Hey everybody, sorry about how late this chapter was, we went on a "expedition" scuba diving, and ate dinner on St. George (That's an island off of Bermuda) I'm going to be trying to post another chapter tonight as well.
Disclaimer: I don't own Jimmy Neutron or any related characters; I also do not own any other copyrighted or trademarked material.
Everyone's a Suspect
"I don't know." Cindy said, "This bullet is made by Heckler and Koch."
Before Jimmy got a chance to examine the bullet, James ran back in.
"All right, here's the med stuff, I think she'll be fine for now, she's stable. I need two of you to watch over her." Libby raised her hand and Sheen, being Sheen did as well. "All right, that'll work, the rest of you, we need to split up, now we don't know who the killer is or what he or she looks like, but you can bet they'll be hiding, waiting for their chance to strike, so don't go out in the open, stick to the shadows."
"How do you know so much about this?" Jimmy asked suspiciously, thinking of the bullet Cindy was hiding clutched in her closed fist.
"I'm a special agent for a federal agency that I can't tell you anything about and, as far as you're concerned, doesn't exist."
"Special agent as in assassin." Jimmy said wearily, he too had been invited to be an agent, but unlike James, he had turned them down. Jimmy didn't want to be a killer.
"How do we know you're telling the truth?" Cindy asked.
"He is." Jimmy said ruefully. "James, you go ahead, we'll be along soon."
"All right, don't be idiots and take something to defend yourselves with." He said, walking out the door and disappearing into the dim interior of the wrecked cruise-ship.
Jimmy shut and locked the door before turning to Cindy. "Let me see that bullet." He said and Cindy handed it over without a word, he looked in the backpack and grabbed one of the spare ammo clips for James' MP5. He handed it to Cindy, who tossed it up and lashed out with her fist, breaking it clean in half and scattering bullets all over the floor.
Jimmy shot her an impressed look before retrieving a few of the rounds. He held them up next to the one that had hit the girl now lying on the bed. They matched perfectly.
"Well?" Libby asked expectantly.
"It's from his gun, he's the killer, or at least the one who shot her." Cindy said, gesturing to the girl on the bed.
"Hello." They all turned to the girl lying on the bed. She really was beautiful, with dirty blond hair and near-perfect features. She looked like a model.
"What's your name?" Libby asked softly.
"Sarah, what happened?" She answered.
"You were shot."
"I know, but after that? All I remember was this guy in some sort of ninja outfit stepping out of a corner. He had this gun…"
"What kind of gun?"
"A big one, like you see in spy movies, some kind of submachine gun, like from Mission Impossible Three, it was all black, and he said something about my being only the first. And…I felt a sharp, it felt like a searing…" Then her voice trailed off, her whole body was shaking.
"You don't have to talk about that, but what happened after, well he shot you?" Cindy asked curiously.
"Then this guy, some teenager, he had long hair, light brown, sort of wavy maybe, he was hot too. He was dressed kind of funny though, like some sort of commando, with a helmet too. Anyway, so he came running out of nowhere, and he had a gun too, the same kind, and he started firing. He hit the man, but it didn't stop him…."
"And the ninja disappeared."
"Yeah." Sara said weakly, before falling back down onto her bed.
"Just take it easy." Jimmy said, he was worried, if James wasn't the killer who was?
Sarah smiled up at him before closing her eyes.
"Well, that explains the bullet, they had the same gun." Jimmy said dejectedly to the others.
"What should we do?" Carl asked nervously.
"What he said we should do, Libby, you and Sheen stay here and help Sarah, Carl, you'll come with Cindy and I."
"But we don't know how to fight, or at least, I don't." Carl said weakly.
"All right Carl, you stay here with Libby and Sheen." Jimmy said. He picked up the backpack and started looking through it. Cindy rolled her eyes and grabbed it from him. She pulled out a handgun and tossed it to him.
"Beretta, nine millimeter, extra ammo." He caught the gun and the ammo clips. "It's loaded, already, automatic weapon, so just pull the trigger. The safety's already off." She told him. He put the spare ammo clips in his pocket and the gun in a shoulder holster on the combat uniform James had given him. He hated everything about the gun, hated everything it represented for him, death, killing, and pain.
Cindy pulled out a gun for herself and holstered it. She also grabbed a weighted combat knife and a scabbard, strapping the latter to her leg and slipping the knife into it. She tossed the backpack to Libby who dropped it. Sheen however, caught it and pulled out two guns and some ammo. Cindy slipped the backpack on her back and ran out of the room.
"How…do…you know, so much about guns?" Jimmy asked, finally catching up to her as they ran up a flight of stairs.
"It was part of a self-defense class after I got my ninth degree black belt." Cindy told him. She had retrieved their helmets and tossed him one. He put it on resentfully and heard her talking over the radio.
"This is much quieter, try not to make so much noise." She said. They both fell silent.
"Why didn't I think of it before?" Jimmy exclaimed.
"Think of what?"
"The lifeboats, we've got lifeboats!" He yelled into the radio mouthpiece. Cindy winced.
"Try not to scream into the radio." She said.
"Come on." He said, running down the hallway to the main staircase, a great winding marble thing that led up from three different parts of the ship to the royal promenade. (Which is like this street that's four floors high and has shops lining both sides, sometimes they have parades down it, oh yeah, and when deserted, the perfect place for an ambush) They hurried down the street that was the promenade, glancing nervously at the shops on both sides, Jimmy stopped for a second and gazed at a particular Jewelry store.
BANG! They saw the muzzle flash and heard the report as a high-powered weapon fired.
"Look out!" Jimmy dove to the side, tackling Cindy to the ground as the bullet smashed into the store behind them.
"What was that?" Cindy asked.
"Some sort of high-powered weapon, like an emplacement." Jimmy said, he had encountered several weapons of the kind while fighting a group of insurgents for BTSO a few years ago, before he had quit.
"I think it's a depleted uranium chaingun, the kind on Apache helicopters." He said, digging through his memory. Just then the store next to them exploded under a hail of fire.
"Yup, that's it." He said diving, into the store nearest them.
Cindy ran after him, and they crouched near the back, behind a shelf of what looked like diving equipment.
Jimmy fumbled in a pocket; pulling out one of the grenades James had given him. He pulled the pin and counted to three before hurling it into the health-food store across the street, next to the jewelry one.
"Why didn't you get him in the jewelry store?" Cindy asked.
"I'm not a killer."
"Yeah, me neither." Jimmy grabbed a heavy air tank from the shelf and crawled over to the side-wall, just as they heard a huge explosion that made the glass on all the stores on the promenade shatter. Jimmy grabbed the shelf to keep himself upright, one the shaking stopped, he felt the side wall, it was plaster. He then moved to the back one, plaster.
Pulling back the air tank, he smashed it into the back wall, punching a hole in it. Seeing what he was doing, Cindy grabbed another air tank and hurled it into the wall, smashing a gaping hole in it that went through to the lounge on the other side. Jimmy grinned at her and pullred out another grenade, he hurled it through shattered glass in the display window of the scuba shop and into the souvenir store on the other side of the killer's jewelry store.
When they got through the wall, Jimmy and Cindy immediately began stacking tables and chairs against the hole to stop the killer.
"Look Jimmy, I know there are lifeboats, but remember the explosion destroyed the dining area, well it probably destroyed the food storage areas too, so we should get as much food and drink as possible." She said.
Jimmy nodded, his face unreadable through the helmet's visor and began collecting all of the food, soda, even alcohol from the bar and putting it in his new hyper-sphere that was the size of a large marble and he wore on a chain around his neck.
"What's the alcohol for?" She asked.
"Cleaning and sanitizing wounds, take only the pure liquor, or strong liquor, shots, whiskey, that kind of thing, tequila." He said. "Pretty boy's med stuff won't last forever."
Once they had cleaned the place out, they ran out and to the elevators. But as the door slid open, they were bet by the sight of a dead man, he had a knife sticking out of his chest with a note on it. Cindy took of her helmet. She staggered a little before throwing up all over the floor, the man's eyes were blank and staring, his shirt was missing and his chest was covered with blood. He also had a bullet wound in his forehead and the note looked like it had been written in blood. Jimmy bent down and picked up the piece of paper, he felt like he was about to be sick and he knew that the sight would haunt him for the rest of his days. As he read and re-read the note, he swore to himself that whoever had done this was going to die.
"What does it say?" Cindy asked weakly. Her face was pale and she looked like she was about to be sick again.
"It basically says that we're all trapped here and…well, here." He said, handing her the note.
You think you could escape me
Well it's time to think again
You're all stuck here anyway, trapped with your friends
You think you're guns can hurt me, well go ahead and try
It doesn't matter anyway, because soon it's time to die
She re-read it before dropping it, a new fury burned in her eyes.
She turned from the elevator and dashed up the stairs, Jimmy hurrying after her.
"Jimmy." She said.
"Yes?"
"The lifeboats won't work."
"Yeah, probably not." He said. "Whoever this killer is, is obviously much smarter than leaving them intact."
They rounded a corner to see s figure dressed in all black waiting, with a knife balanced in one hand, holding a Smith and Wesson automatic handgun.
A/N: Yup, another cliffhanger, I hope the action in this chapter made up for how late it was, I also hope that the gruesome scene with the dead man didn't offend anyone…if it did, I apologize. REVIEW! Come on, you know you want to!
