Author Note: Please first read my story 'MW2: Predated'. This is based upon one of that story's main characters, Aqua. This will be confusing to read without reading that first.
-Trouble on Holiday-
-7 years prior to Predated-
Bell Cloud slung her shoulder bag down onto the bed in the hotel room. She slung herself onto the bed as well, completely exhausted.
Bell was on holiday in Germany. She had spent the whole morning with her friend, Jane Rowan, looking at famous landmarks and going to nice shops. She was going to catch a bit of sleep now; there was that museum this afternoon, then late night fun afterwards.
She went through her bag for her watch. She found it and pulled it out. It was a gift from a family member, and she had it with her almost all the time. It was silver in colour but had scratches all over it from its continuous use.
The time was 12:40. Bell dropped the watch back into the bag where it clattered amongst her other possessions. She pushed the bag away and lay her head on the soft pillow and fell quickly asleep.
The museum was amazingly interesting.
There were things from all different parts of history. Jane was interested in things from wars. Bell didn't have any interest in weapons. She wouldn't be bothered if they all disappeared and wouldn't care if there was six times as many.
The whole trip was looking to be amazingly interesting, although you could have probably said that things were shaping up to be a bad day from when the angry man shown up.
He was complaining into his phone noisily at the back of a crowd gathered round a glass tank containing a military tank. Jane was off looking at one of the other exhibitions, saying she'd wait until the crowd had dispersed.
Bell was trying to hear what the guide had to say about the tank, but couldn't hear under the voice of the angry man. As you weren't even allowed to use phones, Bell decided to speak up.
"Excuse me, could you turn that off? I'm trying to listen to the tour guide." Bell asked, trying to sound polite.
He looked at her with a stony face then carried on his conversation.
Bell tried again. "You know, you're not allowed to use phones-"
The man put the phone on hold and angrily grabbed the neck of her jacket, shaking her. "Don't you realise this is an important call? I'm not losing my job over something as insignificant as a speech about a tank!"
Someone stepped in the way of the raging man before he could react violently.
"Ok, break it up you two, I don't need bloodshed on my shift." He was one of the museum security staff. He turned to the calmer of the two, Bell. "What's going on?"
"I asked this man politely to turn his phone off so I could hear the tour guide, and he reacted angrily."
"Is this true?" The security asked the angry man.
"It was an important call!" He protested.
"Well, you'll have to make it outside the museum." The security put a hand on the other man's shoulder and led him towards the door.
"I can leave by myself!" He snapped, striding from the door.
"Some people, hey?" Bell said.
The security man looked at her. "Yeah. Some people are like that." The badge on his uniform said his surname was Sanderson. He was speaking German, but must have been from England originally.
"What happened?" Jane asked, striding to the side of her friend.
"I was confronted by some pissed off guy, but Mr. Sanderson here sorted things out." Bell told her. Sanderson smiled.
"Well, the crowd's gone, time for me to get a look at this tank." Jane stated, marching past them to the tank. "Hello baby! This is in really good condition."
"She really doesn't care." Bell shrugged theatrically.
"Well, I'd best be going." Sanderson said, then as an afterthought, "What's your name?"
"Bell Cloud." She shook his hand.
Suddenly the building rocked, several things smashed and clattered to the floor. Bell and Sanderson spun around, looking for what happened. Another crash and the wall exploded inwards. Lumps of stone were flung across the room and they smothered several people. Everything fell down several feet.
There was a quiet pause, only punctuated by the occasional pained yell or sob.
Bell coughed on the brick dust, trying to see through it to pick out another person. A hand wrapped around her arm and pulled her out from under some rubble. Bell jumped, startled, then felt embarrassed at doing so. It was only Sanderson.
"What happened?" Bell asked, looking around at the chaos. The building had been levelled and wrecked by the two explosions. There were large holes in the walls where daylight poured in, piercing the clouds of dust. The ground was an impassable mess of broken stone. The tank had partially fallen through into the lower floor of the building and was creaking dangerously. Then again, so was the rest of the building.
Sanderson was clutching a bleeding wound on one arm but appeared to be mostly ok. He was pulling rubble away from other people, and Bell hurried to help.
When Bell pulled Jane up, she hurried to the nearest hole in the wall, dodging the broken parts of the floor and looked out.
"A mortar tank." Jane exclaimed. "Someone shot the building!"
"They're finishing off the job." A businessman muttered gravely, pointing. A coordinated troop of armed men were crossing the square. They split up and went to different buildings. The first mortar had been less aimed at the museum, more towards the hospital next to it. Most of the square had suffered damage, and the armed men were trying to finish the job.
"Help me open this damn thing!" Sanderson called to them. Bell helped him push some stone away from a small safe door. It said 'Emergency- Staff Only' in bold red letters. He opened it and inside collected three handguns and some ammunition.
Bell didn't accept one, so the businessman, Keller, a big built man called Hartmann and Sanderson himself got a gun.
There was the sound of some glass smashing and they spun around to see Jane breaking an already wrecked glass case to retrieve an MP40 sub-machinegun.
"What?" She asked. "The museum probably won't notice me borrowing it in this mess."
"Fine, whatever." Sanderson shook his head.
The other survivors didn't know what to do. Some stayed in one place due to injury or confusion, others fled. Only a few decided to sensibly leave the building with the armed security guard.
"Maybe they won't hurt people." Bell suggested. "Maybe they'll ignore us, or just take prisoners."
They heard the frantic voice of the angry man, followed by a burst of gunfire and a cut off scream. Sanderson looked darkly at the people following him.
This was too much for most people, in the end everyone turned back and decided to hide except for Sanderson, Bell, Jane, Keller and Hartmann.
Sanderson took the lead. They carried on down the stairs, turned a corner and were in the line of gunfire. They threw themselves back round the corner or behind cover. Jane's arm had been hit, and Hartmann had been ripped apart. Bell realised she had picked up his gun. Might as well keep it, considering she might need it.
Sanderson darted his arm out and shot a few bullets which hit one of the men and took them to the floor. The other man wasn't expecting them to be armed and stood in the open in surprise.
Jane gave him a hail of bullets, most of which missed, but the man went down. He started yelling for backup.
"Shut him up!" someone yelled. Two bullets exploded from the barrel of Keller's gun and the two men were dead.
"We need to go quickly." Jane headed for the stairs, practically dragging Bell behind her.
"Hold on a second!" Sanderson ran to the bodies, grabbed one of their machine guns, searched them quickly and nodded grimly. "There has been a worry about this gang for some time. No serious action was taken because no one expected them to be this well armed, with an army men and mortars."
Before he'd finished the last word, another mortar rocked the building and large amounts of it came down, but it wasn't the area they were in. After a 20 second gap, there was another explosion.
"They're using smaller mortars." Jane said.
"Must have only had two big explosives." Sanderson shrugged. "It doesn't matter how big they are, they can still knock the roof down on us."
There was a lot of gunfire outside. The authorities must have joined in and were fighting the terrorists.
Someone was approaching them so they made a quick exit down the stairs. Keller slipped on the loose stones and broke his ankle. Sanderson and Bell supported him.
As they got to the ground floor, they found they were surrounded by criminals. Some were cutting off their escape back up the stairs as well. Bullets flew but they managed to duck behind some large fallen masonry.
Peering round the fallen statue head Bell and Sanderson were hidden behind, Bell fired a couple of shots that flew lucky and hit a man in the chest. He looked shocked and fell back through a window.
That was it, Bell had killed someone. Surprisingly, she didn't feel bad. The man would have shot her if given the chance. She had nothing to lose.
She didn't get another chance to shoot as these guys outnumbered them and had better weapons. They were closing in and their shots were getting closer to the mark. One went right next to Sanderson's ear.
"Oh god!" muttered Sanderson, moving his head back from the bullet. They were completely pinned down…
A hail of bullets covered the room from outside and several terrorists fell. The enemy split there interests and aimed half of their force out at the military in the square.
Sanderson and Bell looked round and shot several bullets, wounding and killing three more men.
Soon, the security guard and the three museum guests were the only living people in the lobby.
As Sanderson, Bell, Jane and Keller stalked forwards in cover the authorities came to meet them. Sanderson gave them a quick run down on what had happened before there arrival. The man in charge of this squad, Ramoz, arranged for some of his soldiers to escort them from the area. He wasn't accepting any changes to those orders, much to Keller's disliking. It didn't bother Bell; she just wanted to get the hell out of there.
Another mortar flew at the front of the museum and everything started coming down.
Everyone ran out of the building, heading to cover. There wasn't much cover out in the square, so several people dashed to a small partly ruined inn.
Bell threw herself through the door, Keller just behind her. A spray of bullets dismembered him, and Bell was alone inside.
She used the pistols that had belonged to Hartmann and Keller akimbo and fired bullets at the enemy. They just kept coming. There was a part of her mind that was shocked at the bodycount she was racking up, another part that just wished they would all die so she could live.
She could see Sanderson. "Sanderson!" She called out. He didn't hear her. He was next to Ramoz and Jane, fighting a fight of his own.
Bell shot down another man. "Jane! Sanderson!" They reached a breathing space in their fight where they reloaded.
"Sanderson, help me you god damned filthy ROACH!" She yelled, desperately fighting off the terrorists.
He heard her this time, and looked round. Their eyes met for a brief second before a mortar brought the front of the inn down.
Outside, Sanderson tried to make a dash for the inn, but Ramoz held his jacket and stopped him.
"You can't leave her trapped in there! They'll kill her!" Sanderson protested.
"She's already dead or as good as!" Ramoz yelled angrily. "Now, you're a civilian and my orders are to get your ass out of here! Same for you, Ms. Rowan!"
And Gary 'Roach' Sanderson didn't see Bell for another 7 years.
Bell was dazed and injured. She heard some people running through the inn, shooting a survivor somewhere in another room. Bell scrambled to her feet, grabbed her weapons and waited for them to enter the room.
They smashed the door down and Bell opened fire. Three of the gang members dropped to the floor dead before one of the last two men shot her in the leg and brought her down. He reloaded and prepared to execute her. Her guns were out of reach.
"Hold on!" The second man put a hand on the first man's shoulder. "We were meant to take some prisoners."
The first man looked displeased, but put his gun on his belt and just kicked Bell in the face, knocking her out.
When she was next vaguely conscious, three hours later, they were branding a prisoner number into her arm. 257. So that was her future.
Author Note: It was tricky writing a story around the details mentioned in Predated, so I ended up with some weird terrorist plot. I hope no one is offended by that.
Expect another chapter in this story about Aqua's life in the prison!