Page 6 of The Darkest Half

Silence ensues.

“Niklas, I’m so sorry your life turned out this way. A normal life was all I ever wanted for you. Christmases and Thanksgiving dinners, vacations and school field trips, graduation, and college and your first shitty job in a restaurant; girlfriends and breakups and eventually kids; then that nine-to-five job and hiding from Jehovah’s Witnesses. If I could give my life for you to have that normal life, I would without thinking twice about it.”

Yeah, well, we can’t have everything we want.

After a moment:

“Niklas.”

My eyes meet hers.

“They’re going to kill us either way,” she reiterates. “Don’t let them fool you with my life into giving them what they want.”

Fool me…

Wait a damn second…

My instincts are kicking me in the back of the head with a steel-toed boot suddenly.

I play along for a moment to be absolutely sure of those instincts. What if everything she’s telling me is a lie? What if she’s on their side, pretending to be on mine and just playing with my emotions?

“I am going to give them what they want,” I tell her. “I’m going to strike a deal with Lysandra.”

My mother’s shoulders rise and fall; she shakes her head. “They won’t make any deals,” she says. “And if they do, you know they won’t honor them.”

Oh, I know…

After the thirty minutes are up, I hear Lysandra’s stilettos coming down the hall again, preceded by her shadow growing larger against the white wall beyond the plexiglass window. The door opens, and she enters with five operatives dressed in black military-style boots and black clothes and gear: tactical vests equipped with guns and extra magazines, knives, and all manner of things I once carried dressed like that, long before Izabel shook up The Order. Izzy…I miss the hell out of her.

I push myself into a stand, my wrists bleeding behind my back.

“I have a proposition for you,” I announce to Lysandra. “Are you ready to hear it?”

Lysandra walks across the room, her heels tapping against the tile. She stops in front of me.

“This isn’t a negotiation,” she says. “You will give me what I want, or the threat becomes another example.”

I don’t flinch; I keep my eyes on Lysandra, unblinking, untouched by emotion. And I negotiate anyway, for what little good it will do.

“How about you just keep me alive in this place until Victor comes for me?” I smirk and cock my head to one side. “Because he will. You should know that, at least.”

My mother, or whoever she is—I bet Vonnegut isn’t even my father—gasps, and her eyes veer toward Lysandra.

Lysandra grits her teeth and presses the barrel of her gun to my mother’s temple.

“An example it is then?”

I wait for a moment, calling her bluff, and sure enough, just as I’d suspected, she’s reluctant to pull the trigger. She grits her teeth harder, and her breathing becomes more abrasive. My mother is her only bargaining chip.

“You want your mother to die then?”

I grin at her and shake my head. “You must really think I’m fucked up. Issues with women stemmed from mommy issues? Is that it?” I click my tongue and glance at the woman who may or may not be my actual mother. “She just told me that my father wasn’t my real father. Why should I believe this woman is who she claims to be?”

“Niklas,” my mother says with desperation, “I am your mother. I gave birth to you! Please don’t do this. Don’t let them get to you! Just tell them what they want to know!”

“So, then you do want me to tell them?” I ask, now more than ever, sure that my instincts were fucking spot-on. “Just moments ago, you didn’t want me to give it up. So, which is it, mom?”

Lysandra slams the gun against the side of my mother’s jaw, knocking her head back on her neck; the chair rises from the floor and wobbles before settling.

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