Roman instinctively tucked his head further into his body upon hearing bullets fired from their respective vessels. "Fuck," he seethed, pushing another magazine into the grip until he heard it click.
He got off of his knees and moved along the fallen-over lockers staying as low to the ground as possible. The second round of explosives went off, and all Roman could think about when the ringing was reverberating in his ears was that those explosives were meant to go off at 3:50. Roman reached for his scroll, he had to tell Neo, but he just kept patting his pocket until he realized that it wasn't in his pocket. Did he drop it? Shit.
Neo will figure it out. He was supposed to check in a few minutes ago, so she will know that something went wrong. Roman peeked out from behind debris to analyze the situation. Roman counted the people on his team who were trained to the point of being able to handle a situation like this. There were about fourteen mercenaries on this job. The last five were specialists meant to deal with the rigging of explosives. Roman didn't know where they were. When they heard the gunshots, everyone on his team had scrambled to cover without regard for anyone else.
Roman caught a glimpse of a few of their attackers as they advanced into the room. He watched the way they moved, the way they knew where to go without saying a word to each other.
Mercenaries. Who the hell hired mercenaries?
Shit. They would have to throw the objective. Roman scanned the far side of the room for an exit. Looking over the large pile of safety deposit boxes discarded on the basement floor, he found the outline of a door. There wasn't any cover from where he was to all the way over there.
Roman counted to three, then bolted off the ground, moving as quickly as he could to the other side. A sudden, splitting pain ripped through his shoulder, sharp throbbing tearing through his conscious ability to think straight. If Roman could have run any faster, he did, but having to open the door with his left hand slowed him down. He swung the door open as another bullet grazed his thigh. He cried out, but his own screams were drowned out by the constant yet inconsistent chatter of gunfire. The door closed on its own as Roman took to a nearby chair and propped it under the door handle.
Roman turned to face his new surroundings: a dining room with vaulted ceilings and a long, polished table. Kitchen, dining room…what was next to the bank? Roman strangely realized that he could no longer hear a single thing when he closed the door. The room was soundproof. Where was he?
Roman knew that something came out the front of his chest, but what happened in the back to make it this painful? He twisted his body and pulled his shoulder forward, noticing a shimmer among the gore.
"Oh, you've gotta be fucking kidding me," Roman muttered. "Shrapnel bullets?" They really want to kill someone tonight.
Roman looked around the room and scanned for anything that might serve as a bandage or something to that effect. A napkin lying on the table might have helped, but there was nothing to keep pressure on the wound. In the back of his mind, Roman joked about picking up a knife and using that to cauterize the wound, but then Roman realized he didn't have anything in the near vicinity. He looked down and saw the blood pouring down his leg, coming from the wound on his thigh. Weird, he hardly felt it. Roman knew how to read the signs.
He dove to the cabinets, looking for a napkin he could tie around his leg and something that could stop his shoulder from bleeding. Roman watched the blood drip into the crook of his arm. Knife. Why did that idea stick out to him? Roman looked back to the table where a knife hung out over the edge, casting a shadow on the tablecloth.
That's it.
He jumped up and stumbled over, taking the knife in his hands. He estimated a sizeable chunk of fabric and started shredding it with the knife in his hand. His vision brightened to the point that everything was an annoyance. The black was too black, and the red was too fucking red. Everything that he saw, that he felt, that he heard made him want to throw up.
When the strip of tablecloth finally came off, he frantically wrapped it around his thigh. Now that he thought about it, his shoulder was probably bleeding much more than his thigh, but he was already tying the knot, and he probably would not be able to keep a bandage on it if he wasn't holding it on there. He snatched a napkin off the table and pressed it to the wound just under his clavicle, grunting from the pain.
Shakily, he stood up, loosely holding the knife's handle between his fingers. He felt fine enough to walk, but his head wasn't keeping track of where the floor was, it was just focusing on keeping him up. Man, he really needed a doctor.
Down the hall, he heard a door creaking loudly as it opened and closed, followed by hushed footsteps. He couldn't see anyone, but he heard those footsteps getting louder. Roman slid his feet across the door and hid behind the wall, waiting for whomever to come around that corner.
The footsteps drew closer, and Roman readied himself to attack right when he saw something. The silver end of a gun appeared, triggering Roman to spring into action. He grabbed his wrist, pulling him forward as Roman jumped on him and pinned his arms above his head.
He looked down to see who he was dealing with. It wasn't a he.
Roman growled under his breath. "Hello, Red."
Her face flushed, she leveled his gaze with hers. Her mouth twitched as she tried to find words. She couldn't seem to settle on one word. Under his hand, hers tried to slip out from under. Roman was hardly paying attention—he was having the strangest sense of déjà vu. Have they met before? Red's hand slipped out from under Roman's, and Roman grabbed her wrist in preparation to break it, but he noticed something on her finger. Neo's ring.
