John was looking worse than ever.
He was going to die.
It was a solid, undeniable fact, and Gordon was, if he was honest, not sure how he felt about it, really. Bothered, yes. Upset? Kind of, but it wasn't that which was getting to him. No, it was it was that the killing blow wasn't going to be his.
He was going to be denied his only goal, denied what had been keeping him going for so long now. He was being denied not only the right to avenge the betrayal but also the right to grant John a swift death.
So he'd decided that if this was the last thing he was going to do—and it was looking more and more like it would be—he was going to make sure she regretted it.
He was going to crush her. Admittedly he wasn't sure how, but he had Penny so he was certain he could do it.
They could do it.
She was here, not entirely safe, but she was here, her hand in his meant that right then he could take on anyone, including a psychotic rogue AI that thought she was more than just a collection of wires and copper.
Tugging on his hand, she pulled him from the main path, knocking him from his thoughts and into to the labyrinthine, humming metal-forest.
'Do we have a plan?' She glanced back, and he realised he'd missed those blue eyes. It was odd, almost like seeing them again for the first time. Huge, ocean blue crystals.
'Umm. Take ribbon, blow stuff up?'
It wasn't the answer she'd wanted, he'd known that as soon as the words had come to mind, but it was really the only answer he'd had right then.
She sighed, looking ahead again, and he couldn't help but smile. She was rolling her eyes, he didn't have to see it to know it.
'Okay,' he started, 'we can take the ribbon, wrap it around something important looking, and run a power cable against it. It *should* spark and then bam, fire?'
'You know there are matches?'
'Yeah, didn't Parker say "from a distance"?'
'Because running a cable means you'll be at a distance?'
'Hey, if I get burnt taking this shit show down with me, then I'm okay with this, if I'm honest, but a cable might give me just a little more room not to burn?'
Reaching the end of the warehouse they found what Gordon assumed to be the main computers if the heat coming off of them was anything to go by, not to mention the carefully placed heavy duty industrial sized fans pointing at them.
Penny paused, looking around before turning to him. 'Gordon…'
She sounded uncertain, unsure, and he figured it was probably for the same reason he did. This was feeling more and more like a one way road.
'After. Please?' Turning away, he flipped the switch off on the fans, there was no difference in sound levels though, the great towering machine hummed, drowning out everything else. He approached one of the looming metal monsters, looking it over carefully and doing his best to ignore Penny walking up behind up. He couldn't deal with that right now. Everything was spiraling out of control and he just didn't want to deal with his own messy tangle of feelings on top of everything else, so he pushed it down, locking it away for now.
Putting it back on pause. Everything had been on pause for so long now…
Later.
'As promised,' Naunet announced, causing Penny to jump and grab hold of his arm. Naunet had promised she'd return and he knew that she would, but to actually hear that voice again made his stomach drop unpleasantly.
Slowly and a little unwillingly he turned round to face her, as she stood, hands on hips. 'I told you I'd change the rules.' She smiled. 'Also, did you forget that you are effectively standing within me? I can hear everything.' She grinned.
'What do you want, then?' he growled.
'Well…' She raises a hand a. It took a second for the numbers to appear, small, red, and blinking.
00:00:20
'Better start running, kiddies.' She laughed as it rolled over to nineteen seconds.
Gordon's mind stalled as the blood drained to his feet.
00:00:19
00:00:18
Instincts kicking in, he moved to grab her hand, sprinting the short distance back to Parker and John feeling penny struggle to keep up. Dully, somewhere he heard her begging to.. Stop? Slow down? He couldn't be sure. Didn't know.
Didn't care.
He only let go of her hand once they reached parker and John again, the small clearing that served as the rooms entrance, the little spattering of tables and chairs. Parker glanced, penny talking to him, her panic registering somewhere as he swept a hand across one of the tables. The sound of the items that had been sitting on its surface hitting the floor sound so far away to his ears right then.
He dragged it over to them, tipping it on to its side. This wasn't going to shield them from anything, it wouldn't save them but what else could he do? Parker had followed his lead, pulling anything flimsy table over as Gordon wrapped his arms around penny, burying her head against her neck. The able wouldn't shield him but he could shield her.
He didn't look at john, he didn't want his brothers corpse to be the last thing he remembered.