Chapter 26~Injustice
There had been a lot of scurrying around to get everything together in ten minutes, or at least, everyone except Valerie had been scurrying. She had stayed exactly where she was, completely lost in thought. She just didn't understand why Sam Johnson had been involved with Wilder. It didn't add up; he was so sweet, the phrase "wouldn't hurt a fly" had been re-defined by his existence, and the two of them had been very good friends. So she simply failed to understand why he was doing this.
The team had almost left her behind; she was so wrapped up in her inner argument that she hadn't even noticed Seb getting very cross at Maria telling him to stay behind until Anton shouted back to her, which had immediately set her thoughts going again. She wasn't happy with him, either. He let the fact that he didn't like Sam influence his, and therefore pretty much everyone else's, opinion of him, and Valerie knew for a fact that this dislike was based on jealousy and jealousy alone. Five years ago, when Sam had first joined the colony, within a week Anton had lost his toolbox, and immediately pointed the finger at the new guy, even though there was no evidence suggesting it, and had hated him ever since. Even after he found it under the sofa a week later, the two of them had never had a civilised conversation, and now, Anton was very, very unlikely to give Sam a chance. And she hated him for it.
She had gotten into the car and gone through the whole journey on complete auto-pilot, and Maria's hand on her shoulder when they arrived at the garage made her jump out of her skin. Maria told her that if she didn't get her act together, she would be left behind. This had led to Anton staring at her with one of his famous unreadable expressions for the next ten minutes, which Valerie completely ignored, and followed Maria through the anomaly.
She'd realised that someone was following them as soon as they had reached the city, and a combination of logic and common sense told her that it was Sam. Who else would it have been? Her suspicions were confirmed twenty seconds after making them as a tall, blonde man stepped out of the shadows of a nearby doorway, and Anton's hands fisted at his sides. Valerie met Sam's gaze, and instead of everything she thought she would feel at seeing him again; namely happiness at his survival from that predator attack; she felt nothing. Everything she had been feeling up until that moment vanished, leaving just her, Sam, and a whole lot of words. She sent Anton a "move and I will kill you" look, ignored his protests, and took a few steps toward Sam.
"Why?" She demanded, skipping the pleasantries and giving him no chance to escape the issue.
"Why what?"
"You know what I'm talking about," Valerie gave him a hard stare until he answered in his thick Oklahoma accent.
"He made me an offer I couldn't refuse,"
"And what was that?" Sam's gaze slowly moved from Valerie to Anton, who was standing with his arms folded, his body language daring Sam to answer his question. The look on his face was cold, and if Valerie hadn't known him better she would have mistaken it for a sneer.
"He offered me a way outta this place," Sam replied, keeping his guarded expression fixed on Anton but aiming his response at Valerie. He matched Anton's Alpha-Male appearance perfectly, which only annoyed Anton further. "Which I'm guessin' by what you guys are wearin' y'already did,"
"Were you so easily bought?" Anton's tone was thick with disgust and if Sam hadn't responded so quickly Valerie would have told him very loudly to shut up. Sam, however, seemed to have been expecting Aton to ask.
"Don't try and tell me for even a second you wouldn't have done the same. All the old man said I had to do was finish somethin' for him and give him a hand movin' somethin' else. If I'd known he meant runnin' a movin' truck over with a freakin' dinosaur, I never would've agreed to it,"
"You also stole my research,"
"Dude, I never stole a thing. I've had that teleportation thing figured for years, you were just too stubborn to listen to me."
"Sam, we need you to help us," Valerie interjected before Anton started punching things. "You have to show us where you sent the people in that pickup." Sam's gaze flicked back to Valerie, but it returned warily to Anton every few seconds.
"Can't, honey. If I do, my deal with the old man's off, and I ain't got a clue where the anomaly I want is."
"It's half a mile outside the city, on the edge of that canyon," Valerie supplied without a moment's hesitation. Sam smiled, sadness tinting the expression.
"I'm no betrayer, Val," he said, quiet enough for Anton not to hear him.
"But you're not the bad guy either," When Sam didn't say anything, Valerie changed tack. "What were you going to do, just roam around not even existing until you died?"
"What's your point?"
"Help us. Come back with us, and we can make you actually properly exist." she turned around and sought out Maria, who was standing a little behind Anton, silently watching the exchange. "Lester can make some phone calls and do what he's doing for us, can't he?" Maria nodded slowly, in truth having no idea exactly how many phone calls Lester was willing to make, and armed with this information, Valerie turned back to Sam.
"See. Please help us, Sam." Sam's silence was so long that Valerie was afraid he would say no. But he didn't. After what seemed like forever, he let out a long breath and shook his head in exasperation.
"I cannot believe I am doing this," he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. "Fine, I'll show y'all where they are," Valerie grinned at him like the Cheshire cat, a grin which vanished as soon as she heard Anton's smirk. Sam's whole face darkened and he turned on him.
"Look, everyone's got their price, okay? Mine just so happens to be the fastest way I can get myself outta here, and I'll bet that if y'all hadn't already found a way, yours wouldn't be too far off." When Anton's expression didn't change in the slightest, Sam started up again.
"Ok then, what if it was her?" he gestured at Valerie and Anton's smirk disappeared. "You and I both know you'd do whatever it took to protect her if she was in danger, even if it meant betraying everything you believed in. Everyone has their price, Ivanov, even you. Now do you want me to show you where your friends are or not?" And with that, Sam turned and slunk back into the building he had come out of, not even waiting for them to follow him. Valerie snuck a glance at Anton but he strode past her without even looking in her direction. That was the first moment in her entire life when Valerie wondered how deep his affection for her actually went.
So that was how it had happened. And now, Sam was leading the newly rescued ARC team through the rabbit warren of ruined buildings back to the anomaly. Neither he nor Valerie spoke to one another as they walked, even though they were ahead of the rest of the group. Sam could sense that the person she really wanted to talk to was Anton, but he had been avoiding her since Sam's earlier outburst. That, Valerie could understand. Anton had never been the type to talk about his personal feelings.
Sam stopped and changed direction to avoid a Predator nest, which was the only reason Valerie was paying enough attention to her surroundings to notice the figure on top of the building ahead of them, and the thing that glinted in the sunlight that was pointing down at them. Before Valerie could even process what it might be, the deafening boom of a gunshot rang out, and the air around them was instantly filled with the all-too aware growling of Predators that knew there was prey nearby. She turned to Sam to ask him which way they should go, and everything around her stopped.
As she turned, Sam's eyes widened in fear and a single drop of blood trickled down the side of his face. At almost the same time, Sam fell onto his knees and then forwards into the dirt, landing awkwardly on his side and stared up at Valerie with unseeing eyes. At the same moment as he hit the floor, Valerie screamed. She felt her own knees give out and she hit the floor too, only vaguely aware of Maria skidding to a stop next to Sam. She took one look at where the bullet had entered Sam's skull and shook her head at someone outside Valerie's field of vision, probably either Lou or Becker. Valerie felt something warm running down her cheeks and realised that she was crying, but there was no feeling inside her. She felt like she was letting someone else control her body and was merely watching the outcome of their decisions.
Then she saw him. Wilder. He had climbed down from the top of the building and was now standing only a few feet away from her, keeping to the shadows of a doorway. Hatred stronger than Valerie had ever felt before welled up inside her and she got to her feet, prepared to kill Wilder with her own two hands. As she launched herself at him, however, strong hands grabbed her around her waist and pulled her back. She began to scream again. Not the same high-pitched wailing as before, but feral shouts aimed at her captor to release her. A voice, Anton's, began whispering in her ear, telling her to calm down. She didn't even register the sounds; she was too focused on Wilder's obnoxious grin as he backed away into his building, and a flash of light told her that he had disappeared. Valerie's screams only intensified. She heard Anton shout to Maria, and then someone else's hands were on her shoulders too.
"I'm sorry," Maria's soft yet commanding voice whispered in her ear, and Valerie felt something sharp puncture the skin of her upper arm, before she lost all control of herself and fell into Anton's sturdy arms. She lay there for a small number of seconds before everything went black, and the sedative Maria had injected her with kicked in.
Anton scooped Valerie up into his arms as soon as her eyes closed and turned to Maria. Guilt at what she had just done flickered through the doctor's expression but was gone again as quickly as it came. Anton knew that as soon as this mission was over, Maria would have all kinds of moral problems to argue with herself but until then, her mind was in the present and nowhere else.
"We need to get out of here," he said matter-of-factly. As if she didn't already know. Anyone with half an ear could hear the predators growling to each other as they approached. The only way that wasn't blocked was the way Wilder had gone, through a building which Anton happened to know had a back door. Maria nodded and turned to Becker, who was already fireman's lifting Sam Johnson's body over his shoulder. They nodded at each other before setting off across the dusty track that had once been a road. EMD shots fired all over the place, and even though only four people were using them, predators fell by the dozen. But that was the thing with predators. There seemed to be no end to them.
Lou and Danny were the last through the door; Anton was amazed that the latter had even got this far with so many wounds on him; and Alison slammed it shut behind them before automatically turning to her brother for the next move.
"Okay Anton, I really hope you know where we are," Maria's emerald eyes gave away nothing but determination and a hell bent desire to get the whole team out alive. Anton nodded once before turning and kicking open a door directly opposite the one they had come in through, hoping to gain some ground before the predators realised they had gone the short way. They only had a ten second head start, but Anton knew that the anomaly was just around the corner.
Becker felt like a robot as he carefully placed Sam Johnson's body on one of the stretcher beds the ARC medics had brought down to the garage. He hadn't even known the man, but got the feeling Valerie would want him buried properly, in a proper graveyard with maybe even a proper service, if that was at all possible, so hadn't needed telling that he needed taking back with them. Without any internal feelings at all, he looked around the garage at the rest of the team; Anton laying Valerie down on another stretcher and telling a medic what had happened; Lou helping Danny onto a third stretcher and scribbling something, probably an injury list, onto a clipboard which he handed to another medic before sliding down the wall and sitting, completely exhausted, on the floor; Natalie insisting that nothing was wrong with her to yet another medic before joining Lou, and the two of them leaning against each other, neither saying anything but just enjoying the other's company; Connor and Abby being led into the back of one of the four ambulances waiting outside so that they could go and get some proper casts put on their broken arms, wrists and ribs; Alison and Maria in the middle of a heated conversation...
The sight of this brought a small spike of curiosity into Becker's exhausted brain, but before he could approach them he was ambushed by a medic who asked to put fresh bandages on his wrist. Having learnt his lesson from last time he agreed, and by the time the medic was finished, Maria was talking to Lou and Alison was being occupied by another medic who seemed to have more interest in his sister than just her injuries. Becker only got as far as raising an eyebrow before a hand slid into his, and he looked down at the top of Maria's head resting against his shoulder. He pulled her into a comforting hug and rested his chin on the top of her head while she seemed to fall asleep against his chest. They stood like that for a while before Maria muttered something that Becker didn't catch.
"What?"
"I said," Maria straightened up so that she was talking at him not down to the floor, "That Valerie is going to kill me," Despite himself, Becker smiled.
"She'll understand,"
"Oh, undoubtedly."
"So why..?"
"Have you ever been sedated?"
"No, actually,"
"It's not very nice. And yes, Val will realise that it was necessary and will, probably, get over it very quickly, but she will still kill me." Becker smiled again and Maria nestled herself back against his chest. If he hadn't been so tired, Becker would have been quite content with just standing there holding her, but as it was, he really wanted a cold shower and to go to bed. As if to punctuate his thoughts, Becker yawned, and Maria laughed.
"Me too, I could sleep for a week," she said through a smile. Lou shouted over to them, saying that they were waiting for them so that they could go home, and Maria gave him a thumbs-up and turned back to Becker. She kissed him, long and soft, before staring into his eyes.
"Do you trust me?" she asked. Becker's eyebrows furrowed as confusion washed around his already saturated brain.
"Of course I do, why?" Instead of answering, Maria tightened her grip around his neck and hugged him again, which Becker returned, albeit somewhat slowly.
"Ahh crap," she muttered after an almost awkward pause.
"What?"
"I left my MedKit down there. You go on, I'll run and get it and catch you up," She pulled away from him and jogged towards the anomaly locking device, which Becker only then noticed had the little green box sitting next to it. He turned to head towards the cars parked expectantly outside but only got three steps before his instincts told him that something was wrong. He turned again, and caught the last glimpse of the anomaly compacting as it locked itself. At first he thought it was just his imagination but the fact that Maria was no longer in the garage confirmed it.
"Goddamnit Maria!" he yelled, feeling anger and concern welling up inside him.
"What? What's she done?" Lou ran over and slid to a stop just behind him, panting slightly. Becker didn't look at him, instead his eyes seemed glued to the anomaly that had been the bane of his existence for far, far too long now.
"She's gone back," he told his friend. "She's gone back through the damned anomaly."