"Make Them Pay, Baby..."

Cynthia

I don't know how long I stayed on the floor of the locked guest room.

I pounded on the door until my fists were red. I screamed until my voice broke.

"ROBB! EVELYN! OPEN THE DOOR! THIS IS MY HOUSE! MY FATHER BUILT THIS HOUSE!"

No one came.

I slid down the door and cried. My wrists were red where Robb twisted them. My pink dress was ripped at the shoulder.

This is my house. My father built it with his hands.

And now I was locked in it like a prisoner.

There was suddenly the sound of the handle of the door clicking.

The door opened a crack and Agatha slipped inside. Agatha is sixty-eight. She has always been my nanny. She raised me after my parents died. She is my mother now. Behind her legs, Biscuit pushed his head inside. He whined when he saw me on the floor and ran to lick my face.

"My baby! My poor baby!" Agatha whispered, dropping to her knees and hugging me. Her hands were shaking. "I heard them. I heard what that boy and that evil girl said. I told Evelyn you are not crazy!"

"Agatha," I sobbed into her shoulder. "They said I signed the company away. I signed papers last month without reading. I was so stupid. So loyal to Robb."

"You are not stupid, you are good," she said, wiping my tears. "That's why bad people use you. But we have to go now. Evelyn called someone. She said Dr. Croft is sending men in the morning to take you to a hospital. We have to get you out tonight before they succeed."

Biscuit barked softly and dropped something on my lap. My mother's old chemistry notebook. The one with _GENESIS RAIN PROJECT - DANGER, pH 1.0_ written on it. Agatha must have taken it from dad's study.

"Your mother wanted you to have this," Agatha said. "I kept it safe."

I held the notebook to my chest. My mother's handwriting. She wrote: _Acid not from nature. Croft making it. He wants to kill 90% and sell cure.

She knew something they didn't want anyone to know. And maybe she knew she was going to be killed.

Before I could read more, the whole house shook.

A low thunder cracked the sky outside. But it was not normal thunder. It sounded like the air itself was burning.

The lights flickered.

Biscuit started barking loudly, his ears flat.

"What was that?" Agatha whispered.

I ran to the small guest room window and pulled the curtain.

The sky wasn't the usual way when it was going to rain.

It was not black. It was dark yellow-green, like dirty acid in a beaker. The clouds were swirling fast. They were low and glowing. And then without warning, the rain started.

It didn't look like rain.

The drops were thick, yellow, hissing when they hit the ground. Where they hit the grass outside, the grass turned black instantly and smoked.

"Oh God," I whispered. My chemistry brain woke up. "pH 1.0... Mom was right... It's not rain. It's acid. Real acid. Croft did it. He really did it!”

I remembered my dad's lessons. _Cynthia, if rain ever burns, you don't run. You get under steel. You get in the vault. The vault has air filters. The vault is the only safe place._

"The vault!" I grabbed Agatha's arm. "We have to get to the vault under the west wing! My dad's bunker! It has air filters! It's the only place that can survive this!"

Agatha nodded, holding Biscuit's collar. "The service stairs! let's get to it fast!"

We ran out of the room. The hallway was empty. Evelyn and Robb must have already run.

We ran down the service stairs, through the kitchen. The house was shaking. Outside the big glass windows, I could see the yellow rain pouring down harder now, eating the paint off the cars, melting the flowers.

We reached the main gate door that leads to the driveway. I needed to cross the driveway to get to the west wing vault entrance. It's twenty meters of open concrete.

Biscuit was barking like crazy at the sky.

I pushed the heavy front door open.

Outside was hell.

The air smelled like rotten eggs and burning plastic. The yellow rain was falling hard, sizzling on the ground. It was already eating holes in the stone.

And at the main gate, twenty meters away, I saw them.

Robb and Evelyn were trying to get into their black Mercedes. Shae Collins was with them, holding a designer bag over her head, screaming. They were leaving me. They were leaving us to die.

"ROBB! HELP US!" I screamed over the hissing rain. "AGATHA IS HERE! PLEASE!"

Robb turned and saw me in the doorway. His face was panicked. Then he saw the vault key in my hand — the silver key my dad gave me.

For a second, I thought he would come back.

Then Evelyn grabbed his arm. "Don't! She has the bunker key! If she gets in there, we never get the estate! Leave her!"

Robb looked at me one last time. There was no love in his eyes. Only disgust.

The car engine roared. They reversed, smashing through the main iron gate.

And Robb slammed the gate button from inside the car.

The huge iron gate slammed shut and locked, blocking my path to the vault. He locked me out on purpose. He locked me out in acid rain.

"You BASTARD!" I screamed.

I tried to run anyway. I held my mother's notebook over my head.

The first drop of yellow rain hit my arm.

It was like fire. Like someone pressed a hot iron to my skin.

I screamed so loud my throat tore.

"Ssss!" The skin on my arm bubbled and turned red-black instantly.

Agatha screamed and pulled me back inside the doorway, but she was too slow.

A splash of rain hit her face and her hands as she shielded Biscuit.

Agatha fell to her knees, holding her face.

Biscuit howled as the rain hit his back. He was smoking.

"No! No! AGATHA! BISCUIT!" I grabbed them and dragged them back inside, into the small security guard room by the gate. My arm was burning, my skin melting.

Agatha was shaking in my arms. Her face was blistered.

She looked up at me, her eyes full of tears.

"My baby... run to the vault... you know chemistry... You can make them pay..."

"Don't leave me! Please don't leave me!" I cried, holding her.

Biscuit lay against my legs, whimpering, his golden fur burned.

Outside the locked iron gate, parked across the street in the yellow storm, the black SUV was still there.

Its headlights turned on.

I thought it was death watching me.

It was Daniel MacPherson.

Then the rain hit the guard room window and the glass started to melt.

I held Agatha and Biscuit as my skin burned and the world turned dark.

My last thought was not about Robb.

It was: _I will come back. I will learn how to make antidotes. And I will burn you all to ash._