Forged(71)

We turn or stay straight as he did. The path is made obvious by the blood from his leg—smeared against walls he paused to lean on, splattered against the floor where it fell as he ran.

Another turn and we’re facing a narrow stairwell. I ascend half the flight and look over my shoulder. Bree’s leaning against the wall, shivering.

“I’ll be right behind you,” she promises. “Go. Please?”

I slow, take a step toward her.

“Go!”

My feet carry me up the rest of the stairs. I shoulder my way through a door, and it bangs open into blinding light. I’m on the roof. A helicopter is backlit by the sun, the blades already alive. My bangs whip into my eyes as rooftop rubble swirls at my feet. Squinting against the wind, I see motion in the front of the rig. I fire and the pilot goes still. Another Order member leaps from the rear, and my bullet finds him before his feet hit the roof. No more movement.

“Frank!”

I’m not climbing into that helicopter. He’s going to come to me. In the open. Where I can see him and fire a shot easily.

“Quick to run now that your Forgeries are dead and no one’s willing to stand and protect you, huh?”

Still nothing.

“There’s no way out except through me.”

With his hands held in surrender, Frank steps from the helicopter and onto the roof . “Gray,” he says. “The unHeisted boy. Here to put a bullet in me?”

“Believe me, you deserve worse.”

“For trying to protect people? They need to be told how to think, what to do. Just look at them.” He waves in the vague direction of the square. “They are tearing one another apart. People can’t be trusted with their own two hands, let alone their minds.”

“Enough!”

“Are you going to shoot me, then? Is that how the fugitive for freedom frees his people? By killing the one person who’s kept them safe?”

“Yes.”

I pull the trigger.

The hammer strikes.

But no bullet flies.

Is it jammed? No, I’m out. This is the Forgery’s gun from the training field. I didn’t know how many rounds I was carrying, hadn’t been counting as I fired.

My head whips back to Frank, and he’s already in the process of drawing his weapon. I dive, tackling him to the ground. He’s slow, and I easily dodge the punch he throws. It’s the dust and rubble that he tosses in my face that costs me my advantage. Blinking, eyes burning, I stagger away. My hip hits the lip of the roof, the wall that separates me from a deadly drop. Frank’s hands are on the front of my shirt. He pushes me backward.

I can feel the hook of gravity, how I’ll topple to my death if he applies much more pressure. I will my feet to dig into the roof. My hands grapple for something, anything, to keep me on this side of the ledge. The only things they find are Frank’s fists clenching the front of my shirt.

And then, without warning, Frank pauses.

I blink away the last bits of dirt to see what’s made him loosen his grip.

Emma.

Emma no more than three paces away with a gun aimed at Frank’s heart.

Her form isn’t great, but she’s close enough to not miss. I think. Her gun hand is shaking, and the corners of her eyes wrinkle as she takes aim. She might not have it in her to pull the trigger. Emma’s a fighter when it comes to saving lives—stitching cuts and setting bones and tending to illness. Saving, not killing. She couldn’t even kill that Order member below. All she did was drug him.

I look toward the stairwell, desperate to find Bree there. The door bangs in the wind.

“Let go of him,” Emma says. Far quicker than I expect him to, Frank caves. I stumble away, rubbing at my burning eyes.

“Now sit on the wall.”

He complies.

Emma moves nearer. One step. Two.

“Doll, you can’t be angry with me,” Frank says. “Not after all I’ve done for you.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Please,” he says, hands held in surrender. “I’ll leave, I’ll do whatever you want, but please show mercy. All I’ve ever wanted is to fix people. I’m not the villain you’ve made me.”

“You’ve oppressed everyone who turned to you for guidance. You’ve murdered people for having their own opinions.”

“You’re looking at it wrong. You and Gray and all these brainless Rebel romantics think the answer is letting people run wild,” he says. “But structure and rules yield order. Too much freedom makes people bored and greedy. They tear one another apart. Everyone would see that if they stopped fighting me long enough to listen. All I do is protect people. My whole life has been spent keeping people calm and safe and—”

“Living in fear,” I say. “Afraid to speak their minds.”

“People cannot be trusted!” A vein bulges on his forehead. “Not with anything breakable and certainly not with the future.”

“Stop it!” Emma shouts. “Not another word.” The gun shakes again in her grip and Frank sees it.

“Put the gun down, doll. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I’m making the demands now.”

He laughs, and she loosens a bullet into his foot like she’s Bree. Like she doesn’t have a thing to fear and will pull any trigger necessary. The same possessed determination I’ve seen on Bree’s face now graces Emma’s profile. It’s the look of a person about to do the unthinkable. Maybe no one is above killing.