Chapter Ten
Delete: Part II

Eureka was de-resing around them and Zane was roaming around GD gathering the Astraeus crew like a freaking kindergarten teacher.

Jo had gone off to find Grace who still hadn't surfaced by the time they headed back to GD. Henry definitely must have slowed her down and he hoped that she was okay. Hearing about what happened with Holly and what could have happened to him if Jo hadn't shown up, he was paranoid about any of the Astraeus crew members being left alone with the program's NPCs.

He was also pissed that, once again, Jo had gone off by herself to walk right into danger, head first. Actually, knowing Jo, it would probably be gun first which made him feel only a little bit better. She viewed saving the crew as a non-negotiable obligation and part of her specific current mission. He got that. But it was still maddening how nonchalant she was about it. When he'd voiced his concerns, she'd simply kissed him and promised she'd be careful before climbing into her car and speeding off. Fargo had to grab his arm and push him into the car before his mind got over it and switched back to solving their latest problem.

Fargo had sent the other sixteen members of the Astraeus crew a 911 text telling them to gather in the rotunda. However, Eureka scientists weren't particularly known for immediately following orders. The astrogeologists and biologists were the worst and sure enough, he found them all in the conference room off of Lab 7 arguing about whether they should shut down their experiments before complying. After directing this last group to the rotunda, he turned around in time to see the far wall de-resing and coming apart behind him.

Screw this place. He wasn't hanging around another second he didn't have to. Hopefully, there'd be no more delays and Jo and Grace would be waiting safely when he got to the rendezvous point.

Apparently that wasn't in the cards; when he turned to run out of the room, he ran full body into Sheriff Jack Carter.

Zane was instantly enraged by the utter absurdity of this development. He had hit this guy in the head with a piece of wood and watched him shake it off; he'd seen him get drugged with a tranquilizer dart and watched him shake it off; he put a slew of bullets into the back of his stupid, simulated head and watched him shake it off. Now, after blowing up a ship practically in his face, the guy was standing in front of him looking fresh as a daisy while the world fell apart around them. He was staring Zane down as if this was just another day at the office and Zane had pulled an especially irksome prank.

Carter stood in front of Zane with a stern expression and his arms crossed in front of him. Traces of dried blood remained on his face and he was pissed. Really pissed.

"Surprise," he murmured without any of Carter's usual humor, mocking or otherwise. "I bet you weren't expecting me at your little party. I guess you're realizing that I'm pretty light on my feet when I want to be. And quick. Boy am I quick." Even as he spoke, his body flickered and de-resed a few times, although mostly it stayed solid.

Zane wasn't going to wait for him to lead with the first strike. He punched him full force with a right hook.

Carter's head snapped back briefly but there was no other indication that Zane had even violated his personal space. However he did grin at the attempt; it was that signature Carter smile but instead of being good-humored and welcoming, it was dripping with a manic hatred.

"Now I'm definitely going to kill you," he said. Before he could even blink, Carter drew back his arm and hit Zane hard enough to knock him flat on his back.

Zane glanced quickly over his shoulder seeing that the Matrix abyss had reached farther into the room. Tables, desks and chairs that had previously been bolted down flew into the nothingness, drifting inside the ether to de-res without a trace. He tried to scurry to his feet away from the vortex but unfortunately Carter beat him to the punch, literally, and kicked him back to the ground.

"You always did think you were so much smarter than everybody. We'll see how you like having your brain squeezed out of the program into nothing." He had a good hold on two fistfuls of Zane's jacket and seemed eager to give him a personal escort out of the Matrix via the cascade failure. "That must be why Jo will be so quick to forget all about you and come running right into my arms."

Despite the pain, Zane scowled at who he now considered to be the smuggest asshole he'd ever met; worse than that toolbox General Mansfield ever was. Knowing all this was fake didn't make Carter's taunting words piss him off any less.

Also, unlike Carter, Zane wasn't one for dicking around with idle conversation when there was ass-kicking to do. That's one thing prison teaches a guy that law enforcement types would never understand. And the big guy had forgotten one thing. Zane pulled the gun from his pocket and willed there to be bullets remaining in the clip. He couldn't remember how many he had emptied into the sheriff back on the Astraeus. Like before, he didn't hesitate to pull the trigger, watching the impact of the ammunition force Carter to release his hold and stumble farther towards the crumbling vortex.

Zane knew the shots wouldn't keep the man down for long but they didn't need to; he could let the suction coming from the empty space behind him do the rest.

Struggling to stand up while holding the gun to his aching side, Zane tried to catch a few breaths after the blows Carter had inflicted upon him. Watching the sheriff reeling from the assault, Zane resisted the urge to empty the clip into him. That would be overkill he supposed.

But what the hell.

Zane raised the gun back up, walking backwards towards the exit and away from the approaching cascade failure. He fired again and again, the force of the bullets this time causing the man to fall on his back at the edge of the vortex. Just when Zane thought he was in the clear, at the last second, Carter grabbed onto the leg of one of the desks and tried to pull himself back up. Zane cursed at the man; he just wouldn't fucking die!

He heard someone call his name from behind him and chanced a quick glimpse over his shoulder at Allison running into the room. "Oh my God, Jack!"

Zane pushed her back behind him, gun still pointed. They both watched Carter's losing battle for escape—one wearing an expression of horror, the other exuding an angry determination—as the cascade failure began to swallow him. The NPC completely ignored them, occupied by his loosening grip on the desk getting pulled in along with him.

"It's not him, Allison. He's a fake." He certainly said this to ease some of Allison's distress. Perhaps he also said it for himself, a way to acknowledge how he had just angrily and almost gleefully emptied a round of bullets into another man, albeit virtually. He tried to think of it as a video game where the consequences for shooting or stealing, even killing were nothing more than fabrications made up of a series of code that would reset itself upon command. But in the back of his mind, he fully understood what his anger had prompted him to do in the name of protecting his friends; how saving lives, including his own, had justified in his mind so much violence from his normally easygoing demeanor. On some level, he liked Sheriff Jack Carter, the real Sheriff Carter. He certainly respected him in a way, despite his authoritarian tendencies. Nonetheless, he wasn't so sure he'd do things differently in the real world if the man threatened the people he cared about.

As much as he believed his words to Allison and as much as he hated everyone in this simulation, especially Carter, he didn't have the heart to finish the man off in front of her. The guy was a goner anyway and they would join him if they didn't get out of there. He backed them out further keeping Allison firmly behind him during Carter's last moments. They watched as the desk reached the edge of the cascade failure and the momentum of the vortex pulled Carter into a free fall. Zane wanted to see the man eviscerated with his own eyes to ensure that he was gone for good and not making any last-ditch efforts to sabotage their plans.

As Carter made his last grasp on this virtual world, he drew his gun on them. "You jackass," his voice echoed from the vortex. Zane smirked knowing that the sheriff's parting words were definitely meant for him. Bright flashes from the gunfire flared at them as Carter flew into the vortex and disintegrated.

Zane's first reaction was to revel in the satisfaction of actually seeing this Carter get torn to pieces. Gloating felt good.

His second reaction was disappointment. He looked down and frowned at the smoke rising from the newly formed hole in his chest. Jo wasn't going to be happy that he'd gotten a bullet hole in her favorite leather jacket. He pressed his hand underneath and encountered what felt like the very real stickiness of his own blood running along his fingers. Suddenly everything seemed very surreal. Or more accurately, everything felt more surreal than realizing a few hours ago that he was stuck in a total immersion simulation program. What a funny thing.

Allison turned him around, eyes wide with fear. He felt the pressure of her hand against his as she tried to stop the blood flow.

She looked so sad, he thought. He didn't like that.

"Hey, that didn't suck," he joked cocking his head towards the vortex into which the sheriff had disappeared. Then a wave of dizziness washed over him, blurring his vision.

Expanding cascade failure forgotten, Allison shuffled him out of the room and hurried him down the hallway as fast as they could go with her hand pressed solidly against his chest. "Hey, no dying remember? We're going to get you out of here and you're going to be fine."

As soon as they rounded the corner, they were met by Fargo. "Where have you guys been? We're all in the rotunda waiting on Jo and Gra— Holy socks!" he exclaimed when he saw the blood running down Zane's shirt. He had stopped cold with his mouth hanging open in shock.

Focused on keeping Zane conscious and upright, Allison glared at Fargo. "Help me get him to the infirmary! We need to patch him up and keep him alive long enough for Jack and Henry to get us out. He's going to go into shock any minute."

"Right!" Fargo responded, running to Zane's other side and holding him up.

Zane looked down at Fargo a bit lethargically but still with a solid enough stance. "Allison's just exaggerating. I feel fine enough," he said flashing a small smile at his friend. "Don't worry, Little Big Man. There's no way I'm dying in this crap town." They shuffled quickly forward and saw two figures rushing towards them. Jo and Grace, Zane noted with a smile. They were safe.

When they met the two women at the turn-off for the infirmary, he saw a look of horror cross Jo's face. He checked her over making sure she wasn't similarly shot up or bruised or hurt in any way. Grace looked shaken and clearly worried about the scene in front of her but, otherwise, she appeared unscathed.

Allison continued to hold on to his chest but used their momentary respite to assess the damage. She quickly yanked his farther arm out of the jacket to see if the bullet had gone through and repositioned her hand against him to apply more firm pressure to the bleeding wound.

Feeling the pain shoot across his chest and up his neck, Zane's grimace turned into a scowl seeing Jo's worried face. They were so close and he had to go and complicate things. And the more they stood around, the less they could do to help themselves get out of this program. However, first things first, he needed to get that awful look off of Jo's face while he still had the energy.

"We've got a little problem guys." Jo's eyes narrowed seeing what he was trying to do. He automatically smirked at her which he knew would drive her crazy but would also distract her from freaking out over his injury. "Sorry JoJo."

Snapping back to reality, she immediately ran towards him and took over for Fargo who looked like he was about to keel over supporting Zane's bigger form. She took his muscular weight against her body with no problem. His mind immediately defaulted to the sexiness of that thought and he didn't waste any energy feeling bad about the inappropriateness of that sentiment at a time like this. He had a freaking hole in his chest; anything to keep him focused was fair game as far as he was concerned.

She stroked the bruise already forming across his cheek. Carter 2.0 packed one hell of a punch; virtual or not, it hurt like hell. "I can't leave you alone for five minutes," she muttered now leaning past his shoulder to assess the damage as best she could while Allison carefully removed his other arm from his jacket.

He looked down at her and sighed with the relief of seeing her. This was the home stretch. Just a little bit longer and they'd be clear and she could hold him for real. He carefully leaned down to kiss the top of her head.

"Don't worry Jo." Her gaze turned up to him and she kissed his lips gently, tears welling up in her eyes. "Hey none of that. I'm gonna hang in there as long as I need to." They both turned at the sound of Zane's blood soaked jacket hitting the ground where Allison had slid it from his arm. "And I've still got the real version of your favorite jacket out there in the real Eureka." Jo's strangled laugh slash sob broke his heart but she recovered quickly and pulled him more firmly against her. As a tear escaped the corner of her eye, she smiled at him, that sweet grin that made his insides melt every time—although his insides probably didn't appreciate the disruption currently.

She wouldn't let him go; he was sure of that now.

He looked up at the worried faces surrounding him and smiled weakly. "Let's get to the rotunda. We've got a few hot dates waiting for us."

TBC...