Page 59 of Antihero
My limbs feel heavy, my heart lurching to a stop, then hammering so hard it shakes me.
And I see now, through his split lip, through the blood pouring from his nose and gushing along his jaw, from where his ear used to be; Goodry is smiling.
Needler’s words are true.
“Not s…” I gasp a short, shallow breath. I can’t even get the question out, and when I do, it feels like the wrong question. “Why?”
“Because you stayed!” Goodry grates. His shrill scream, even his pain, is forgotten. He wore a mask more real even than Needler’s. More real than any of ours.
The last ten years coalesce. Appointment, needles, treatments.Lies. To keep an eye on me. Could that really be it? All of that torture just to keep tabs on me?
“And for his own sick pleasure.” Needler growls, then twists his hand in the coat, pulling the front to choke Goodry, making him lurch and cough. My gaze cuts to that silver mask, the man behind.
He’s angry, furious. He’d pick bits off Goodry piece by piece right here if I asked him to. But I just feel so cold. “No,” is the only word I can choke out. No to all of it. To trusting him, to not trusting my own body. To everything I’ve done because of this…
I clutch at what’s got to be the truth. What can’t have been for nothing. But it slides out of my grip like sand. All those tests, the ones that hurt, the aches, the despair. Somehow, it gets worse. My benign scare two years ago. The one that turned me into a killer. And Goodry was the one to tell me of it, so sympathetic, so tender. The same way he told me just earlier today that I was dying. It hits me in a rush. That too is a lie.
I’m not dying.
He made me think I didn’t have time. That there was nothing to lose. How much of my life have I based on his words? I’ve killed for this. Nearly died for it.
I stumble before I realise that I’m faint.
Charlotte is on her feet. I blink when I feel her hands clutch my arm, realising it’s her, realising my vision momentarily faded and came back as my blood decides where to go. “You called the cops,” Charlotte accuses to the doctor. So, it really wasn’t her. “What did you tell them?”
Goodry spreads his hands. “The truth, of course. Paige here is the Wraith.”
A lump lodges in my throat. They know. It’s over no matter what. As quickly as I got a future back, it’s been taken away. And again, it’s by him.
I look into Charlotte’s face, see the despair in her eyes, and realise she didn’t know about this. About Goodry. What was she trying to tell me? That there were more? That I’d never be free of them here.
Any freedom I’ve ever had has been an illusion, a manipulation. All along, the asylum never really let me go.
I’m looking up at the two of them. Rain strikes my upturned face. I don’t care. It’s washing away the blood on Goodry’s face. I shiver once as the wet soaks through my clothes. But I can’t feel the chill, can’t feel anything. “I’m not really sick. There were no harmful waves or chemicals. You know what really happened to me. You knew us all. You were at the asylum.”
Needler has let him go, left him in a pile on the edge, and stepped back. He could snap out within a second and kill him, but he doesn’t. Not until I’ve got all the answers. He stiffens when Goodry laughs. The sound is a slick, abrasive grate after his scream. “I know what happened to you, dear. Because I’m the one who did it.”
My world tilts.
Needler is telling him to shut up, making him scream again. But the words are echoing themselves. It was him. All along. The monster of my dreams, and the one who kept the nightmare alive in my waking days; they were the same person.
Bile rises in my throat. Sudden and acrid. I vomit, falling to my knees on the broken ground.
Charlotte is standing behind me. She looks up at Needler. “Kill him.”
A helicopter roars overhead, blurry through the falling rain. It passes without seeing. They won’t stay in the air for long. Soon they’ll be on foot.
The Tregam force has finally come to White Rock. Soon, they’ll be here. To find me. And anyone with me.
Needler kicks the backs of Goodry’s legs, hard. He falls to his knees again, swaying, blood pouring down his neck, dribbling down the wall of the basement he kneels on the edge of.
Tristan has the needle in his hand.
At first, I think the blast comes from down here. That somehow, I’ve made a horrible error in turning my back on Charlotte.
Tristan staggers, then drops or trips, falling backwards. Shot.
I can’t tell if I’m the one that screams.
