So here's my excuse for the lateness of this coming chapter- in my American Literature class, we were assigned to write "a really, really good short story." Naturally, I was excited to be graded on doing something that I loved, so I put a lot of heart into this... I figured I should share it with you all. There may be a few formatting errors in the transition from school format to format, but for the most part I think you'll be able to follow it. Enjoy! (new chapter close on the heels of this update)
Avery 12
Will Avery
American Literature
C. Smith, class E
04/19/09
Thicker Than Water
The radio came to life with a tinny crackling, squawking a series of hysteric, inane sounds that vaguely resembled a superior's voice. A soldier picked the device up off the crate and reversed the process. "Say again, sergeant? You're breaking up, wherever you are. Over."
There was a brief silence as three soldiers waited to hear their sergeant's voice again, the only thing keeping them bound to their home in a foreign nation. He returned to the scene, just as much in spirit as in voice. Unfortunately for the particular soldier who'd picked up the radio, he wasn't in the most tolerant of moods. Then again, he never was. "God damnit, Johnson, I ordered you to report in every five minutes and you've almost missed three intervals! Now what the hell are you seeing up there? Over!"
As his two brothers-in-arms had to shy their faces away in a fit of laughter, Johnson snapped to attention and hastily responded. "S-sir! We haven't seen any activity from the rumored group, sir!" Johnson had never been the best at composing himself in the face of authority, but he was particularly bad when confronted with the sergeant. This was especially an issue when he, as well as all of the other men, knew the sergeant's feelings towards being stuck in such an insignificant location as Grimmwick during the invasion. "B-but everything else is clear, sir! I can see the lights from Third Eagle over on the horizon now, s-sir! Over!"
"Third Eagle, eh? You can see those lights, Johnson? Over."
"Y-yes sir, I can see them plain as day! Over."
"Do you know what that means, private? Over."
"That the operation is going well, sir? Ov-"
"It means you aren't doing your damn job, Johnson!" the sergeant cut him off in a fit of misplaced anger. "Nichol's squad watches Third Eagle's progress, and yours looks out for the resistance and nothing else. Do I make myself completely clear, private?! Over!" Needless to say, Sergeant Waters hadn't been in the most merciful of moods as of late.
"S-sir, yes ma'am! Sir! I meant sir, sir! Y-yes, crystal clear, sir! Over!"
Sergeant Waters' response was broken up over a series of static clicks and scratches. Johnson, understandably shaken up, frantically shook the radio above his head in a desperate search for a clearer message. It didn't occur to him the irony that he was actively seeking verbal abuse by doing so. The voice came back through the standard-issue speaker box, though the distortion this time came mostly from the sheer volume of it. "Jesus Christ, Johnson, shape up before I have to do it for you! I said-" the signal went dead after that, if only for the brief second that it took to hijack the sergeant's frequency.
A new voice took his place. "Get the hell out of England, ya bloody yank!"
Before Johnson could react to the intruding voice, his attention was called away by the sound of shattering glass just behind him. He spun around to meet a bocce ball head-on, knocking him out with ease. The other two soldiers jolted upright as though they'd suddenly found themselves sitting on a bed of needles, but were felled almost as quickly by a combination of a nine iron to the ankles and an aluminum bat upside the head, respectively. One of the assailants dropped his bat with a satisfying "pang" and clutched his wrist dramatically as though trying to wring the life from his hand.
"Hell- that smarts!"
"Ah, quit your complainin', try taking a gunshot." The woman with the golf club gestured to a small, circular scar on her shoulder. "Your damn bat doesn't even tickle in comparison."
The man's temper flared visibly at this comment as he rushed into close quarters with his companion. "There you go with your damn bullet again! Ya cried enough when it hit you, and you're still bringin' it up?"
The woman now matched his composure, their faces not but an inch apart as they spat insults back and forth. "Tess! Harry!" the third man who'd thrown the bocce ball broke in, "enough of the arguing, we've got work to do." He pushed them apart to get to the radio and tinkered with the knobs for a moment. The clearing of the static affirmed that his efforts were successful. "Al here, we've got the high squad taken care of. What else needs doing?"
The resident Irishman of the team responded in his typically loud demeanor. "Ah, you were last to take your position after all, Al! Looks like you owe me twenty quid!"
"Aren't there more important things to worry about right now?" Al found himself near the point of screaming into the receiver, tired of being surrounded by the younger, incompetent agents.
"Well don't get up in knots with me, I'm just tryin' to 'ave a little fun around here! Everyone's in position, even Clint is on time for once! We've got all of the patrols rounded up except for… huh, never mind, it looks like they just got 'im."
"Just tell me where Dieh is, Harv- is he on schedule?"
"Ah… Dieh, Dieh… Dieh…" Harvey briefly cut his communication to inspect the onscreen map of Grimmwick and found the yellow spec that represented the inventor. "Looks like he's a bit behind and… turning? No, wait, he's going back down- no, that's not… I'll get back wit' ya in a bit."
Dieh wasn't quite as adept with the element of surprise as Al and his group was; he never had been. Even as far back as elementary school, Tess and Harry had always been able to get the jump on him and he'd never been able to successfully return the favor. It had never been as big a problem as his current situation, however. His breath's burning force stung his throat as it was drawn in and out, faster and faster as he sprinted. He could still hear his pursuers barking commands and directions to one another, no matter how fast his breaths came, or how loud his steel-toed boots were on the pavement of the alley.
All wasn't lost, however. As he continued to give them something to chase, he noticed that the orders became less organized, and more confused. Things like "alpha squad, signal to theta and kappa squad that target could be coming their way" had become "what do you mean kappa isn't responding, what about theta? What do you mean- alpha? Alpha!" Dieh smirked inwardly at the blundering soldiers that the Americans had sent to Grimmwick. He wondered if they'd just assumed that the town would be defenseless and laughed through his panting.
A voice came through to his ears. "Yank squads are taken care of, open up on 'em!"
Dieh reached up to flip the switch on his own radio clip, brushing the wispy ends of his bleached hair out of the way. "Gotcha, Harv." He turned on his heel just as he reached the end of the alleyway, unhooked a metallic orb from the shoulder of his thick vest, and slung the device at them, immediately losing sight of them in an inky billowing of smoke that absorbed a good twenty yards of space in a matter of seconds. This wasn't a problem to those who knew the town like the backs of their hands.
In just twelve seconds, the inventor had scaled the packing crates next to the store that made up one half of the alley's boundaries, climbed onto the flagpole, and leapt onto the roof's edge, clearing his way onto the top with an exhausted huff of air. It's not over yet, keep it together. He thought to himself as he gazed into the smoky confusion that he'd left the soldiers in. Four, three, two… he jumped down into the blackened abyss just as he'd timed the smoke to clear and landed solidly on the thick soles of his boots. One!
As predicted, the Americans had just gone straight through the smoke to evade it- now there was distance between him and them; the conflict was a completely different story. "Oy, septic!" Dieh shouted, pointing at the shorter of the two men, "your mother gave me a better workout than this last night!"
Hearing this, the shorter American charged at the inventor, the second following close behind. Dieh pitied the two only slightly, left to fight with pipes and crowbars by their own country. He met the full force of the pipe with the stubborn iron plating of his homemade gauntlet, deflecting it more than actually taking a hit, and hit his opponent with a fearsome punch to the stomach, causing him to double over. The second American came up from behind him and stabbed forward with the split end of his crowbar through the empty space. Dieh dipped to the left to dodge it, then to the right for the second strike, and grabbed the bar on the third attempt as he leaned back to avoid it, giving it a sudden downward push that struck the first of the attackers squarely on the crown of his head and knocked him out cold.
He jumped back to dodge the next hit, unfortunately finding that the yank had longer legs than he'd estimated as he took a solid hit to the side. Thinking quickly and through the pain, he wrapped his arm around it tightly and spun a full circle to right, giving his opponent two options: release the weapon or have his hand broken. As expected, he took the first choice. Moving with the momentum he created, the inventor wound up and struck the soldier with a low blow to the back of his knees, sweeping him off of the ground and onto his back. While he had his target in an adrenaline shock, he ripped a sheet from a makeshift dispenser of moist towelettes he'd soaked in chloroform and smacked it down over the soldier's mouth. In a matter of seconds, the threat had been subdued completely.
"Did you get all of that, Harv?"
"O' course I did, what else is that camera for? Whole damn world's gonna know what kind o' beastie ya get when you put a black belt of ba gua zhang and a weapon inventor together! We'll be talkin' to all the big 'uns: Spielberg, Scorsese, Gibson-"
"The point," Dieh interrupted with a tone of disappointment, "is to show that anyone in England can put up a fight, not that anyone can make a living on war."
"Psh, you are your no-fun morals…"
"Harv…"
"Alright, alright, everything's still clear; last reports say each station is still under control, you're clear to go. Third Eagle is still a good ways away… twenty-one minutes, nineteen seconds."
"Right, keeping that camera going." Dieh undid the rows of his vest's buckles and let it fall to the ground with a heavy "thud", glad to be thirty pounds lighter after all of the running. I may not be good with surprises… but thank God for natural athleticism. Out of his pockets, he drew two sets of roller-blade wheels that he'd designed to clip onto the bottom of his boots and proceeded to attach them. He slid forward awkwardly at first, and soon he had a smooth rhythm going, followed by an unsafe, though enjoyed, speed. "Inform the others that phase three is underway."
"Gotcha."
The cool air of the night was comfortably familiar to the inventor as it playfully wafted against his face. Two days ago, no one would've dreamed that the English-American conflict would come to such a small town as Grimmwick. Three weeks ago, no one could've guessed that the government would support domestic resistance over evacuation. Four months ago, if someone had claimed that the United States would declare war upon the United Kingdom, they would've been branded a complete and total lunatic. It went without saying that Dieh would never have guessed that he, six years out of high school with no college acceptances, would be the key player in saving the four-hundred and twelve residents of his hometown from losing everything that they owned and loved.
As he skimmed silently across the smooth pavement of the main road, he found his mind wandering back to those days in high school, before all of the pressure of the real world came crashing down on him and his friends; back when issues that seem so juvenile now seemed like they would shatter the fabric of reality. He remembered the rivalry between him and Clint to capture the heart of Tess, the only girl in their class of eight, and how awkward it sometimes was that her twin brother, Harry, was his other best friend. He remembered how he would always be the center of everyone's envy in metal shop and physical education, and how they would get back at him by taking advantage of his jumpy nerves with every prank you could name. He couldn't help but smile at the irony that the four of them once had a running joke that the Americans would try to get back at England for starting the revolutionary war.
"Pole!" shouted Harv's voice.
Dieh's eyes shot open just in time to see the street light that he was barely able to dodge as it whizzed past him. "Thanks," he mumbled, inwardly chastising himself for drifting off like that in the middle of what could possibly be the most important night of his life. Focus… he told himself, I've got to make sure this goes flawlessly. He grabbed onto the next pole and used it as a pivot point to swing around into a shortcut. I've got the magnet, two smoke bombs left, a grenade, a lighter, and a box of small flares, all packed up in the titanium-weave backpack. He patted down each part of the mental checklist on his body to make sure that they were there, coming up with six out of six items present. He nodded to himself as his destination came into view: the Grimmwick dam.
He couldn't help but look back on the debate they'd had at the resistance meeting two days earlier, when they'd received news that Grimmwick could be a possible target of the American army.
Even then we were just like we'd been in high school… always something to argue over. He thought back to Clint's outburst at the meeting, when he nearly broke the dining room table with his fist-slamming. "Where in this plan to do you employ logic? If we break the dam's lock, what will happen to us when the river dies down again? Need I remind you that Grimmwick doesn't do much outside trading? That river is the source of water in this place- if we can't lock up the dam to save our water supply, we'll either abandon our home or die out!"
"Well then what the hell do you suggest we do?" Al gave Clint a strong shove to the chest, sending him stumbling backwards. "If we fight, they'll send more troops and wipe us out. The only way to save ourselves in this case is to sabotage ourselves; by making the dam useless in their plan, we'll no longer be a target."
Clint was just about ready to break Al's jaw in his enraged state. "Look, I'm the only one in this resistance who works at the friggin' dam. I'm telling you, if we don't have complete control over it at all times, we're risking floods, droughts, our economy, and our very lifestyle! We can't just toss all of that to the wind! I say…" Clint looked around into the eyes of his friends and neighbors; he wanted so dearly to help them see the issue from his perspective, the correct one. "We let them take the dam."
This caused a rippling uproar amidst the forty or so people present, and they began to curse and spit at him, calling him a traitor. "Listen to me!" he shouted, causing an uneasy and incomplete silence, "if we let the Americans occupy Grimmwick for however long they need to, they won't resort to violence against us and there's no way we can lose in the long run! If the war ends with us on top, we get our town back like nothing ever happened, and if the Americans end up winning, we'll be treated with kindness and mercy by our new government for willingly giving up a key point in their plan."
There was a silence that followed his last words that had a level of tension that none of them had felt before. Al stepped forward once, twice, slowly. He raised a finger and opened his mouth as though he were about to speak, but found that he was just stunned. He shook his head slightly as though he thought he were hearing things and tried again. "Did you just suggest… that we surrender?" Again there was a long silence, and Clint only stood his ground, his gaze meeting Al's veteran stare as best it could. "That we throw away hundreds upon hundreds of years of our history? Of our heritage? England has been a major world power for as long as I can remember, and as long as my father can remember, and his father, and his, and his! We once had an empire on which the sun never set, one of a size that rivaled the Roman Empire, and the Mongolian Empire! We're the sons and daughters of one of the greatest nations the world has ever known! How can you just throw all of that away to the Americans, whom, might I add, we created?" Al swiftly grabbed his rival debater's collar and brought him within an inch of his face, snarling with the red-hot breath of fury. "How will you be able to look your fellow countrymen in the eyes when all you have to tell them is that you scorned our nation with your damned white flag?" He set the boy down with every intention of being rough and stared him down, along with everyone else in the room, awaited a response.
Clint didn't have to look around at the solemn glares that he knew he was receiving. "How will you be able to when you're dead?"
Clint… I worry about you sometimes. Dieh thought, back in the present day in both mind and body. He'd arrived at the entrance to the damn, uninterrupted by the Americans. Everything was going according to plan, and Dieh knew that he should be happy about that, but he just couldn't understand how one of his closest friends could just give up like that. No matter, he thought, I've got to keep going. He flipped the radio on. "Time?"
"Third Eagle's got ten minutes, four seconds before it reaches the dam. You've got time."
The inventor pushed open the front doors, shoving his detachable wheels back into his pockets. There to meet him was none other than Clint, wearing the same dark green jacket that he'd had since his junior year in high school. The familiar sight was more than welcome to Dieh; its mere presence dispersed any distrustful feelings he'd had prior. "You ready to do this?"
"Yeah, I am. I'm sorry about… you know… the meeting. I don't know what I was thinking, honestly. I just-"
"It doesn't matter now, Clint. What matters is what we do here and now, for the good of our people." He held out his hand to be shaken. "God save the Queen."
Clint smiled and took his hand, giving it one, solid shake. "God save the Queen. Now how do we do this?"
"I have here…" Dieh took the backpack off and reached inside, pulling out a dense, metallic cube just larger than his fist, "an extremely powerful magnet." He handled it carefully as he examined it, the pulsing neon-blue glow of the device's edges putting on a hypnotic lightshow all the while. "Once activated, we have ten seconds to get out of range of its effect- everything with a trace of magnetic metal within roughly ten feet of the thing will immediately be pulled towards it with tremendous force, and then pushed away from it with equal magnitude once the polarity shifts a little while into the process."
"So the whole thing only takes two seconds to work? How exactly does that bust our lock issue?" Clint asked as they now began to walk and talk, working their way to the bottom floor: the observation deck.
"Well," Dieh began as his partner opened the door to the staircase, "if we chuck it down into the locking mechanism, the magnet will bend the metal to a point far beyond repair, rendering the concept of controlling the dam absolutely impossible, and thusly rendering it useless to the Americans. Explosives were an option, but this is a much quicker and safer way to do it."
"Just not for you."
Back at the hideout, Harv's communication and video feed of Dieh went blank.
Dieh froze in terror as he heard the cocking of a gun. There's… there's no way. He turned as quickly as his rigid body would allow, looking straight down the barrel of Clint's father's handgun. He'd seen it before next to the fireplace of Clint's family's living room, and he'd heard the story behind it multiple times, but he never dreamed that he'd ever see it like this. "There's no way. There's just no way," was all that he could manage to say, shocked completely and totally.
"I tried to help you all." Clint began to walk forward, forcing his friend to meet each step with one backwards, through the open doorway that led to the observation deck. "But none of you could see how I could save you."
"Save us? I'm the one saving us! The resistance's plan is foolproof, and we're just minutes away from completing it!"
"Wrong! You're completely wrong! The Americans won't just leave us alone if we make our town useless to them, they'll merely see us as just as useless! They'll slaughter this whole town; our friends, our families, our neighbors, our people! I can't just stand around and let that happen! And personally, I'm nothing less than disgusted to think that you can."
The pair began to back up to the center of the room now, surrounded on all sides by the clear glass walls overlooking the waterfall that brought what small amount of tourism it could to the town. "Just put the gun away, please. We can discuss this."
"I tried to discuss this, Dieh. I tried the best I could, but some people are just too damn stubborn to see the truth, it would seem."
Dieh noticed at this point that the gun was shaking, ever so slightly, in his comrade's hand. He was nervous. But is he unsure enough not to pull the trigger? "What're you gonna do, then? How is this going to fix anything?"
Surprisingly to both the gunman and the target, a tear welled up in each of Clint's eyes. They stood there on the edge of his lower eyelids, clinging onto them for dear life before they finally gave up and slid down his cheeks. "If I can kill you… I can stop this whole plan." His voice trembled a bit as he worked his way into a second sentence. "And I-I tell the rest over the radio… that the magnet malfunctioned… and you died. I can tell the rest that they have no choice but to follow my plan to save themselves! And only one person has to get hurt, that's the b-best part!"
Dieh didn't know what kind of horrible conflict was going on inside of Clint's head at the moment, but he felt oddly comforted that he knew his friend would never be able to pull the trigger. "You're like a brother to me, Clint… and I know I'm the same to you." He took a step forward, and another. This time it was the gunman backing up. "We both know that you'll never fire that gun at me… this is ridiculous." In a sudden stride, Dieh closed the gap between them and heartily embraced his companion.
"No… I have to! Please, get away from-"
"No, Clint." He tightened his embrace. "The risks are frightening, I know. But you can't put yourself in the middle of that kind of decision alone… we're all just as scared and unsure as you are, and that's why we have to do this as a team. It's going to be okay."
Clint tugged and rustled very slightly against Dieh before he brought his free arm up to return the hug. They stood in silence for a good while, the mood uplifting throughout. It's good to know, amidst all of this, that nothing can- Dieh's thought process suddenly shifted when he felt a cold metal pressed against his side. An instant before he heard the gunshot, he felt Clint's one-armed grip tighten.
A moment later, Dieh fell to the floor, clutching the fresh wound just above his kidney. "Bastard!" was all that he could think to shout through his grinding teeth, writhing in agony on the cold floor tiles.
"Now that was too perfect!" Clint's voice had changed completely, now brimming with confidence. "And they said theater would get me nowhere! Ha!"
"Why?!" the inventor demanded, struggling to come to terms with his agony. "Why are you doing this?!"
"My own god damned protection, of course. I was being honest when I said that I tried to help you, but you wouldn't listen. So if you bloody idiots are just going to let the Americans run you down, I'm saving my own skin! I'm gonna kill you, take your damn magnet, and tell the Americans that if they lay a finger on me, I'm gonna use it on their precious dam! That oughta get me out of here in one piece, but I can't say the same for you. Now hand it over."
Dieh reluctantly pulled the cube away from his body, where he'd previously been sheltering it in his fetal position. He winced as he moved even slightly; his thoughts were scattered and incomprehensible. Have to think… something I can do… I've got… got to focus. Focus. I save the town by breaking the lock, I have to be alive to break the lock, and I can't be alive if… He didn't like what he thought, but facts were facts.
The wounded inventor quickly and quietly flipped the switch on the magnet before letting his arm fall to the ground as he released it, causing it to slide across the floor, between Clint's legs, and stop about nine feet behind him. The gunman turned slightly to look at his prize, and then turned back to Dieh. "You can't even lift it up to me? You're pathetic." He cocked the gun again and squatted down, twisting the end of the barrel against Dieh's skull. "Any last words?"
Dieh sighed as he prepared for what was to come. "You always had to get that last threat in, you know. You could never just let something not go your way. It's a shame."
"Is that-" Clint's expression suddenly went from cocky to shocked as the magnet silently activated, rapidly pulling the five remaining bullets right out of the non-magnetic gun's clip and through his body in ascending order, carving a straight line of a gap right through his chest. He stood his bloodied body upright, his whole form from the chest down well on its way to being completely soaked in the crimson liquid. To say that he stumbled backwards would be a bit incorrect- it was as though his legs were taking turns in a game of one-upping, each passing the other's step with increasing distance in an eerily slow, staccato-like pattern. He opened his mouth, releasing something much more gruesome than the intended words, when the magnet reversed its polarity, spitting four of the bullets in sporadic directions, and one of them through his shoulder.
As though it was only the final bullet that had taken his life, Clint fell backwards through glass wall he'd shattered with the first bullet that had gone through Dieh. He made only a faint gurgling noise as his weight shifted enough to send him over the edge, and after that, only the rushing waterfall could be heard.
It's… not over yet. Dieh was even grunting in pain in his own mind as he stood up to finish what he'd started, trying to drive away all of the distracting thoughts. Mourning, regrets, explanations… come later. Now is my last chance.
"I'm tellin' ya, that bastard's wearing a jammer! We can't- oh! He's back!" Harv's voice was more than welcome to the battered inventor. "Dieh! What happened? Where's Clint, that bloody traitor?! I knew we couldn't trust him!"
"Harv… time."
"What? Oh, uh- Third Eagle's a minute and twenty seconds off, you've got to get out of there now!"
"Can't do that, Harv. I'm gonna see this to the end if it kills me." He plucked the receiver out of his ear so that he wouldn't be able to hear Harv's protests and held it in front of him. "God save the Queen," was the last thing he said before he threw the radio through the same broken window and into the falls.
As quickly as he could, Dieh hobbled over to the "employees only" door on the other side of the room, next to the staircase. An explosion could just as easily bring down the whole damn as it could break the locking mechanism… he thought to himself when he considered the use of the grenade. But a contained explosion might do the trick. The only problem… he'd now barged through the door and could plainly see the square opening in the iron floor, through which the inner mechanics of the dam's functions laid in total darkness, is aiming.
With the magnet, aim wouldn't have been a problem- a simple toss into the abyss would cause enough damage to any given part of the mechanism, which would start a chain reaction that would eventually destroy it all. However, Dieh would need a clear shot into the dead center of the mechanism to break it with a contained explosion. All he needed to do was illuminate the chamber to get that shot.
Within seconds Dieh had the solution, putting one of the flares in each of the titanium-weave backpack's side pockets. He proceeded to light both of them, taking the pin out of the highly dangerous final piece to the puzzle immediately afterward. He hastily stuffed the grenade into the pack and stuck it, the arm carrying it, and his head through the opening. I should have just long enough… He tried to reach down as far as he could with the flares to see as much as possible, and succeeded in making out the edges of the machinery below with the glare of light. But none of the edges looked right- none were close enough together to suggest a mechanical core.
He began to panic, looking frantically from one side to the other to decide where to drop the bomb before it took him with it. It was only now that it occurred to Dieh that the core could be below where his legs tensed to keep him from falling in on the surface, in a blind spot that he couldn't draw his head further out to check, lest he descend into the blackness. With mere moments left, his brain shut down as instinct took over, deciding to take the risk. He swung the bag underneath his surfaced body and let go of the load with a heavy grunt. God save us all! He faintly remembered hearing a "clink" before the explosion, a ray of hope in the darkness of the room.
Death wasn't nearly as bad as he'd figured it would be. Honestly, it was a welcome change of pace after all of the physical and mental strain of his last minutes on earth. He felt himself ascend through the light-headed stages of consciousness as he let go, thinking to himself how many people he'd saved with his deed. Dieh was distinctly at peace, and never wanted it to be otherwise.
Then again, you don't always get exactly what you wish for. Dieh learned this as he was roused awake by a familiar, bocce-seasoned hand on his back, shaking him. His body was picked up and his arms thrown over the shoulders of two unidentifiable people as he descended through the light-headed stages of consciousness, eventually becoming at least somewhat aware of his surroundings. Familiar voices came to him. He could barely piece together a sentence from one of the two: "That's a shame about Clint, though… at least we can still help this one."
The inventor's eyes tried to blink as he shook off his pains. "Harry? Al?" Dieh mumbled as he tried to lift his head, finding it to be a fruitless effort.
"Oh, he can even talk? Thank God for your natural athleticism, most bodies couldn't take that kind of strain." Dieh could see Al's face without even looking up, framed in an overgrown head of hair that was just starting to gray.
"And yours can't take much more. We got here in the nick of time." Harry's lanky arms seemed to be channeling the strength that Dieh's body wished it could.
"Let… let me down, guys." Dieh managed to speak a complete sentence as they walked out of the front doors of the dam, the sun threatening to peak out over the distant horizon. "I can… walk." He hobbled two steps away from them and came that much closer to full consciousness. "How'd the plan go?" he asked as he ran a hand over the tender area where he'd been shot, which he discovered had already been cleaned and bandaged.
"Do you want the fairy-tale version or the real version?" Harry's sarcasm was like music to Dieh, who never thought he'd hear it again.
"You know me."
"Well then, the plan failed." Dieh's heart sank as a million and one questions began to form a hurricane of thought within his head, though Harry continued before he could ask anything. "We're fine, though. The Americans had to turn back- from the communications we've hijacked, Third Eagle's pilot got hit by a rogue bullet and died instantly; they have no idea where it came from."
Dieh's thoughts immediately went to the magnet, and the four bullets that had shot off in unknown directions when the polarity was reversed. He was nothing short of baffled. "And the dam?" was all that he could think to say.
"Well," Tess's voice came from behind the three of them as she emerged from the front doors, an odd look of satisfied disappointment on her face, "nothing seems to be damaged; not a screw out of place. Turns out you missed with your grenade-in-a-bag and threw it into an empty corner, so we didn't even lose our dam." She made a beeline for Dieh and compressed him in a warm embrace. "You took a big risk with that move, you idiot."
Dieh smiled back and returned the gesture. "Can't you at least show your idiot that you're happy he's alive?" he asked as he buried his face into her shoulder. "Or that you're worried about his wounds?" She took a step back and parted her lips as though she was about the respond, but the weary inventor cut her off. "And you can't tell me to 'try taking a gunshot before I start complaining' anymore, by the way."
Tess grinned and gave him a loving punch in the shoulder. "You're no fun. As long as you don't turn your back on us like Clint," her face briefly tarried on a sour expression before returning to its relief upon the mention of the name, "then I'm happy you're alive."
Dieh's grin twisted into a cunning smirk. "Am I not facing forward?"
