Thank you all for the great feedback from last chapter. This one is action-y. I don't normally write anything past fluff, but I just loved writing this one - so let me know what you think?
Love you guys!
She'd never really liked hospitals.
She had brief, hazy memories of visiting them a lot when she was younger and her father had been involved in a car accident, breaking his neck. He'd had to remain under observation for a long time whilst the hospital used weights to ensure his bones grew back in the correct way and his spinal cord remained intact.
The corridors had been just as white, just as cold, just as nerve-wracking.
But definitely not as quiet.
It was eerie, stepping cautiously and quietly through the empty corridors, one incredibly slow step at a time.
Becker had told her they were going to take it slow. He insisted on going first round every corner - which she wasn't dumb enough to argue with - rifle EMD shouldered at the ready, military crouch perfected, movements timed and judged exactly to the millisecond.
She followed, stepping somewhat clumsily, but slowly, her head whipping from side to side or back down the corridors at every faint noise, clutching the small EMD in her hands for dear life.
Every patient from floors seven to nine had been evacuated - none of them were in critical condition - so that left them with three completely huge, completely empty floors to cover, looking for the anomaly.
They'd had to take the stairs - the lift wasn't safe, and even if it had been security had shut them down just in case.
"Stop," Becker whispered suddenly, firmly, his left hand coming up to signal his words.
Jess stopped immediately, understanding that this was his domain, his area of expertise. If she failed to listen, it could be more than her own life that she risked.
They came to a stop at the corner of a crossroads which led to an open area of corridor where the nurse's station was. Leaning on the wall to their right, Becker had surveyed the left corridor and apparently deemed it safe to continue on, and the right seemed to be posing no problem either.
But Jess didn't have to be a trained solider to realise the problem.
There was a noise coming from behind the curved desk: a grunting, snorting, scavenging noise which made the hairs on the back of Jess's neck stand on end. The animal - because it was definitely an animal - snorted again, and then a large reptilian-like tale darted out over the desk, sweeping a pile of paperwork onto the floor in one powerful movement.
Jess's heart hammered so hard in her chest she was afraid it could hear her. After all, the creature was only three meters away, at best.
Becker swallowed, and turned slightly to stare at her through the gloom. He didn't speak, or move, or try to push her back, he simply gave her one piercing look that said it all: don't do anything unless I tell you to. Don't panic. Don't make a sound.
Jess was more than happy to oblige.
As the creature grunted again, lifting its head in a sharp motion which suggested it had evidently heard, smelt or sensed something, Jess tried to be less aware of her incredibly slow breathing. Every exhale sounded a thousand times louder in the dense hospital.
The creature was like a bird crossed with a Velociraptor - the face was birdlike, with a kind of savage beak, but as it opened its mouth to snap at the light bulb on the wall in front of it, Jess was treated to the terrifying sight of its row of sharp, deadly teeth.
She was incredibly glad Becker was with her.
He'd noticed something was wrong halfway down the corridor, she'd noticed once they'd reached the end - in simple, she would have noticed too late, the clacking of her heels would have given her away because she just knew she would have walked too quickly. She would probably be dead by now if it wasn't for him. Or running for her life.
And yes, she had thought about taking her shoes off, but they were relatively quiet for heels, the grip on the bottom creating a muffled effect, and if she had to run, she could do it a hundred times better in heels than in tights, or bare feet (or trainers for that matter - she found balance easier on her tiptoes). Becker had agreed - no sense in taking them off if they were going to be practically crawling through the hospital anyway, and hopefully not encountering any creatures.
Since when did anything at the ARC go to plan?
Actually, since when did they ever have plans?
The creature, finished with the apparently unappetising light bulb, sniffed again, and its head jerked to the right, staring down at the corridor to their right - if it had looked over half a meter more, it would have seen them.
Becker, finally making a decision, ushered her back down the corridor slowly, and into the first room which joined the corridor.
He opened it extremely carefully - which also meant painfully slowly for Jess because she knew that whilst he was occupied, it was her job to be the lookout - and let her in first so that he could close it just as quietly behind them.
The room was tiny - hardly the size of Lester's office - but there was enough room for one bed, and a chair for a visitor.
Jess made to turn the light on, but Becker's deathly quiet "No" stopped her.
So did the hand he used to grab her wrist.
She spun back to look at him in alarm, trying to apologise profusely for the stupid thing she'd almost done. As soon as she got out of there, she was going to give herself a good talking to for that.
Who tries to turn on the light?
The creature definitely would have noticed them if she had.
She had completely overestimated her ability to be in the field.
How could she have been so stupid?
Pride, she reminded herself. Some genius she was.
"Stay here," Becker breathed, standing practically on her heels so that he didn't have to speak louder than necessary. She was suddenly aware of the proximity in which they were standing, acutely aware of the warmth of his body, and ridiculously concerned about it in a moment when she should be worried about other, more important things.
Like being mauled by a dinosaur.
Or closing a doorway through time.
"No," She breathed back, grabbing his upper arm for dear life. "We have to stay together."
"Jess-"
"No. Do you even have a plan? Or do you just think you can wing it better without me? And what are you going to do if you do reach the anomaly?" She pointed out, barely moving her lips. "Maybe we should go back, let the units round the creatures up with fire-power. If you shoot that one, the others will come running. They've got to be put back through anyway, no use in closing the anomaly with the terrifying, man-eating creatures on the wrong side, is there?"
Becker actually managed to roll his eyes, despite the situation. "Fine," He breathed. "We go together."
Instead of sighing to show her frustration at his answer, she mimed strangling him in irritation behind his back whilst he checked his EMD.
"Here's what we're going to do," He breathed, turning back to face her. "See that vent up there?"
She looked up and nodded.
"I'm going to help you up-"
"But Abby said-"
"She said it could be narrow, but it most likely isn't that bad. Plus, we have the benefit of knowing the layout of this floor now, and we've checked half of it - the anomaly can only be to the west of the building."
"That's providing it's even on this floor," Jess pointed out in a whisper.
"Yes, thank you for that, Jessica," Becker breathed back sarcastically, half-joking.
Before she could comment, or argue some more, there was that dreadful, make-your-blood-run-cold sniff that only a predator could make from right outside the door. A shadow past under the doorframe.
Not tanking their eyes of the gap under the doorframe, Jess and Becker inhaled, and held their breath for thirty long seconds, listening.
There was only silence.
Then the door handle shook violently and the door almost buckled under the weight thrown at it from the other side.
Frozen in fright, Jess thought she might die from fear and anticipation at that moment.
Becker responded differently: he was immediately roused into action, grabbing the chair beside them and swinging it into place under the vent as the rattling at the door became more insistent.
"Go, Jess, now!" There was no point in keeping his voice below a whisper now - any creature close enough to hear was already outside that door, attempting to barrel its way through at any moment.
Becker's hand on the small of her back practically pushed her onto the chair, but she wasn't going to take it personally at that moment.
Balancing on her heels, the rattling at the door bordering obscene now, Jess threw her arms up at the grate over the vent, shoving it further into the vent and to the side so that she could climb up. Just as it dawned on her that she didn't have anywhere near the upper body strength to haul herself up, Becker lowered his weapon, stepped up onto the chair with her - once again with his body completely squashed up against her own - and pushed her in one swift movement towards the ceiling.
She latched her arms onto the side of the vent and hauled her body into the tunnel-like system, barely reaching (Heels solve everything, she thought to herself briefly), and barely having enough time to adjust her balance and catch the gun Becker shoved at her before he was pulling himself - with enormous effort - up to climb into the vent too.
The door rattled one last, forceful time, and then the catch snapped and two carnal Saurornithoides came scrambling desperately into the room, making a beeline straight for Becker.
Laying flat inside the ventilation system and pointing the barrel of the gun through the gap into the room and making sure she was aiming nowhere near a straining Becker, Jess locked on to one of the creatures as it leapt towards Becker's legs, sharp teeth ready to severe at least some arteries, and squeezed the trigger.
The creature shot back a meter or so, but gained its footing almost immediately. The other one kept coming, unperturbed.
"Becker!" Jess couldn't help herself. She hated it in movies when the girls screamed names at stupid moments - it wasn't helping one bit, if anything it just made the situation worse - but she couldn't stop the word from leaving her mouth. It was a reflex.
His shoulders and waist were through into the vent, taking up most of the vertical height, his face was straining from effort - even Becker had some limits. Jess scrambled backwards as far as she could - which only really amounted to an inch or two because the vent made a sharp plummet, and she wasn't going to go back down.
She grabbed Becker's arm and tugged as hard as she could as the second Saurornithoides snapped for his leg.
It probably would have severed the whole thing if he hadn't hooked his elbow onto the floor of the vent and hauled as hard as he could.
So instead of losing a leg, Becker squashed Jess and almost lost an eye with its proximity to the barrel of his own gun which Jess had flailed about in her left hand as he landed on her.
"Ouch," She mumbled as their foreheads collided.
"'Ouch'?" He asked, exasperated. He braced his arms either side of her face so that he wasn't squashing her so much, but there wasn't much room for him to retreat. Their faces were still only an inch apart, and their bodies were still very much condensed together.
She gave him a sheepish grin. "Are you okay?"
"Now that I'm not in danger of being mauled to death by a prehistoric dinosaur? Oh, absolutely brilliant."
"So… do you think you could get off me please?" She asked sheepishly, trying to make the question less awkward than it was, but failing miserably.
He, for once, didn't respond defensively but did as she said, scrabbling backwards towards where their feet were and managing to sit up on his heels, so long as he leaned forwards and ducked somewhat. Jess handed him his gun, then he helped her to a sitting position too.
By unspoken agreement, they both turned to the vent gap behind Becker which was no more than half a meter wide. Very clearly below them was the room they had just been in, the chair directly underneath the meter and a half gap to the floor.
The three Saurornithoides - because a younger one had now joined them - snapped at each other, at them, at the chair, at everything really, as one tried to scramble onto the chair. The other two contented themselves with jumping as high as they could towards the human meal they could see just out of their reach.
Without hesitating, Becker swung his EMD into the gap, aimed it at the chair, and fired. The metal chair went flying violently, toppling over and taking one of the Saurornithoides that had half-climbed onto it with it.
Becker turned to Jess. "We need to get going. The anomaly has to be this way, and we better close it before Matt and the others come charging to the rescue. Those things are dangerous, and I'd rather not put any more of my men at risk than necessary by leaving the way open for more of them."
Jess nodded, the adrenaline in her system slowly dissipating, slowly being replaced by shock.
"We're going to have to crawl over this gap," Becker told her gently, but firmly, making sure she was listening and understood. "Do you still have the portable locking device?"
Jess nodded again, and figured it was probably more reassuring that she wasn't going into shock if she could speak. Her voice cracked though. "Y-Yes… it's on the belt Abby gave me."
She gestured towards it, her hands shaking, and Becker nodded, thankful.
"Okay, I'm going to hop across, and then you're just going to copy, okay? I'll be right there to catch you just in case," He tried to reassure her, even cracking out a small smile. She looked at him through the gloom of the vent and nodded, but her eyes didn't focus. Becker tilted her chin with his left hand until she was looking right into his eyes - she couldn't exactly miss from the inch between them. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you, Jessica," He told her sincerely.
She swallowed, finally comprehending his words, and nodded.
Next bit coming soon! There's less banter in this, because I simply couldn't fit it in, but there should be more coming next. I hope you liked this, please let me know your thoughts? :D
