Chapter 11 - The Fall
Thorne didn't hesitate.
The heavy steel wrench came down in a brutal arc. I threw my left forearm up to block it. The steel cracked against my radius bone with a sound like a dry branch snapping. Pain exploded through my arm, but the adrenaline drowned it out instantly.
I drove the barrel of the empty shotgun straight into Thorne's throat, directly onto the tracheostomy tube.
The plastic tube shattered. Thorne let out a horrific, strangled gasp, clutching at his neck as air hissed uselessly through his ripped flesh. He dropped the wrench, stumbling backward into the cedar closet doorframe.
I dropped the useless shotgun, lunged forward, and tackled him with my entire body weight.
We smashed through the cedar paneling, slamming into the antique stained-glass window at the front of the house.
The glass didn't just crack. It disintegrated.
The cold winter air hit me like a bucket of ice water as we tumbled out into the open sky.
We were fifteen feet off the ground, falling through the snow-filled air. Thorne’s heavy frame hit the wooden railing of the front porch first, splintering the banister into a thousand pieces. I rolled off his chest, flipping mid-air, and crashed hard into a deep, frozen snowbank beside the porch steps.
The impact knocked the breath entirely out of my lungs. Black spots danced across my vision.
I lay in the freezing snow, gasping for air, clutching my broken left arm against my chest. Five feet away, Thorne lay impaled on the jagged remains of a wooden porch spindle, his milky eyes staring blankly at the falling snow. He was dead.
"Drop your weapons! Hands where I can see them!"
The harsh bark of a rifle command snapped me awake.
One of the tactical operators from the black SUV was coming up the walkway, his rifle raised, laser sight painting a crimson dot on my forehead.
"Don't move, Vance," the man ordered, his voice muffled by a balaclava. "Turn over on your stomach. Hands behind your head."
"Wait!"
A voice called out from the SUV's passenger side.
Caroline stepped out into the snow, wrapped in a heavy fur-lined parka. Her right arm was wrapped in an elastic bandage. She walked toward me, her designer snow boots crunching smoothly in the powder.
"I told you, Ryan," she said, looking down at me with genuine pity. "You should have stayed asleep. You had a good life. We gave you everything."
"You... gave me... a cage," I wheezed through bloody teeth.
Caroline smiled faintly, turning to the contractor. "Put a bullet in his head. Then go upstairs and bag the subjects. Burn the rest."
The contractor nodded, resting his finger on the trigger of his carbine.
Suddenly, a loud, sharp crack echoed from the second-story roof above us.
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A massive, hundred-pound decorative concrete gargoyle, loosened by decades of water damage and jarred free by our crash through the window, sheared completely off the eave.
It dropped like a meteorite, crushing the contractor’s skull and shoulder in an instant. The man collapsed into the snow, dead before his body even settled.
