-

Chapter 13.

-

Zhen's POV.

-

He looked at me as if I had betrayed him.

There was really nothing between us to begin with anyway, was there? Yet somehow, I couldn't help feeling an enormous amount of guilt. I would avoid his dejected gaze with every breath in me. I knew if I just looked at him once, just once, and I would surely burst out into tears. It was a torturous act, this thing called love. I was finally feeling the real version of it, heartbreak and all.

But the days went on and he wouldn't stop. I could feel his gaze always on me, sometimes even when he wasn't even there. Again, that had to have been the guilt thinking for me.

But I kept reminding myself it was the right thing to do and that fact was my sole comfort to lean on. It was wrong to lead him on for a relationship that could never be. Which was exactly what confused me so, as to why denying it felt so wrong.

Then when Lucas called my cell phone and asked for Declan, I lost it completely. I couldn't speak to save my life. A knot appeared in my throat and I could only choke on my words. Whatever did she have to say to Declan?

Thankfully, Declan stepped up to the speaker and took over, cool and collected as he always was.

"I'm here, Lucas," he said in his wonderful Irish accent. I saw his Adam's apple rise and fall as he gulped back the nervousness a second ago I had been so sure was nonexistent.

"Ah! Gormley, my dear!" she said as if they were old friends. "How have you been? Anyway, listen: I like you, plain and simple. So I'm going to give you a chance to save your own life. I want you to step down from the IMF."

"What?" Declan said in surprise.

"Oh, it's not so bad; I've done it before. Find yourself a lady friend, settle down somewhere and have a real human life. Maybe nab that Chinese number and save her life too by dragging her with you."

I spied Luther glance at me for a reaction, but I kept my face expressionless. How this woman knew what was going on between Declan and I was beyond me.

"I don't see why I have to," Declan countered. He was fishing, humoring her, which was smart of him.

"If you don't step down, you're just asking to die. Just like all of your friends. They're going to die too. Now, I'm asking you, Declan: are you going to resign or are you not? And you better answer fast, that nerve gas sure spreads quick and you know how I'm a sucker for a handsome face like yours."

My heart skipped a beat at her words and from the look on everyone else's faces they were just as surprised. I now realized this was her plan all along. The shooting, the phone call… it was just to keep us here so she could let whatever gas spread and exterminate us all. We could only wonder how much time we had left.

"Yes, clever little twit, aren't I?" she boasted to Declan as everyone, including me, suddenly began to scramble around gathering papers and files to evacuate. Luther rushed to a room with an intercom, to warn others in the large building.

"A tracer program for this call won't do you much good if you're dead, will it?" Lucas went on.

Declan was in shock, poor guy, and he was the only one who stood still in the entire room.

Then I noticed he wasn't in shock; in fact, his mind was still on the job! He wasn't staring off into space like I had assumed, he was staring at the last few seconds counting down from the tracer program to get her location.

That's when I saw it. The gas starting to drift into through the vents; an ugly yellow gas that spread quickly like she had promised. Luther tossed me one of those cardboard doctors masks and we fought our way through the smoky room to the emergency exit as the alarm blared above us and the red alert lights streaked through the fog.

Oddly enough, I looked around for Declan as we headed for the exit, and saw that he wasn't among us. Squinting through the yellow haze, I saw that he was still near the phone, waiting for the pinpoint of the location to print. He held a mask up to cover his face, but that wouldn't do him much good if he waited any longer.

"Declan!" I yelled to him. "Come on!"

Oh, why did I risk my life by lingering? What was making me feel I had to wait for him to make sure he followed?

"California!" he called back. "She's in California!"

"That doesn't matter now, Declan," I tried to persuade him. "Forget her!"

But he wouldn't move until he knew where in California Lucas was. The gas was so thick now I could barely see him. I coughed a bit even through the cardboard covering. We weren't going to last.

"Zhen, what the hell are you waiting for?" Charles yelled to me. "Get out of here!"

"Declan, please!" I insisted, my tone resorting to begging. "Come on!"

Then I could make out Declan through the mist, grabbing the paper with the final location and running toward me. I felt his arm go around me, grabbing me around the ribs and practically dragging me away. I didn't even realize that my legs had failed me and I had fallen to my knees.

Soon we made it through the hospital chamber doors and had locked ourselves inside. Charles, Luther, Bobbie, Conroy, and a couple doctors and nurses were all safely around too. They had thought like we had: the nearest door to the outside was too far away, so thus our next best bet was inside the sealed hospital wing, where air came from a shaft that filtered air directly from the outdoors, making sure that the patients had nice purified air to recuperate on.

"My lungs," I moaned, holding my gut like someone had lassoed me around my middle and every step was another pull at my stomach's expense. I only coughed, feeling heavy and limp all over. The gas must have spread more rapidly over me than it had to Declan, considering I was smaller in size.

Declan tenderly laid me on a hospital bed in one of the hospital rooms and watched as the doctors quickly got to work on me, sticking a plastic oxygen mask to force my breathing.

"She's gonna live, right?" Declan asked them in a small voice.

The doctor's didn't quite know what to tell him, which scared me. We didn't even know what this gas was, how it worked, or what it was even supposed to do… besides kill us, that is.

They tried to get Declan on a bed too, but he wouldn't have it, muttering something about 'spending too much time in hospitals lately'. I just knew it was because he didn't like doctors and chuckled to myself at the memory of when I had found that out.

But soon, Declan too, helped himself to the bed beside me, having complaints about his head feeling funny. Whatever this gas was, it was ailing us bad. As time rolled on, our conditions only seemed to worsen and the few doctors we had were powerless on how to aid us.

I felt relieved at the report that we were seemingly the only ones really affected by the gas, probably because we had insisted on staying behind longer than Luther and the others.

Declan laid in the bed next to me, but I put up my practiced defense outside and again pretended like he didn't exist. I just concentrated on the ceiling like the meaning of the universe was hidden in the depths of the white spackle.

Everyone soon began to realize that we were probably going to be in these isolated chambers for a good long time. At the very least twenty-four hours or until the air monitor decided the dangerous fumes had cleared out enough outside. We didn't know how long that would take and if our conditions took a turn for the worse, Declan and I were in a word: screwed. Also, we could only hope that our other coworkers and superiors had made it out alive as well.

It was then I noticed that through all of this, Declan was staring at me. Again. Through all of our worries that could very easily plague our thoughts, especially that of not knowing if he and I were going to last the night… and he was spending his precious last moments staring… at me.

Well, what could one do… except stare right back?

I turned on my side and peered right back into those liquid eyes, now so light in color they almost seemed white from the life that was leaving them. We had been through so much together, Declan and I, and in my own precious could-be last moments all I could think about was why the hell I hadn't kissed him that day.

Suddenly things like the career and the mission seemed miniscule compared to what I had sacrificed to keep it. I began to think that my priorities were wildly out of sorts. What was the use of being a mission machine to a company that will never love you back? When it came down to it, it was only a job, a way to make money so that you could eat and have a roof over your head. It couldn't be your life, unless you wanted to only live half alive… Unless you wished to be a robot and not truly like a human being was meant to live.

All of those moments I had wasted holding back when I could have been spending them with him. For what? Nothing left in my hands that really mattered… and an even emptier heart.

At that moment, I considered my life sincerely, completely and utterly wasted.

And then he smiled at me. Declan bared those lovely rows of pearly whites and grinned broadly in my direction. It was intoxicating.

"What?" I said to him a little harsher than I had meant to.

"You waited," he explained blatantly, as a statement of a particularly glorious revelation that he was willing to share with me. I found it amusing of his choice of words, being so vague that no one would truly find the meaning behind them save for us. All he was trying to say was that he knew. He knew that I had risked my life only to make sure he made it out safe.

As such, I could not find any words to reply.

-

Go, Flamingmushrooms! Do your thing.
Signed,
--RedRogue