The Girl Who Couldn't Kill

Chapter 22 -Unveil Your Mask

"Stop this nonsense now Noel." Mr. Volkov said in a cool tone, his hands wrapped around Noel's arms, arms red and stricken. "Give me the knife."

There was no expression on his face. He handed the knife over instantly and retreated. Rory was flooded with relief.

"Mr. Volkov thank god you're here, we need to go to the school board and inform Officer Hong asap." She felt her shoulders release tension.

"Not so fast, Rory." His eyes flared with a glint of jade.

"I'm confused, why not?" Rory realized that Noel was now standing in the corner, was he taking orders from Volkov? The whole situation was odd to her, why wasn't he holding Noel down?

She took in her surroundings, she hadn't paid attention due to her blurry vision before she was knocked out. But she had been transported to a scientific laboratory. There were no windows and the ventilation was extremely limited, coming to the conclusion that she was possibly underground.

She looked to the far end of one of the counters. Rows of test tubes of blood were sampled on a tube holder. Red caps sealed the mixtures shut with a variation of labels, written in frantic letters. Tools were splattered across the sinks and counters, a mess of shiny metals. Different liquids and animal specimens were placed along the vintage shelves.

Then finally, the realization hit Rory like a boulder falling off a cliff. How could she not have pieced the puzzles together earlier? The sentence rang in her mind

Do what brings you joy and don't let others stop you.

The words that appeared in the threat from Chrome were exactly what Mr. Volkov have told her the last time they had talked after class.

Volkov's face stretched into a wide grin.

"It was you all along." Lifted her eyes slowly to meet his, a moment forever imprinted in her mind. The sinister face of Volkov, one she never thought she would see. "You're Chrome."

Chrome's eyes shine with delight, "Oh my, that took you a while. Ah, I thought you would be smarter than that, Rory. I guess your softness got the best of you, and here I thought you were the infamous heartless girl of Brighton.

Rory's face burned with fury. Everything started to make sense. "You were trying to get on my good side so no one would suspect you? You betrayed my trust." Rory accused.

"Well, Rory you were a great asset. You gave Paul a lazy cake so I had access to all the security cameras and the keys to the library. I had taken the keys from Paul and used a copy of the keys that I 3D printed myself to open the desk." Chrome explained. "I had Adam deliver that message to me. It was a message from Connor, sending me the precise location of Autumn Kowalski."

"I don't understand." Rory shook her head until she was dizzy from fatigue.

"Let me explain to you. My intention was to kill Autumn. She and I had a fallout of some sort, you could say. She was very unhappy with me, even though she was the one that suggested I hit her. She wanted to use it as discipline for her inability to succeed in her academics. I believe a good student should never back down from a promise, her fulfillment had not been complete." Chrome stroked the stubble of his chin as if it were a casual conversation. "After a while, I sensed that her hatred of me had grown. I knew she wanted to get rid of me. But I didn't how."

"At first, I didn't intend to kill her, I just needed to temporarily silence her. But on that night I realized she had an angry alibi that wanted me dead. Connor came to kill me on that night, in defense of Autumn. But she wasn't able to stop him in time because I had finished him off before she was able to confront him. Connor wasn't the boy I intended to kill, I would've liked for him to strive, what a shame."