Estranged (25 page)

Landen addressed the audience. “Ladies
and gentlemen, I give you our honored co-hosts for this evening:
Kalei Distrad and Jenna Kendrick.” The crowd cheered and clapped
amiably. Landen walked back across the stage and presented the lion
with an outstretched arm. “And let us not forget our dear friend,
the honorable and ferocious Max!” Again, the crowd cheered and
clapped. The renewed energy in the audience had sparked Max’s
interest, and he began to pace the front of his cage, licking his
jowls as he beheld the noisy morsels.

“
And now, let’s get on
with the main event. Jared, will you come up here, please?” Kalei’s
spin was already turning her away from the theatre, but out of the
corner of her eye, she saw a man in the third row stand
up.

Kalei was facing Jenna now, and the
young woman was quickly working at the straps on her harness while
everyone’s attention was on Jared. She managed to get one leg loose
when Landen Franklin said, “Jenna, don’t be a spoilsport. Here,
before you take that off, let me show you what it’s for. Ted, can
you take off the safety for me?”

Kalei turned her head to try to see
what Ted was doing in the shadows behind Jenna, but her endless
rotation carried her too far around to see. She was getting tired
of this game. She tried to reach up and grab the cable that held
her, which was fairly more difficult than she had imagined, but
right as her hand closed around it, she heard a click and dropped.
She had probably fallen no more than a few inches when the harness
pulled her to a stop again, but those three inches were enough to
scare her shitless. She didn’t want to mess with the cable anymore.
She felt the full terror of every foot of empty space between her
and the stage. Adrenaline pounded in her veins and she closed her
eyes to try to block out the height, but the darkness only added to
the sensation of spinning and made her stomach heave. She opened
her eyes again and saw that she was now turning back to the center
of the stage where Landen stood facing the audience with Jared on
his right and Jenna on his left.

Franklin said, “Okay, so we’ve got the
safety off. Now, Jenna, you see your sister up there? Wave hi for
me.” Jenna didn’t wave. Neither did Kalei. He continued, “Ah, a
couple of spoilsports. Anyway, keep an eye on your sister and take
a step forward.” Kalei couldn’t see them anymore, but the cable
hoisted her a foot higher. “Now take a step back.” The cable
lowered Kalei back to where she started. Landen said, “You see how
this works? Every time you take a step back, your sister drops
closer to Max. He’s a bit desperate for company, so I don’t
recommend letting her get too close to him. You’re still welcome to
take off that harness if you want, but I’m not sure Kalei will
appreciate you for it.” He laughed, and the crowd laughed with
him.

Kalei heard Jenna mutter, “I’ll keep
it on, thanks.”

Landen said, “Sorry, we didn’t hear
you.” Kalei spun back around in time to see him walk to the front
of the stage and accept a microphone from a stagehand. He walked
back to his place and held the microphone out to Jenna. “Can you
repeat that?”

Jenna squared her shoulders, pulled a
smirk onto her face, and joked amiably, “You talked me into it. I
hadn’t realized how sexy this harness is. Maybe if you’re lucky,
I’ll let you try it on sometime.” The audience laughed, but Landen
just smiled stiffly.

“
Anyway, none of you came
to see two sisters play with a lion, although we could call that
icing on the cake. Tonight is E-night!” The audience approved
enthusiastically. Landen continued, “So, on my right, we have our
dear friend Jared. This man is terminally ill. His body has already
begun to decay, his strength is fleeing him, and every day from
here on out, he is doomed to watch as he wastes away into nothing.
Unless Jenna here can cure our man.”

The audience cheered again
as Landen offered Jenna the microphone.
Jenna...
Kalei thought.
This is so weird, Shenaia is so... but Shenaia is
Jenna, and Jenna is Shenaia.
Kalei’s head
was spinning faster than the harness. She turned her attention back
to the issue at hand: escape. She searched for something, anything
she might be able to grab on to, but the curtains that sailed by
were more than ten feet out of her reach, and she doubted she had
enough cord to inconspicuously swing over there.

She heard Jenna ask, “What kind of
disease do you have, Jared?”

Jared responded confidently, “I’m
Untouched.”

Jenna laughed. “You have issues if you
think being Untouched is a disease.”

Landen saved Jared the trouble of
responding, “Of course it is. Name one Untouched man who doesn’t
have to fear dying in a car crash, or can withstand the ravages of
cancer, or can say with confidence that thirty years from now, he
will be every bit the man he is today?” Kalei came back around in
time to see Landen step up and address the audience. “You know that
saying, ‘If it’s not broken, don’t fix it’?” He paused while
several people in the audience nodded. “You know what I say? We are
broken, but we can fix it!”

The audience roared in
approval.

Landen walked back to his guest and
co-host. “Jared, step up and shake Jenna’s hand to find out what it
means to be immortal.”

Jared stepped forward, his eyes locked
with Jenna’s. She hesitated and started to step back. Kalei dropped
an inch.

Landen said, “And don’t forget, if you
deny Jared, then you’ll reward Max.”

Kalei cursed as she lost sight of
Jenna and Jared, then yelled, “Shut the fuck up, Landen!” The
audience laughed. Kalei continued, “Drop me in the cage, Jenna.”
The name felt odd on her tongue. “We both know it doesn’t have as
much bite as you.” The audience laughed again.

But as the laughter died, one voice
continued to ring out in a deep, undulating laugh that steadily
rose in pitch until its owner seemed to be crying. The theatre went
quiet and as Kalei came back around, she saw Xamic sitting in the
center aisle, wiping tears from his eyes.

Landen said, “It wasn’t that funny,
Xamic.” The people laughed quietly.

Xamic pulled himself back to his feet
and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “What? The thing Kalei
said about the lion?” He gave a short snicker. “That’s not what I
was laughing at.”

Landen watched Xamic warily but
maintained his composure. He smiled amiably and said, “What’s so
funny?”

“
What’s so funny?” Xamic
replied. Kalei couldn’t see them anymore, but she heard Xamic jump
onto the stage. “What’s funny is that you can dangle a girl above a
lion, make some comments about the glory of being Estranged, and
still call this entertainment. This entire setup is a joke! There’s
no edge, no excitement. Little Maxxie over there is a poor
substitute for real suspense.”

Kalei glanced down at Max and found
him lying in one corner of his enclosure, closest to the crowd. It
seemed he had lost interest in her. She watched him for a moment
longer before a sudden wave of vertigo forced her to look
away.

Landen asked, “Okay, then what would
you do?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Kalei
saw Xamic wander over to Max as he said, “First,” he pulled several
pins out of the joints holding the lion’s cage together, “I would
unlock Max’s door and see how long it takes him to figure out he’s
free.”

A security guard ran up to tackle
Xamic, but the blonde man stopped him with a hand to the guard’s
throat. Kalei couldn’t see Xamic’s eyes, but the guard’s eyes were
suddenly bulging. Somewhere in the theatre, someone screamed. More
guards appeared, guns drawn.

Kalei wondered if the distraction
would buy Jenna enough time to get them out of this mess. Kalei
hated to admit it, but Jenna was her only ticket out now. There was
nothing she could do from her dangling perch. She tried to grab
Jenna’s attention, but the young woman’s eyes were still locked on
Xamic.

Xamic tsked at the guards and dropped
the first guard’s body. Landen signaled his people to lower their
weapons.

Landen said, “Xamic, what are
you—”

“
Then!” Xamic shouted the
word to be heard over Landen’s microphone-aided voice. “I would
place explosives beneath five of the seats and set them to detonate
at random times between, oh, 12:30, 12:45, somewhere thereabouts.
But— well, I’ve already done that.”

A hush fell over the theater. No one,
except Kalei on her spinning wire, moved. Someone screamed as a
small bomb went off in the balcony. The explosion was just large
enough to destroy three seats and mangle the people sitting in
them.

Xamic shouted, “Here we go!” While
panic broke out in the theatre, he jumped over to Landen and
snatched the microphone away. “And then, just when I have you all
at the edge of your seats, I would remind you not to leave them
just yet. Because, ladies and gentlemen—STOP!”

The theatre went silent again.
“People, please, need I remind you, there is a lion in our midst?
And look, you’ve disturbed his nap.” Indeed, the lion was up and
pacing again, unaware as of yet that he could be free with just a
bump against the transparent wall. Everyone watched the lion
warily, scared to move a muscle lest they draw his
attention.

To a subdued audience,
Xamic said, “Just a moment.” They waited. One heartbeat. Two. Then
several red lights revealed themselves in the ceiling and started
flashing, adding a red, pulsing light to the room. A
resounding
thunk
echoed from all the entrances. Xamic smiled and said, “Then I
would activate the security lock-down protocol so that none of you
can escape while I chase you down and rip the delicious darkness
from your corrupted hearts.” The audience had been still before,
but now it was as though everyone had been turned to stone, with
eyes that contorted with rage and terror. Xamic threw his arms up
and yelled, “Welcome to E-night, bitches!”

Kalei couldn’t see the stage anymore,
but she heard a gunshot, immediately followed by something that
sounded like a piece of wood snapping. She heard Xamic laugh while
members of the audience gasped or cried out.

She came back around in time to see a
guard in the third row shoot again, three times. Head-heart-groin.
Xamic’s body shook with the impacts, pieces of his flesh bursting
out behind him, but he didn’t fall. When the guard was done, Xamic
shook his head, splattering blood and gore onto the stage, the
hosts behind him, and the side of the lion’s enclosure. He said,
“God, that itches,” unzipped his jacket, and reached up under his
red shirt to scratch beneath the hole in his clothes.

Another bomb went off in the front
row, scattering debris and catching the curtains of fire. The lion
threw himself after the fresh blood on his cage and won himself
free of his captivity. Landen tackled Xamic, and people screamed
and ran for entrances.

Kalei didn’t see what happened next
because her attention was focused on the ground that was now
rapidly approaching. The cord at her back still held her securely,
but she was dropping at a pace far faster than she was comfortable
with. All the while, her harness kept spinning, and when her spin
brought her back around, she looked up to see Jenna running towards
the stage entrance where her wire came from.

Kalei wanted to be excited, she wanted
to believe that Jenna had found their ticket out and was working on
a plan. But as she watched her sister run into the shadows
backstage, Kalei could only see Shenaia running away to save her
own hide. It didn’t matter that everyone called them sisters, she
couldn’t deny that the young woman over there was her sibling, but
she still couldn’t see the Shenaia she knew stepping up to be the
Jenna she remembered.

About ten feet above the stage,
Kalei’s descent stopped.

The Jenna from her childhood wouldn’t
leave her there; she would come back and make sure Kalei got out of
the harness. Kalei waited for her spin to bring her back around.
Shenaia, on the other hand, would give no fucks. Kalei looked for
the backstage entrance where her sibling had disappeared, but the
smoke from the curtain was already filling the theatre. The heavy
haze caught and amplified the strobes of light from the security
beacons, nearly blinding her in the process.

She shielded her eyes, but she
couldn’t make out any sign of Shenaia or anyone. And she felt not
so much as a twitch from the wire. The entire world around her
melted away as the flashing red cloud consumed it all, leaving her
abandoned, spinning aimlessly in her own personal corner of hell.
Within the smoke, she heard the lion snarl and several choked
screams as people died. She wasn’t sure if the victims belonged to
Max or Xamic.

Taking matters into her own hands,
Kalei reached down and started undoing the harness around her legs.
When her legs came free, her weight shifted painfully to her chest,
and she quickly moved her hands to the straps across her upper
body. Her fingers had just found the first metal clasp when the
wire above her went slack and Kalei dropped to the
ground.

Hitting the stage felt like taking a
hammer to every inch of her body at once. The hammer hit her knee
and both elbows with particular violence as she threw her arms out
before her, then it took a lighter, albeit no less solid smack to
her temple.