“You can die with them or you can die for them.” / pog
Her silhouette cuts a vicious shadow in the light of the open exit gate. Julie stands among his fallen teammates, turning the knife, predatory and deliberate from where she crouches over crumpled, gasping forms. Until he grits, lip curling: “stop.”
This is the choice– the ultimatum. You or them. The scoreboard or the pebble in her shoe. She is snake-like when she watches him– her venom hardly veiled by the smiling plaster. She likes games–they all do, in a way. He supposes these things become routine after you’ve slit enough throats to paint the Thompson House.
Of course, he doesn’t intend to die. He never does.
“Trade, then. Me for them.” He turns his hands over, no glass shards–a surrender. “I’ll play nice.” A bold-faced lie on any other day, maybe– but right now, he hesitates. He wants to be breezy, he wants to be unafraid of consequence– but the air is copper-tinged and wrought with electricity. Around them, the mist curls in low halos, and his breath stings where it gusts in and out of bruising ribs. So instead, he is quiet, sobered. “Let them go, Julie.”
