Free Web NovelChapter 19: You Got Me...
The awareness reached through the white double doors before my hands did, and what it gave me was more than just location.
The fat man stood inside with one arm locked around the woman’s upper body and his pistol aimed toward the doors.
His heart was hammering fast, and the same went for the woman.
The woman’s breathing was short and shallow.
If that woman was Kara, then she was too close for negotiations, too close for mistakes.
I raised the DDM4 and the awareness gave me the angle; I adjusted a half inch, breathed out through my nose, and pressed the trigger.
-Tissh-!
The AP round punched through the wooden door, through the man’s skull and through the wall behind him, while his head snapped back in a spray of blood, his pistol firing into the ceiling as he went straight down.
Because he had been holding the woman, she went down with him.
And almost immediately the woman scrambled across the floor, grabbed the fallen pistol with both shaking hands and pointed it at the door.
Her finger was on the trigger, her heartbeat tripled, and I could feel through the awareness that she was one wrong sound away from using it.
"Police!" I moved to the side of the doorframe. "Drop the weapon and put your hands up!"
The pistol hit the floor immediately.
I pushed the doors open and stepped inside, and my feet stopped before my brain told them to.
I found her.
The splatter of blood on her face was the first thing I saw, and for one half-second I went somewhere dark inside my head before I followed the spatter back to the man on the floor and understood it was his.
Her white hoodie lay on the floor beside her.
Her shirt was torn in several places, the fabric stretched and pulled in patterns that told a clear enough story.
Bruising covered the skin that showed.
Red streaks crossed her cheeks from being slapped hard enough to leave marks.
Her lip was split and bleeding. Her eyes were enormous and full of tears and locked onto me as though I had come through the door to finish what was already started.
Then I remembered what I looked like.
Head to toe in blood that was not mostly mine, holding a rifle, smelling like everything that had happened in the past hour, looking, by any reasonable estimate, considerably worse than the men whose corridor I had just walked through.
I raised both hands slowly.
"Hey. It’s okay. Nobody’s going to hurt you. I’m-"
And before I could let another word out-
"Waee!"
Tikki trotted past my feet and ran directly to her across the room, ears forward, tail up, completely uninterested in anything I had just said because he had already identified the most important person in the room and gotten his priorities sorted.
"T-Tikki?" she mumbled as she stared down at him.
He launched himself straight into her arms without waiting for an invitation and immediately started rubbing his face against hers like a cat who has been separated from his favourite person and intends to make up for every second of it.
Kara caught him without thinking, arms closing around him as she buried her face in his fur while I stood in the doorway with a rifle, feeling thoroughly outclassed by my own cat.
Then she looked back at me with Tikki still pressed against her chest, still shaking, and her voice came out fragile and uncertain.
"You’re... Nikki? No...Can’t be..."
I looked at her for a few seconds, and just raised my hands.
"You got me... I’m actually Nikki’s special forces cousin. Kikki. Nikki sent me to get you."
Her face crumpled as she recognized my voice, and that tendency for stupid jokes at the worst possible moments.
She sniffed once, twice, fought it with her jaw clenched, her eyes squeezed shut, and managed to hold it for about three seconds, which was more than I could’ve in her place.
And then the crying came through fully, loud and ugly while her whole body shook.
Kara pressed her face into Tikki’s fur while he held completely still against her chest with his eyes open wide and his purring going at full volume.
"He wanted to... "He tried to..."
She couldn’t finish.
I did not need her to.
I looked around the room properly while she stabilized herself.
The torn shirt. The bruises on the skin that showed. The hoodie on the floor. The dead man with half of his brain on the wall.
[Five minutes... Maybe less than five. If I hadn’t started the shoot-out when I did and pulled everyone’s attention...]
My fists clenched on their own as I forced myself not to think past that because thinking about it further served no purpose.
All that mattered was that Kara was safe and with me.
I crouched in front of her, kept my distance, and kept my voice soft.
"Hey. It’s okay. I’m here. Nobody’s touching you."
Those were not reassurances I frankly can’t do those gentle reassurances.
So I just stated facts.
Kara kept crying, but quieter now. Just sobs and hiccups.
And somewhere along the settling of reality and regaining thoughts, her eyes drifted toward the man on the floor, and I stepped sideways immediately, putting myself between her and the sight of it. freewebnovёl.ƈom
"Don’t," I said. "... Don’t look there. It’s done."
She looked back at me instead as I stood and held out a hand.
"Let’s go."
She nodded shakily, still holding Tikki, and pushed herself to her feet, and I started, "Stay close to me and-"
But Kara cut me off, wrapping both arms around my chest and practically shoving her face into the blood-soaked jacket.
Tikki let out his little outrage from somewhere between us.
While I stood there frozen for about two seconds with no idea what to do with my hands, eventually I just patted the top of her head.
"There, there..."
A short, wet, and exhausted laugh escaped Kara, and it was the best sound I had heard since entering this building.
Eventually she let go and looked up at me, her face was a mess of red eyes, blood splatter, and streaked tears.
"Thank you," She said as though the words themselves were too small for what they meant.
And once again I was reminded why I liked and respected Kara so much. I knew she wouldn’t break.
"Just make me something good to eat, and we’re even." I chuckled as I reached into the inventory, pulled out the leather jacket I had bought a few minutes ago, and draped it over her shoulders.
And the moment I did, her mouth hung open.
Her eyes tracked to the empty air where the jacket had appeared, then back to my face.
"Long sto-"
-Ding!
{
Quest Completed!
Rewards Received:
Legacy Gear
Bonus Reward for Excellent Completion: Enhanced Grappling Hook.
}
[Grappling hook?]
And just then-
-GHRRRRAAAAAA-!
-GHRAAAAHHHH-!
-RAAAAGHHHH-!
Multiple voices shredded through the silence from outside the building, from the street, from more than one direction at once, and I recognized those screeches in an instant.
Those were not the sounds of people standing at the edge of the Turning anymore.
Those were the sounds of people who had already gone over it completely.
Kara went rigid as though by instinct alone she could tell.
Tikki’s fur doubled in volume against her chest.
My hands were already clutching the shotgun.
The shit show had waited exactly long enough for me to find Kara.
And not one second longer.
