Blow Up and Fall Down Read online

  “What happened?” Kyle whispered.

  She grimaced as she tried opening and closing her hand. “I jammed it when we dove out of the way.”

  “How bad?” Kyle asked.

  “Pretty bad . . . Shhhh,” she answered.

  “What’s the plan?” Kyle whispered, peeking around the dumpster again.

  He didn’t see Samyra until he turned back toward Allaire and saw Samyra standing over them, her gun pointed at Allaire.

  “Hands,” Samyra said. “Let me see them.”

  Allaire pivoted toward her without leaving her crouch and put her hands up. She still wiggled her wrist, trying to work out whatever was wrong with it.

  Kyle reflexively looked at the gun, now sitting right behind Allaire, as he raised his hands into the air too. The gun was shielded from Samyra’s view by Allaire, but as soon as they stood up, she’d no doubt see it.

  “I have one question,” Allaire said to Samyra, holding in her crouch.

  Samyra smiled. Kyle didn’t know her well enough to know if she really had the stomach to shoot them execution style, right then and there. “Okay?”

  “Why does Yalé want me dead?” she asked.

  “Because he has me now,” Samyra answered. “And you’ve become a liability.”

  “You know, there’s no safety,” Allaire said. Kyle couldn’t believe she was just going to talk to her as Samyra prepared to kill them. He’d always known her to be more of a fighter.

  “I know that,” Samyra said, wrinkling her eyebrows. “Worry about yourself. I can take care of me.”

  “There’s no safety,” Allaire said again, this time louder and through gritted teeth.

  “All right, it’s time for me to shut you up, bitch,” Samyra said, taking a step backward as she squared up her aim with Allaire’s forehead. Kyle could see her hands jittering a bit. Just then, his heart racing as he thought about how he could never do what Samyra was about to, he looked down at Allaire’s gun again. He’d never shot one before. Didn’t even know where to find the saf—!

  “Kyle, there’s NO safety,” Allaire spat out, but by the time she finished the sentence, Kyle had already lifted her gun from the ground, raised it toward Samyra and pulled the trigger, hitting her in the chest. He stood up and put another bullet in her forehead to make sure she was dead and blew off a chunk of her head.

  The last thing Kyle could’ve imagined himself doing was killing anyone intentionally. Not after the bus crash had left him with so much blood on his hands. But, once it was clear Samyra was going to kill them, and he realized he was the one who had to stop her, he didn’t hesitate.

  He put his hand down for Allaire and pulled her to her feet. He looked at her and felt more compassionate about the lives she’d ended. Murdering, like the kind Ayers turned into a sport, took nothing more than a chemical imbalance and a weapon. But Kyle felt now what Allaire must have many times over. Killing in self-defense still meant taking a life. However much their survival was linked to his killing Samyra, he still felt an empty pit in his belly when he looked at her corpse.

  Allaire bent down to the body and pulled Samyra’s car keys from her pocket.

  “Other than some of the times I’ve had with you, I don’t know if I’ve ever been happy,” Allaire said to Kyle as they walked toward the Mercedes.

  Kyle looked at Allaire confused. “Why are you telling me that now?”

  “Because after today,” she said, “we’re the same. I wouldn’t wish what you just had to do on anyone. But now you know, at least.”

  Kyle nodded. Her words matched his feelings more than ever before. This, he thought, was possibly the first time they were ever really on the same page about anything. There had been only one choice, and when killing was what was necessary, Kyle knew now that he was someone who wouldn’t hesitate. Maybe he’d never match Allaire’s theatrics, like when she practically danced with her blade from combatant to combatant in his prison cell, but there was no doubt that they could be a team now.

  “If you want to run away, once and for all,” she said, “this would be the time.”

  “Nope,” Kyle said. “No way.”

  “I didn’t think so,” she answered, pecking him on the cheek and putting her arm around him for a second.

  Kyle hopped into the passenger seat of the Mercedes and they left Samyra’s body for someone to discover later.

  “We’ll call in the bomb in my Accord once we get a few miles away,” Allaire said.

  As Allaire turned the car and headed toward the ramp down from the roof, Kyle looked at Samyra’s body once more, lifeless and bloodied because he’d taken action. What had changed in him now could never be changed back.

  CHAPTER 18

  April 12, 2005

  * * *

  Two hours later

  A couple of hours later, Kyle and Allaire were in New Paltz, about ninety miles north of New York City. They’d been staking out Great Oracle Wok on Main Street for a couple of hours, and other than a few customers coming and going, there seemed to be absolutely nothing extraordinary about the place.

  Kyle and Allaire were both so quiet, they were practically catatonic, as the adrenaline of their afternoon subsided. Kyle couldn’t escape the image playing in his mind of Samyra’s head, half blown off, the life escaping her body as she took her last breaths. Allaire wasn’t in any better shape, coping now with the idea that Yalé had tried to kill her. Although Kyle didn’t know exactly how Allaire had gotten involved with the Seres, or every detail of what her role was, it was obvious to him that she’d devoted her life to them and now she’d been repaid with an attempt on her life.

  “You sure this isn’t just somewhere Samyra came because, I don’t know . . . she liked the dumplings?” Kyle asked, willing himself to try to lighten the mood as he dug with his chopsticks into a box of pork lo mein. Allaire had passed on ordering anything when they went in to give a look around the restaurant about an hour earlier.

  “This was the only address on the only post-it in her car,” Allaire said. “If she was coming here, it wasn’t for the Chinese food.” New Paltz is a small college town—not somewhere you’d venture to from New York City for no reason.

  “Just seems a little flimsy to spend our whole day on this,” Kyle said.

  “I’m out of leads,” she said. “If they tried to kill me, it’s because they think I’m a danger to Ayers. He’s certainly not going to be in any of the places I might check.”

  Kyle looked out the car window at the restaurant. It occupied the ground floor of a small, old, white building with stairs on the side leading up to an apartment, or office. The whole thing was badly in need of a paint job. “That’s interesting,” Kyle said. “Check out those upstairs windows. Are they painted over? Looks like black paint.”

  Allaire craned her head forward, then looked at the single floor house across the street. “Strange move to conceal second floor windows when there’s no building across the way tall enough to see inside.”

  “Maybe they want to keep someone from looking out,” Kyle said. “We should check it out? Knock on the door maybe?”

  “The only way we’re gonna stay ahead of Ayers is to surprise him. If he’s here and we go knock on that door, he’ll see us coming and we lose the one advantage we have,” she said.

  “I know what it’s like to be let down by someone you trust,” he said, sucking up a mouthful of noodles.

  Allaire didn’t move her eyes from the building.

  “I know you’re upset,” he said. “You can talk to me, you know?”

  “You’re upset too,” she said. “We just don’t get to sulk about it right now. Thanks for saving my life.” She smiled at him, and the mood in the car lightened a fraction.

  Kyle knew he should let the levity hang there for a little while. The funereal atmosphere was exhausting. But, he couldn’t help speaking his mind. It was as if pulling the trigger had reminded him that boldness was a critical piece of getting what he needed out of life. �
�I’m here with you, risking my life too . . . taking life . . . All for something I don’t even fully understand.”

  “I still don’t know if you set me up the first time we met . . . ” he continued. “You said it was your job to protect the guy we’re here to catch . . . I’m in the dark here, Allaire.” He paused. “And it sucks. And the other thing . . . you know, I’m also supposedly special, because of this mutation. How is that even possible? What’s your guess?” Kyle trailed off. He felt like his head was going to burst. He could spend another hour listing all of the things he didn’t understand.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” she said, consciously avoiding eye contact now. “I’m not hiding anything from you. I—”

  “Bullshit,” he said, cutting her off and slapping his hand on the car’s dashboard. He was fired up now, the adrenaline from earlier coming back hard and fast.

  “Let me finish,” she said. “I’m not trying to hide anything from you. This is my life. It’s not just some puzzle or mystery to lay out for you because you’re curious. I promise, after we get Ayers locked up somewhere so he can’t weave and make things worse, I’ll tell you everything.”

  “What are you going to do if we get him? You can’t bring him back to Yalé, right? Not after he tried to kill you,” Kyle asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Allaire touched Kyle’s cheek gently with the back of her hand. “Listen, I’ve been working alone for a long time. And, since all I really do is this, I’ve been pretty much by myself in this world for . . . ever.”

  Kyle nodded, listening. He glanced at the Chinese restaurant wondering whether this was just one stop in an unwinnable wild goose chase, or the beginning of something decisive and important.

  “There have only been two kinds of people in my life: People who didn’t matter, and obstacles,” she said. “And for a long time, I was fine that way . . . I don’t want to stand here and lie to you and tell you that there isn’t more to the story of how we met.”

  Kyle was relieved to hear her finally say it. “Okay . . . ?”

  She looked at him in a way she hadn’t before, like she was trying to let him see inside of her. “Now is not the time, but I promise, I’ll tell you . . . I choose to let you in,” she said. “If you still want that.”

  “Look!” Kyle said, pointing out the window to a black BMW pulling into the small parking lot next to the Chinese restaurant. A man in aviator sunglasses popped out and walked along the gravel toward the stairs leading up to the second floor. He left the trunk of his car open and carried two paper grocery bags in his arms. “Is that him?”

  “Yup,” Allaire said, looking straight ahead.

  “Let’s go,” Kyle replied.

  “We have to wait,” she said, pulling both of her blades out and flicking them open simultaneously.

  “Do you think he knows we’re here?” Kyle asked.

  “I don’t think so,” she answered. “If he did, I don’t think he’d lead us right upstairs. Unless that’s exactly what he wants . . . Let’s give it another thirty seconds.”

  Kyle took a deep breath and reached into his back pocket, relieved that the small box with the temporal tracker hadn’t fallen out. After seeing the brutality Ayers was capable of, he’d gone back to 2060 to get the tracker from the silo. They’d need any advantage they could get in trying to subdue him. Kyle also hoped that by grabbing it, he might show Allaire that he was undoubtedly on her side.

  “Do you have any kind of weapon?” she asked.

  Kyle smirked and held up his fists. “Just these guys.”

  She slowly opened her car door. It was impossible for him to stay annoyed with her. She was so imperfect, but so was he. He’d made the mistake of blaming her last time when things didn’t turn out the way he’d hoped they would, but she had actually been the only one to warn him against what turned out to be misplaced optimism.

  They crossed the street together and headed for the rickety staircase leading to the second floor above Golden Oracle Wok. Allaire held her hands in a fighting stance as she tiptoed up the stairs, blades upside-down in a reverse grip in each hand. Kyle followed her, wishing he had a weapon as well. Instead, as Allaire looked up toward the door, he pulled out the small box from his back pocket. He moved the tiny piece of plasticky film into the palm of his hand and slid the box back into his pocket.

  Although the door, like everything else about the building, was old and worn, there were four deadbolts on it. “He’s sure trying to keep people out,” Kyle whispered as they stood on the landing between the stairs and the door.

  “Or in,” she said, pointing at two of the deadbolts which locked from the outside. “Listen . . . ”

  “What?” Kyle asked.

  Before he could say anything, the doorknob turned and the front door swung open. Allaire pulled him onto the landing.

  Kyle reached out awkwardly for Ayers’s hand, but missed. He grabbed his shoulder with his other hand as he almost lost his balance. Ayers turned and saw Kyle. He raised his eyebrows and smiled, opening his mouth to speak. But, before he could, Allaire grabbed him into a chokehold and moved one of her blades very close to his face. “Inside,” she said, the softness of a few seconds ago completely gone. She held Ayers in the chokehold as she pulled inside the open door.

  “I’ll do whatever you want,” he said. “Just get the knife out of my face. You know you’re not going to kill me, Allaire.”

  She grabbed him tighter. “You mean, like you and Yalé didn’t try to kill me?” she hissed.

  “I had nothing to do with that,” he said calmly, considering he had a blade lined up against his chin.

  Kyle looked at Allaire’s face. He could see how conflicted she looked as she kept him in the tight chokehold. He knew she wouldn’t hesitate if she decided the right move was to kill him, but based on the information Kyle had, that was not an easy decision.

  They all stood in the small living room. The apartment was nearly empty, save for a small liquor cabinet and some folding chairs. To the back of the apartment there was a hallway with three rooms. Ayers didn’t even try to resist Allaire’s arm around his throat.

  “Kyle, I’m disappointed,” he said, gritting as Allaire pulled harder on his neck. “I thought the next time I saw you we were going to become gods together.”

  Kyle just looked at him. It was a relief to feel like he’d chosen the right path. Seeing Ayers shoot indiscriminately into the Mega-Market crowd had sealed that in his mind.

  Kyle saw Ayers’s eyes move to a wine bottle sitting on the liquor cabinet, but by the time he opened his mouth to warn Allaire, it was too late. Ayers swung the wine bottle toward her head, forcing her off of him. She tripped as she jumped backward away from the bottle and fell to the ground. As he swung it, the bottle flew out of Ayers’s hands, breaking against the wall and splashing wine and green glass all over the side of Allaire’s face.

  Ayers grabbed one of the folding chairs and hurled it toward them as he turned and ran into the hallway.

  Kyle put his hand out to help Allaire back to her feet. “You okay?”

  “Stop him!” she snapped, swatting at Kyle’s hand.

  Kyle was a few feet behind as Ayers headed for the door at the end of the hallway. He dove for Ayers’s leg, grabbing a hold of his left ankle. Ayers reached down and began to pry Kyle’s fingers off of him, then Kyle grabbed Ayers hand with his own and pressed their palms together. He pressed the temporal tracker into his hand, but Ayers had no idea. This was the device that Allaire had left for Ayers on the mouse in the silo. But her trap hadn’t worked, since he never went upstairs and used their computer in 2060. As long as the tracker remained on Ayers’s hand, it would allow Kyle and Allaire to read his precise temporal and geographic location at any time from a small reader inside the box in Kyle’s pocket. As Ayers backed away from him, Kyle pulled himself up to his feet.

  “Don’t pass up eternal life twice. Come with me,” Ayers said to Kyle, as Allaire came d
own the hall toward them.

  Kyle didn’t say anything. He didn’t know how Allaire planned to get Ayers back to the factory, or into her silk blot. All he could do was try to keep him from getting away. There was no way he was going to come with them willingly. No way he was going to come at all unless he was unconscious. Kyle reached back, about to take a huge swing at him.

  But before he could land the punch, Ayers delivered a crushing jab just under Kyle’s breastbone which knocked the wind out of him.

  In an instant, Ayers opened the door to the middle of the three rooms in the hallway, slithered inside, and slammed it before Kyle or Allaire could stop him. Then, they heard him lock the two deadbolts on the door.

  Allaire nudged Kyle out of the way and kicked the door. “Dammit!” she screamed as her foot bounced off. She kicked it again. Kyle finally stood up straight again a few seconds later, his solar plexus stinging and quivering. He saw that all of the doors in the hallway had two deadbolts on them and wondered what Ayers was trying to keep inside the rooms. As Allaire stepped back and prepared to kick the door again, he thought he heard something behind the door to his right. A shuffling of some sort.

  Allaire gave one more kick at the middle door and then turned to Kyle with a look of frustration.

  “Maybe the keys are here,” Kyle said. He walked out to the kitchen and heard shuffling behind the same door again as he passed. He wondered if Ayers might be keeping a pet in the apartment, strange as that would be.

  He opened every drawer and cabinet in the kitchen but didn’t find any keys. Kyle noticed that there was no refrigerator. Instead, there was a big empty space in the kitchen with a water hookup and electrical outlet.

  When Kyle came back to the door of the room Ayers had escaped into, he saw Allaire peeking through a small keyhole.

  “He’s gone,” Allaire said, wiping a few flecks of broken glass from the wine bottle from her face. “Who the hell knows where he’ll weave to now? Another fucking missed opportunity.”