Chapter 4: Pinned

Experiment 2531's shower was interesting to say the least. The name, well her name now, kept running through her head. She was so immersed in the thought of having her own name that she forgot the injury that plagued her right arm. The pain was brought into the forefront of her mind when she lifted that very same arm to massage the shampoo into her scalp.

"Shit," she hissed through clenched teeth. Chloe, who must have had Vulcan hearing to have even registered the noise, started frantically knocking on the door.

"Hey, are you okay in there?" the voice from the other side of the door asked.

"Fucking spectacular, look, it's nothing to worry about. I raised my arm too high and it hurt, a lot."

"Oh, well I'm sure we could work something out, but seriously. Do you need any help?" questioned the ginger.

"If I didn't know better, I would think you're trying to see me naked. You've had one free show, I'll charge for the next one." Beca remarked. A terse laugh came from behind the door.

"Oh so you think you're funny. Well see who's laughing when there isn't any pizza for the hilarious brunette," Chloe shot back. Presuming the ginger had left to get the pizza, Beca finished her shower. It took some amount of time, having only the use of her left hand but she managed to rinse out all of the soap suds and clean the rest of her body.

After exiting the shower, the brunette was faced with another problem. She didn't have anything to sleep in and she didn't want to dress in the dirty clothes she had worn throughout the day. So she slipped a towel around her naked frame and cautiously stepped out into the hallway, only to be bombarded with nerf gun darts.

"You took long enough, any longer and I would have thought you were getting yourself o-"Chloe's words were cut off by Beca's hand, which had suddenly appeared at Chloe's neck, pinning her against the hallway wall. As Chloe's airway was slowly squeezed against the hard wall, she could feel the soft curves of the smaller woman pressed flush against her own body. Beca had dropped her towel in her haste to stop the immediate threat. Before Chloe had a chance to react to being forced up against a wall by the naked woman, Beca had sprinted down the hall and shut herself in the bathroom.

Chloe slowly sunk down the wall until she was sitting on the ground, attempting to process what had happened. She ran her fingers through her hair and used the other to massage her neck.

"Good one Beale, shoot darts at the assassin because that's always a great idea." She mumbled under her breath as she pushed herself up off the ground. She walked down the hall, and entered her bedroom. It wasn't until she took one of her overly large sleeping shirts out of the drawer that she realized she was shaking. After sitting on her bed to calm herself down, she then made the journey to the bathroom and gently rapped her knuckles against the door.

Agent Swanson looked around at the men who had been assigned to the unit, his unit. He had been chosen to lead this team because he was the best. His best mate Benji excelled at stealth. He could easily move the team in and out of the targeted building without anyone noticing. Donald was an explosives expert, and knew how to easily demolish the building if needed, but tonight his skills would be used to blast through a couple of doors. Unicycle, no one knew his real name (or why he was called Unicycle), was essentially the getaway driver. After years of being a stunt driver, he knew how to handle most vehicles and driving conditions. Swanson's eyes rested on the last member of his group, Bumper Allen. Bumper wasn't even supposed to be a member of the covert operation, but someone in a high place said that this unit needed supervision. Thus Agent Allen was inserted into the group.

In the few hours he had been in the group, Bumper had attempted to boss everyone around multiple times, after trying to tell them all about his "epic undercover operations". Benji nudged his superior, and best friend's, arm.

"Just like old times at the academy, right Jesse," Benji smirked.

"Yeah, at least you've stopped doing close up magic," Jesse turned to face his friend who was nowhere to be found. Suddenly hands grabbed him from behind, and pulled him into a headlock.

"I still do magic and I get paid for it too. It's just on a larger scale and now they call it stealth," Benji shot back. Jesse managed to twist his head around and out of the headlock and pinned Benji's arm behind his back.

"You can't abracadabra your way out of this one, my young padawan," Jesse quipped back, recalling his comrade's obsession with Star Wars.

"Oi, you two trouble makers, quit making my leadership skills look bad and get back to work," Bumper called out from across the room.

Benji playfully shoved Jesse away and got back to making sure everything was prepared. They couldn't afford mistakes in this mission, they needed to capture or eliminate the prototype.

"Beca, open up," Chloe begged, her head resting against the door.

"Go away," The brunette pleaded; wishing she could close her eyes and erase what had just happened.

"I'm not leaving until you unlock this door and let me in, so…" Chloe turned her back to the door and slid down the wooden barrier. It was a good 15 minutes before the handle turned and the door suddenly swung inward, causing Chloe to sprawl out onto the cold tiles.

"It's been unlocked the whole time" Beca, who had changed back into her old clothes, murmured as she resumed hugging herself in the corner furthest away from the door. Chloe slowly walked over to the brunette and eased herself onto the floor. Beca's eyes bore a hole into the floor while Chloe stared intently at the other girls face, trying to decipher what the brunette was thinking. They sat like this for some time before Chloe finally broke the silence.

"You have every right to be mad at me. It was a stupid idea. I just thought it would be cute and -" her words were cut off, again, but this time by a harsh laugh.

"You think I'm mad at you. Chloe, I'm mad at myself. Do you even realise what could have happened? How I could have kil-"Beca couldn't finish the sentence, instead choking on her own words with a silent tear falling down her cheek. Chloe reached across and wiped away the tear away with a cautious thumb.

"Beca, you couldn't control what happened. You can't beat yourself up over your instincts,"

"I can. And I will. Just watch me," the experiment whispered back.

"Beca," Chloe began, dragging out the name.

"Chloe, stop. Don't try and say this wasn't my fault. If anyone else had walked out into the hall, they would not have ended up pinning you against a wall by your throat. You cannot pretend what just happened wasn't extremely dangerous. I shouldn't have come here," Beca managed to get out into the hall before Chloe could begin trailing after her.

"Beca, wait!" The ginger called out. Just as Beca reached the door, she was thrown backwards. A substantial explosion had ripped the door off the hinges, blowing it into the apartment along with the brunette who was now lying on the floor unconscious.

A/N: Sorry this took forever. The area I live in was recently hit by the biggest flood in 200 years, making it impossible to write. Hopefully my writing schedule will return to normal, but I am back at school and am not yet certain as to how that will affect when I write. As always, thanks to Dylan, my beta. I hope you enjoyed this chapter and please let me know what you thought.