Authors: Natalie Whipple
“Shut the hell up,” she says, though she digs into her pocket and pulls out a small plastic bottle. It glows red in the darkness.
The Phantom strides forward. “Give it to me!”
She smiles wide, and then she throws it over their heads. “Go and get it.”
“No!” Mr. Mitchell looks back just long enough for Allie to kick him in the balls, and he crumples to the ground.
She dives for his gun, but The Phantom is there first.
Bang.
His shot hits Allie in the head. She’s gone. Bea whimpers, covering her eyes at the same time Brady shields her from the gory scene. I stand there frozen, not ready to accept that she’s dead. Just like that. The Phantom didn’t even think twice about it.
“Make sure they don’t move,” he says as he hands the gun back to Mr. Mitchell. “I’ll get the drug, and we go. The O’Connells’ backup can take care of the body.”
“Yes, sir.” Seth’s dad turns to us, holding up the firearm.
The Phantom heads for the glowing speck of red in the dark desert. All my warning bells go off as I watch him. If he gets that bottle, it’s just as bad as Allie having it. She’s already done the hard labor—all Juan has to do is work on it some more to make the cure better.
I want to run over there and get it first.
There’s no guarantee Mr. Mitchell won’t notice my footsteps as I sprint.
But I take off anyway.
Everything is chaos in my ears. Mr. Mitchell yells something, but then Bea’s voice screeches over that and there’s punching. Loud punching. Is it Brady? There are gunshots, but I don’t look back. I keep my eyes on the red pills, on The Phantom’s dark silhouette ahead of me.
I’m faster. I gain on him, but this only makes me nervous because I don’t have time to hide my footprints on the dusty, dry ground. They will give me away, and I’m not sure how to fight someone I can’t touch.
Taking several steps at a diagonal, I decide it’d be better
not
to be close when I pass him. I pump my legs as hard as I can, the fact that I’m naked barely registering against my goal. The Phantom hears my footsteps, and his face fills with rage as he searches in vain for my body.
“Don’t you dare!” he yells into the night.
The pills are feet away, and I crouch down to grab them. When I turn, I’m shocked to see he’s right there—he doesn’t hesitate to slam into me. He feels perfectly solid as we hit the ground.
“Give me the pills!” His hands reach for them, but I move them just in time.
I push and struggle against him, hating that he’s so close when I have no clothes on. That discomfort is distracting me more than I want to admit, but I try to focus on keeping the pills from him.
The Phantom finds my neck and squeezes. “I can kill you, too. You know I will.”
My first instinct is to pry his hands off, but then the pills would be within reach and he knows it. My lungs burn, and I kick wildly as I try to throw him off. I get weaker as my body begs for air.
“I’ve strangled people before,” he says with a disturbing note of enjoyment. “I know it doesn’t take long.”
I can’t reply. My vision is getting hazy.
“Fiona! Throw them over here!” Seth screams. Hope blossoms in me. I don’t know exactly where he is, but it sounds like he’s to my right. So I chuck the bottle as hard as I can.
The Phantom jumps up, his only focus the cure and the power that comes with it. I gasp for air, attempting to pull myself up to see what’s happening. It’s dark, but there’s enough light from the cars to see that Seth has the bottle and Bea and Brady stand in front of him as protection.
Mr. Mitchell has his gun trained on them, while the Phantom stands there huffing and puffing. Seth opens the bottle, pouring the pills into his hand. “Hell, I’ll swallow them all myself.”
My jaw drops, knowing just how painful that would be. Possibly painful enough to cause death.
“You’re bluffing
,
” his dad says.
“I will do it.” He looks at the pills. “There’s only five.”
“Seth! Don’t!” I pull myself up, but my legs are too shaky to run. “You could die!”
He shoots me a look, and I think it might be a little bit vengeful. “It’s not fun when the people you care about sacrifice themselves, is it?”
“Yeah, yeah.” His dad is the one who answers this. “You’ve made your point. Put the pills away now. You know I can shoot you before you swallow those. Stalling will get you nowhere.”
“Just shoot him,” The Phantom says. “We’re wasting time.”
I can’t quite tell in the darkness, but I think Mr. Mitchell hesitates.
The Phantom turns to him. “Can you not shoot him because he’s your son? Then give me the gun.”
Seth’s dad slumps. “I…can’t do it.”
“Tsk, here.” The Phantom walks over, and I can’t believe what’s happening. Bea lets out a loud scream in an attempt to stop them, but they fight through the pain. Brady lunges forward. Seth moves the handful of pills toward his mouth.
And I’m too far away to stop any of it.
I should have never thrown that bottle.
The Phantom puts his hand on the gun, and I think that’s me screaming but I’m not sure. Then there’s a loud bang, and I freeze because surely it’s too soon. The Phantom barely touched the firearm. He couldn’t have shot at Seth yet.
But then The Phantom’s knees buckle, and Mr. Mitchell catches him before he hits the ground. It takes a second for my brain to realize what happened.
Seth’s dad shot The Phantom.
“You…” Blood sputters from his mouth as Mr. Mitchell gently lays him in the dirt.
“Sorry,” Seth’s dad says with a smile that says anything but apologetic. “Had to make sure you were solid when I pulled the trigger.”
“How…c-could…?” The Phantom goes limp.
I stand there, dumbfounded. When Seth’s dad faces his sons, I have no clue what to expect. From the looks of it, neither do they. He scratches his head and says, “C’mon, you really think I’m heartless enough to let you guys get hurt? I’ve done a lot of horrible things, but I’m not that far gone.”
“W-why?” Seth finally gets out. “You waited so long. You sold us out and everything.”
His dad holds his hands out to the empty desert. “No syndicate witnesses out here. All I have to say is that the girl killed him and then I killed her. Everyone thinks I’m still loyal.”
Brady frowns. “What about us? Won’t they expect you to take us back?”
“Maybe.” Mr. Mitchell stoops down and pulls something off The Phantom’s hand. My guess is it’s a ring. “But they won’t question me if I tell them I got the command ring from The Phantom before he died. Looks like I just got a promotion. Lucky me.”
My jaw drops. “You planned this, didn’t you? Your goal was to get second-in-command out of this somehow.”
He turns in my direction, his smile shrewd. “No better way to protect the ones you love than to be in power, right, Fiona? Yes, I’ve been working my way up so I could have enough sway to keep Juan’s eyes out of Madison. Did I know it’d happen this soon? Not exactly. But opportunity knocked.”
“So…” Seth looks extremely uncomfortable, and I can’t begin to imagine how he feels about this. “What now?”
His dad shrugs. “I take the bullet car, you take the truck, and we haul ass back to Madison. After that? I pull Juan’s men out, and you decide what you want to do with those pills. Because as far as I’m concerned, what Allie had was all a bluff—the wrong stuff. Damned Phantom was following a dry creek.”
Seth nods slowly. “And what about you?”
“What about me?” He looks confused for a second, but then seems to understand. “I imagine you won’t be seeing much of me anymore, though I don’t think you’ll mind that, will you?”
Seth and Brady look at their feet, seeming resistant to admit the truth.
“Take care of yourselves. Don’t get into any more trouble.” Mr. Mitchell turns his back to them at this point, heading for the car. He throws my clothes out and shoots off before we’ve made it to the road.
No one speaks as I get dressed. Or as we drive the dark road back to Madison. Or as we veer off towards the cave to dump the stolen merinite back where it belongs. It’s only as we pull up in front of my house, which looks just the same as ever, that Bea says, “Did that really happen?”
“I think so,” Brady answers.
“Let’s get inside.” Seth heads for my home. The second we step inside, we’re met with a crowd of worried faces. The Navarros, my mom, Miles, Lee Seol, Graham. They practically tackle us in relief, asking questions much faster than any of us can answer them.
“She’s
dead
?” Graham cries when we get to Allie.
My heart breaks for him. Maybe she didn’t make the best choices, but who does these days? I’m not proud of mine lately. “I’m so sorry, Graham. The Phantom just…”
He covers his ears, and his feet hit the ground. “No.”
“I know, hon.” Mom is right there with him, comforting, though she’s been through a lot today. It looks like Rosa has already healed Mom’s wound. I kneel next to them, adding my hug to Mom’s.
Then Miles comes, patting Graham on the back. “It’s a lot to take in.”
“Yeah…” Seth winces. “I don’t mean to intrude on the grief, but there’s still more to tell you.”
We talk until there are no more words to say and daylight brightens the windows. No one seems to care about that—we all agree it’s time to sleep, since it looks like everything has settled as much as it ever will.
Seth follows me up to my room, and when he shuts the door I already know what he’ll say. “What should we do with these?”
He pulls out the bottle of pills, which we somehow neglected to mention. I stare at them, my heart twisting with conflicting emotions. I want to keep them so badly, but I shouldn’t. It would be hypocritical, wouldn’t it? And yet to have just a few more opportunities to see myself…
I gulp. “I don’t know, Seth. I can’t pretend I don’t want them.”
“I know.” He comes closer, taking my hand and pressing the bottle into my palm. “I think we can all agree the caves have to go, but I don’t think I have a right to tell you what to do with these. Not now that they’ll probably be the last of their kind.”
Curling my fingers around the bottle, I take a deep breath. “I need to think about it. My brain is fried.”
“Mine too.” He wraps his arms around me, and for a second everything snaps back to normality. It feels weird, but also amazing. I can only hope there’s more of this to come, but who knows for how long? “Sleep well, okay? Call me when you wake up.”
He starts to pull away, but I grab him back. “Stay.”
“Are you sure I won’t get in trouble for that?”
“Not today.” I bury my head in his chest and take a deep breath, though we’re both grimy. After almost losing him however many times today, I don’t care what he smells like. “I can’t be alone after that. The more I think about what happened…it’s scaring me worse now.”
Seth runs his hand over my hair. “Okay, I’ll stay then. Don’t have to twist my arm.”
I look into his eyes, the ones that have always seen me better than I see myself. He kisses me, and I wonder if I’m better off believing his vision of me than my own. But still, I keep those pills under my pillow the whole night.
Major Norton comes by a couple days later. He’s in shock about Allie, but he doesn’t seem as bad as Graham. My brother is a husk of a person, losing the girl he loved, knowing it was all a lie to her. I wish I knew what to do for him. All I can manage is trying to convince him to eat.
“It seems Juan’s men have completely pulled out of the area,” the Major says as he sips at some coffee I made. “My guess is you know why.”
“I do.” Yesterday Seth found the deed to his house signed over to him and Brady, as well as Mitchell Construction. Turns out their dad had been hoarding a lot more money than they could ever dream of. “But I’m afraid I can’t tell you about it. I hope that’s okay.”
He nods slowly. “There are some things that should be kept buried.”
“Like the factory?” I ask tentatively.
“It seems that’s the best I can do.” Major Norton lets out a heavy sigh, and I wonder if he might be the most “heroic” of us all. He at least had the best motives, I’m sure. “I wished for so much more, but it’s clear now that time can’t be reversed.”
A lump forms in my throat, because as I’ve thought over what to do I’ve come to the same conclusion. “Maybe there’s another way to make the world better? If anyone could find it—I think it’d be you.”
He smiles. “I don’t know about that, but I won’t stop trying.”
“Me either.”
“Good.” He stands, looking proper in his dress uniform. The Army is having a ceremony for those lost in the fight two days ago. “I better go. Will you be attending?”
“Yes, of course,” I say as I follow him to the door. “How could we not honor the people who tried to keep our little town safe?”
“Thank you.” He salutes my family, who are all crammed in the living room. He particularly zones in on Graham. “I know it might be difficult, son, but if you ever wanted to serve in my unit I’d be happy to have you.”