Chapter Eleven: The Stronghold
(Author's Note: It does get violent in this chapter, not domestic violence, but of course, Victor involved violence.)
The newspapers over the past few weeks had held varying amounts of strange occurrences, even for Gotham. First the Wayne Murders, then a couple of crazy loons went around snatching children. Of course Hestia couldn't forget the Balloon Man, and to follow that end up, the deaths of Gotham City Councilmen placed the city on edge. She also found that her office was much busier these days with checkups and parents wanting their children to be all caught up on their shots. She also began to receive more of Falcone's men over late nights, and so she was starting to get worn down. Victor came around every few days or so to collect inventory and to check up on the status of some of Falcone's men.
Their relationship was a strange one for her, given that they never talked on the phone, and he always seemed to appear at random times. She thought of him as she scrubbed her hands to attend to a late night visitor. One of Falcone's men approached her. "You might wanna be careful, this guy seems strange."
Hestia pulled nitrile gloves over her fingers before making eye contact with him. "That is what I have you guys for, isn't? Just… be prepared I suppose." As she entered the room, she could tell what the man had attempted to warn her about. This gentleman was pacing the room, but he was obviously bleeding profusely from somewhere. He was muttering something as he searched through cabinets, his patience wearing thin. "Sir? I am going to need you to sit down, please. That way I can examine you."
She eyed a nurse on the other side of the corner as she slowly approached the man. She reached out to grab his shoulder and the next few moments were a whirlwind in her little operating room. The crazed patient had turned his full attention to her, and before her hand made complete contact with her, he snatched it. Hestia let out a slight whimper at the pressure now clamping down upon her wrist. He had pulled her closer, his voice reeking of spoiled milk. "More."
She flailed in the air as he easily lifted her feet from the ground, and she began to kick wildly to escape his grasp. The nurse behind him attempted to subdue him by striking the back of his head with a surgical tool tray, but the patient responded by tossing Hestia into some of the cabinets against the wall. Her head made contact with the handle of one of the cabinets, causing her eyes to water, and she was quickly trying to scramble to her feet. She heard a sickening snapping noise next to her and the nurse was dropped to the ground, his voice gurgling as he was more than likely suffering a possible punctured lung. "Help!" Hestia finally managed to call out as she attempted to crawl towards the door.
One of Falcone's men entered the room with his gun drawn, but the patient had tossed something at him, causing the man to lose consciousness. Hestia began to panic as she finally scrambled out of the door. She ran to the closest wall to her and pulled a fire alarm as she looked for a place to hide. The crazy man came out of the room yelling incoherent sentences except for the word "more." He caught a hold of the tail end of her jacket and began to pull her back towards him, so she quickly unbuttoned it and slipped back down onto the floor.
The remainder of Falcone's men had exited the break room at the commotion, obviously annoyed that their card game had to come to an end. "Run! Or shoot him! Do something!" Hestia panicked as she tried to regain her footing again. The men took a look at her, and then at the rather large man as he was causing damage to some of the furniture dotting the hallway. They then ran back into the breakroom and she heard the door slam and the lock turn. "You cowards!" She had finally managed to brace herself against the wall nearby, but she knew she had to get away from this man. The fire alarm blared through her aching head as she scrambled around the corner into the waiting room.
She shook the front door and remembered that the keys to open this door were in her jacket in the hallway. She looked around, her breath shaky and her head starting to feel heavy. She touched the side of her head and found blood at the end of her fingertips as she examined them. She removed her dress shirt to place it tightly over her wound, and noticed bruising on her arm and leg from the side that had hit the cabinet. How the hell had he thrown her that hard? She stumbled towards the front desk and climbed into the window behind it. This led to their records room, and from there, she could at least get out closer to the break room. She heard the man tossing furniture in the waiting room, so she didn't even bother with closing the metal grating to protect the records room.
Once she was out in the hallway, she went straight for the break room door, her fists pounding on the door. "Let me in, you assholes! Please! You have guns!"
"That guy is fucking crazy!"
She continued pounding on the door, her knees shaking beneath her as she heard the man losing his attention with the furniture a few rooms over. "Open the fucking door! I swear to God if I die out here, you guys will regret it!" Her knuckled were beginning to bleed as she realized that she was no longer knocking at the door, but punching it. She was desperate. Her heart almost stopped as she heard the silence in the other room, and so she turned to lock eyes with the rampaging patient as he entered the hall. She began to claw at the door. There was no way she could make it down to the next room before that thing caught up with her. "Please, open the fucking door!" Her voice was breaking as she began to sob, her nails breaking against the steel door. "Please, you fucking cowards!"
She could hear the large thumping echoing off the halls as the patient charged her, and she dropped to the floor as her hands wrapped over her head to at least attempt to protect herself. Her whole body started to feel numb as the adrenaline coursed through her, and she began to wish she had gone out with her friends this evening. Just as the man approached her, a loud clap shot through the hall, and then two more. The man fell to the ground before her, and she peeked through her fingers as he started to…crumble? "What the fuck?" She muttered as she heard a new set of footprints behind her.
She was grasped in a concerned manner, and soon hands were on her face to make her look at the newcomer. "Victor." She let her head rest into his palms as he examined her.
"Where are your guards?" His voice was demanding, and she could feel the anger seeping from him.
She didn't have to answer as he glanced up. His eyes took in the sight of her bloody handprints around the door, a pair of them sliding down the door as she had kneeled down. "They wouldn't help." She hiccupped, her voice still shaking. Her shirt had fallen to the floor during her panic, and her white tank top was soaked in blood. A few more men came down the hall from the direction of her home, along with three women dressed in very extreme clothing. "How did you know to come?"
"The company alerts myself and Falcone if the alarm is tripped. There should be an ambulance soon, and probably cops." He had left her on the floor, his hands digging into one of his pockets. He jammed a key into the break room lock and threw the door open. Two of the women from the hall followed Victor in, and soon the four other guards were dragged into the hallway. Victor kicked the back of the knees of the man he drug out. "You look at what you did." He snarled as he grabbed the man's hair, his gun jamming into the man's temple. "Do you see it?"
"Zsasz, you should have saw that thing! It was fucking crazy! We didn't even think it would do anything if we shot it! We didn't mean to lock her out, we swear." The man was now pleading as Victor bounced his head off the wall a few times.
Hestia watched carefully as the man's head smacked against the wall until the side of his head was bleeding much like her own. She moved her eyes towards Victor's, and she could see the enjoyment in them. She waited until he stopped, leaving the man to fall to the ground, obviously dazed. Victor kneeled down to place two of his fingers under Hestia's chin. He looked carefully into her eyes. "What shall I do with these cowards, Hestia? I will offer your advice to Don Falcone when he decides how they will be punished."
The young doctor moved her eyes over each of the four men. She made her face as tough as she could before answering. "Kill them."
Victor's lips curled into a grin. He was surprised by her answer, but it was a nice surprise for him. He placed his forehead against her own before turning to his assistants. "I will call Don Falcone and we shall discuss what to do with them."
"That won't be necessary Victor. I came to make sure everything was going alright. And to—" Falcone's eyes looked down the hallway. "Assess the damage of the clinic."
"Sir, it could have been dangerous for you to come."
"I appreciate your concern Victor, but this is one of my establishments, and so I had to come make sure it was still in proper order. There is a car outside to take Dr. Zaqar to the hospital. I have also made arrangements for a crew to come clean up any messes. I will contact the contractors in the morning." Falcone had made his way down the hallway, and he looked down at Hestia, his hand reaching down to touch the top of her head. "I apologize for the cowardice actions of these boys tonight. I placed them here to protect you, and now I see that my choices for your guard were incorrect. I didn't get to hear your answer to Victor's question. So, how would you like this handled."
Hestia looked up towards the older gentleman and her eyes grew dark as her brows dipped towards her nose. "I told Mr. Zsasz that he should kill them. If they weren't willing to protect me, how could they ever serve you with loyalty and respect? They couldn't even follow your orders to assist me and to offer protection if need be." She touched her wounded head again and winced from moving her arm.
The Don's experienced eyes moved over towards Victor's eager face. While Zsasz was a very calm, meticulous killer, Falcone could still catch glimmers of childlike expressions in his face. He had his moments of candid innocence. It was the reason Falcone took him in in the first place. As much as he tried to keep others from recognizing it, Victor Zsasz was like a surrogate son to him. Even in his violent nature. He continued his gaze over the faces of the terrified men. "What did they do instead of assisting you, Dr. Zaqar?"
She cleared her throat and focused her gaze back on the Don as she collected her thoughts. "That man attacked me down the hall, in the operating room. I had only tried to calm him, but he threw me against the cabinets and so I started to leave the room. He killed one of my nurses and knocked out the other guard. He was going to try and shoot the man, but he never got a chance. So I pulled the fire alarm in the hallway and then I called out for help, and they came out of the break room, took one look at what was going on, and they ran right back in. I tried to crawl away, and the patient grabbed my jacket, so I slipped out of it and went in the waiting room, except I couldn't get through that door because my keys were in my jacket in the hall, so I went into the records room and came back out into the hallway and started pounding on the door." She paused to hold her bloodied and bruised hands up for the Don to inspect. "I begged them to open the door, and I told them that that thing was going to kill me if they didn't help me. Instead of helping they simply asked if I saw how fucking crazy that guy looked. After that, they didn't answer me, so I started clawing at the door."
Victor's jaw was tightening and untightening as she recalled a brief summary of the night's events. He was boiling under his skin, and he had to at least be able to give these assholes some sort of discipline. He was careful not to display affection towards her in front of his boss, but his hands ached to make some of her pain go away. He looked expectantly up at his boss, his mind reeling with different ways to torture the guards before he would kill them. "Victor," the older gentleman spoke, his voice low, "you can do what you like to those three, but if she is willing for their lives to be taken, she must also take one herself."
The trained assassin removed one of his pistols from its holster and he carefully held it out to her. Hestia took the cold steel between her fingers and looked at the men. How could she decide which to kill? Her eyes glanced up to the Don as her body ached, and she simply wanted to get it over with so that she could go get some care and some proper rest. "Which one of you locked the door one me?" The men didn't speak, but they betrayed the culprit as two of them glanced to the man in the middle, and his eyes looked straight to the floor. She stood up as well as she could before stumbling towards him. He refused to look her in the eyes, as she placed the barrel of the gun against his forehead. "A coward even in death." She spoke as she gently pulled the trigger. The clap echoed through the hall again as his body thumped to the floor.
His head left a mess against the hallway floor as some of his blood splattered up Hestia's sleeve, with only a few drops reaching up to her neck and face. "May I go to the hospital now? I need to make sure I am not severely hurt."
Victor joined her side and took his gun away before placing it in its holster. His eyes burned into the side of her head. Where had this sudden darkness come from? He felt a surprise creep back up into him as Hestia turned towards their boss. "Of course Hestia. Make sure you are prepared to speak to the police, they'll probably meet you at the hospital. Make sure you leave out certain details."
Hestia nodded as she began to limp down the hall towards her housing unit. She could feel Victor's gaze still on her as she continued to stumble down the hall and out towards the car parked close to her front door. She made sure to keep herself awake in the back seat of the car as it took corners sharply to get her to the ER quickly. Once there, a woman came out with a wheelchair, the red emergency sign reflecting off of her blonde hair. Hestia calmly lowered herself into the wheelchair and she was taken into the emergency room for evaluation. She wouldn't get much rest that night, however, given the fact that the hospital had their fair share of aggressive patients. In the morning news, she would discover that she had met a user of Viper, some sort of obscene street drug.