Brandon

After we breached the hatch and moved up onto the roof, I double-tapped one of the PMC that was on the roof with John. David shot another who wasn't far away. Big Luke just held his 1911 level and aimed at John's face about twenty feet away. He was using his left hand as his right could not be lifted high enough to use the sights.

"Whoa, whoa!" exclaimed John with a big ironic smile. Then his face changed after he realized what our presence meant in regards to his son. "I guess you got passed Kyle and his squad," he said, his voice full of regret.

"You should have seen him as he begged me to finish him off," Big Luke told him. "Then you should have seen him as his squad opened fire on his body after I killed him."

"He had been talking about taking you on one-on-one for sometime," John informed us. "I suppose he went through with?"

"Yeah," I replied. "Now, let her go."

John was standing on the ledge of the building with his arm around Brittany's neck, holding her as a human shield as he held his eight-inch Colt Python to her head. If one of us fired our weapons at him, he could take Brittany with him as he fell the twenty stories to the concrete below. Assuming that we didn't hit Brittany in the process. John and Brittany were thrashing around and moving all over the place, it would be hard to find a clear shot.

If anybody was going to take the shot, David would be the ideal person to do so. Maybe not with his MP7 but perhaps with my rifle, longer barrel and slightly more accurate. He could see patterns in people's movements that not many other people could see and generally pull the trigger at just the right moment. David was thinking the same thing as he slowly walked up next to me and we traded weapons. He left his M110 in KATE's trunk as he often did when we moved into buildings so it was not readily available at the moment.

"You are in no position to make demands," John told us, as if he needed to. We knew perfectly well that we were essentially at his mercy. "I want you two to leave," he commanded David and I.

"You OK with that?" asked Big Luke.

"Fuck no, I'm not OK with that!" I exclaimed.

"I wasn't exactly asking you," he replied, still holding his arm out with the 1911 trained on John and his eyes on Brittany.

Big Luke wasn't asking me if it was alright with me to leave him alone on the roof with the guy that killed his mom and now had his friend held hostage on the roof of a twenty story building. He was asking Brittany if it was OK with her if he could take the shot and kill John, putting her life at risk.

Remember how I said that David was the best option we had for taking the shot? Well, Big Luke was the worst possible option we had to take it. He practically couldn't hit the broadside of a barn with his left hand and the handgun he was using was not helping his case.

"You do what you need to do for your 'mission'," said Brittany as she put "mission" in air-quotes despite the fact that she was still being held hostage. Apparently, she was still pissed at Big Luke for making out with his es on his vacation.

"Alright, that's enough talkin'!" exclaimed John. "Now get to steppin'."

Before I left, I pulled my radio from its designated pouch and used some medical tape to hold down the button. I laid the taped-up radio in front of Big Luke's feet and David and I walked back down the stairs to the next level. The radio was so I could hear everything that was said on that rooftop.

"Alright, give me your radio," I demanded from David and he complied.

He unplugged the radio from the headset and handed it to me. This way we both could hear the conversation.

"So, you ditched the first bomb and disarmed the second," started John. "You decided to save your entire army rather than save your little girlfriend."

"I can still save them both," I heard Big Luke reply.

"For all you knew, she was long dead by the time you had the second bomb defused. You just came back to finish me off," said John.

"I wasn't going to believe it until I saw a body. To be honest, I didn't even come back for you or your son. I came back for her. I didn't want to leave without knowing that I had done everything I could to make sure she got home safe. You being here was only a bonus."

"We need to hurry up and find a way to catch her before Big Luke decides to pull his trigger," suggested David.

I pressed the button on the side of the radio, hoping that the pressed button on the radio I left on the roof would block what I was about to say. "KATE, you there?"

"No, I'm not there on the twentieth floor but I am nearby the building," she replied.

"OK, fine. What do you have that can catch a woman who falls off a twenty story building?" I asked.

"I may have something that should suffice but it takes thirty minutes, thirteen seconds to inflate to a safe level," she replied.

"What about a risky level?" asked David.

"Twenty-eight minutes, forty-five seconds."

"We need a new plan," I told David.

I dropped the radio on the floor and moved towards a wooden door. I guess David could see on my face that I had an idea. I whipped out a fillips head screwdriver and started to unscrew the door from the wall. Rather than asking me what I was planning, David just kept his mouth shut and trusted in what I was doing. At this point, I totally forgot about the radio and what was being said on the roof.

The next thing on my list was something really heavy. I found a desk and I asked David to help me push it towards the window. We left it there and moved back to the door which we also carried to the window. My plan was to knock out the window and use the desk and the door to make a small platform for David to shoot from.

We shot out the window with the near silent MP7 and laid about three quarters of the door off the ledge, using the desk to hold it in place. I took a seat on the desk to assure myself that David wasn't going to fall. David just looked at the makeshift platform, then back at me.

"Oh, right," I said. "You're going to lay down on that door and use my 416 to take John out from behind. With the angle of the shot, you probably won't hit Brittany or Big Luke."

David just shrugged and crawled out onto the platform with my 416 slung over his shoulder. The door was holding together nicely as David rolled over onto his back. He shouldered my rifle and was just getting the sights on his target when a single gunshot rang out from the rooftop and it didn't sound like Big Luke's 1911.

David and I both jumped and David pulled his trigger. The gun went off and so did Big Luke's 1911 about five times. About a second later, John's body fell in front of the window and nearly landed on the door. Brittany let out a huge scream that nearly ruptured my ear drum.

"Did you get him?" I asked David who was standing up on the platform to get back in the building.

"Yeah, I got him right in the base of the skull underneath his helmet," he replied as we made our way up the stairs and through the hatch.

We saw Big Luke laying on the ground and Brittany was bawling hysterically next to him. Big Luke had been hit in the gut and was dying. Not dead yet, just dying. His blood was starting to pool around him as Brittany tried to apply pressure to his wounds. David and I ran up to them and David went right to work trying to heal Big Luke.

"Come on," I told Brittany as I tried to usher her to the corner of the roof. " You gotta stay- Oof!"

Brittany whipped around and kneed me in the nuts and I fell to my knees. I laid there for a minute, grasping for air as she ran back to Big Luke's side. Sometimes I wish she never took his hand-to-hand combat class.

"Don't you die on me!" she screamed at him.

I forced myself to get to my feet and waddled back over to them. I knelt down next to her and she started bawling into my shirt sleeve. Big Luke's blood from her hands staining the material.

"It's alright," I allayed, still grieving over my damaged nether regions. "David will get him fixed up. Right, David?"

David took a split second to look at me and put this expression on his face that I only interpreted as Don't get your hopes up and went back to work.

Big Luke was still conscious for the time being but he wasn't saying much.

"Big Luke, you reckless son of a bitch!" I insulted him. "You already got hurt once today; you going for two?"

"Sorry," he gasped, coughing up a little blood. "Had to be done."

We were twenty stories up in the air and we had to get Big Luke to the infirmary or a hospital and fast. I steadily leaned over and picked up my radio that was laying on the ground and peeled off the medical tape.

"KATE, we need you to launch up the stretcher!" I yelled into the radio, my voice quivering a little.

A second later, we saw a ultralight gurney that was folded up into about a two feet square being launched from the ground below and land on the rooftop. Brittany grabbed it and I stood up to help her get it unfolded. Once we did and it was flat on the ground, we rolled it over next to Big Luke and helped David get the two-hundred, forty pound individual onto the gurney. We pumped the hydraulic actuator to get the thing to raised up.

We rushed down the stairs, David and I carried the stretcher and Brittany applied pressure to Big Luke's wounds. She wouldn't stop looking into his paling face and his glazed eyes as she cried her eyes out. In a way, Big Luke was lucky to have been shot in the gut, it was a painful way to go but it gave us some time to get him some help. He would have probably already been dead by now if he had been shot anywhere in the chest or the head.

We made our way to the elevator because it was faster and easier on Big Luke than the stairs. David pressed the button and wouldn't stop tapping his foot as the elevator made it's way to the twentieth floor. The doors opened and we stepped inside. We rode the elevator all the way down the the bottom and headed out the lobby to the street. KATE was waiting for us outside the building.

KATE popped her passenger's side door and I yanked it open. We all hoisted Big Luke into the passenger's seat and ran around to the driver's side to get in. Brittany and I in the back, David up front. Brittany was still sobbing as she scooted up next to me so we could recline Big Luke's seat back.

Brittany held his hand with one hand and stroked his hair with her other. Big Luke had lost consciousness but was still breathing and his heart still beating. David had hooked him up to all these machines that KATE had concealed away under different panels on the interior. Big Luke had installed them after I got shot last summer. I didn't exactly know what to do in this situation but I put my arm around Brittany's shoulder and tried to comfort her. She was so focused on Big Luke that she didn't care.

KATE was heading back to camp, hopefully there would be some more people from the Apollo cabin there help David out. Hopefully, Chiron could work some of his centaur magic on him. Hopefully, Big Luke wouldn't die before we got there. Hopeful was all we could be at this point as we let David do his thing.

We eventually made our way out to the interstate and KATE could really open up and make some really good time. Big Luke died twice on the trip. I mean stone cold; his heart stopped beating; he stopped breathing. I was sure by the second time that we had lost him once and for all. David had to use the defibrillator to revive him. Ambrosia and nectar weren't helping him much. The only thing that were really keeping him going was the plasma that we had running through his blood stream.

I was scared out of my mind. I looked up to this Marine and now I might have to see him leave this world. Big Luke was so worried about us getting hurt and having to tell our parents that we had been killed; now, the tables were turned. Who were we going to tell that he had been killed? His grandparents? We hadn't even met them before; let alone know where they lived. I wasn't even entirely sure as to what happened on that rooftop. I was lost in thoughts until I heard Brittany say something to Big Luke.

"Jon Luke, if you love me, you won't die on me! OK? OK?!" she begged Big Luke's unconscious self.

"Brittany, don't say that. Don't set yourself up for more pain. He's fighting just as hard as he ever has," I tried to say but my voice quaked as I spoke.

"Shut up, Brandon!" she yelled at me.

I couldn't help but fight back tears of my own. This guy was more than a team member to me, or even a friend; the guy was like the older brother I never had. I was sure that David would say the same thing. Big Luke taught us everything he knew and he looked out for us. Had to be done, were his last words to us.

David was doing his best to stay strong but he was constantly wiping tears from his eyes on his sleeve. He was not numb as to what was happening, he wanted to save Big Luke as much as the rest of us. He flooded the geyser from his stomach with more Quick-clot to help stop the bleeding but was still using the gauze to apply pressure.

"He's going to need surgery," he announced.

"Is it risky?" I asked.

"I don't know. Several of his internal organs need to be repaired. This is my first gunshot wound, Brandon. I think it's most of the people in my cabin's first gunshot wound," he replied. "Besides, we have nothing really to lose by trying."

"I bet it isn't his first," I said. "He's probably seen this before. Shit, he might have even gone through this before. See all those scars?"

Big Luke had several scars on his torso: he had a lateral scar on his left oblique and a couple of what looked like old cigarette burns on his chest. They were all thick and jagged, uneven. You could tell that the wounds were not sewed up by expert hands. Brittany looked at them and shook her head like she remembered something from the past.

We finally arrived at the Big House and got Big Luke into surgery as soon as we got him out of the car. David let some of the more experienced and better medics to do their job. So the three of us sat on the front steps of the Big House and waited. Brittany sat in the middle and David and I sat on either side of her. We didn't talk too much until Mathew walked up to us.

"Where's Big Luke?" he asked.

Brittany stood up and walked over to her brother. She wrapped him in a big hug and dug her face into his matching blond hair. Mathew hugged his sister back. He knew that something was wrong.

"He's in surgery, Mathew."

"What for?" he replied.

"He was wounded in combat. Shot in the gut," I told him.

"Is he gonna make it?"

I looked at David for help. Thankfully, he understood.

"If he makes it, he will probably be in a coma for a while. He can wake from that but we can never know for sure."

KATE was still sitting there in front of the big house which gave me an idea.

"You want to go for a drive?" I asked the twelve year old. "Maybe talk about some things?"

He just nodded and we stepped in KATE's cockpit. I looked at Brittany before I boarded the Charger and she just waved me on. David stayed with her as I got in the driver seat. KATE had stored all of the medical equipment and the blood ran off the waterproofed leather so Mathew could sit in the shotgun seat.

I sat there in the driver seat. I could drive stick but I wasn't as good of a driver as Big Luke or Brittany but I could handle it all right. I stuck the Charger in first and turned around on the lawn and headed back up Half-Blood Hill. I drove the car back down the hill and headed out on the dirt road that ran past camp.

"Where are we going?" asked Mathew.

"I want to head back to the building we were in, retrieve the stuff that Big Luke left behind. I'll go in if you don't want to. It's not a real pretty sight so I don't want to piss off your sister any more than I already have," I told him. "I promise it won't take very long."

"He was probably laying down in this seat. Wasn't he?" asked Mathew, ignoring the explanation I gave him. He rubbed his hands along the arm rests and sighed.

"KATE does a pretty good job of cleaning up," I replied.

"Was he at peace when he passed out?"

"I really couldn't tell you. I know that he's a fighter and he's doing his best to pull through. I know that he wasn't afraid, or at least he didn't show it."

"My sister really did like him," he said, staring at the floor. "She never told me but she had been in some abusive relationships. She tried to leave me out of it but she couldn't hide it well. Big Luke was the only guy that really treated her right. Only he never liked her back."

"I wouldn't talk about him in the past tense. Technically, he's still alive. It's just that, he takes on a lot of responsibility and he takes it seriously. You've seen him go off when things so South," I explained.

"He should of never befriended my sister and I. He was right all along but we didn't listen," he scolded at the floor.

We continued the drive into New York City and the talk. Mathew was somehow convinced that Big Luke wasn't going to make it, I was trying to stay hopeful. Eventually, we made it too the same twenty story building. I made sure to parallel park the Charger away from John's dead corpse that I'm sure was still on the pavement.