Playing God (Helford #2)

(13) Aerial

I remember once, way back in the time when I was still in training on the aerial ropes, I lost my balance. I was fourteen then, practically a new recruit although better than the rest, with something to prove, and in that moment, I happened to slip. It might have been a trick of the mind, gravity plotting against me, but one moment I was stationed fifty yards high, and the next I was tipping sideways and barreling down toward the hard ground, gravity pulling me, the air trying desperately to push me back to where I had been. I remember wanting to scream but I didn’t, and I remember the most how I wanted to close my eyes but I didn’t. I watched in silence as the ground and the sky became one as I twisted and tumbled, my limbs slack and tense all at once, and I never had felt like a doll or a marionette more than I had in that moment, feeling like a higher power was watching me fall just to laugh and see what happened. I bit my tongue on the way down so hard that I needed stitches later, but I didn’t want to scream. It felt like cheating to scream.

I imagined what it would feel like to hit the ground twenty million times before I even came close. The net caught me several yards above the ground, and I could hear my classmates laughing and jeering me from up on the course where I had left them as I bounced, blinking up at the sunny sky. I remember being so confounded then about the way that time worked, and how much it had bent and morphed in those moments. What really took ten seconds felt like it had taken a minute, more. Time had ceased to exist to my mind the way it worked on the ground while I was falling, and I was curious about why that was. I blamed it on adrenaline, told myself it was an illusion of my mind. But I will never forget the paralyzing terror I felt moments before the net secured me above the ground.

That’s what it felt like, seeing Shawn standing in front of me with a gun and a smirk. It felt like falling; limbs locked and numb at once, eyes unable to see clearly, my mind constantly wandering to the inevitable conclusion.

It felt like five years gone, but it could have been twenty seconds. It could have been before this mess, back when I was unswervingly loyal, when Shawn would look into my eyes and smile and tell me that I was the best there would ever be, that I would always win.

Time had bent itself again. I suddenly felt childish, holding this piece of metal at this powerful man’s heart, knowing that he would beat me to it if it came down to it. My eyes didn’t blink as I stared into his, even when they started to water slightly, because looking away from him felt like it would break the spell, and the ground would catch me instead of the net.

I said, “Interesting, indeed.”

Shawn laughed. It was chilling, condescending. My trigger finger twitched anxiously, but Shawn did not make a move.

“I had a day on my calendar scheduled just for you, Nina Abraham,” Shawn purred, his eyes sparkling maliciously, “but now it doesn’t seem I have to bother to make the trip.”

I smiled. I hoped it sent a feeling of unease through him, but Shawn was a sociopath—he feels nothing at all. “I was about to say some of the same in regard to yourself, Shawn Masterson. I assume this is not the atmosphere in which you intended to come in contact with me.”

“Formalities,” Shawn scoffed, waving away my words, dropping his gun only slightly, still pointing it at such an angle that a kill shot was still manageable like the assassin he was and trained people to be. “I request that we make this much more casual.”

And then Shawn did something that he never would have done if he knew I was Caitie Alastair.

He dropped his gun.

I still held mine pointed at his chest, shocked for the longest moment, the feeling sinking into me like concrete. I swallowed hard and bit my tongue as I forced a civil smile and allowed my weapon to fall out of my fingers, listening calmly as it crashed loudly onto the concrete floor. I kicked it away from me slightly, closer to the mass of rebels, not looking at them. Shawn was smiling, patient, the way one would smile to any other stranger that they had just been introduced to. This was all a game to Shawn, and maybe that was one of the main reasons why my blood boiled just looking at him—I knew how competitive he was, and I knew all that he would give to win.