How It All Goes Down
- Lena's been waiting all day for Alex to save her, and she worries that he's not going to show.
- "I just have to believe that Alex will come and rescue me—like in one of the fairy tales he told me" (27.5).
- Lena decides that if Alex doesn't come and save her, she'll just kill herself. "I'd rather die loving Alex than live without him" (27.31). What?
- Thankfully, Lena doesn't have to end it all. Her little cousin Grace unties her, and Lena jumps out the bedroom window where Alex is waiting on a motorbike.
- They speed away as all hell breaks loose. Helicopters, people with guns, and helicopters with guns pursue them.
- Alex has a plan: drive the motorbike into the fence to short-circuit it, which will give them precious seconds to climb over the fence and escape.
- After a spectacular crash, Lena clambers over the fence and waits for Alex to drop beside her.
- He doesn't.
- She looks back through the fence, and "Alex's T-shirt is red […] soaked in blood" (27.123). Yep. They shot him.
- Before the Regulators swarm him, he mouths one word to Lena: "Run" (27.126).
- So she does. No time for a denouement. She runs.
- The end.