Just to let everyone know: the first three chapters of my first (real) work of original fiction are up on Fictionpress. There's a link on my profile (toward the bottom) if you're interested.
Disclaimer: I do not own Alex Rider.
It seemed to take forever—but at the same time no time at all—for them to hit the ground. Alex had done his best to adjust as they fell so that Takami was completely underneath him. Her eyes wide open—giving her the look of a small child—and her mouth forming a perfect 'O', she had been too stunned to struggle.
But even with her body cushioning his, the impact was devastating.
The cracking he heard told him more surely than anything he could have seen that Takami was dead. It sounded louder than a gunshot, overwhelming the smaller cracks Alex knew were gripping his body. They were plenty painful, even if he couldn't hear them. He rolled off of her, ignoring how it made his back sting and struggling to find room in his lungs to breathe. Looking over at her, bile rose in his throat as he saw clearly her body contorted in a position beyond what any human could accomplish naturally. Her spine was undoubtedly broken.
He forced himself to look away and try to regain his breathing. Good riddance—the sooner the world was rid of people like her the better. But it was harder than it should have been to breathe; it seemed he had cracked a rib or two, for his chest refused to rise. It didn't help that there was sand digging into the fresh wounds on his back, making it sting and throb. He struggled to gain composure—he had to help his classmates! He couldn't just bloody lie here!
Pushing himself up, he grimaced as his left hand gave out beneath him. He'd apparently sprained his wrist as well, though he couldn't quite feel the pain yet. The rush of adrenaline was too strong.
He stood just in time to see a member of the congregation—Alex recognized him as Yayah, the boy who had shared a tent with Nevaeh and himself—rushing toward him, his eyes murderous. Alex tensed and widened his stance, hands raised. But before Yayah had the chance to do anything but run at him, he was on the ground. Alex looked around wildly, but no one had attacked Yayah: there was a bullet lodged in his chest, bleeding freely.
Alex turned and he saw Lewis standing behind him, holding a gun. She lowered it and made her way to Alex, her expression worried. Alex was suddenly flooded with gratitude. If there was anything else that could have convinced him of her allegiances so quickly, he couldn't think of it. But he would still be careful of her—he could never be entirely sure. If she was in deep cover, why hadn't Blunt and Jones told him that? Things still didn't quite add up where Lewis was concerned. He got the feeling that there was some variable he just wasn't seeing.
"What timing you have, Alex," she muttered, looking over the horizon. "It looks as if your backup has finally arrived."
Alex looked over in their direction only quickly enough to register that they were there. He had more pressing concerns; namely, that of finding some way to keep his class safe. If Yayah attacked, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the parishioners followed his example.
"Great," he muttered. "Do you happen to have a gun I could borrow?"
Lewis shook her head. "Just this one. But check Takami. She should have one on her somewhere. She wasn't the type to go around unprotected."
Alex pushed his mind away from the gruesome fact that he would have to search Takami when her spine was all but sticking out of her back and made his way over to her corpse, thinking of where she might hide a gun. Trying to avoid touching her as much as she could—her skin was already getting clammy—he searched her urgently. Pulling out the gun that was buried underneath her, he spun to face the congregation, gun wielded.
They had started to get organized. Alex's classmates, still tied up, could do little but cry out as the parishioners made to kick and punch them. Alex felt the familiar focusing of his vision, the familiar flood of adrenaline, and suddenly he was invincible. Injuries or not, Alex wasn't about to stand back and watch people he knew die.
Without a sound he ran toward his nearest classmate. "Run," he told her as he struggled to untie her bonds. "Go and hide in the church!"
She followed his orders without hesitation, weaving in between the crowd. Alex didn't watch her go—he was already onto his next classmate. This one he recognized, he realized. Ryan Kent's ropes were nearly undone already, and a quick tug in the right direction from Alex had them falling to the ground.
"Run and hide," Alex told him, already starting to move. He had been lucky so far. But he had the feeling his luck wouldn't last much longer.
"Like hell I will!" Kent yelled. Alex didn't have the time to observe his face; too busy on Regina's wrists; but he sounded angry. Alex couldn't bring himself to care. There were bigger things to worry about. If Kent got himself killed, though...
Regina stumbled to her feet just before a shot rang out. Alex froze for a millisecond—what side?, he wondered wildly—before Regina fell, a scream dying on her lips.
Shit. Someone had gotten to a gun, and now Regina Marbury had a bullet lodged in her thigh. Alex could only thank God that it hadn't hit any higher.
"Kent!" he yelled, grabbing onto the back of his shirt, "get her inside and try to stop the bleeding—but be careful! I don't know who's got the guns here."
Thankfully this was enough of a hero role to satisfy Kent. The bastard needed to learn how to sort out his priorities. He lifted Regina up into his arms—Alex winced, he wasn't exactly being gentle—and ran as quickly as he could back to the nearest tents and buildings. It was a weird picture. But then everything about this situation was just so surreal.
Alex found his next classmate on the ground at the exact same moment the SAS showed up in full force. Unlike Alex, they had no hesitation firing their weapons, though their shots weren't generally lethal. He saw at least four parishioners go down in the first wave, and more followed, clutching wounds on their legs and shoulders. He had just finished untying Gemma and shooed her off when the first SAS soldier approached him.
"How's it going Cub?" a familiar voice asked.
Alex's jaw clenched. He didn't answer the question directly, but instead said, "Why am I not surprised?"
The figure Alex now knew was Wolf shrugged. "We seem to get dragged to the same places pretty often, don't we?"
Alex didn't respond, but instead focused on the knot in front of him. It took him a moment to realize that he was working on untying Tom, and that Tom was yelling at him.
"Down!" he yelled, before throwing himself to the ground. Alex, his fingers entangled in the ropes binding Tom, quickly followed with a yelp.
He felt the shot go over his head, taking a few strands of his hair with it. Damn. He hadn't even seen the gun. That had been too close for comfort. Hopefully with the SAS finally there they would be able to disarm them quickly.
He got back to his knees just in time to see Wolf aim and shoot at their attacker. He didn't miss—the bullet hit the parishioner in her upper thigh, and she went down screaming.
Alex grimaced. He could hear similar screams coming from around him—making his way over to the last classmate he saw tied up, he hoped that none of his friends were dead.
Though his back stung, his chest ached and his left wrist twinged from the effort, Janice Murray was freed after only a few moments. Alex looked around, but all he saw were SAS and parishioners. He felt a surge of relief. Some of his classmates must have been helping their friends to escape. Hopefully now they were all far away, somewhere safe.
He turned to see Wolf's brow crumpled, looking confused. "What the hell happened to you?" he asked, relaxing his grip on his gun now that the sounds of fighting were fading. "And how are you still moving?"
It took Alex a minute to get where Wolf was going with the questions. "A whip," he said, without elaboration. "And a high tolerance for pain."
Wolf rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Let's finish this off, shall we?"
"Gladly," Alex said, following his lead and heading back to where the fighting was still taking place. It appeared that the SAS had taken out most of the congregation, who were scattered on the desert sand, most of them clutching wounds. Only a few of the stronger men were left.
It was then that Alex remembered Father M. He hadn't seen the man once that day, and he cursed himself for not noticing it sooner. But then again, he had been a bit preoccupied. Had he taken off in the middle of the night? Or had he received word that the SAS were on their way, and cut and run? Neither option made much sense to Alex, so he pushed the thought away. He had other things to deal with at the moment.
"Got 'em all, Fox?" he heard Wolf call out. Alex took a deep breath. The pain of his multiple injuries was coming back in full force. But he bit the inside of his cheek. He would be fine.
"Yeah, I think so," the younger man replied. He kicked at one parishioner still moving by his feet, and the man fell still. "Yup, I think that's the last of them."
Alex registered a presence behind him the moment before he heard the click of a gun. "Not quite," a familiar voice answered quietly. Lewis. The SAS immediately tensed and went for their weapons, but they froze when she pushed the barrel of the gun onto the back of his head.
Alex turned around slowly, so slowly, trying to take deep breaths, though his chest barely—painfully—filled with air. He turned until the barrel was pointed smack dab in the middle of his forehead. Sure enough, there she stood. The woman she had been just moments ago—calm, helpful, trustworthy—was gone. In her place stood a woman with crazy, twitching eyes and a gun pointed evenly at his skull.
"Lewis," he said evenly, trying not to startle her into accidentally shooting. "What does this make you now? A quadruple agent? Or just a maniac?"
The woman laughed, pushing the barrel further into his face, and she didn't sound quite sane. "I no longer know what I am," she said, the hand not holding the gun clenching and unclenching oddly. "I thought joining the Horsemen would help that... but no. I'm worse off then when I started!"
"So," Alex said, as if speaking to a spooked animal, "You weren't a member when you joined MI6?"
She laughed again, and Alex wished he could find some way for her to turn the other way, so that her back was facing the SAS men, but she wasn't stupid. She kept her feet planted firmly where they were and kept Alex between them. "Of course not, you stupid boy!" she answered in reply. Alex didn't like the way her finger on the trigger was twitching. "Do you think I would have been accepted—trained as Blunt's replacement, even—if they had known I was a member of a dangerous organization like this one? Never! Do you think they would have sent you, if they had known a more senior member was already there?"
"And MI6 didn't put you here in deep cover?" Alex asked, his adrenaline begging him to do something. Fight... or flight?
Her eyes grew wider and her hands started shaking even more. "No," she said, "that was a lie."
Alex shook his head the tiniest bit. "Then why did you help me?" he asked, trying to make sense of it. Her actions were completely baffling.
"Isn't it obvious?" she asked, laughing again. "Takami was insane! I couldn't let her kill more innocent people—that would have bought me a ticket straight to hell. So I did the first thing I could think of. I pretended I was on your side so Takami would lose."
"But... you shot Yayah. Isn't murder a ticket straight to hell?"
She stayed silent this time, but a sickly grin spread across her face. "'One in the stead of many,'" she said, as if she were quoting someone. "That's something the Father told me. He told me, 'Sophie, Christ died for our sins so that we would be able to go to Heaven. If you have to do bad things, at least do them well, in such a way that Christ would be proud of.'"
Alex crinkled his brow, ignoring the way it made his head ache. That just didn't make sense. But she wasn't done.
"'Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses,'" she continued, not even looking at him anymore. "Proverbs 10:12. Don't you see, Alex?" she asked, wrenching her eyes from the horizon. "I hate with a passion, and look where it got me…but it is my love for the Lord that shall get me into the Eternal Paradise!"
"Lewis... Sophie... you're not making any sense. Can't you see that what you're doing is wrong? If you kill me, it will be in cold blood. That's murder. And, if I'm not wrong, that's breaking one of the Ten Commandments."
No hesitation crossed her brow. "'One in the stead of many,'" she repeated, as if reassuring herself. Alex's heartbeat kicked up again. She didn't sound convinced. Shit. She sounded like she was actually going to kill him!
Fight? Or flight? His adrenaline was telling him to make that choice, and now. So, without warning, he kicked her feet out from under her at the same time he knocked the gun out of Lewis' hand. It was easy, really. She didn't even let off a shot. She just lay on the ground, laughing and wringing her hands together. Alex shook his head. She had seemed just fine only a few hours—no, minutes—ago. What the hell had happened to have her descend into such madness so quickly?
It was only when a few SAS men started carting her away that he really started to feel his injuries. Now that the threat was gone, the adrenaline had faded, leaving nothing to block the stunning pain.
Suddenly, his legs were shaking and he had to sit. He blinked and saw Snake in front of him, looking concerned. Somewhere in the back of his head he remembered that Snake was the unit's medic. Concern was probably not a good thing for him.
"What's up, Cub?" the man asked, though to Alex's ears it sounded a bit muddled.
"Fractured ribs, if not one broken one," Alex began to list. "Sprained wrist. My back was whipped."
Snake pursed his lips. "How the hell are you still conscious?" he asked, unknowingly repeating Wolf's earlier question.
Alex coughed, and was surprised to find blood on his arm when he removed it. "I have..." he said, but the words were growing harder to say, his mouth unwilling to move. "A very high... pain tolerance." His words came out slowly, and he could barely hear them.
When he blinked again, Snake had gone. He only had the time to gape in confusion before a wave of pain so severe he nearly blacked out hit him. He doubled over, clutching his chest. Shit, shit, shit, shit! What the hell was going on?!
He barely registered when he fell to his side on the sand, ignoring the pain in his back and curling up into fetal position. He didn't notice when Snake shook him, nor could he hear anything the man said.
He got one last glimpse of the man barking out orders before the darkness overcame him and he slipped into unconsciousness.