Indeed, Ara could not believe it. Neither could she grasp the extent of treachery Fitch had commited by letting them walk right into the trap, nor could she follow the line of thought that had led her brother to the conclusion that this was the very best way of saving her life. A lie has no legs they say, but then again she highly doubted that this was the actual moment for sudden honesty.
For an odd moment that would've been actually dryly funny if shown in a film, all three people in the chaotic room stared at the phone like they expected somebody to come out of it in a jack-in-the-box manner.
Finally, it was Ara breaking the silence. She wondered if it had ever been that hard not to yell at her brother.
"Argh," she made weakly.
"Yes!" Francis sounded a tad to cheerily for her likings. Diego leant heavily against the wall and let out a deep Ooooof. Butler looked a lot like he would explode at any further turn of events. He had seen a lot, a lot more than most other people, and after years of working with Artemis, he was used to inscrutable plans. But this incident had become so confusable complex in such a short time that even he started to feel like he had missed the connection.
Then, Francis spoke again, obviously attempting to make anything worse.
"Anyway," he said and his words cut through the silence, "Fitch hasn't planned with us, has he? He gave me the codes for the doors and the cameras, that idiot. In less than fifteen minutes, we're out. Jackson is nobody to fuck with, Linus should know that."
"Yaaa," said Ara, unable to hear herself think through all the blood that rushed through her ears.
Somebody did explode, but much to her surprise, it was not Butler but Diego. Something wild had appeared in his eyes and the half-dried blood in his face didn't do much to distract the image.
"Jackson?" he all but yelled. "You - how could you?!"
"Er ... we ... I'm ... sorry?" Kiara asked tentatively.
"You are what?!" If it hadn't been for Butler still standing in the small room, Diego would've clearly jumped at his girlfriend. "Jesus, Ara, I never thought you could stoop so low as to backstab us and work for Jackson!"
Now this would be all so much easier if I had a clue who Jackson is, Kiara thought disgruntled and pretended to inspect the smithereens of the glass table under Butler's boots. She wondered if she shouldn't be more in pain, but maybe her hoodie had prevented her from further damage.
"Oh, is that Diego there?" That was Francis, still on the phone. "Sorry, mate, didn't know you can hear me. To be perfectly fair, Jackson is a way better party to work for than Fitch. I mean, you remember Nicholas? The faked black beauty? Just ten minutes ago he blowed in with this look on his face, I bet my life that somebody is dead on his behalf. We don't have to put up with working with this kind of people. Jackson is always fair, isn't he, Ara?"
How in the f'cking world am I supposed to know?! "Yes, sure he is." The deep pain of a personal betrayal in Diego's eyes cut deeper than the broken table could, but Ara forced a blank expression on her face, as far as she was able to do so. The situation was not over yet and something about the brooding silence of Butler made her feel more threatened than ever before.
Who knows how this encounter would've ended up, hadn't suddenly the window crashed under the impact of a bullet. A bullet that made its way through half of the room before it found its target.
The kinetic energy of the projectile impacting in his chest sent Butler tumbling over the sofa's armrest.
Over in Francis' working space, there was a cruel silence after the well audible bang had cracked through his phone, followed by something that could be well described as hell breaking loose. Before he had been able to do anything but gasp for air in shock, another sound like an earthquake rumbled through the line before it went dead.
Unable to grasp a clear thought, Francis stared at his own phone and forced back the overwhelming feeling that it was likely Kiara hit by that shot. He never had an actual plan to help Ara out of whatever catastrophe Fitch had manouvered her into but to try distance her from him. The story of the backstabbing pair of siblings had appeared to him as something as close to a good solution as he would get within the next four minutes.
Anyway, none of that mattered now. Francis' mind was blank, and it stayed that way for a very long half minute before he allowed the emotonial part of him, the one that belonged to the normal young man he would be under other circumstances, to retire for the rest of the day and let his professionalism take over. Albeit he was scared about what he would find, he tuned into Ara's earphones again and forced the unwelcome picture of them being defiled with her blood back into his head.
He had never felt that relieved to hear his sister breathing.
Francis' description of hell breaking loose was probably the best for the situation in the small apartment over in Germany.
It's something physics teachers like to tell their students in an attempt to make their subject sound more cool or even intriguing: fired from some rifles, a bullet will kill you before you can actually hear the shot. Not that that mattered. If hit properly, you were very likely to not hear the shot at all, no matter what gun it was fired with. Or at least, your brain won't be able to process it that fast and tell you: mate, you've just been shot, didn't you hear the bang?
So much in theory. No need to explain that students won't fall for their teacher's errant try to make physical laws sound as exciting as the new Bond-movie. Just as there's no need to tell anybody that in the acute situation of being shot, you couldn't care less about if you heard the bang or not or at which point you did so.
Butler had landed heavily - and very inelegantly - behind the sofa, momentarily blinded by the pain and the lack of air in his lungs. Kiara and Diego, now trapped between what seemed to be a sniper attack and him, both decided to make it for the door as quick as their feet would carry them.
Diego made it. Any other day, he would've stopped to help Ara and made sure she got out fine, but this very moment, he didn't care. She had betrayed them all, and not only had she been stupid enough to undermine Fitch's plans, of whatever nature they might be, but she had been daft enough to work for Jackson instead. That was the part Diego would never be able to forgive her and he decided that in the moment he threw himself out of the room's door and rolled quickly behind the wall.
His former girlfriend, however, could have needed a helping hand. She as well decided to seek refuge in flight but unfortunately for her, her leg was not at all happy with the overall situation and quit the service after only half a step. She crashed into the narrow side of the sofa and tilted over it, the pain that jolted through her leg dazzled her so she couldn't do anything to stop the fall and landed flat on Butler's chest. Which might be, given the circumstances, not the place she would've chosen if asked but nevertheless the best place in the room, since the old furniture with the flower print was the only cover they had left.
They, for though she had reckoned him already dead, the huge man still seemed to very much alive and breathing.
Ara was not at all attached to death and violence but this very moment, she wished he would at least be unconscious due to a severe injury. Instead, he grunted very unpleasantly as the approximately sixty-five-or-so kilograms of woman hit him, rolled halfway around and pushed her off. Something she recognized as her phone crushed under her arm as she landed next to him and knocked her head of the back of the couch. Another shot cracked and the bullet missed her just, entered the wall instead and left a admirable hole in it. Plaster and dust trickled out of it and Ara ducked behind the sofa, now untroubled by the fact that she actually leant against the same man she had been running from a few hours ago, only half-conscious after the unpleasant close-up with their cover.
Butler growled as he tried to shift his weight in a way that would unburden the area in his chest the bullet hat entered, thankful for his bullet-proof vest. He knew that it wasn't to be treaten as given that the vest had held after the encounter with a projectile fired from a sniper rifle, but he could tell it had. He had been shot before, and he knew both how it felt if the vest did its job well - and if not.
The woman next to him interrupted his thoughts. "You should be dead," she said accusingly, obviously a bit dizzy after the contact head - couch. He didn't bother with a reaction, instead trying to find a flight route without making himself a target to the sniper.
Kiara groaned as she involuntarily put weight on some place at her body she better shouldn't and almost fell out of the cover. Rather to get her out of his way than to keep her safe, he dragged her closer to himself and away from the dangerous edge of the sofa, now leaning over her and peeking around in the room for anything that could help him.
Just that there was nothing left. No pillars to hide behind, not a single piece of furniture to take cover, nothing. Besides the small shelter behind the couch, there was no other area in the room that was out of sight for a possible gunman likely placed in a window of the opposite building. The range to the door was small, small enough to make it. Maybe. But Butler wasn't still alive because he bet his life on maybes. There had to be something he could use.
The third shot hit the couch only a few inches above his head, causing a small geyser of filling to follow suit and flutter down like snowflakes. The shot fired blindly, hoping he would hit any of them by accident. He retreated momentarily, figuring out a flight plan.
"For f'cks sake ...," Kiara murmured and tried to speed up the process of coming to. She lay flat on her back and though she knew she should be able to see the ceiling, something blocked her vision. It took her another few moments to understand that it was a shirt. Something that looked like a whole grazed it, and she roughly remembered the gunshot that had shattered the window. There should be blood, actually it should drip straight into her face, but there wasn't. She caught a fast glimpse at an empty shoulder-holster hidden under the jacket and at something that looked like dark fabric under the shirt.
Aah, a vest, she realised, now over the tipping point and more awake than asleep. If Butler planned to lean over her for longer, she'd get claustrophobic down here. There wasn't much space between the couch and the wall anyway, maybe half a metre. She remembered wondering why Franziska had placed it like this rather than pushing it up against the wall. Maybe the cat liked it that way or Franzi didn't want the room to look as empty as it was. Hell knows why, it seemed to be the thing keeping them alive so she wouldn't do such thing as complain about it.
Finally, Butler crouched back and she felt herself exhaling more sudden than she had planned. He shot her a dark look that made her fear he could just throw her out of their cover. He didn't. Ara felt like a rabbit trapped in a collapsing tunnel with the fox already waiting outside. Nowhere to go and nowhere to stay.
Still, she felt too much alive to feign death yet. There was not really a chance she could hope for being safed by anybody else now, so she did what she was used to as a professional thief: search for solutions on her own. After all, making flight plans was the most important thing if you make your living with walking through rich people's property and taking one or another souvenir.
One fast overview was enough to see: nope, this would be either a death trap or in the best case a Russian roulette scenario. Three steps to the door, she reckoned, two if she would be able to turn them into jmps. Which she was sure she couldn't. Her leg didn't seem to be broken but it was far away from unharmed and thus not fully usable.
Three steps, and then to the left, in the direction of the kitchen. No way she could use the main door of the apartment for that was in the field of sight of the shooter. How to get out of the kitchen window in second floor would be a question to answer if she came so far, she decided. Possibly that was the way out Diego had taken, or at least she hoped so.
Though he left me here, her mind thought unforgivingly. May he burn in hell for that, no matter if he believes I'm really working for whoever Jackson might be. Something to ask Francis about.
Again, later.
Ara was just about to start her dash for the door and hope that Butler would be too busy saving his own life - maybe taking the advantage of her distracting the shot - when he moved close to her. She retreated a bit since she had no intention to be buried under him again but whatever he was looking at, he had been able to fix it from their hideout. Carefully and inquisitive all the same, Ara turned her head and tried to follow his gaze to ... to ...
"What the hell are you staring at?" she asked, words exiting her mouth before she could stop them. He barely moved, just for a split second his eyes jumped towards her and then back where Ara was not able to see anything but wall and broken window.
He didn't bother to answer her, his fingers still flexed around his gun. Kiara wondered if they were sort of glued to it, she could think of no other way one might not loose grip while getting hit by a bullet. Maybe she would've asked a second time but she could tell by the way his breathing had slowed that he was focussing on something. In any given situation other than this one, Kiara would've felt worried about that fact but since they seemed to be in a strange, albeit fragile, ceasefire-situation due to an enemy endangering them both, she stayed quiet and instead again tried to recognise the point he addressed his attention to.
And shook her head once she found it.
After Francis was sure that his sister was alive and breathing, he moved on to the next part of his plan. Though "plan" sounded a bit too much like he had an actual idea of what to do next. Which he hadn't. As much as he hated to admit it but he would have to do one step after the other and hope that this would lead him somewhere other than a desaster. To put it positively, he already was in the middle of such a desaster so there was hardly a way it could get worse.
So he thought while he checked the cameras Fitch had given him the ID-numbers of. Fowl was in the first floor of the building, in one of the rooms Linus liked to refer to as "guest rooms". Sometimes, no matter how genius the man could be, his sense of humour was doubtable. The room had no window, which made it look - and feel - rather like a cell under the ground. The only door was behind the boy and, as Francis saw with a grim smile, Fitch hadn't deemed it necessary to order a guard in front of it. His way of working was based on a minimum of people involved and thus a minimum of possible weak spots.
Then again, it also meant that a traitorous member of your assembly had less eyes on him than otherwise. To put it in a nutshell: Francis was the only one watching this room and, for this was also covered by the task Fitch gave him, also the hallways that led to it from the main door.
Which unfortunately was guarded, so that was not an option to leave with Fowl. Francis still felt unsettled by that thought: he was going to free the boy, just like he had pretended on the phone, though he didn't know what this would lead to. Artemis was intelligent, he would use the situation the way it gave him the most advantages and that could well be disadvantaging Francis and Kiara. Anyway, he had not really a choice, or at least he had no time to check if he had one. Acting time was now. Who knows how much of the boy was left as soon as Fitch had what he wanted to.
A movement cought his attention on one of the monitors. Nicholas. God, no ... The man looked a lot like he was on his way to the Fowl heir.
No further figuring out a route then. Francis overruled the door's control and several doors clicked open, including the one of Artemis' cell. Muttering curses under his breath, he grabbed his phone, the small device that kept him in touch with Ara, and his jacket and ran out of the room.