Author's Note: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Sooo much going on lately and I am NOT exaggerating when I said I had, like 7 midterms these last couple weeks. Talk about intense! But they all went quite well if I do say so myself ^_^ ...except French. French didn't go well :/ Goodbye awesome GPA
Anyway...
Also... we're back to the depressing chapters :)
*Insertes smiley emoticon to throw you off, or perhaps to lighten the atmosphere to make it seem less depressing*
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note, or anything remotely associated with it.
August 10, 2024. 9:00 PM... 14 Days Left...
"I still don't like this," I whispered to Mello as he, Matt and I made our way along a dark and deserted alleyway to our destination; the converted office building with the supposed bomb in it.
"I'll look out for you okay? It'll be fine. We're just going in and out anyway."
"Yeah, but something feels fishy, don't you think?"
"Look, even if this isn't the bomb we're looking for, we're just going to be in and out; nothing's going to happen. We've both done this at least a dozen times. And Gevanni and his crew are only a block away if we need reinforcements."
"Yeah, I guess you're right," I relented.
"Mic check," Matt said into his com.
"Check," Mello said.
"Check," I echoed.
"Gun check," Matt said, and we all checked our pieces. We'd each been given a police issue Beretta for the mission; 'Just in case.'
"Check."
I turned mine over in my hand and clicked the safety off. "Check."
We stalked closer to the building in the dark. The blueprints we had acquired to the building showed a service entrance around the back, we would be using that to get in. It was a set of heavy steel doors; probably secured with sliding-bolt locks into the floors and chained together with a padlock. I had seen this set up many times before.
It was child's play getting inside.
"'Kay, spread out," I heard Mello say into the transmitter he was wearing. "Jewel, you take the north stairs, I'll take the west stairs; Matt, take the elevator."
"Got it."
"On it."
We fanned out across the main floor of the building like spiders. We'd all changed outfits from earlier. We were all wearing all black now, and I had my hair tied up and hidden beneath a black toque. Nothing ever gave me away more quickly than my silver hair being caught in security cameras or catching and reflecting beams of light.
The lights on the main floor however all seemed to be dimed. From the outside of the building we had seen that there were only one or two scattered lights on each of the floors that were actually lit. Bonus for us.
I made my way over to the north stairwell. Not easy in this maze of a building, not easy in the dark, and not easy with my crappy eyesight. I adjusted my glasses on my nose even though I knew it wouldn't help, and pressed on.
When I got to the stairwell door I paused and listened and peaked cautiously through the narrow pane of glass set at eye level in the steel frame. I heard no sound but my own breathing, and saw nothing in the stairwell except the outline of the staircase, lit up by pale, orange emergency lights. I creaked open the door slowly and slid in.
I made it up the first flight and then stopped at the door leading out to the second floor landing and repeated my earlier procedure of peaking out the narrow pane of glass. I had to be more careful this time. There weren't a whole lot of places for someone to hide in a stairwell; there were plenty of places for someone to hide on an entire floor space... especially one as complicated as this was. I hadn't had a real chance to memorize the floor plan or the blueprints, and I really wished I had. I listened at the door and when I was satisfied that I heard nothing, I let myself through.
I snaked and skirted and crept my way through the second floor to the stairwell that would lead to the third floor and so on until I made my way up to the fifth floor landing; all the while dealing with a growing feeling of malaise in my stomach.
There was only one more flight to go to the sixth floor where the safe with the bomb was supposed to be. I was supposed to regroup with Matt and Mello up there. We'd split up for safety reasons, but I had yet to even hear, let alone see any member of this 'skeleton staff' the brunette had told us about.
Something was seriously wrong.
I inched my way up to the fifth floor landing, listened, and was about to reach for the door handle, when I noticed something peculiar.
"A deadbolt?" I asked confused. "What kind of an idiot puts a deadbolt on the outside of a door?" It didn't make sense to have a deadbolt on the stairwell side. If you wanted to keep someone from sneaking around your building, you would put a lock on the inside.
But then, the whole entirety of the building was more than a little backward.
I couldn't worry about that right now though; I had other things to worry about. I shook the oddity from my head though and pressed my ear against the cold steel. I listened carefully and let myself onto the landing. This floor seemed darker than all the rest. Whereas the other floors had been letting moonlight in through their windows, this floor, didn't seem to have any, which didn't make sense to me. There had quite clearly been windows marking the fifth floor on the outside of the building, so why...
I crept to the closest wall and felt my way along until I found it; the reason why no light was getting in. The windows were boarded up on the inside!
"That doesn't make any sense. Why would...?" I whispered to myself, and then I saw it. Less than half a foot to my right was a tiny, glowing red dot about the size of a thumbtack. It tracked its way along the sheet of plywood over the window. It tracked its way closer to me.
"Oops, time to go," I cried as I ducked out of the way just in time. I felt it in the air above my head as a silenced round flew over me.
Suddenly the stairwell door I had just come out of was thrust open and a hulking shadow with the recognizable outline of a shotgun stood in the orange glow from the emergency lights.
I launched myself off the floor and made a mad dash for the stairwell at the far end of the building, the one that Mello should have been working his way up. I didn't want to lead them to him, but I couldn't get down my own staircase with the behemoth in the way, and I wasn't about to trap myself on the top floor.
I pulled out my Beretta and fired two quick rounds behind me without aiming.
"We've got to bounce, we've been compromised!" Matt came in over my earpiece.
"Yeah no kidding," Mello answered back.
"Where are you guys?" I asked as silenced bullets sliced past my ears.
"Fourth floor," they both came back at once. "Heading down," Matt added.
Shit.
I was trapped alone on the fifth. I just had to make it to the staircase though, and I'd be fine.
I could see the stairwell door in front of me, and I saw it fly open and another shadowed figure step in with a massive gun.
"Oh hell," I muttered casually as a barrage of semiautomatic gunfire lit up the floor.
"We got one!" I heard a raspy voice call over the ear-splitting noise. "Lock the doors and set the charge."
"Is it the one we want?"
"The other three are getting away."
The other 'three'? There were only three of us total.
"They might still be here."
"Lock the doors and set the charge," I heard again, and my blood ran cold. I really hoped that they weren't going to do what I thought they were going to do.
The gunfire stopped and I heard two doors slam close in the darkness, and then, I heard the ever recognizable sound of two dead bolts sliding into place.
I was unable to stop the miniature jet of panic that welled up inside of me.
Silence.
I waited to a count of ten in my head and then I crawled to the stairwell door and tried to open it. No dice.
'Well,' I thought to myself, 'that explains the idiot who puts deadbolts on the outside of doors.' I sighed and took a closer inspection of the door.
It was solid steel. If I tried to fire at the deadbolt to knock it out my bullets would just ricochet and cause no end of problems.
Great.
'Calm down Jewel, calm down,' I willed myself. I waited a moment in the silence and the eerie orange glow of the emergency lights for a minute with only the noise of my blood pounding in my ears to keep me company.
Then, a new sound replaced the pounding, "Jewel, come in. Where are you?"
I couldn't answer back. I was too afraid to move, I was too afraid to make a sound.
"Gem, come back! What's your status?"
"I... I think... I'm in troub-" but I didn't have time to finish. A terrible, Earth shattering blast knocked me back off my feet.
I was thrown hard against a wall and had the air knocked out of me for a good moment. My glasses had flown off my face with the force of the explosion and I patted the ground frantically looking for them.
All around me were pieces of shattered planks and concrete debris, and what's more, the room I was in was starting to fill with a thick, black smoke.
Finally my hands bumped against my frames and I quickly picked them up to inspect their damage.
My lenses had been shattered through and through to the point where they'd almost be just as useless as not having glasses at all.
A crackling came over my earpiece then. It was all static at first, but then I started to catch bits and pieces of what was being said. "...Jewel... still inside? What's... I don't... not replying... explosion... com's down..."
"Guys! Guys can you hear me?" I asked back worriedly, as dark, suffocating smoke enveloped me."
"...back inside... Jewel... hear us?"
"You keep breaking up? Can you hear me?"
Static.
It was no use. The explosion had obviously knocked out the equipment.
'Shoddy craftsmanship,' I mused angrily.
I coughed and hacked as billows of offensive black surrounded me and forced their way into my lungs... and then I saw it.
Really I should have known, where there's smoke, there's fire; but I think my subconscious was trying to protect me.
Bright orange, yellow and red flickered and danced around me, throwing shadows of death on the walls and floors.
Oh God, why?
A paralyzing fear started in my heart and flowed through my chest, arms and legs, stiffening my joints and muscles and making it all but impossible to breathe in the already smoke filled room.
"Mommy, Daddy!" I called as the fire licked at the bottom of our closed door.
"Get out! Get out of the house!" I could barely hear my father's call above the crackling and splintering of the wood.
Smoke billowed in above my brother's and my heads and on the other side of the house I heard glass shatter.
"Mommy! Daddy!" I called again, but this time received no answer. "MOM! DAD!" still no answer.
The smoke was getting thicker in the room and the flames were working their way up the door and walls. I stole a glance at my brother; he was sitting under my window with a handful of toys in his hands. His white pyjamas and silver hair were covered in ashes and soot and I had to imagine that my hair and clothes looked the same.
The two of us were starting to cough as I crawled over the window. I grabbed a blanket off of my bad and draped it over the two of us as I prepared to open the window. If I wasn't careful the crosscurrent that would be created by opening the window would cause an even greater flare-up of the flames.
I slipped the window up and was grateful when the room wasn't immediately engulfed in flames. "C'mon, let's go!"
"Jewel! Can... hear...? Get out o..."
'Move Jewel! MOVE!' I ordered myself, but I couldn't. 'You've been through this before! You survived then and you can now! Freaking move!'
Time and space froze. Fire flickered and debris fell all around me in slow motion but made no sound. I wasn't moving, and I wasn't even sure if I was breathing.
All of a sudden I felt a painful, bone breaking punch into my chest, and what was left of the untainted air in my lungs whooshed out.
"I've got her! Everybody else get out!"
The natural flow of time resumed as I was carried in a blur down flights of stairs and as my mind struggled to catch up.
"Is she going to be alright?"
"She's suffering from severe smoke inhalation, and she's got a couple burns and scratches, but its nothing that won't heal. We'll release her tomorrow... If she starts coming around." What the nurse said next was hushed and I am sure, not meant for me to hear even though I was the one who was living it, "She's been sitting there rigid like that for the past two hours, I don't even think I've seen her blink."
"The way she's grasping the blanket..."
"We believe its just a case of PTSD, it's common with things like fires. She should snap out of it soon... We hope."
I stayed staring at the wall, watching the nurse and Gevanni in my periphery. They shared a few more muted words and then left my room.
I was alone for only a moment before another figure filled the doorway.
Mello.
I didn't acknowledge him, and he didn't come in. We both stayed perfectly still for what seemed like hours; him watching me, and me watching the wall, waiting for it to spontaneously ignite.
Finally there was movement in the doorway.
Matt came into view. He gave me a sad, pitying look, placed his hand on Mello's shoulder and the two of them left my doorway.
Author's Note: DEATH TO COMMUNAL WASHROOMS!
Sorry, I just needed to get that off my chest, LOL.
Okay guys, I think I should ask this now, instead of waiting for too many more chapters...
Do you guys want:
A happy ending?
A sad ending?
Or...
A bittersweet ending?