Thanks again for all the kind comments, you guys! This beast is nearing the end now. One more chapter after this one, I reckon. Hope you enjoy!
Retrieval
Chapter Six
"What happened?"
Duarte's hand was warm on her back, supporting her, but she shrugged him off, ignoring his questioning glance and flipping on the flashlight she still held. She swept the beam across the walls and floor of the chamber, but there was nothing: no Dumont, no heavies, no Auggie. She turned to Duarte, then, shining the beam in his face.
"Where's Auggie?" she asked.
Duarte put a hand up to shade his eyes, pushing the flashlight away with the other. "I was about to ask you the same thing," he said. "Are you OK?"
Annie struggled into a sitting position, rubbing the back of her head. The tracker. It had to have been the tracker, the pain was the same, the white lights and the red-tinged vision. But Dumont hadn't taken her, which meant most likely he hadn't known she was there.
"He did something," she said. "Dumont. He knocked Auggie out."
"Dumont was here?" Duarte lifted his head, scanning the surroundings like he was expecting Dumont to jump out from behind a boulder or something. "Damn. Damn."
Damn was pretty much how Annie felt right now, too. Well, except maybe she felt more like fuck. "We have to get him back," she said, climbing to her feet and leaning against the wall as the passageway spun lazily around her.
"Hey, hey," Duarte said, grabbing her upper arms as she started a slow topple forward. "You're in no condition to go anywhere. What happened to you?"
Annie started to shake her head, then stopped when she decided she really didn't like the floor to be at that angle. "Something Dumont, uh," she said, trying to sort through her tangled thoughts. "It must've, must've been what he did to Auggie. Something electronic."
"He knocked Auggie out with something electronic?" Duarte was ducking his head, peering into her face, and for a moment she just wanted to let him do this, let him look after her and go after the bad guys and save Auggie so she could sleep.
It wasn't a long moment.
"What were you doing?" she asked, pulling back again from his touch and putting her back against the wall. Maybe she could barely stand, but she wasn't going to let Duarte see just how out of it she was. Hell, she wasn't going to be that out of it. Mind over matter.
"What?" Duarte said. "I was looking for a plane. You know that."
"Let me tell you what I know," Annie said. "I know you went away and twenty minutes later, Dumont showed up. I know that he had no way of knowing where we were. I know that when I passed out, Dumont and Auggie were here, and now it's just you." She straightened her back a little, lifting her chin. "So you want to tell me again what you were doing?"
Duarte closed his eyes for a second, raising his hands in a gesture of frustration. Opening his eyes again, he met her stare for stare, nostrils flared. "I was looking for a plane," he said.
"I don't believe you." Annie's head was buzzing, but the one thought that cut through all of it was that she was tired of being played, just so sick of it.
Duarte shrugged, anger tight in the lines around his eyes. "I don't care," he said. "I don't get what your problem is with me, but right now the only thing that matters to me about you is that you don't get in the way of my getting my friend back before that psycho rips his vital organs out of his body with an electromagnet. So are you going to co-operate, or am I going to have to immobilise you?"
It turned out that rage was sharp enough to slice through the fog in Annie's mind. "Are you threatening me?" she said, and somewhere underneath the buzzing and the muzziness, her mind was already racing. Could she take Duarte? Would it be better to run? Where was the nearest weapon?
Duarte shook his head. "It's not about you," he said, and turned away, and Annie, so tense with anticipation that her back ached with it, tried to reach forward and stop him and almost fell.
"Hey," Duarte said, turning back and catching her, hands on her shoulders this time, and she wanted to push him away again, but not as much as she wanted to stay upright, so she let it go, cheeks burning.
"Don't patronise me," she said, almost spitting the words out. "I have no reason to trust you."
"How about the fact that Jake trusts me?" Duarte said, and Annie closed her eyes. It wasn't enough. Not when she didn't even know who Jake was, not when she didn't even know who Auggie was any more .
Duarte drew in a deep breath. "Look," he said. "You have a tracker in your head. The moment you leave the mine, Dumont and his goons will find you. They'll find anyone who's with you. I can't risk taking you with me."
Annie opened her mouth to protest, but Duarte squeezed her shoulders. "Come on," he said. "I'm not trying to cut you out, here. Sometimes the best thing you can do for the mission is nothing at all."
Swallowing, Annie felt the slow throbs of pain that still emanated from the back of her skull. Dammit.
"OK," Duarte said. "There is an airfield. It's about a quarter mile away, and the mine is between the factory and the airfield, so that'll work in our favour. I want you to stay near the entrance to the mine and wait for my signal. I'll get Jake, and I'll pick you up on the way back. Annie." He ducked his head and peered into her face. "When the time comes, we may have to run. Do you think you can handle that?"
Right now, Annie felt like she couldn't handle staying upright, but Duarte's words made her spine snap straight. "I can handle it," she said, biting the ends off the words.
Duarte watched her face a moment longer, then nodded. "Good," he said. "I'll be as quick as I can."
"Hey," Annie said as he turned to go, and he looked back over his shoulder at her. "Don't get caught," she said.
Duarte's lips twitched into a half-smile. "It's a simple retrieval," he said. "What could possibly go wrong?"
It was cold in the passageway that led to the entrance; colder than it had been deeper underground, and Annie thought about that for a while, still fighting her way through the swathes of cobwebs in her mind. Something about the outside air penetrating this far in. It had been warm – hot, even – in Helsinki, but apparently August nights in Karelia weren't exactly tropical. At any rate, she wished – again – that she had shoes. Any shoes would do. She'd settle for Birkenstocks. Hell, she'd even wear socks with them. Style was weirdly unimportant when you were huddled in an abandoned uranium mine waiting to see if your best friend had died an agonising death because of you.
Annie swallowed hard. Her plan of not thinking about it was really not going too great. The problem was, there were only so many distractions to keep her from imagining what it would be like if Dumont put Auggie in that electromagnetic chamber. It was night, so there wasn't even a faint glow to give her something to look at, and she couldn't turn the flashlight on in case one of the goons was skulking around the place, so that more or less left listening to the various really quiet night noises and thinking. And the problem with thinking was that there were only three things she could manage to think about right now: one, how Dumont might be torturing Auggie to death right now; two, how the CIA was using her as bait and Auggie had known about it all along; and three, how cold her feet were.
And she'd already covered the feet thing. Damn.
She had no real idea how long it had been since Duarte left, but she did know that it had been daytime then, and now it was night. It must have been hours, felt like days. She tried counting seconds for a while – anything to drown out the endlessly circling anxiety – and made it to seven minutes before she remembered that she'd entrusted Duarte with complete responsibility for saving Auggie. Duarte, who she didn't trust. Duarte, who had recently suffered a fairly serious head injury and was going up against two heavily-armed mercenaries and a man who made comic-book villains look well-adjusted.
It had been hours.
Start again, Annie thought. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three-
-and then, of course, there was the fact that Auggie meant nothing to Dumont. Less than nothing. Auggie – all of Auggie, everything he was – was just inconvenient packaging for the technology Dumont wanted, and Dumont wasn't even going to think twice about ripping that packaging off.
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi.
Dumont was going to kill Auggie. In all likelihood, Dumont already had killed Auggie. And all Annie had done was sit here and wait, sit here and assume that somebody else would fix the problem. Some CIA agent you are. No wonder all they think you're good for is bait.
Annie stood up, bouncing on her heels a little to try and bring feeling back into her feet. I can't risk taking you with me, that was what Dumont had said. They'll find anyone who's with you. He'd been right – he was still right, much as Annie hated to admit it – and then again, things had changed. Annie wasn't with anyone any more. Maybe Dumont would find her the moment she stepped out of the mine, but maybe he didn't even care any more, not now he had Auggie. And maybe whatever he'd used to knock out Auggie had killed the tracker anyway. Whatever the case, all she was risking was her own life.
Jesus. Her feet were really fucking cold.
One Mississippi, thought Annie. Two Mississippi. OK.
She drew in a breath, and headed for the entrance to the mine.
There were no visible lights at the factory, and Annie almost walked straight past it in the dark. The only thing that alerted her was a slight lightening of the air to her left as she slipped through the forest, the faint glow of the stars stronger in the clearing around the factory than under the trees. The black bulk of the buildings loomed against the sky, and she tried to remember where the door was that they'd found earlier. The south wall. That's what Auggie had said, keep heading south. Duarte had taken the compass, and Annie stood in the shadow at the edge of the clearing and scanned the sky for the pole star, finding it finally just above the dark line of the treetops. A compass would have been nice, but so would a gun, a car, a pair of shoes. Annie would get by on what she had.
Even knowing the right wall, the door was hard to find in the dark. Annie found herself trailing a hand along the wall, shuffling to avoid tripping over anything that might be lying on the ground. This was how Auggie lived all the time. If Auggie lived at all any more.
Her hand struck against something jutting from the wall, and a couple seconds tactile investigation confirmed it was a door frame. Annie remembered the alarm from earlier. Had Dumont repaired it? How had Auggie disabled it in the first place?
Oh yeah, he was a freak of nature who could communicate directly with electronic devices. Well.
Annie spent a second wishing she had nanites of her own, and then a couple more remembering all the reasons why that was a terrible idea. Then she dropped to her knees and found her trusty hairpin, fingers fumbling for the lock. Really, hairpins ought to feature more strongly in CIA training. Maybe they could have joint lock-picking and makeover classes. God knew, some of her fellow recruits could really have done with some haircare tips.
There. And there. The tumblers turned quietly over, and Annie rose to her feet and pushed gently down on the handle, remembering the creak of the hinges from last time and nudging the door open as slowly and smoothly as she could. There was a low protest of aged metal, but it was quiet, quiet enough, Annie hoped, in the same way that she hoped that there was no alarm and that Dumont wasn't tracking her any more. For a second, she had a mental image of the entire enterprise, a fragile, matchstick structure held together by gravity alone. If she made one wrong move, if one match was in the wrong place-
-and now wasn't the time to think about that. Annie swung the door closed behind her, and began her search for Auggie.
As it turned out, she found him in the most unexpected place. Of course, that wasn't nearly as unexpected as what happened after that, but when you've discovered that your best friend has super powers, the love of your life is a spy and your employer is using you as bait all in the same twenty-four hours, unexpected starts to get kind of banal. All the same, when Annie peered through the crack in the door of the room she'd just dodged into to see who the footsteps she'd heard belonged to and saw a familiar mop of brown hair and a hand trailing along the wall, she thought for a moment that maybe she was hallucinating, that maybe the tracker was affecting her brain more severely than she thought. It was only when Auggie had already passed and was continuing on down the corridor that she pulled herself together enough to step out.
"Auggie," she said, her voice cracking a little, the relief making her stomach burn and flip.
Auggie turned back toward her, head lifted slightly like he was trying to figure out where she was.
"I'm here," she said, taking a step forward. "Are you OK? I thought- I thought-" She trailed off as Auggie walked toward her. It didn't matter what she'd thought, what images she'd had in her head. Auggie was upright, walking, not obviously injured. Thank God. Thank God.
Auggie stopped in front of her, reaching out, and she stood still as his hands fell on her shoulders, feeling the comforting weight. "You're OK," she said, and shivered a little as his hands moved up to her head, her face. "Auggie?" she said, reaching up and grabbing his wrists, because actually, this was kind of weird.
And then Auggie drew back, pulling out of her grip, pulling back, pulling back like he was going to-
-Annie dodged instinctively, but late, too late, because it was Auggie, it was Auggie and he'd been lying to her about so many things for so long but she'd still thought, she'd still thought-
-but it didn't matter why (not now, not yet), the point was, she dodged too late, and caught almost the full force of the blow on one shoulder. Annie had been in fist-fights before – too often, too many – and she'd taken some hard punches, some that she thought maybe she wasn't going to come back from, but this, this-
-she was flying through the air, Auggie's fist had sent her flying like she weighed no more than a child, and in that long moment of clarity she knew it was going to hurt like a bitch when she hit the ground, knew that her shoulder was wrenched, maybe even dislocated, knew that Auggie had hit her because she'd seen him do it, she'd seen, and if she hadn't she wouldn't have believed it, even after everything.
And then the ground hit her even harder than Auggie had, and she felt all the breath leave her body, and she knew, she knew she needed to get up and run now right now but she couldn't make her body obey her, couldn't make it do anything but lie there struggling desperately for breath, even the pain of the impact not registering yet, nothing but air air air please God I can't breathe.
Auggie loomed in her vision, blurred around the edges, kneeling beside her and fumbling on the ground, fingers snagging the edge of her sleeve and then moving up her arm. She pulled in as much air as she could and tried to say his name, but what came out was hardly more than a croak and then she was rising, Auggie was lifting her, hands under her armpits and the shrieking of her wrenched shoulder was starting to penetrate now, but she didn't have time to worry about it, didn't have time for anything except how do I get away?
Auggie raised her above his head, face tilted up toward her, lifting her like she was nothing. There was no recognition in his face, but there was no anger, either. There was nothing. Like she was nothing.
She struggled, kicking out at his stomach, but she had no leverage, and Auggie's grip on her didn't falter. And then she was weightless again, sailing through the air, and this time it was a wall that cut off her flight, and even though the crunch of the impact was bone shaking, she wasn't too out of it to get that this was her moment, this was the break. If she'd hit the floor again, if she'd had to take the time to struggle to her feet, who knew if she would've made it, but as it was, she was hurt but upright, forcing her knees not to buckle, and she had maybe three seconds before Auggie would find her, three seconds' grace to figure out how she was going to win.
One Mississippi.
Auggie walked forward, hands outstretched. He couldn't see her, but she could see him. She could use that.
Two Mississippi.
He was strong, frighteningly strong, but he was moving clumsily, jerkily, like he'd been hurt. She shifted out of the way as his hands made contact with the wall near her head, and Auggie's head snapped up and around, sightless eyes staring straight at her.
Oh, right. He had super-hearing, too.
Three Miss-
This time, Annie was ready for Auggie's punch, and she ducked, bruised ribs complaining, and came up under his reach. Real fights are won up close, she remembered, and threw her own punch, Auggie's head snapping around. Apparently, nanites didn't make you invulnerable. Good to know.
That wasn't going to win the fight for her, though. Auggie might not be able to see, but he could stove in her head with a single well-aimed blow. Her only chance was to knock him down long enough to get out of range. Annie let her instincts take over, automatically moving into the manoeuvre she'd practised so many times. Elbow to the neck. Feet as pivot point. Weight swinging round. Even as she moved through the motions, she knew it wouldn't work. Auggie had taught her that move, no way would she be able to use it to take him down.
And then he was falling, and Annie didn't wait around to ask why it had worked. It was time for Operation Run Like Hell.
There were two problems with running away from Auggie, Annie decided. One was that apparently, he could run really fast. The other was that his ability to track her by hearing apparently pretty much cancelled out the fact that he couldn't see her.
Of course, there was also the problem that he was Auggie and she didn't understand why she was having to run from him in the first place, but if Annie stopped to think about that right now, she was pretty certain she would only live long enough to get to why is he doing th-, so she put that question to the back of her mind and concentrated on running.
She rounded a corner and grabbed the nearest door handle, flinging the door open without checking her speed. There was a long straight coming up before the next intersection, and she opened every door she could, skidding into a left turn just as she heard the sound of Auggie crashing into the first one. She slid to a stop outside the third door she came to and opened it, slamming it shut again as she heard another crash round the corner. Forcing her breathing to quiet, she retraced her steps as fast as she could, slipping past the intersection where Auggie was still finding his way round the doors and carrying on, hardly daring to breathe.
By the time Auggie made it to the intersection, Annie was forty yards down the corridor, and she stopped dead, holding her breath as his hand hit the corner and he stood still. There was no way this could work. Annie could hear her heart thumping in her ears, and if it sounded like a marching band to her, then surely Auggie would hear it.
And then Auggie turned left, and Annie waited until he found the door that she'd slammed and walked into the room beyond before she started to breathe again.
Annie didn't start running again until she was five corridors away from where she'd last seen Auggie. Maybe he would still be able to hear her, but hopefully the headstart was enough. Of course, she didn't know where she was running to. So far, the only plan she had formed was get away. Everything was upside down, and Auggie had been right, he'd been so right when he'd told her never to trust anyone. She'd been almost hurt at the time, but that was nothing to how she was feeling now.
She was almost sprinting when a door opened in front of her, and she knew she wouldn't have time to stop, was adjusting her course to try and steer round the obstacle, when a hand shot out and grabbed her, hauling her inside the room and closing the door behind her. She spun, wrenching her arm out of the grip of her assailant and coming round, thrusting the heel of her hand sharply up and feeling the crunch of contact with someone's face. She didn't waste time, following up with a punch to the jaw and spinning again, lunging for the goon's wrist to flip him and gun, gun, he was holding a gun.
Annie's fingers closed around the guy's wrist, but he brought his other arm up and around her throat, pulling her body tight against his.
"Annie, it's me," he said, and she recognised the voice – Duarte - but right now the only rule she was playing by was trust no-one, and she let herself relax in his grip, felt him relax, too, felt his arm loosen, and then she darted forward, grabbing his forearm and using her weight as a pivot to swing him round and into the wall. She crowded right up into his face before he had time to recover, gripping his wrist with both hands and squeezing, slamming his hand against the wall over and over until his fingers loosened and the gun fell to the floor.
"Annie," he said again, and she stepped backward, grabbing the gun and raising it until he was firmly in her sights.
"Don't move," she said, and Duarte raised both hands.
"It's me," he said. "It's Kyle."
Annie didn't move. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she asked.
Duarte's expression moved through confused and headed right on to irritated. "Oh, come on," he said. "This is getting ridiculous."
"You think so?" Annie raised an eyebrow. "I'm pretty sure this is the least ridiculous thing I've done since I left D.C."
"Look," Duarte said. "You have to believe me-"
"I don't have to do anything," Annie said, aim not wavering. "And you know, I'm actually getting pretty tired of people asking me to trust them without giving me any reason to."
Duarte paused a moment, like he was thinking his way through this. "OK," he said. "You don't trust me, I get that, I do. You don't even know me. But you know Jake."
"I don't know anyone named Jake," Annie said, and Duarte let out a frustrated breath.
"Auggie," he said. "You don't trust me, but Auggie does. Isn't that enough?"
Annie felt her lips curl in a smile that almost hurt. "You're behind the times, Duarte," she said. "Auggie just tried to kill me." It was weird, saying it out loud. She'd thought it would be painful, but it was easy. Auggie tried to kill her. Like it didn't mean anything.
Duarte's eyes widened. "Damn," he said. "I was afraid of that."
"Afraid of what?" Annie asked. "That I'd get away from him and get the drop on you?"
"That he'd find you before I did," Duarte said. "Annie, there's something wrong with him. Dumont did something."
Annie felt her eyes narrow. "I'm starting to think Dumont is the least of my worries," she said, and then pieces started to slot together in her mind. "Where'd you get the gun?" she asked. It was Russian. She'd seen it before, really, really close up.
"One of Dumont's goons," Duarte said.
"He gave it to you?" Annie felt her finger tighten on the trigger.
"No. He was dead." Duarte swallowed. "Jake killed him."
Annie shook her head slowly. "You're working with him," she said, trying to make sense of this, some of it, any of it. Auggie tried to kill her.
"No. No," Duarte said. "He's broken, Annie, the nanites – Dumont's done something, he's reprogrammed him."
"You have got to be kidding me," Annie said. "Reprogrammed? He's not a robot."
"The nanites are an integral part of his neural system," Duarte said, but Annie wasn't falling for this, not again, not after everything that had happened.
"What, so Dumont programmed him to kill his own bodyguard?" she said. "Why would he do that?"
"Maybe he's testing out the program," Duarte said. "Maybe he doesn't think he needs bodyguards now he has Jake. Best guess?" He shrugged a little. "He thinks it's fun."
Annie adjusted her aim a little. "You want to know what I think?" she said. "I think you're the one who thinks this is fun. I think you're the one who's pushing buttons. You've got one minute to tell me why I shouldn't just shoot you right here."
"Because I'm on your side," Duarte said, but Annie shook her head, pushing back the pang of hurt at the phrase.
"Wrong answer," she said. "Fifty seconds."
"He's done it before," Duarte said, fast, the words tumbling over one another. "Dumont's messed with the nanites before. Last time he had us all thinking Jake had gone rogue. We had a shoot to kill order out on him, just like you have on me now. It was just like now, Annie."
"Thirty seconds," Annie said, anger and fear curdling in a sick lump in her stomach. She'd never shot a man in cold blood before, but all she could think of was how Auggie wasn't on her side, never had been, and neither was Joan, neither was the agency, how there was nobody on her side but herself. "You might want to try the truth."
Duarte shook his head. "It is the truth," he said, sweat beading on his upper lip. "He erased Jake's memory, told him he was someone else. He turned us all against each other."
"What?" Annie blinked, because for the first time since (Auggie tried to kill her) this conversation started, here was something that felt like it was familiar, like it fitted with something she already knew.
"It's the truth," Duarte said, but Annie wasn't listening.
"He erased his memory?" she said, and Duarte swallowed.
"I know, I know it sounds absurd, but-" he said, but Annie broke in.
"He joined a cage-fighting ring," she said, and Duarte stopped, stared.
"He told you about that?" he said.
Annie blinked again, and Duarte straightened up a little. "Please," he said. "Think about it. You know Jake – Auggie. You know Auggie. Maybe he hasn't always told you everything, but who a person is isn't what they tell you, it's how they act. Please." He raised his hands a little further. "Just think."
Annie thought. She thought about how Auggie hadn't said a word to her, how he'd been clumsy, uncoordinated in a way Auggie never was, even when he wasn't using the nanites. She thought about how he'd been unfocussed, not just his eyes, but his whole face, how he hadn't seen moves coming even when he was the one who'd taught them to her. She thought about how he'd lied to her, how he'd been lying to her this whole time, but how even so, even after he'd told her the truth, he was Auggie, he was still Auggie.
The person she'd seen out in the corridor, though, the person who tried to kill her. She didn't know who that person was.
"How do we fix it?" she asked, and Duarte's whole body sagged, his eyes closing for a second. Then he drew in a deep breath and straightened up, hands still raised.
"Are you going to stop pointing that thing at me?" he asked.
"No," Annie said. "Tell me how we fix it."
Duarte sighed. "OK," he said. "OK." He paused, like he was working something through. "The nanites basically have two processing spaces. There's the core set of programs at the base, and then there's a higher-level space for additional programming and calling functions. That's the space Jake uses when he asks the nanites to interface with a computer or hear something really quiet, and that'll be where Dumont's program will be stored. It's kind of like the difference between the conscious mind and the subconscious. We need to override the conscious part so that Jake can reassert control and reprogram it."
"So we need to knock the nanites unconscious?" Annie asked.
"Right," Duarte said. "The core functions automatically override any higher-level programming in certain types of situation, like instincts," Duarte said. "I'm pretty sure that if we can get a critical mass of nanites performing core functions, the program will be broken, at least until those processes are complete."
"OK," Annie said, thinking fast. "What situations?"
Duarte shook his head. "You're not going to like it," he said. "You need to give me the gun."
Annie felt all her attention snap to Duarte. "No," she said.
Duarte sighed. "Then you're really not going to like it," he said.
It might have been Annie shouting that brought Auggie to them. It might have been Duarte pleading with her, voice rising to make itself heard over her denial. And then again, Auggie might have found them eventually anyway. Whatever the case, it was definitely the argument that stopped them from hearing his footsteps, that meant that the first moment they were aware of his presence was when the metal door clanged against the wall and there he was, standing in the doorway, face slack, a fresh smear of blood on his upper lip, listening.
Annie stopped mid-word, her mouth still open, the I can't evaporating in air that suddenly felt freezing cold. Duarte froze, still pressed against the wall, hands raised. Neither of them was breathing, and for a second, there was absolute stillness.
Auggie blinked, his head turning slowly from side to side, and Annie stared at him, at the jerky movements, the blank face. She wondered if it was worse, that she'd thought that this was really him, if her not being able to tell was worse somehow than him lying to her about who he was, about who she was. Her arms ached from holding up the gun, and she was tired, she was so, so tired of all this.
Maybe she made a noise, or maybe Auggie just heard her heart thundering in her chest, but his head swung round and he took a step toward her. She danced back, lightly, staying on the balls of her feet, but no matter how quiet she was, she couldn't beat technologically enhanced hearing. Auggie took another step, more confident this time, moving toward her, and Annie dodged and moved and knew that this time, she wasn't going to win the fight. Auggie swiped a hand out toward her, almost catching her sleeve, and then Duarte started shouting.
"Hey," he yelled. "Hey, Jake. Over here!"
Auggie stopped short, and then turned with a jerk, moving faster now, headed straight for Duarte. He threw a punch, but Duarte had started ducking almost before he'd finished speaking, and all Auggie's fist connected with was the wall, plaster and rubble cascading out of the hole the impact made. Duarte slipped out of reach, sliding along the wall, and Auggie turned, following the sound of his footsteps. Duarte was fast, but Auggie was faster, and Annie found herself stepping forward without thinking.
"Auggie," she called, and Auggie stopped again, spinning, heading in the direction of her voice. Annie backed against the wall and saw, too late, the splintered workbench that blocked her way back out. She slid sideways, but Auggie was too close, and she was running out of space. She was aware of Duarte yelling, but Auggie wasn't taking the bait this time, he was reaching for her and there was nowhere left to go.
Auggie's fingers were inches from Annie's face when Duarte barrelled into him, grabbing him by the arm and shoulder and hauling, using his momentum to swing Auggie round. Auggie stumbled, spinning away from Annie, and grabbed back, gripping Duarte's forearm and using his own body as a pivot, swinging Duarte into the wall like a rag doll. Annie felt the crunch of the impact in her spine and stomach, and she was aware she was speaking, yelling at Auggie, but all she could hear was the blood pounding in her ears.
Duarte slid to the floor and rolled over, spitting out blood, but Auggie wasn't done. He bent down, picking Duarte up by the throat, and Annie could see his fingers flexing, crushing Duarte's windpipe. Duarte's eyes met hers, his mouth moving soundlessly, but she knew what he was asking for, what he was trying to say, and she lifted the gun, aiming it at Auggie's back, below the heart.
"I can't," she said, but she couldn't even hear herself saying it, and Duarte's eyes were rolling up in his head.
She pulled the trigger.
Right. I shall now commence hiding from the angry mob. Because, y'know, I figured the last cliffhanger wasn't cruel enough.