It's Letting Go

Chapter Twenty One: Backstage Battle

With nowhere to go as the three holograms started shooting at him, Dean Domino ran toward the back of the stage, dropping down into a kind of baseball slide as he took cover underneath the metal stairs that were partially hidden by the curtain. The whole thing shook each time one of the energy blasts struck the metal, and the Ghoul had to shield his face to avoid the resulting sparks. However, instead of cowering or begging for mercy as Tonya hoped, he aimed his pistol and started shooting.

This was a move of pure desperation, the Courier thought as he pulled the trigger two more times, since the holograms were immune to such attacks… but then she realized that Dean wasn't aiming at them, but at a small device on the far wall that glowed the same blue color. His third bullet struck home; the small device shattering in a small explosion, and causing one of the three holograms to vanish almost instantly.

Energy blasts were still coming from the other two, but this gave the Ghoul the opening he needed to scramble out from under the chairs, and then dive over the edge of the stage so that it would protect him as he crawled along the floor. Nothing moved for several seconds after that, making Tonya gasp when the holograms turned yellow, so she grabbed an empty water glass from the nearest table, and tossed it over where Dean was hiding.

"Ow, damn it!" The Ghoul yelled when the glass shattered over his head, forcing him to stumble into view. "You dirty bitch, I'll get you for…

His words became a scream when one of the holograms fired a shot at him after turning red, hitting Dean in the arm and making him drop the pistol. The force of the blast knocked him off his feet, and his arm was sluggish as if it had just been electrocuted when he got up, but the Ghoul was still able to run through the same door that Tonya had gone through earlier, thanks to a table blocking one of the hologram's shots.

Instead of following him, the holograms turned back to yellow after a little bit, and blue a bit later to resume their regular patrols, making the Courier feel silly for acting so rushed while in Vera's dressing room. But she wasn't going to let Dean get away after what he had done to Dog and Christine, so Tonya picked up the fallen pistol, and followed him through the door into the straight corridor.

Silence was the only noise that greeted her, and the hallway was long, meaning that he had to be hiding somewhere nearby, since only the first couple doors were open, and she hadn't heard any of the others close as she came in… but which door? Vera's dressing room was the closest, so the Courier decided to start searching there; creeping up to the doorway and very slowly stepping into the room, only to hear a noise as the door came flying at her.

Tonya was right in the middle of the doorway, causing the door to pin her against the frame when it struck her, then hitting her a second time as if something was slamming into it from the other side. The first hit knocked the wind out of her, and the second hit her in the head when she tried to move, making her drop the pistol just before she felt something loop itself around her neck.

"So, you want to be Vera Keyes, do you princess?" Dean asked, yanking her into the room while tightening his grip on the rope in his hands. "Then I'll choke you just like I used to choke her when we would…

The rope had been put around her neck and tightened before she could take a breath, slowly strangling the Courier while the Ghoul dragged her across the room, but then she put a stop to his speech by jamming her elbow into his ribs as hard as she could. Stomping backwards with her high heels, Dean cried out when she felt one of them cut into his ankle, and then Tonya grabbed his arm while bending forward, hip-slinging him forward so that he landed on his back.

Momentarily more concerned with getting the rope off her neck than dealing with him, she gasped when he scrambled for the pistol, picking up an old telephone receiver, and tossing it at his hand just as he was getting up. Ding! The phone's bell rang once when it hit him right on target, making the Ghoul yell in agony when he lost the pistol yet again, followed by Tonya suddenly ramming into him with her shoulder.

Dean was already off balance, so the Courier was able to tackle him down onto the couch; punching the Ghoul in the face before scrambling to get on top of him so that she was pinning down his arms with her knees. Then she looped the rope around his neck and pulled it tight so that now it was Dean who was coughing and squirming around… making Tonya feel a rush of anger that motivated her to pull the rope even tighter until his mouth was gaping open for air.

"I am so sick of your shit, Dean!" The Courier yelled, intent on killing him this time. "The collars were gone, you fucking asshole, we could've escaped! All of us, together, we could have gotten out! Why, Dean?! Why did you kill them?!"

"The… Madre!" He gagged while trying to squirm out from underneath her. "It's… mine!"

Suddenly something pierced her leg… something sharp… making Tonya gasp when she realized that Dean hadn't been squirming to get out from under her, but rather reaching for something on the floor. Oh God, she thought, I've been stabbed… but then she looked down at her leg and saw that it wasn't a knife that was sticking into her… but five now empty syringes that were labeled Med-X. It had been a large box hidden under the sofa that the Ghoul had been reaching for, a box that was filled to the top with more syringes… and now her body was starting to feel numb.

The Courier tried to keep choking him, but in less than a minute the numbness had made it so that she could barely use her hands; she was now sweating profusely, having to make an effort to take in each heavy, labored breath, and Tonya's vision blurred for a few seconds before refocusing… just in time for Dean to grab an ashtray and slam it into the side of her head. The good news was that she barely felt it thanks to the Med-X, but that didn't stop her from ungracefully tumbling over onto the floor face-first.

"That's from Vera's private supply, my dear." The Ghoul said, clearing his throat after taking off the rope. "I figure since you want to be Vera so much, you're going to have to learn to love Med-X just as much as she did… little junkie couldn't get enough, so…

Bang! What Dean hadn't realized was that the Courier had fallen right into the pistol, so when he reached down to roll Tonya over, he received the surprise of his life when she pulled the trigger. By that time her vision was so blurred that seeing details was impossible, although she must have hit him, judging by the way he fell backwards after the shot went off, but then the pistol fell out of her hands as the numbness got worse.

She felt drunk to the point of passing out, and her heart was slowing down just like Christine had warned her, but the Courier knew that she had to get out of there. If she could make it back to the theater, then holographic security would keep her safe until the Med-X wore off, but this was harder to do than she realized, since she stumbled right out the dressing room door and into the wall while attempting to get to her feet.

Sliding down the wall and onto the floor as her vision became blurred yet again, her body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, and now Tonya's legs were barely working at all. Things weren't much better with her arms, but they still worked a little, so the Courier dragged herself back down the hallway until she could reach the door that would lead to safety… only to find it somehow moving out of her reach.

The door got further and further away from her hand, and by the time Tonya realized that it was because Dean was dragging her by the ankles, he had already pulled her back into the dressing room. She tried to grab the doorframe and furniture to stop herself, but her numb fingers couldn't close around anything, allowing the Ghoul to pull her all the way back to the sofa, where he rolled her onto her back and pinned down her arms in the same way that she had done to him.

"If I didn't need you to get into Sinclair's vault, you would be dead, sweetheart." He explained, taking another syringe out of the box. "Killing the mutant and the mute was just business; had to eliminate the competition, but you… I'm going to get you so addicted to this crap that you'd sell your children for a fix… and then it'll be like having Vera all over again."

She tried to get away, or protest, or at least scream, but nothing worked to stop Dean from injecting the syringe into her neck while he explained that he had figured out what had gone wrong with Christine. The Med-X overdose that he was giving her along with the two following syringes, made the Courier almost incoherent as the Ghoul rambled something about needing a preserved Auto-Doc instead of what was in the Clinic, and that he should have waited for something.

"Dean… can't… breathe." Tonya whispered through labored breaths. "Stop… stop."

"Oh, don't worry, my sweet." The Ghoul replied, closing the box and then stroking her hair. "I'm not going to kill you, just… knock you down a few pegs so that you'll be a sweet, obedient girl, just like I had to do with Vera. After all, my darling, I made you a promise about what would happen the next time you raised a hand to me… and Dean Domino always keeps his word, you little brat."

The last half of his sentence echoed as another wave of the Med-X effects kicked in, making her head pulse while her eyes swam around in her head, and then Tonya went limp… hardly able to do anything but force down labored breaths while trying to stay conscious, because with all of the chems that Dean had pumped into her… who knew if she would even wake up again?