Can't carry myself, can't carry me home/
Wait for the wind to
blow/
Can't bury myself, can't carry us both/
On my own will/
The instant Candice's mind registered Mr. Bennet standing in their doorway, she tried to shut the door on him, but she was only 120 pounds of woman and it was very much a losing battle. He bulled the door open and was into the room before they could react, gun up and shooting with slide-rule accuracy. Jonathan, immobilized by surprise and alarm, had the presence of mind to at least try to jump away from the bullets, but it wasn't enough—he felt metal bite into his knee and he hit the floor, swearing with an enthusiasm that would have made nuns faint.
"Candice!" he yelled, kicking the table over with his good leg, a flimsy barrier against Mr. Bennet's attack. "Candice, give me a gun!"
He heard the spatter of quick-fired shots and an angry wildcat scream of rage, but he was far beyond worrying about Candice. It was clear she wasn't going to be giving him any help, so his mind automatically blocked her out, graying her into unimportance until he found a way to get out of this alive. He put his palms flat on the floor and sent electricity pulsing into the floor, lighting the carpet on fire in a clean line to Mr. Bennet. Another yell, the sound of a scuffle, and bullets began raining toward him again, peppering the fragile coffee table with holes.
Between gunshots, Jonathan managed to get a look at the situation, which unfortunately was far worse than he'd suspected—Candice was nowhere to be seen (dead? run off again? who knew?) and Mr. Bennet was loading a weapon that he recognized. The unwieldy long-barreled handgun was designed to fit power-dampening cartridges, filled with the same neurotoxin they used in the collars, a kind of riot weapon Linderman had developed recently to immobilize special abilities. I'd better not get hit by that, Jonathan thought, and then promptly became a case study for Murphy's law by getting hit by it. As he ducked back behind the table, he felt one of the skinny silver cartridges punch through his shirt, pumping chemicals insistently into his bloodstream.
"Damn," he muttered as he scrabbled to pull it out of his shoulder. "Damn, damn, damn."
He heard a gun cock inches from his ear, a small menacing click that let him know that his life was now officially up for grabs. The chilled metal of a gun muzzle brushed against the short hairs at the back of his neck, and he could feel Mr. Bennet's voice vibrating gently through it. "Come on, Jonathan," he said. "Get your hands where I can see them."
Jonathan brought his hands slowly up like a million cowboy movies, smarting under the turnaround and afraid of the cold clear dislike in Mr. Bennet's eyes. "What are you going to do, Bennet?" he said, quietly taunting, playing chicken with the impossibility of the situation. "Shoot me? Mr. Linderman told me about you, the man with a clockwork mechanism instead of a heart and a five trigger fingers on each hand. I'm sure you won't lose any sleep over me. Just another notch in your gun grip, right?"
The muzzle pressed harder into his neck, no longer a gentle reminder but a painful heavy-handed threat. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't shoot you in the head and walk away," Mr. Bennet said evenly, his voice untouched by conscience or guilt.
"Because Claire would miss me," he said, and he felt the blow almost before it hit, the gun cracking across the back of his head and sending him sprawling. Mr. Bennet's foot pressed down on his chest with enough force to make breathing somewhat of a challenge, and Jonathan felt goosebumps racing up his arms at the expression on the man's face. Now he was remembering the stories Linderman had told him, about this man who had given his soul away for free simply because it was slowing him down, who hugged his daughter with hands he'd just washed blood from. This was no bleeding-heart pristine Good Guy, no matter which side he was on. This man would hurt him, and this man would kill him without a single qualm to mark his passing.
"I suppose," he said breathlessly, "this would be a bad time to say I'm sorry." The boot pressed harder into his chest, and now he really couldn't breathe, was choking on his own smart remarks. "Tell Claire—," he gasped, couldn't get it out, tried again. "Tell Claire all about how—you killed me, she'll—," gasp, "love that."
He felt air rush back into his lungs as the foot released, saw as Mr. Bennet aimed a kick at his ribs and managed to catch the foot as it came down, shoving the man off-balance, nearly toppling him. He scrambled up as Mr. Bennet fell into the table, assessing the situation with very little hope. He was cut off from his abilities, barely able to stand on his injured leg, weaponless, and much less experienced than this renowned ex-Company agent. Legend had it that no one had beaten him out of anything he really wanted, not in sixteen years, no one had ever gotten the jump on him without a fatal payback. And what was he? Nothing but an eminently breakable seventeen-year-old traitor. There was never anything special about me except my ability to create a really spectacular Dixie Chicks concert light show—and now I don't even have that.
He decided he might as well take his fate into his own hands, make it a suicide instead of a murder, as long as Mr. Bennet was off-guard anyway. He grabbed Mr. Bennet's wrist with both hands and smashed it against the broken tabletop until he lost his grip on the gun, sending it skittering under the couch. Desperately needing the leverage, Jonathan lunged for the weapon, but Mr. Bennet caught him by the collar and threw him bodily into the wall. White starbursts of pain mixed with Jonathan's shock at discovering that beneath Mr. Bennet's dark suits were muscles—real, vastly threatening muscles.
"I said I was sorry," Jonathan tried, wondering if Mr. Bennet would know how much of the apology was sincere and how much of it was last-ditch pleading.
"You're sorry?" he said, darkly venomous. "For what? For spying on us and stabbing us in the back? For endangering my daughter's life? For breaking her heart, or for nearly killing her? What are you sorry for?" He was right over Jonathan now, and towering, lawyer, judge, and jury and already declaring him guilty, unanimous verdict.
Trying to reduce the overall towering effect, Jonathan struggled upright with the help of an armchair, looking Bennet in the eyes even though it felt like blinding himself with a hot poker. "Um," he said weakly. "All of it."
He needn't have bothered with standing up. Mr. Bennet hit him with the gun, slamming it right where his cheekbone met his jaw, effectively stopping him from speaking altogether. Jonathan went to the floor with a throated cry of pain as his injured knee hit the ground, spitting blood onto the carpet. Mr. Bennet bent coolly over him, pressed the gun to his head, and pulled the trigger.
At least, that was what he meant to do. He fully intended to make the tiny, fatal movement with his pointer finger, the simple muscle twitch that would send this festering threat straight to Hell. But in the second between decision and motion, Claire suddenly popped into his head, hovering like a shoulder-angel, silent but insistent and staring at him with disappointed reproof. He felt Jonathan tense for his death, and wanted to kill him, rationalized that last finger-twitch—and couldn't shake Claire's eyes.
With a put-upon sigh, he brought the gun away from Jonathan's neck and instead smashed it against his temple, knocking the kid out cold. He nudged the still form distastefully, feeling as if he would regret this decision in the future.
In the new silence at the end of their scuffle, he suddenly began picking up another set of noises, seeming to come from behind the closed bedroom door. Leaving Jonathan in an unconscious tangle, he walked quietly over to the room, wondering what could be behind the door, and whether it could possibly be worse than what he'd encountered so far.