, her good hand tucked inside her leather jacket and beneath her injured arm, like she’s holding a cramp in her side. Sweat coats her forehead. She’s paler than the moon.
“You said a graze.” I pull her nearer. “You said it barely clipped you.” She leans into me. “Bree?”
“I didn’t want you . . . to slow down . . . or not go after him.” She cringes. “I didn’t want you . . . to know.”
“Know?” I hold her face in my hands, let my fingers trail over her skin just to confirm she’s still real.
“Two shots.”
“Two shots where, Bree? Where?”
“One graze . . . the other . . .”
She lifts the arm I bandaged just earlier, draws her opposite hand away from her torso. Beneath her jacket, the blood is abundant.
THIRTY-SIX