A Few Days To Dawn

Alarm

"Fuck."

The curse left him in an annoyed sigh the moment he saw me.

Recognition flashed through his eyes the moment they landed on me. It was brief, so brief that I might have convinced myself I imagined it, but the immediate way he turned his back toward me made that impossible.

Crack!

Boom!

Boom!

The first shot took Victor. The next two I didn't see — only heard, somewhere deeper in the suite.

AAARGH!

Panic swept across the entire floor like a tidal wave.

I watched as Victor's head snapped back.

His life ended right before my eyes.

For a moment I couldn't process it. My brain simply refused to catch up with what my eyes were showing it. Victor Hale — the man who owned half this city, who had never begged for a single thing in his life — was on the floor. Gone. Just like that. Three shots. Less than ten seconds. Over.

A heavy thud followed.

Somewhere deeper inside the room, one of the girls collapsed.

"My shoulder! Agh! Please! Agh!"

Another scream followed.

Then another.

I couldn't move.

My legs had completely given up on me.

The cold-blooded scene happening before me had locked me on the spot. Panicking. The breathing exercises I had taught myself over the years from Victor's abuse didn't seem to be working anymore.

Turning away from the door, I dropped to the floor and began scrambling backward.

Desperately I clawed at the floor searching for anything I could grab onto. An edge. A crack. A loose section of the carpet. Anything at all that could help pull me farther away from this horror.

The heat beating against my skin.

Goosebumps.

The chill crawling down my spine.

I couldn't stand.

So I crawled.

Or at least I tried to.

"No... please! Don't! My shoulder! Please! Agh!"

The girl's screams echoed throughout the suite.

Everything else faded away.

The pounding of my heartbeat.

The ringing in my ears.

All I could hear was pain.

"Help me..."

My own voice sounded weak.

Small.

Like a mouse trapped inside a slaughterhouse.

I had almost reached the staircase when a deafening alarm suddenly blared throughout the building.

The sound hit me like a physical force.

It vibrated through the floor.

Through the walls.

Through my bones.

"Ah!"

AAARGG!!!

I slapped both hands over my mouth instinctively.

As if somehow that would stop anyone from hearing me.

As if the alarm wasn't already drowning out every other sound.

The movement only made things worse.

"f**k!!"

My hand missed the railing.

My balance gave way.

And I fell.

AAARGH!

My screams disappeared beneath the alarm.

My fingers brushed against the railing as I desperately tried to grab hold of it.

Missed.

Then I was tumbling.

Down.

Down.

Down.

It was only during the fall that I realized just how long the staircase actually was.

Every step felt like a hammer slamming into my body. My shoulder struck first, followed by my ribs and then my face. At some point I stopped registering each individual impact because everything blended into one endless wave of pain.

My brain had stopped sending nerve signals. My whole body was screaming.

By the time I finally stopped rolling, bruises burned across every inch of my skin. My split lip from earlier had opened again.

I could taste it. My blood.

My vision blurred.

Forcing myself onto my knees, I realized I had fallen from the Pantheon floor all the way down to the Signature Suites.

Without wasting a second, I dragged myself forward.

Blood smeared behind me, trailing my escape.

I didn't care.

As long as I got away.

As long as I survived.

Reaching the nearest door, I slammed my fists against it.

"Help me!"

Bang!

"Help me!"

Bang!

"Please help me!"

Every ounce of strength I had left went into those knocks.

Nothing.

No response.

The alarm continued blaring.

Red emergency lights flickered violently across the hallway.

Then it hit me.

I remembered why the floor was empty.

There was an emergency maintenance ongoing.

That's why nobody was here.

But where were the engineers?

I stared down the length of the corridor. Door after door after door, all of them closed. All of them silent. The red emergency lights made everything look like a nightmare I couldn't wake from. My blood on the floor looked black beneath them.

I moved to the next door anyway.

Then the next.

Nothing.

"Fuck..."

My shaking hand reached for the handle.

It was too high.

I couldn't properly reach it from where I was kneeling.

Then I heard it.

Footsteps.

Fast.

Deliberate.

It was faint beneath the blaring alarm, but I heard it.

Coming from the staircase.

I pressed myself flat against the wall without thinking. As if somehow the darkness could swallow me whole. As if a trail of blood soaking into the carpet wouldn't give me away entirely. My lungs burned. I had been holding my breath without realizing it. I was terrified he could hear me.

That familiar cold sensation returned. Death seemed close.

Again.

With every last bit of strength remaining in my body, I pushed myself upward and jumped, aiming for the handle.

But I never reached it.

The door suddenly swung inward.

It had never been locked.

My weight had simply pushed it open.

I crashed face-first into the room.

My knees hit first.

Then my ribs.

Then my head.

The cold floor slammed into me so hard it knocked the air clean from my lungs.

My skull bounced off the tiles.

For a moment, all I could hear was a low ringing inside my head.

My own groaning echoed through it.

I lay there completely still. Unable to move. Unable to think. The ceiling above me was the most ordinary ceiling I had ever seen — plain white, no chandeliers, no golden light — or maybe that was just my mind refusing to process what was real. For some reason that ceiling was the detail that made everything finally land.

Victor was dead.

I had watched it happen.

And the man who did it was somewhere on this very floor, looking for me.

As I lay there, unable to move, something warm trickled down my thighs.

Realization struck immediately.

I had pissed myself.

Then something touched me.

Cold against my skin at first. Then the warmth of a grip tightening around my arm.

A hand.

Gentle.

A groan escaped me as strong arms lifted me from the floor.

I tried to stand and run away.

Tried to focus.

Tried to see.

A terrible mistake.

My eyes slowly rose.

And locked onto his.

The man who had killed my husband.

My heart exploded into panic.

But my body refused to react.

Refused to move.

Refused to run.

And then my entire world went black.