As soon as Don saw pencil touch paper, he launched himself across the garage's open space. Left hand in left hand, right hand—once again, his clever Quantico move was going to come up a little short, more of a controlled fall than anything else. His vision had cleared while he stood against the wall but his sudden jump across the garage made him so dizzy he do little more than slam into Padgett and try to pin him down. The student sprawled across the desk under Don's weight and his knife went skittering into the corner. Charlie snatched the gun out of reach. Don managed to latch the cuffs onto Padgett's left hand, but couldn't grab his flailing right arm. The free cuff swung wildly until Charlie grabbed it and snapped it onto the first fixed object he could find: a drawer pull on his side of the desk.
Padgett howled, flinging Don off him, wrenching the drawer to the edge of its rollers. Don staggered backwards in a spray of scrap paper and chalk, convinced that Padgett would tear the desk to pieces. Somehow, amazingly, it held against Padgett and his kicking, screaming fury. Don and Charlie stood, panting, on either side of the desk with Padgett between them until he'd finally exhausted himself into a twitching, mumbling heap.
Don caught his breath and said the first thing that came to his mind: "That's a hell of a desk." Not some piece of IKEA crap, he thought irrelevantly, unable to process anything more significant. It was probably a cast-off from the city planning office, one of those metal and wood office tanks that were supposed to protect you during Civil Defense drills back in the day. Dad must have brought it home when it became evident that no student desk could hold up to the abuse Charlie put it through. Which reminded him, where was Dad?
"Don?" Charlie looked rumpled and disoriented, as though he'd just woken up. "I don't— " He held out Don's gun, blinking as though he were surprised to find it in his hand. "I don't want this." Don moved to take it from him, forcing his mind to move forward. There was something he should ask Charlie, a question that had been on the tip of his tongue. He blinked away the starbursts of blackness on the edges of his vision, tried to focus on his brother. Charlie was holding his torn right arm against his chest like a bird with a broken wing. Dominant hand defensive wounds, said Don's inner agent; he could see a bone gleaming wetly and suddenly he remembered: "Hey, where's…."
Don didn't have to finish the question: he was standing close enough to see over the desk, now, to see what Charlie had kept looking for earlier. Not an exit.
Alan was crumpled in the back of the garage, beneath a makeshift fort of blackboards. He looked gray; Don thought for a minute that, like everything else in here, he'd been covered by a thin coat of chalk dust. Except for his shirtfront, which was liquid and red.
Don couldn't tell if the wound was deep enough to suck. He couldn't hear over the renewed rushing in his ears; it sounded like someone had opened the taps to put out the flames in his head. Felt like he was underwater, too: everything going dim and blurry. He took a disoriented step towards his father, but he was moving through something thicker than air. He lurched sideways, plowing into Charlie instead of going forward. How had Charlie gotten here? Don tried to strand up straight: he was too heavy for his brother to support.
Charlie was saying something. Don could see his lips moving, but he knew that if he tried to respond, he would get a mouthful of water. And then he would drown. Besides, it was just too hard to focus on Charlie's pale and anxious face. Very dizzy. He thought he would close his eyes for just a minute, but then he found they wouldn't open again. Didn't matter; if he held on long enough, he would just float to the surface. Floating felt like sinking, though, like sinking down to the floor. That happened in water, sometimes: you got disoriented. He remembered swimming in the ocean. Don felt fingers on his throat, undoing the collar button, feeling for a pulse, cradling his head. He knew they were Charlie's hands because they were gentle and shaking so fiercely.
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