Page 51 of Inside the Wicked

Out of all I’ve faced, nothing has worn me down as easily and rapidly as this. The fourth time I’ve been forced before aninnocent young boy and made to balance his long life in my palm with the power to crush it.

I pick up my choice after my fourth attempt at figuring out which one might have the bullet. The screen in front of me turns on, and instinctively, I shoot to my feet. A firm hand stops me, slamming me back down.

Is Ana here?

The room is sparse like where they’re keeping me, but her bed has a frame. She has a desk too. Ana lies still on the mattress, and I assume she’s unconscious. I start to pick apart what’s different enough to shatter my hope she’s in the same four walls as me. The ceiling is lower and the lights are different. Her walls aren’t raw concrete, they’re soundproofed, and I despair for her to wake up in the maddening kind of silence I know too well.

“What the fuck have you done to her?” I snarl.

I was weak and exhausted, but now I’m wide-awake, teeming with rage.

“Nothing ... yet. I might decide to exact your punishment on her in other ways for trying to shoot me.”

I’m detonating from the inside with no way out.

Micah adds, “Alistair is disappointed with her, and he feels she’s better off here for yourmotivation.”

“You’re going to wish you were never born.”

“No need for lullabies while we do this.”

Micah picks up the other gun. “Here’s how it goes. You take that gun to the head, and I take this one to little Ryan here. We each take shots. Easy, right? One of you lives, one of you dies. Best get a good last look of the little bird. Truthfully? I’m hoping the bullet is in yours so I can take her. I bet she fucks real good?—”

My impulse to aim my gun at Micah wins. I fire the whole round. And they’re all fucking empty.

Micah’s manic laughter chills my sweat-slicked skin. He shivers in delight like a real fucked-up piece of shit. “I was hoping you would do that. Now we know this one is loaded.”

The gun in his hand is slipped across the table to me. My teeth grit so hard they might break.

On the screen the door to Ana’s room opens, and a man enters. I haven’t felt this helplessly, violently ill since the day I watched Sarah get shot. Ana is so vulnerable I want to yell and yell and hope she’ll hear me through some fucking mental plane of existence and wake up.

He points a gun at her sleeping form.

“You have ten seconds,” Micha sings.

I pick up the gun, unable to contain my tremors. I look away from the screen tobreathe, focus, breathe. I have no choice. My will to protect Ana trumps everything—my morals, my safety, my well-being. She will always come first no matter what I have to sacrifice.

“Five.” Micah teases the countdown. “And don’t look away.”

I lift the gun, staring the terror-stricken kid in the eyes, and it’s a mild relief that he closes his tightly. Fucking brave kid. It takes far more bravery to find acceptance than to plead a powerless case.

I make it quick, firing all rounds faster than I ever have before, braced with a blackening soul and a mind for theclickto turn into the condemning blast of a bullet.

It never does.

The boy peels his eyes open, meeting mine, wide and terrified, but as his tears fall there’s a flicker ofhopein them. I don’t know if it’s a blessing he feels even a little relief he might make it out after all, because the next second Micah produces another gun, aiming it at his temple.

“Huh, I actually thought you’d aim for me again.”

He pulls the trigger.

I look away as the boy’s head goes limp. I’m so mind-numbingly cold.

“I may have fired the real bullet, but your willingness killed him first.”

I killed him.

I killed him.

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