FIRE [FIRST DRAFT]

Chapter 4: Leaving for Doom

 Gavin was driving me back to GINM. I was quiet in the car, thinking and regretting.

"Did you give them the papers?" he queried.

"Yeah, my mom has them," I uttered.

The papers were tickets. It was a plan to keep Molly and Clifford safely out of the line of fire – sending them to England – without anyone else knowing. Maybe we failed to stop Domino Doomsday and maybe America was destroyed, at least my parents would be safe. Yes, there were a million other innocents I wished I could save, but Moll and Cliff were my family, and if they got out, maybe the scars of losing my home would not cut so deep.

In the car, I sat still, replaying Molly's words, paralysed by them, and even more fearful than before. There were tears falling from her eyes. By her motherly instinct she refused; she couldn't let me, her daughter, go without her. It was a damn suicide mission, as she called it, which was not that farfetched. But I didn't want anything to happen to her, I told her, I loved her too much – it felt as if I had pulled the words from her mouth. I cried, too, I couldn't help it. I had forgotten how painfully difficult it was sometimes, wanting the best for someone.

Molly had clutched onto her arm and looked me in the eyes, past the tears. Her last words had been: "I am your mother – not that French bitch – I couldn't love or worry about you more, okay? We're going to Lorient and we're gonna come back." She walked into the kitchen before I could say anything else. But I wouldn't have spoken a word; her stubbornness was enough that I'd been rendered speechless. That and it was the first time she had ever cursed in front of me.

Suddenly, Gavin nudged my arm; I guessed he'd been trying to get my attention for some minutes.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, why?" I said in a somewhat forced high note.

He gazed at me with suspicion, not believing my guise for a second, but he did not pry. "Is Clifford still at work?"

"He is. Molly will have to explain the papers to him when he gets home."

We called them 'papers' because everyone was still under the impression that Abba was watching me, always. Even discussing the plan had to be cryptic; I'd texted Gavin a few months ago asking him if he could show my parents his house before we left, and he understood it in a second. He had a house in London, a holiday home that Buckley and his family used to occupy, until he became a turd and lost Janet and Stefan by law. For years, it had only known the butlers and maids who maintained its appearance. Buckley had given the house to Gavin about a month before I had gotten tangled up in their world, before I had met them.

I knew Gavin had seen the manor once before, but had never gone inside. There was something about it that repelled him. Maybe it was the intimidation of its size and high-class appeal, or the mere fact that it was something of Buckley's. But now that home had a purpose.

"I texted them the address," he said. "And I took your bags from my place, they're in the trunk."

"Thank you," I whispered, from the heart. "Sorry to make you drive up and down."

"Don't worry about it," he said with a wink.

We reached the building. I walked into the elevator with Gavin on one side of me and my suitcase on the other. I was scared, petrified! I despised GINM incredibly, but when I thought of how it could've been my last time in that building, I began to miss it – its ridiculously affluent technology and aura of pompousness included.

Gavin and I watched the agents hurry up the stairs in squads, through the glass sides of the elevator. We looked at all of the agents who'd be joining us, rushing to meet at the helipad with a strange calmness on their faces. Of course, it was a routine thing risking their lives. They were following orders; those agents were ready for their mission. Gavin glanced at me, he had a worry in his eyes, and I saw it. I knew what he was thinking; we were both scared. Scared because we knew (and also didn't know) what was coming, thus we prepared ourselves, mentally, for death.