Page 68 of Her Reborn Mate
I’m on it. Don’t worry; we have the situation under control,she said.
I turned my attention back to Fred and smiled at him. “You never really had any faith, did you, Fred?”
“What does faith have anything to do with any of this?” Fred scoffed.
“You’ll see,” I said.
Chapter 29: Alexis
I wasn’t dying, at least not at this very moment. Then why was my life flashing before my eyes? Why did time feel like it had decided to stand still? The half-hour timer had just shifted from 30 minutes to 28 minutes, and it seemed that an eternity had passed between those two minutes. An eternity comprising snippets of memories. Memories that made up my life.
The pain was the most resounding emotion in all the memories that were playing in front of my eyes as I stood there vapidly looking at the bomb and its timer, not knowing what to do, ignoring Vincent’s call, completely frozen by the fear of the very likely possibility that in just a few minutes, this place would blow up and take the lives of thousands of people. I could already picture the flames, those billowing plumes of smoke, and the buildings with their ramparts caught on fire. It was bizarre how both my flashing memories of the past and my foresight of the doomed future were playing simultaneously in the present, jarring my senses and draining my energy.
The levies broke, and the barrage of memories started pouring down as I stared into that LED light that would detonate my doom. Repressed memories from my entire life started flooding through, making me drown in a sea of pain and anguish.
There I was, in one of the memories, standing in the graveyard with my knees grazed and my body cold. It was one of the few times Fiddler’s Green had a blizzard warning. Mom and dad had gone to visit their parents’ graves, and I was lost somewhere in the woods around the forest, crying, calling out for mom, surrounded by large trees with blackened barks. When they found me after an hour of searching, I was recoiling in the snow in a fetal position, weeping my little eyes out.
“Alexis!”
It seemed that someone was calling out my name in the present, but what was I to do in the face of this sudden storm of memories? The pain had dug itself underneath my flesh, and there it seethed, burning me from within.
As if to counter my negative thought stream, a new memory came into focus, a memory where Will was holding my hands. This was after the first time we had made love and were lying in each other’s arms. He was staring intently into my eyes. And just as fast as this memory had come, another followed where Will and I were sitting at the skating rink, eating junk food and commenting on the meaning of contemporary graffiti.
And there was Will yet again, saving me from Blair the first time. Will, kissing me after apologizing profusely for being rude to me all those times when he hadn’t been able to control his rage. All these happy memories came to a climax with the latest one, where Will and I were in Vermont, and he was kneeling in front of me, asking for my hand in marriage.
I must live yet, I thought. While there’s Will, and while there’s even a remote chance for us to be happy together. How ungrateful I was to think that all my life had been nothing but sorrow after sorrow. Through my mate, I had come to know such joy as I had never imagined. And with this thought, life came back to my limbs, and I regained consciousness, only to find that Vincent had made his way to the top of the tower where I was standing. He was shaking me vigorously, calling my name over and over again.
“What happened to you?” Vince asked, still holding me by my arms. “I thought you’d lost your mind just now.”
“It became all too much,” I said, staring at the timer—twenty-five minutes to go. “I became petrified, Vince. All my life, I’d been putting on the bravest front I could, only to become enveloped in my fear when I needed to be courageous.”
“It’s okay. There’s still time. And you’re the bravest person I know. If there’s anyone who can get us out of this, it’s you. Below, all the pack members are disarming the bombs as we speak. I gave the order myself. We’ve isolated as many bombs as we could find. But there’s still work yet cut out for us. We need you!” Vince said, taking a look at the bomb as he took out a pair of scissors from his pocket and began fidgeting with the wires. “Even if I disable it, all the bombs are going to go off remotely. We can’t hold them off forever.”
“How are you disabling them?” I asked, looking at what Vince was doing.
“I’m not really disabling them. I’m just cutting down the wires that control the timer so we have more time on our hands. That’s the best we can do. These bombs will either go off through a remote detonator, or they’ll eventually blow on their own. What I’ve done, what the pack has done, will buy us an hour at best. So we have to hurry!”
I knew what I had to do. First, I had to disable the remote detonator, but there was no way in hell I would be able to do that all by myself. I picked up my phone and dialed Maliha’s number. It was the only thing I could do.
Below, the election countdown had started. At any minute, they’d announce the results, and then the situation would truly be out of our control. The people would go crazy with celebration and rush the streets, dance in the town square, and do what celebrating people all over the world do—celebrate vicariously. That would be the perfect opportunity for the bombs to go off. I needed to make sure that didn’t happen.
Not on my watch.
***
“What the actual fuck? Tell me this isn’t one of your jokes,” Maliha exclaimed once I’d finished telling her what was happening. It took ten minutes, but those ten minutes were well invested if Maliha agreed to help us.
“Yeah, you know my famous wit. Since when have I ever joked with you about such matters?” I couldn’t afford another ten minutes consoling and calming her. I needed a solution stat.
“But I’m standing right here, waiting for the voting results. I don’t want to get blown up into a billion bits,” Maliha said, her voice breaking as she began crying.
“Listen to me. I won’t let anything happen to you. But you have to help me first. Tell me how I can disable the detonator. If the perpetrator pushes one button, dozens and dozens of bombs will go off. Is there any way you can disable the detonating mechanism?”
“I can…uh…fuck…Yes. I can help you disable the detonation mechanism, but there’s nothing that can be done about the timer,” Maliha said.
“I’ll take it. Now tell me what I have to do.”
“You don’t have to do anything, actually. You’re already there, at the antenna tower. All you have to do is take down the antenna. It’s responsible for all the cellular signals in town. Remote detonation also utilizes cellular signals. No signals mean no detonation,” Maliha said. “And with this, I’m leaving. I can’t be anywhere near the blast radius when shit hits the fan. It was nice knowing you, Lexie. See you on the other side.”