Page 63 of The Fall
The limo sways, bumping over a rough patch of road. I feel like I’m going to be sick.
What is wrong with me? This creeping dread, though, this sense of it all coming unstitched—it’s like trying to hold water in my hands. Slipping, slipping, slipping away. His hand is a lifeline, but the rope feels like it’s fraying.
The world outside smears. Breathe, Torey.
I’m unraveling, stitch by stitch, inch by inch. Dizziness climbs my spine. I taste salt, hear the ocean’s roar, feel water filling my throat?—
Strange reflections move across my teammates’ faces. Everything is distorted.
The world is tilting, a slow, sickening spin. It’s like being on rough seas when the horizon fades and balance becomes a memory. This is wrong. This, all of this. I don’t fucking know what’s happening.
The bridge over the bay is a ribbon of steel and concrete, rising over black water. Reflections drift below us, bobbing, bouncing, beautiful. My heartbeat syncs with the softthump-thumpof the tires thudding over the expansion joints.
I count bubbles rising in Hayes’s champagne glass. One. Two. Three. Four blurs as the limo hits a bump.
Blair turns his hand in mine, threading our fingers together. His eyes hold a question I cannot answer. I squeeze as hard as I can and hold on to the blue shards of his eyes.
It happens too fast.
The limo lurches. It isn’t a bump in the road—it’s a violent jerk that throws us sideways. Blair’s grip goes white-knuckled in mine as Hayes’s champagne flute flies from his hand. It hangs in the air for one suspended second, a fragile question mark.
Crystal shatters against the window.
Shouts erupt, tangled in confusion. “What the fuck?” Hayes and Axel surge toward the partition separating us from the driver. “Hey! What’s happening up there?”
The driver’s reply is a thick, slow slur. “S’rry, fellas. Only a bump, ‘kay?”
His head slides sideways, cheek dropping to a shoulder that dips—and dips again.
Ice floods my veins.
“Stop the limo!” Axel slams his fist against the glass.
The driver’s hands twitch on the wheel. His head lolls, eyes glazed. He’s not there.
“Stop the fucking car!” Hayes roars. Axel drives his shoulder into the partition, once, twice, knocking it from its track as the limo swerves again, tires screaming.
“He’s passing out.” Axel shoves his arm through the broken opening, grappling for the wheel. “Get his foot off the gas!”
“Look out!”
We veer, swerve, fishtail blindly. Metal grinds. Horns blare. Blair locks his eyes, wide and dark, on mine as the world outside our windows explodes in blinding white light.
We are sideways on the bridge when a truck T-bones us.
The world caves in. Metal screams, glass atomizes, and the panicked shouts of my friends are swallowed by a brutal, deafening impact. Blair and I are ripped apart; we cling to each other’s hands until the last possible moment. My head cracks against the window frame, blackness bleeding in from the edges.
The limo rolls. And rolls. I catch a glimpse of Blair—shadow, light, shadow again—as he reaches for me, but the distance between us stretches, tears. I’m thrown against the crushed roof, and Axel’s limp body slams into me, dead weight pinning me down as we screech along the guardrail.
The wreckage groans, buckling around us. The sound of my teammates’ screams hammers one horrible, final note into my skull and then stops.
There is sudden, absolute stillness.
The silence is more terrifying than the chaos. Hissing hoses, the soft tinkling of glass, the drip of fluids.
Gas. Oil.
Blood.
