CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: CLINICALLY ALIVE

6

I just stare at the wound in Nine's chest for another moment.

Watch the first drop of blood trickle out of it, watch as more drops build up and push over the edge of the wound, watch the dark, glossy trace that slowly spreads all over Nine's ripped shirt.

The noise of the gunshot still echoes in my mind, bounces back and forth inside my head, replays over and over. The bullet shooting out of the rifle, flying through the air, slamming into Nine and tearing a big hole into his chest.

With a shiver running down my neck, I shake the images out of my head and unfreeze from my numbness.

With two big leaps I'm right beside Walker, who drops her rifle the second my hands tighten around her throat. I lift her up in the air with a loud, furious cry that drowns out the sudden choking sounds escaping the agent's mouth. Her feet dangling a few inches above the ground, she squints down at me, her expression full with gloating excitement about shooting Nine.

I tighten my grip around her throat even more. The disturbingly insane grin on her face doesn't go away, though. Even when she turns pale from the lack of oxygen, she still doesn't wipe it off.

"Wait, my little alien friend," Walker finally manages, gasping for air.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you right now," I hiss through my clenched teeth, staring her right in the eyes. I want to see her reaction when she realizes this is the end of 'ol' agent Walker'.

"How about this," Walker pants. "Your little companion right here is not going to die…"

"Great. And why would that make me want to kill you less?" I give back, squeezing even tighter.

"…if you don't let me down right now," Walker adds. I stare at her with a mix of rage and disgust as she fidgets and hammers her fists against my arms, trying to free herself. But even as she brings up all the strength left in her body, she's not even close to escaping my grip. The satisfaction from watching her struggle is overwhelming.

"The bullet I shot him with," Walker croaks with the last ounce of strength. "It was poisoned. Your friend may survive the shot itself, but he will certainly die from the toxic deposits in his blood system, if he doesn't take the antidote within the next two hours."

I gape at her twitching face, realizing what she just said.

"You poisoned him?" I shout at her, shaking her whole body back and forth. I want to snap her neck so badly right now, to see the life slowly fade out in those maniacal eyes. But if she's telling the truth, I'd be signing Nine's death sentence with it. Of course, Walker telling me about the poison doesn't proves it's true, especially not in her condition. She looks like she's gone completely crazy, a classic nutcase. I wouldn't count on her word. But if just the slightest chance exists that what she tells actually is the truth, I have no choice but to let her live.

At least for the moment.

I puff out an angry sigh and let Walker drop to the floor. She collapses onto the ground, where she remains lying for a few seconds, clenching her throat and coughing intensely.

I look at her nauseatedly as she lies to my feet, shaking my head. I can't believe the woman lying in front of me once was one of the FBI's top agents, a strong, smart role model for the entire human kind.

And now, look at her. Randomly shooting people, acting like a complete whacko, having to beg for mercy from an unarmed, underage teenager.

She's just an empty shadow of her former self. If I wouldn't be so busy trying to contain myself from murdering her, I could almost feel sorry for her.

Almost.

I force myself to stay calm as I wait for the agent to catch her breath. She coughs a couple more times, then she just lies there, giving me a creepy, mischievous smile.

Holy shit, she's easy to hate.

"Damn, kid, you could have seriously hurt me right there," she says, and I can't decide whether she's trying to be funny or if she's just plain dumb.

"I still can. And I will," I bark back at her, slamming my boot into her side for a little demonstration. She groans in pain as the force of the impact roles her over to her side.

My turn to smile.

"Careful, my little alien friend," she says, slowly forcing herself to sit up and holding her side. "Ol' agent Walker is the only thing that can still save Mr. hole-in-his-chest right here."

Walker grumpily points at Nine, who is still cowering on his knees, pressing both his hands at the heavily bleeding wound. A scarily big pool of blood has formed on the floor around him, reminding me I don't have much time to handle this whole thing. If Walker actually did poison him, we'll have to get the antidote right now. Those Mog troops won't stay away forever.

"And why would I believe that?" I demand, turning back to Walker." How do I know that you didn't just make this entire poisoned bullet thing up?"

"Oh, you don't," the agent replies, snickering in childish cheerfulness. "You don't know, that's the funny thing. You can't tell until it's too late."

I give her another kick in the side and she goes flying against the floor once again.

"Hey!" she yells when she gets back up, rubbing her head. "Stop that right now! It makes my head go owie!"

I send my boot down at her one more time, but she manages to roll away before the kick connects. Unfortunately for her, though, I am a Loric; my agility and speed are superior to anything she will ever bring up. At the time she tries to get up from the ground, I'm already standing right beside her again, one foot victoriously resting on her belly.

She lets out a loud, disappointed puff as she realizes I was quicker than her again.

"That's not fair. Using your powers is against the rules," she complains.

"Listen, agent," I hiss down at her. "I'd love to stay and discuss rules with you, but unfortunately, we don't have time to play games." Her eyes light up at the word 'games'. "So how about you just hand over that antidote right now, and maybe I won't make your death quite as painful."

"Ah, yes, the antidote," Walker grins back up at me. "Well, it's not actually that simple."

I press my boot against the agent's belly more fiercely, producing a loud, moaning yelp from her.

"What do you mean, it's not that simple? Does the antidote even exist, or did you just make it up after all?" I snarl, crossing my arms in front of my chest.

"No, no, not made up. It's all real," Walker quickly replies. "But I don't have it with me. The antidote is somewhere else… somewhere safe."

"Great," I mutter. "And where is this safe place?"

"Well, I'd like to tell you, but…" Walker says, motioning at my foot on her belly. I roll my eyes and take it off of her. She lets out a relieved sigh and sits back up.

"Now, I'll tell you how this whole is going to go down," she casually says while brushing the dust off her uniform. "You and your… guy," she points at Nine, "are coming with me."

She makes a pause and stands up with a long groan. I press my lips together, waiting for her to continue.

"You two will do anything I tell you to, at all time! And you will not, I repeat, not try to kick me again, or the boy dies."

I take a menacing step towards her, bringing my face so close to hers until our noses almost touch.

"This is how this thing's going down," I say, looking her right in the eyes. "You tell me where that antidote is or you die."

Walker takes a step away from me, shaking her head in irritation.

"No, no, no," she says. "Didn't you listen to ol' agent Walker? I just said you two will come with me, not that I'd die. That's what I just said, yes. The little alien must be confused. Poor girl."

I clench my fists so fiercely that I slowly lose the feeling in my fingertips.

"If you can't tell me where to find the antidote, you are no use to us," I say, trying to keep my voice down. The agent shrugs.

"Kill ol' agent Walker, and your friend dies, too, sooner or later. Your choice."

I stare at her, struggling to find an answer. It would be so easy to just follow my instincts, to give in to the aggressions inside of me, let out all my anger. I could just beat the crap out of her, then leave her lying here. Let the Mogs figure out what to do with her. The urge to finally give Walker what she deserves is just so strong, holding back drives me crazy.

But I can't be this selfish, not this time. I still have no idea if Nine actually has been poisoned, but what I know is that this wound is going to kill him if we don't treat it soon. I could really need a little help, even if it's from the enemy.

Sooner or later, I'll get my revenge on Walker, but it'll have to wait. Right now, making sure Nine doesn't die on me is way more important.

"Alright, Walker, you won. We're coming with you," I say to the agent and she claps her hands cheerfuly.

"Yay! I like winning," she tells me in an excited tone, as if that was a reason for me to be happy.

I turn away from her, holding back the sarcastic comment I would have loved to drop right now, and walk over to Nine.

He is lying on the ground by now, still pressing his shaking hands over his chest. There's blood everywhere on his shirt, and more just keeps pouring out of the wound. He already seems to be dizzy from the blood loss, and I don't think he will stay conscious for much longer.

He looks up at me with glassy eyes as I come closer, his gaze dull.

"Six," he weakly says to me. "Six, what's going on? What are they doing here?"

He points behind me, and I turn with a jolt, expecting someone to actually stand there. But when I look around, there's no one in the room except for Nine, me and Walker.

"The poison can have side effects," the agent explains, curiously eyeing Nine. "Small doses can lead to hallucinations. And high doses… well, death is some sort of a side effect, too, right?"

I roll my eyes and help Nine to his feet.

"We need to go, Nine. You hear me? We're going away from here. Somewhere… safe," I say loud and clearly, and Nine nods numbly. At least he still responds to my voice.

Pulling his left arm over my shoulder, I half carry, half drag him through the wrecked remains of the marble ceiling. We slowly make our way towards the hole in the force field, where Walker is already waiting for us. She keeps glancing through the hole, impatiently tapping her foot, almost as if expecting someone to appear right outside our cell any second.

The Mogs maybe. Or something worse. I don't really want to know.

I let out a sigh and look at Nine, hanging from my shoulders right now. His long, sweaty dark hair loosely falls into his face, hiding his pained expression. The muffled groaning sounds he makes at every step we take speak for themselves, though, and I know one thing.

He's not going to keep this up for much longer. Maybe the part about the poison was true after all. Maybe it's already nagging its way through his body, eating him from the inside.

I force myself to stay positive, to believe everything will be okay, no matter how gullible that sounds.

"Hang in there, Nine," I whisper, not really sure if he can hear me. "We're getting out of this.

Alive.

Together."

Hey there everybody!

Let's start off with the reviews today:

ArcticBlue: Yeah, Marina really should relax. Stupid characters, you know what they're like...

thsimplestterms: Glad you liked it :)

destinybroughtme: OH MY GOD! THERE YOU GO!

I-wish-I-could-be-Number-Five: Marina's POV probably returning in the chapter after the next one or so, we'll see :)

So today, I'd like to give you a tiny inside look at the thought process behind this chapter and also the one before it, Chapter 25. As you may or may not have noticed – well, I noticed – strong female characters are not exactly one of my strengths. In fact, I tend to make all major female characters in the story appear extremely one-sided, unrealistic and all in all just straight boring, which therefore killed quite a lot of chapters up to now. There are countless examples of this, e.g. in chapter 15, the scene where John tries to convince Sarah to jump off the train, she's really nothing but defensive and scared. Or in chapter 6, where Nine lets out all his anger at Six, she also reacts just defensively without fighting back, which just is not like her at all. I could name a couple of more examples, but I guess you guys get the point. I keep reducing them to 'passive objects', which don't really act themselves but rather just react in obvious ways.

So this is why I decided to make a change to that and give Marina a bit of this angry badass outburst last chapter, and it's why I brought back the old, strong Six. Hope you guys like it :)

If you do (and also if you don't), why not drop a review, while you're at it? Ain't gonna hurt nobody ;P

Hope you have a wonderful time 'til next chapter, and thanks a looooooot to all of you for reading this story =)