So... What Now?

Regina’s body is disgustingly cold against my skin. She’s not gone, not yet anyway, but her staggering breath against my chest tells me what I know she can’t.

I try to whisper that it should’ve been me, but she shushes me before I can get it out. The city, if we actually hope to save it, needs her ten times more than it does me. “I don’t know if I can do this alone,” I mutter instead.

She lets out a small huff. If it were anyone else, it would sound more like a staggered breath instead of an actual laugh. But coming from her? I know exactly what she means it to be. She unfurls her hand from mine and rests it on my cheek. In better times, I’d push her away with a satirical jab at the tip of my tongue. Tonight, a joke feels like an insult to what will soon be her legacy. I lean into her hand and let her soothe me in a way I can’t do her. She sucks in her final breath, the shakiest one I’ve ever heard her take, to dedicate its exhale to me. “You won’t be alone,” she says, “we’ll always be a part of each other.”

Her hold on my cheek loosens.

I should’ve told her I loved her.

I know we have no time for this. The city depends on us, on me, and I can’t mess up again. Still, I hold her hand to my cheek for a few moments more before my other bloodied hand moves her head from my chest and gently onto the rug underneath us.

I take a deep breath as I stand and look away from her once I’m back on my feet. If I stare any longer, I’ll probably succumb to whatever other booby traps The Vein has tucked away in this creepy place. The massive glass panes that line the back and right-side walls reassure me that the city is still intact, for now. But like she said to us before we came; time is of the essence. I watch my step as I approach her desk, as I’m certain that she’s cliche enough to keep the code to the safe that holds the key to the vault with the coordinates for the bomb drop-off’s first clue in there. I check the first drawer. As I should’ve expected, it doesn’t budge.

Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.

Regina’s always been the more prepared one out of the two of us, and her toolbelt of doodads, doohickies, thingamajigs, thingamabobs, whatchamacallits and everything in between is sure to have some kind of mini crowbar.

Without looking her in the face, I make my way back over to her body and crouch down by her waist. I never did know how her super-belt worked. Really the whole thing was just one massive doohickey, but conveniently, an extensive, step-by-step manual on its usage is sticking out of her costume’s pocket. She really did think of everything.

The page unfolds one too many times for my liking when I have it in my hands. I almost laugh at how excessive it all is. The page, when fully unfolded, is the size of three A4 pages stuck together. And, with no disrespect to the dead, they are stuck together quite shoddily. Really, skimming it, I’m sure she could’ve cut some of this stuff out. I mean there’s a frequent readers’ section in here? How many people were reading this thing?!

Some of the section titles read like BuzzFeed articles. I don’t even know how she came up with ten different things that my favourite doodad to generate says about my sex life… Surely she must’ve been onto something though right? She must’ve been, if she were able to build up a frequent reader base.

I groan at my own curiosity. Now is far from the time.

Skimming once more, an article with my name in its title jumps out to me.

Jamila: Read This in Case of Emergency, but Don’t Get Distracted by the Other Articles. They Aren’t Going to Help. Side Note, it’s kind of rude of you to read my paper without buying a copy but whatever. We can talk about it later.

I almost flinch at the thought of one of her scolding lectures being on the horizon. But, well…

The article itself is quite short. It only has three steps. The title is longer than the article. Okay.

Step One: Press the Doohickey Control Ring™ in the center of my belt buckle.

Step Two: Say whatever you want it to create.

Step Three: Wait between five to seven business days for your results.

Business days?! But it’s the weekend!

My frustration almost makes me throw her manual on the floor. Instead I tuck it back in her pocket as neatly as I can.

I’ll have to make do with whatever The Vein has lying around her office then.

Back on her desk, all she has lying around are chewed up pens and half-written revenge letters. Looking at how many drafts she had, I can kind of understand how she and my Gina used to be friends. The only other thing on her desk that sticks out to me is the digital clock that reads 17 85. Hm. Must be stuck.

Towering bookshelves line the opposite end of her office. Being as tall as I am, I still have to crane my neck to see the top of them all. Makes me wonder why she’d choose to have them be so tall considering the shelves over my head don’t have books on them.

Unless they’re made of steel, I doubt they’d be much help here. But what could help is the record player in the corner. I practically sprint over to it. The Vein’s done the easy part for me, since it looks like she took out the cartridge and forgot to replace it. Without it, the headshell seems like it would be thin enough to fit into the crack of the drawer. It doesn’t take much strength to snap the tone arm off the dial.

It might not be a crowbar, but a beggar like me doesn’t have much of a choice right now.

Back to this damn drawer.

The headshell slips in as smoothly as I’d hoped. I shimmy in as much of the arm as I can into the drawer until I reach the bottom. The thought to feel around for anything inside the drawer occurs to me. It’ll surely be easier than forcing it open anyway. I whip the tonearm over to the other side, and the slight slamming sound the collision makes doesn’t register to me, because it’s drowned out by something far louder.

The bookcase cuts a piece out of itself and bursts into the room. The hidden door rattles the real books on the bookshelf next to it when it crashes into them.

I know who’s coming through that door before I even see her.

“Wait!” yells The Vein. She’s dishevelled as ever. Her laughable excuse for a costume is pristine, sure, but her hair is a mess. And knowing her, and knowing that the costume is more or less vacuum sealed to her body and incapable of getting wrinkled anyway, a bad hair day is worse than anything else. When she steps into the office, she almost bumps her head on the frame of her own passageway.

I abandon the tonearm and reach to the back of my utility belt for my trusty, recently sharpened, dagger. My nerves are on edge, but I still grip the hilt like my life depends on it, seeing as it kind of does.

When she catches her breath, she wastes her first full one on snarling out my name.

“Why are you back here?” I ask her, “You forget your own plan that quick?”

I prepare for an intense back-and-forth. I already have like, three comebacks swirling around my brain for whatever nonsense she might spew back at me. Instead, she collapses inwards. Her shoulders fall and her eyes look at me with sincerity they haven’t held since the last day I called her by her real name.

“Jamila,” she starts, and it makes me question if the first time was as snarly as I’d thought it was, “I’m calling the heist off.”

What?

I lower my dagger, ever so slightly.

“You don’t gotta forgive me. But sitting in town hall, knowing what I was about to do but still having to watch all them people come and go… I felt like a monster.” She sighs and turns her head to gaze out towards the darkening city. “There were kids, Jammi. Small ones, like how we used to be.” Kind of a given, I think. “Seeing those little tots hanging off their mommas made me come back here.”

She takes a step toward me.

“Look, I know you and Gina hate me. I’d hate me too, but can we jus' try to start again? The three of us?” I wish I could say she was lying, but I can’t. I’ve known her long enough to know that she’s a horrible liar.

But I am too. And I’d be easily called out if I said her including Gina in that didn’t sting. “The three of us, really?” I spit. “Gina’s fucking dead in front of you!”

The Vein’s neck snaps towards me, and then to the floor where Regina’s cold body lays. A pathetic, almost sympathetic sob escapes her lips. My legs move before my brain does, and I catch her before she can fall to her knees. Her nails dig into the holes of my tattered costume, and though her head is facing me, her eyes are stuck on Gina.

After a few failed attempts, all she can muster is a faint: “How did she…?”

My brows furrow. “It was your trap, Vein.” Of all times to play dumb, it’s a bit messed up to do it in front of your ex-lover slash my kind-of-girlfriend’s dead body, I’d say.

“Trap? What trap? I barely managed to get the fake shelves in here. Landlord rode my ass the whole time on putting them in.”

I peel her off of me, but her nails continue to stick. Why I even caught her in the first place, I don’t know. “Your stupid arrow trap. I’m only stuck here with you because she pushed me out of the way!”

The Vein peaks around my body to look at the crossbow in the far corner. I can’t make myself look over there as well. I’ve seen enough of it.

“I didn’t even know that thing was real.” She murmurs, eyes back on Gina’s body. “It was so pointless.”

And as much as I hate to agree with the likes of her, she’s right. There’s no city left to save. The love of my life is dead, and it was completely in vain.

A few beats pass before she opens her mouth again. “What’re we meant to do with her body?”

“Have a funeral?”

She looks up at me like I’m stupid. “I mean how are we meant to get it out of here? I only rent this place by the hour, Jammi. 'Scuse me for figuring it’d be blown up by now and not extendin' it.”

Shit.

We’re way too high up to get her out the window. The ground floor is crawling with security guards. Well, two. But they already gave us funny looks for our costumes on the way in, so they probably already think something’s up with us. Again unfortunately, The Vein is right. There’s no way to make carrying a dead body look good. And the morgue would probably have a couple questions, if we even manage to make it that far.

As much as it hurts, I stare at her body while I try to think of a plan.

We can’t get out unnoticed in our current outfits, that much is for sure. And she can’t look like a dead body when we’re moving her. If her Doohickey Control Ring™ didn’t have such long wait times we could actually stand a chance.

It seems The Vein has the same idea as me. With staring anyway.

The thought occurs to me that I could just throw her under the bus. But Gina, no matter how much she hated her, wouldn’t want that. Well maybe she would depending on the day. But today… Probably still yes, but not like this. Okay maybe like this. But only if she’d blown up the city, which she—I look out the window just to make sure I haven’t fallen for the easiest trick in the book—didn’t do. So I plan to keep my mouth shut.

The Vein interrupts my internal rambling. “We could wrap her up in the rug and take it outta here through the fake door.” She says.

“Will anyone see us?”

She shakes her head, “Shouldn’t. It leads to the fire exit.” She finally takes her nails out of my arm to walk towards the desk. I try to ignore the fact that she probably drew blood and ask what she wants from over there. “Key to a changing room. If anyone’s left anything behind, we can change into it.” She stops in her tracks when she gets to the drawer. “Why is there a tonearm in the drawer.”

I shrug, “Was trying to shimmy it open to find the code to your safe.”

“You didn’t think to use your dagger?”

I shrug again.

“Jammi, the code is right there.” She points to the (not a) digital clock. “Why would I hide the code in a locked drawer in an office I don’t even own?”

I don’t shrug again because it feels more embarrassing to admit I hadn’t thought that through very well. “Sorry I wasn’t thinking straight after my girlfriend died in front of me.”

The Vein mutters something about Gina and I not technically being together yet. I tell her to shove it.

She takes the drawer key out of wherever her costume’s pocket is supposed to be. She grabs the changing room’s key and tosses it to me. I have to stop her before she leaves the office.

“Shouldn’t we wrap her up first? In case someone comes in?”

Her body tenses up at the suggestion. She knows I’m right though, which is why her hand freezes on the handle instead of turning it. Reluctantly, she turns around and stands on the opposite side of the rug.

“Right.” She says.

When I gesture towards her feet, The Vein seems to pick up what I mean. Well not yet, she’s still in the middle of grabbing her feet. Gently, I pick Gina’s head up to rest it against my chest while I hoist her up by her armpits. We move her into the middle of the rug. It’s mostly me though, The Vein isn’t exactly known for her physical strength. As delicately as we can, we fold the different sides over Gina’s body until we can’t see her anymore.

I choose not to speak to her while we walk out.

She leads me down the hall to the changing room and I let her take care of raiding the lockers.

The only thing she finds for me that’s vaguely my size is a bright red Hawaiian shirt and baggy sweats. Hers is a slightly more stylish button-up with, maybe, the ugliest pair of slacks I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

What matters is that they fit. And if we end up getting blood on our clothes, it’ll blend into mine better than hers.

On the way back, I hadn’t really considered how heavy dead bodies are. But the first hoist almost makes it three dead bodies instead of one. Our height difference doesn’t help much either since, once we’re actually descending the stairs, she starts to slip down one of our ends no matter how slow we try to go.

For some reason, maybe because the workload is 70:30 right now, The Vein keeps trying to crack jokes. No matter how much profanity I hurl at her, she insists upon not shutting up.

After the worst twenty minutes of my life—twenty minutes that are somehow worse than the fifteen minutes it took for my sorta-girlfriend to die in front of me—the door outside is finally in front of us.

With one last plea for The Vein to shut up, I kick the door open and lead us outside.

We let out a joint groan once we get her body on the ground. “Fuck. She got a lot heavier after she dumped me.”

I hit her in the chest with the back of my hand. It leaves a tiny blood stain on the poor guy’s shirt, but honestly, I don’t care anymore.

“Okay… We did it… I’m so ready for today to be over.” The Vein raises her eyebrow at me. “Oh what now?”

“Exactly. What now?”

I give her the same look back. “Do you ever use full sentences?” I say with my voice accidentally raised.

She shushes me for being too loud. “I mean, now that she’s out what do we do with her? You don’t think the morgue’ll have some questions?”

I almost forget that my hands are covered in blood. If I had, I’d have two large streaks of blood down my face from dragging them down it. “I don’t know, Samantha! Why don’t you take her back to your place?”

She gawks at me. “My place?! Why my place?”

“You’re the one who killed her!”

“Accidentally!”