I tackled the white-coated bit-er-bad woman, and the gun in her hand that was pressed way too close Ade's head went flying.
Don't ask for the physics of how that worked. What do I look like to you, a physics professor? Try again.
After Ade was safer, I gave a good solid punch to Dr. Blonde's nose and broke it. She cried out after her senses caught up to her and she covered her nose. She was pretty sad for a bad guy, laying there almost in the fetal position. Was that it?
All of this fuss and pain and danger for a total let down of an ending?
Peter and Neal and a bunch of feds were right around the corner just staring at me. Ade was dazed, but tears pricked his eyes as he looked at me. What had they done to him?
For a second, I didn't even know what to do. I was still hopped up on adrenaline and had nowhere to send it. It seemed like everything was just…over.
Then Ade launched himself at me, tackling me with a hug and I held him close. He was the only family I had left, and I almost lost him. The tension in my body slowly melted, and I felt his tears soak my jacket. My vision got bleary, and I knew he wasn't the only one crying.
I'll bet you thought it was over, right? Everyone that mattered was okay, and the bad guys were about to be cuffed by the good guys. It makes sense, doesn't it? Except my life is a little too crappy for it to be that easy.
Dr. Blonde recovered and managed to smirk at us, making my birdie senses tingle. (See what I did there? Birdie senses, get it? I'm hilarious!)
Erasers came out from behind door number one and door number two, attacking the Feds and attacking Ade and I. Business as usual.
I kept a tight hold on Ade with one hand, picking up Dr. Blonde by the scruff of her lab coat and dragging her along. I kicked the gun forward for good measure, escaping behind door number three, the only one not bustling with erasers.
Gently but firmly pressing Ade into the corner of the room, I picked up the gun and tossed Dr. Blonde onto the floor. "Get up," I commanded her, my voice steely.
She did as she was told, turning around and sitting up, eyes trained on the weapon she had been holding only moments ago.
"Listen closely," I said, cocking the hammer of the gun, "You are going to call off your erasers and let the Feds take you in, or I'm going to pull this trigger. Got it?"
I was the one holding the gun, but Dr. Blonde was suddenly smiling like it was a banana in my hand instead.
"I don't know how much you know of history my dear, but were you ever taught what mutually assured destruction was," she asked in a know-it-all tone. She was so smug it made me all the angrier.
It was a little fuzzy after years of disuse, but I did remember the history lessons on the Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union were at war, only they couldn't attack each other directly. If one country attacked the other, things would quickly lead to nuclear weapons being used. No matter who fired the first shot, most of civilization would be vaporized. The knowledge of the outcome stopped both sides from firing.
Why on earth did she ask about that?
Apparently, my silence displeased her, because she gave up waiting for my response and continued, "What we have here is the same thing. If you fire, then I can't stop the erasers and the erasers will beat you and everyone else. If I give the command to retreat, then I have no protection from you."
I was going to disagree with her definition of mutually assured destruction considering that in about another five minutes she would win either way. But then she said, "There is a way for both of us to come out of this alive. Help me get out of the building past the Feds, and I'll call off all attempts of finding you. Win, win."
"Fine," I said past grit teeth, my mind whirling to come up with a plan. Peter and Neal and the rest of the Feds were in danger, the longer I messed around with Dr. Blonde, the greater the chance they would get hurt. Sure, they were trained and had weapons, (maybe not Neal though), but the numbers game was not in their favor in close quarters. They would be overrun soon.
I knew they were all mostly okay for now by the sounds of snarls, howls, and gunfire outside our door. But time was running out.
If I played along with the white-coat, maybe I could buy them some time. Or save them. Again. But who's counting?
Blondie grinned, "Lower the gun and open the door so I can give them orders."
Did she think I was stupid or something?
"How about I open the door a crack, you give them the order, and I keep this gun trained on you, so you don't get any ideas of double-crossing me?"
Her grinned microscopically faltered, but she nodded.
I waved Blondie over beside me with the gun and she complied. Then I braced myself, looked over at Ade to make sure he was ready, and then cracked the door.
"Experiments," Blondie said in a loud voice, projecting over the sounds of the fight, "Retreat!"
And they did. Mostly.
A few seemed too far lost in bloodlust to listen or obey. A few turned toward the sound of her voice and charged our door. The rest went back the way they came.
I slammed the door and fumbled with the lock, starting to slide it in place when Dr. Blonde attacked me to buy her little furry friends some time.
She had slapped my hand away and tried to choke me from behind. I couldn't exactly flip myself around to slam her into the wall without letting the furry friends in, so I dug in my heels and worked on the lock.
Ade hit her in the neck, stunning her enough that he could flip her onto the floor, hard. I was fine, angry as heck, but fine.
A few seconds was all that it took for those three things to happen: first, Blondie attacks me, then Ade gets her, and last, I fail to lock the door.
The door and I get really, really close as my aforementioned furry friends remove the door from its hinges and slam it (and me) into the wall. The door could have at least offered to take me to dinner first.
As my eyes danced in my skull, I wondered how much good that stupid lock would have been anyway.
Hey, at least now Peter and Neal were safer. A couple furries fewer after them now.
As the Erasers lunged for Ade, I propelled myself out of the carter in the wall and used the door like a battering ram. I went right through two Erasers and landed on a third. The first two were stunned but coming around, the third tried to get ahold of me, and the other two in the room went back-to-back to face both Ade and I.
Dr. Blonde climbed to her feet, a huge smile plastered on her face. I really wanted to punch that face again.
"I didn't expect that to work half as well as it did," she said, "I had no idea so many of them would listen."
I kind of knew white coats were crazy, (hence why I call them mad scientists), but this chick was legitimately insane.
"And what if they kill you," I asked the obvious question.
"They won't," she said confidently, but after a pause felt the need to add, "but even if they did, they would ensure you don't make it out of here alive."
I grit my teeth again, briefly wondering if I would wear them down to nubs if I kept that habit up. Oh well, just another thing to worry about later.
Then King Henry popped out of the vent. His arrival was announced by the screen clattering to the ground. Huh, I wonder if he picked the name King Henry just so people would have to say weird sentences like that.
"Hey," he said, "I have some good news."
Everyone in the room kind of froze. Then liberated experiments poured from the vent after King Henry landed on the ground. They swarmed on the Erasers, pinning them to the ground and knocking them out. They exited the door and jumped into the fray outside.
King Henry walked up to me, a big grin on his face, "Some of us were talking and decided if we all rose up and fought, we would get out of here a lot faster and on our own terms. So we tracked down as many of the intelligent ones and grouped together."
I nodded, a little awed by them.
"And we wanted to thank you," he added, "for freeing us and inspiring us."
"You're welcome," I grinned, giving him a fist bump when he raised his fist.
"Live free," he said as a farewell, ducking out to join the others.
"Live free," I called out after him, smiling. It was going to be okay after all.
The clicking sound of a gun jamming went off and my smile disappeared. Dr. Blonde was clearly an intelligent scientist, but she was also not clearly skilled with guns. She frantically tugged at the parts of gun as I stalked over to her, red filling my vision again.
I'd had it. I'd been on an emotional roller coaster from hades today and I was done. I yanked the gun out of her hand and cleared it like a pro, years of not handling a gun evaporating like water.
I was taught from an early age to respect guns. I was taught they could kill if used wrong, whether misused by ignorance or misused by evil. Guns didn't kill people I was told, people kill people whether they use a gun to do it, a knife, or a car.
I pointed the gun at her face and thought about all those lessons, even as the anger in my veins and the red in my eyes made me itchy to pull the trigger.
Could I take her life? Could I be the person who kills a person? It wasn't self-defense, not anymore. It would be cold-blooded murder. I would be a murderer.
But I just wanted all of this to be over. If I pulled the trigger now, if I killed her, one more part of this whole awful thing would be over. She would never hurt me or another human being or animal again.
My hand didn't shake. My eyes were cold and hard. Dr. Blonde didn't beg. Maybe she felt there was no point. But Blondie was crying, silently. Tears leaving her frightened eyes and traveling down her face and neck to wet her collar. The collar of a white lab coat.
My finger tightened on the trigger by a hair. If I put any more pressure on the trigger, there would be a new hole in her face.
My hand jerked right, and my finger pulled harder.
A deafening shot rang out and the doctor flinched.
My hand jerked left and my finger squeezed again, another shot ringing and making the doctor flinch again.
I pistol whipped her as she stared up at me, terror dancing in her eyes as dust filled the air from the two bullet holes on either side of her head.
As she lay unconscious, I disassembled the gun into harmless pieces, thumbing each bullet left in the clip onto the floor around her, her life safe from me, for today.
I wasn't a cold-blooded killer, not today. Hopefully I never will be. Hopefully I'll never have to take a life, ever, not even in self-defense.
