Overexposed

Raze the Roof

Chapter 20: Raze the Roof

I have no idea how long it will take for someone to come back, but I try to keep my eyes open. What if I fall asleep and die from blood loss? What if I lose consciousness and they're unable to locate me?

What if Abscido finds me first?

For a while, anxiety alone is sufficient enough to keep my eyes open, but as fatigue overtakes me like an inescapable room slowly filling with water, my limbs heavy like wooden planks, body numb with cold, my eyelids slowly become heavy... heavy enough to close for a just few seconds.

Darkness, but awareness. Fear in the form of intense dread.

I try to keep my wits about me because I know EXACTLY what's going on. This is a dream- I KNOW it's a dream and yet I can't wake UP!

The acrid smell of burning plaster invades my nostrils, coating my throat. Heat tickles at my cheeks, making my skin crawl, compressing my lungs. I can't move, frozen in fear because I know what comes next.

The gun shot.

Slowly, as if feeding off of my anxious anticipation, those telltale gray eyes appear out of the darkness, meeting mine with an intensity that I never saw from Gia in real life. I sigh, preparing for the moment I'll have to watch them become lifeless.

But of course, first things first. She has to say that mysterious- wait.

I watch her lips form around the word, but suddenly realize that it ISN'T a word. It's TWO words and I can HEAR her say them.

Gia spent her last breath trying to tell me this and now I UNDERSTAND. It's not "sir." It never had been "sir!" As the sound of a gunshot ricochets around my mind and I start from sleep, the first words to leave my mouth are the last ones that left hers:

It's her.

There's only one thing it could mean.

Tess planted the bomb in POGs' warehouse. She had the opportunity, being that she was missing for so long. She had the means, with her background in electricity and time spent with the Irishman- hell, with the way he talks about explosives, even I know how to make a rudimentary bomb by now. The only think blatantly missing is a motive, but seeing as Tess had spent YEARS with Abscido, I'm quite sure it wouldn't have taken much else to coerce her into sabotage.

Gia likely knew she was going to die when Tess showed up; and why use your dying breath to lie?

A sick feeling permeates through my stomach as I realize that I not only have to find a way to make everyone, including Tommo believe me, but also go back to the brewery where SHE is.

The brewery.

The place TESS picked when we had to evacuate the warehouse district. Are we in danger there too-? And that's when I see them, a picture behind my eyelids, the industrial sized metal cylinders. The SAME as the one Romeo had set up in the parking garage to torture me into giving him answers with a hot iron brand. How do I know? The space in which Haz and I had been practicing downstairs was only available because one of the tanks was missing.