Page 123 of Irreversible

I jolt upright, my eyes flaring all the way open. Jasper scrambles to his knees, both hands curled around the bars as he gapes at the doorway. Following his stare, I nearly choke when I see a chalky plume of gray filtering into the room.

Alarms go off, blaring and shrieking.

Oh, my God.

I crawl on my hands and knees and start yanking on the bars. “Help! Somebody help us!”

Nobody can hear us. No one is coming.

Thisis the worst-case scenario—one I never truly considered. A slow, painful demise as I burn alive with the echo of my husband’s screams haunting me as I take my last breath.

No, no, no.

Panic washes over me. I pull and tug on the bars to no avail. Reaching through the opening, I jerk the padlock until my fingers nearly bleed.

The Timekeeper.

He wouldn’t let me die in here like this. I’m hisproduct. He still needs me.

“Help!” I shriek, heaving in a smoke-laced breath. “Help us!”

“Christ…Jesus. Everly, what do we do?” Jasper mimics my movements, trying to get his padlock to release. It won’t. It’s useless. “Fuck!”

There’s a small window shaped like a rectangle, giving me a narrow view of the hallway. Orange firelight flickers on the other side of it. The building is going up in flames, and we’re trapped.

Doomed to die in these cages.

Tears burst from my eyes. I turn to Jasper, crawling toward him, as close as I can get. “Jasper…”

“Everly.” His eyes glisten with terror and remorse. “I just got you back. I can’t lose you again. Irefuse.”

“Jasper.” My voice trembles through a moan of despair. I clutch the bars in two tight fists as salt pours down my cheeks. “Tell me a story.”

He parts his lips, hesitating. A quick shake of his head tells me he’s all out of words.

Jasper glances at the doorway, expression steeped in shock.

“Please,” I beg, a fraught whisper. I bounce on my knees. “Talk to me.”

Heaving in a long breath, he presses his forehead to the bars and closes his eyes. “Once upon a time…there was a woman. Sitting in a wine bar with a stack of papers and notebooks strewn across the table, a pencil between her teeth. I noticed her right away. Her blue eyes, big hair, pretty face. I had to know her name.” He swallows a moan. “I had to know her.”

I nod, my eyes squeezing shut as more tears leak out. “Keep going.”

“She didn’t want to talk to me at first. She was busy working on an essay about beetles.”

“The bombardier beetle.” I force a tear-filled laugh as alarm bells explode throughout the hallways. “When threatened, it can eject a boiling, noxious chemical spray from its abdomen with startling accuracy.”

“That’s right.” Smoke fills the room in a thickening cloud. Jasper coughs before continuing. “I said, ‘A girl as pretty as yourself should be on billboards, not hiding away in a wine bar researching the defense mechanisms of bugs.’”

“I said I liked bugs.”

“I said I liked you.” He sends me a sad smile, his eyes watering with grief and fumes. “I gave you my business card. A month later, you gave me your heart.”

I cough through my tears, my lungs burning. “Jasper, I?—”

The door barrels open. Voices shout.

My heart bottoms out of me.

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