Saving Grandpa pt 5- Letting Go

Juan has always dived wholeheartedly into every project, confidence shining like the sun. He is even brighter now, fueled by the guards’ blind obedience, but as his gaze lands on me, his change of expression is like an explosion. His strong jaw drops, honey-colored eyes widening and eyebrows falling into his dark lashes.

“Gabby?”

This is my Juan, costumed like a rogue prince—soft, black shirt scribbled with golden brocade. He is a little older than I remember him, but it has been five years. My expression mirrors his. I want to run to him, throw my arms around him. He looks so lost. Has he been here all this time?

I also want to strangle him.

Instead, I straighten, chin held level so my voice comes out even. “Juan, what is all this? Are you really a tyrant? Are you mind-controlling these people with drugs?”

He starts toward me, one hand extended, and I am whisked to the side. Shorter, darker arms encircle me. A luminous ring sizzles by my cheek.

“You’re working together,” Zinc hisses.

“No, I came here to save you.”

I feel him pause. His head tilts.

“Zinc.” Juan reaches both hands toward us as if smoothing a blanket. “She doesn’t belong here.”

“Finally, we agree on something,” Zinc growls. He flicks the ring, and it straightens into an electric scalpel. He angles it toward my heart. Plasma strands pop as they slice the air, and my eyes widen, a scream bubbling from my deepest being.

No one hears it.

All breath is knocked from me as my backside hits the floor. The incandescent blade swipes inches above my nose. Guards soar, leaping at Zinc, and his attention yanks to them as I slide away from the scene. My left ankle stings.

A slender strap digs into my calf as it drags me toward Juan. Fire burns in his warm eyes. The clang and zap of weapons behind me seems distant, somehow quieter than the thud of bodies against the ground. I know Zinc still stands, still fights, still moves, because Juan still frowns, brows slanted in worry.

When Juan disappeared after graduation, not even his family knew what happened to him. Police found nothing, gave up. I refused to let myself believe he was dead. He must have needed a change. I convinced myself he had started over somewhere. He was happy.

I never imagined he would become this.

I twist, but he grabs my arm, pulling me to my feet and further from the fray.

“What are you doing?” My voice sounds ravaged and tattered. It reflects the state of my heart.

“Saving you from a madman.”

“You’re the madman!”

I refuse to look at him, but I feel him stiffen. Those words stung.

I slip free, rush back into the crowd of his guards, scoop up my abandoned mop, and swing wildly. I twirl and duck and jab and stab, feet sliding over the dusty floor. I fall to my knees, get up, receive a blow to my shoulder, my side, but I keep going. I never stop. Zinc hasn’t stopped, and he has been fighting this battle longer than I. What excuse would I have?

For a moment, I ride on a guard’s shoulders, ducking as we spill out the doorway. He flings me on the wooden boards of the balcony, and I roll, heart in my throat as the edge nears. My sneakers find traction on the planks, and I leap up, a wary eye on the never-ending drop as I skitter away from it.

My mop swings, meets a club, and is shoved back. My spine crashes into Zinc’s. His electric ring is circular again, no longer a knife. My stomach flips, cheeks like pools of lava.

It’s Tomato-Face Gabby, my father always teases. Can’t tell if she’s angry or just took a nap on a plate of spaghetti.

“Why would you try to kill me?” I demand, searching for a wince or any sign of remorse, but narrow lines of determination have hardened Zinc’s face.

“The zombies don’t deserve blame for what they do.” His voice hitches as he leaps over the swipe of a cutlass. The sword passes a centimeter from my behind, and I move like a dog tucking in its tail. “They’re under Juan’s mind-altering drug, but you’re lucid, and you chose to help the tyrant.”

I shake my head, mop flying like a bronco’s kicks. “No, I came for you. I chose to release you from stasis.”

He dances around me, meets my gaze for the briefest of moments, and it feels like lightning passes between us. “You think you’re brave enough to help me, stranger?”

“I am not brave, but I’ll stay by your side.” I move with him, swatting at the pests at his back.

Juan appears in front of me. “That’s why you came here, why you crossed dimensions? To destroy my kingdom.” His stare flicks across me, and it feels like embers seeping between my cells. “I thought we were friends.”

I point my mop at him. “Friends don’t let friends turn worlds into dystopias.”

A grin sneaks over Juan’s lips. The strap coiled around his left arm loosens and becomes a whip in his hand.

Zinc barrels into him, and like a sphere in Newton’s cradle, Juan flies over the edge of the balcony. His arms pinwheel, and he stretches for the bridge, fingers just shy of its planks.

“No!” I reach for him. His hand is too far, but the strap trailing from his wrist falls across my palms. My fists clench. The cord pulls through my hands, and fire tears my flesh as I’m yanked forward.

I lie flat on the bridge’s rough planks, about to plummet head-first off the platform, when Zinc grabs my shoulders.

“Let him go!”

I grip the cord tighter. Juan is my childhood friend. He carried me home when I fell in the gully. He walked alongside me every day. Now he dangles from the end of a thin strap, knuckles white, fear and trust overflowing from those deep brown eyes.

A zombie clubs Zinc’s back, and his grasp slides along my biceps. I slip over the edge a little further.

The puppet raises his weapon again. Others crowd around, tripping over one another. One of them is a child not a day over ten. Tears spill over my lashes. How could my Juan have chosen this?

“Stop!” Juan calls, and his minions freeze as if someone pressed pause.

“Drop him,” Zinc insists, pulling me back inch by inch.

I shake my head. If this Juan dies, Juan III will never exist.

“I knew you always loved me,” this Juan says. Through my tears, I can’t quite make out his expression. I hope my nose doesn’t drip on him.

“You’d have been really dense not to notice I loved you.”

His gaze pierces my soul. “I love you, too, Gabriela Martini. I’ve wanted to see you again ever since graduation.”

Words I’ve always wanted to hear spoken by a voice that could always melt me, yet here they ring hollow, as if all my emotions have been scraped out and hang there with him. I am only an empty shell, and logic slowly pours in to fill the void.

“Just after graduation, you were pulled back to the Inner,” I realize. “When Juan III returned to the Outer, he really did push back the same person he had displaced.”

“Stop rambling.” Zinc’s arms tremble. How much longer can he hold us? “I’m trying to save you because you tried to save me, but we’ve got about ten seconds before we all drop.”

I squirm, lurching the rope closer to the bridge post. I can wrap the cord around it, use that mechanical advantage to pull him up, but I also need answers.

“Why this, Juan? Why turn this world into a dystopia?”

“I wanted to be something.” He looks like he’s staring up at his guardian angel and confessing all. “I was ripped away from this place, but that was okay. My new family was nice. I was going to be a doctor. I worked hard. I had scholarships lined up, and then all that was ripped away, too.”

Surely, those aren’t my tears dripping down his face.

I wipe my eyes on my arm, but the scene only clears a little. “You were home here.”

“Here, I had nothing.” He shakes his head, midnight hair flying. “I was no one, but I knew how to make everyone else less than no one, so that being no one was the best.”

“This isn’t a healthy society.” My argument emerges as a faint whisper, and I force my voice out stronger. “You could have used your knowledge for good. If you continue down this path, this world won’t have a future.”

“Who cares about the future?” Juan screams. “It can be ripped away from you at any moment.”

“I know.” I swallow. “But I do care about it. That’s why I’m letting you go.”

And I do.

Continued in pt 6- Love

Thank you for reading!