by Kyle Andrews
Rose burst through the doors that the HAND officer had gone through and she found herself standing at a four-way intersection. Assuming that she could rule out the way she'd come, she had three other hallways that Mandi could have been down. All were dark. One was starting to fill with smoke. She couldn't see clearly, but she had to find that officer and she needed to take him out before he could get his hands on the girl.
She looked down all three hallways, having no idea which direction to walk in. How could she have lost him? How could she have been so stupid?
The fight was raging on behind her. She heard bullets hitting the walls of the hallway that she had come down. She knew that her people were in the middle of a very bad situation and walking away from that was not something that Rose took lightly. Listening to them fight and knowing that some of them were being injured or killed while she stood in that hallway, unable to make up her damn mind, was driving her crazy.
She had a mission. Every one of them knew why they were at the hospital and they had all signed up for that mission. They could have all gone to the HAND building if they just wanted to kill HAND officers, so she knew that all of them would urge her to find the girl, even if it did end up costing them their lives.
She turned once again, toward the hallway that was filling with smoke. This time, she saw the HAND officer walking out of one of the rooms, toward a set of doors at the end of the hallway. He didn't look back and didn't see Rose standing there, but she raised her gun anyway, and she kept it aimed at him.
“Justin!” the officer yelled, pounding on the doors.
The word was like a smack in the face. Was this officer really calling for Justin? The Justin? If so, what did that mean? Did it make him an ally? Or was he just a part of Justin's cover that needed to be taken care of.
More than that, did this mean that Justin was tracking down Mandi Hollinger and keeping her safe until Freedom could get to her? Because if so, she could stop worrying about all of the horrible things that the authorities could be doing to that little girl. She could stop rushing into things and take a second to catch her breath. She could think things through and be smart about what needed to be done.
“Justin!” the officer called again, pounding on the door. “It's Sim!”
And Rose's night just took another huge turn. She found herself lowering her gun just slightly at the mention of that name. She opened her mouth as though she were going to say something, and then shut it again, because even if this was the same Sim that she had heard about from Libby, Justin and Marti, that didn't mean that he was a friend. In fact, it meant that she knew for certain which side of this fight he would be on. It meant that she should probably kill him right then and there.
Rose started walking toward Sim, slowly and quietly. As she went, she honestly didn't know whether she was going to kill him before he knew what was happening, or if she was planning to engage him in some sort of conversation.
Conversation? The moment she thought that word, it sounded stupid to her. What were they going to discuss? The weather?
Rose decided to kill him. She tightened her grip on her gun and she began to squeeze the trigger, but before the shot rang out, Sim turned away from the door and saw her. He dove out of the way just as the gun went off, and instead of hitting him, Rose's bullet blew a hole in the door that Sim had been trying to get through.
If Justin was behind that door with Mandi, Rose's job would be to keep Sim away from it. Her job would be to make sure that Justin could get the girl out of there without having to deal with any more officers than necessary.
She heard a gunshot from behind the door, mixed with the muffled and distant gunshots of the battle going on behind her. Justin was in trouble and here she was, stuck with Sim.
Sim pulled his gun and tried to take aim at Rose, but she charged toward him, firing shot after shot. She doubted that she was going to hit him this way, but he was distracted enough to throw his aim off, just long enough for Rose to reach him and dive on top of him.
Both of them fell to the ground with a roll. Rose's gun fell out of her hand, which was just as well because she had lost count of how many bullets she had left and she didn't have a lot of time to reload at the moment.
Sim's gun was pinned behind his back. Rose stayed on top of him, headbutting him in the hopes of getting him to pass out or lose his grip on his gun entirely, but neither happened.
Using his legs, Sim grabbed onto her and pulled her off of him, rolling on top of her and pinning her to the ground as he aimed his gun at her head. He was going to kill her. She needed to find a way out of this.
“I knew Libby,” she said.
It wasn't much, but it was enough to make Sim hesitate for a fraction of a second. This was enough time for Rose to kick off of a nearby wall, throwing Sim's balance off and giving her a chance to twist out from under him.
She got to her feet, with Sim close behind her. He grabbed her and slammed her into the locked doors that she had just shot a hole through moments earlier.
Proving to have better aim than even she knew, Rose's bullet had struck close to the lock in the door. When Sim threw her into it, the doors burst open.
Rose landed on the ground beyond them. She landed hard and it hurt, but she didn't allow the pain to slow her down. Sim was walking through the doorway. If Rose didn't stop him now, there would be no way for Justin to get Mandi out of the way.
As Sim moved closer to Rose, she kicked his legs out from under him. As he fell, she got to her feet, and while he was attempting to recover, she kicked him in the gut. Sim slumped back down the the ground.
Rose tried to kick him once again, but Sim grabbed her foot and twisted, causing her to fall against the wall. She managed to catch herself before she fell to the ground, but Sim still had her leg and he pulled on it as hard as he could, trying once again to bring her down. This time, Rose decided to go with it. She controlled the fall and landed on top of Sim, with her good elbow landing right in his face.
Once they were both on the ground, Rose and Sim rolled over each other, throwing punches and kneeing each other as best they could. They kept each other from getting up, and when Rose tried to pull herself away from him, Sim grabbed onto her belt and pulled her back to the ground. When Rose landed this time, she smacked her chin on the floor, which hurt. A lot.
Since there was no blood spurting from her mouth, she assumed that she hadn't bitten her tongue off and she flipped over, trying once again to pull herself away.
Sim grabbed onto her leg and pulled her back once more. When she was closer to him, Sim tried to grab onto her belt again, but Rose stopped him by kicking him in the face. As he fell back, she climbed on top of him, pinning his arms at his sides. She punched him in the face twice and then grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head into the floor until he was unconscious.
Looking down at Sim, Rose wondered if she should just finish him off right then and there. She could shoot him in the head or stab him through the heart and he would never even know what happened.
If it had been any other HAND officer, she would have done it without a second thought, but she looked at Sim and she couldn't help but think of Libby. She hadn't known the girl for very long and she hadn't spent much time thinking about her recently, but in that moment, she could see Libby's face in her head. She remembered all of the conversations that she and Libby had had about Sim in the month that Libby had been locked away in her room, in the Garden. She could practically hear Libby yelling at her not to kill Sim, and though it shouldn't have mattered to her, it did.
Rose felt his pulse. It was strong and steady. He would wake up soon enough, so she didn't have much time to waste. She got up and picked both her own gun and Sim's gun up off the ground, tucking them away in her belt.
She then looked at the rooms that were lining the hallway, and she had no clue which room Justin was supposed to be in. She didn't even know for sure that the right Justin would be in the room when she did find it. For all s
he knew, the door would open and she would be met by a swarm of HAND officers who would kill her as soon as they saw her. How could she know for sure? How could she know anything?
As she asked herself that question, the answer came to Rose. She walked to the closest wall and pounded on it. Two quick knocks, followed by three slow knocks. It was one of the many signals that Freedom members had used to identify each other, back when Justin was still a part of their world. She just hoped that he would remember.
Nothing happened after she knocked on the wall. Rose pulled the knife from her belt and moved down the hallway. She chose another spot on the wall and used the butt of the knife to pound the signal out once again.
Seconds passed and still she got no response. She moved down the hallway and tried it again. Seconds passed with only silence. Then there was a click.
Rose turned around and saw one of the doors that she had passed starting to open. She put her knife away and grabbed a gun, taking aim and preparing for another fight.
The door stood open for several seconds and nobody came through it. Finally, she saw the barrel of a gun, first pointed toward the doors that Rose had come through as he stepped out of the hospital room. Then, when he had cleared that direction, Justin spun around and aimed his gun at Rose.
They stood, guns pointed at each other for what seemed like forever. At first, Rose wasn't even sure that he recognized her. She thought that his years of HAND training might have messed with his brain and he might be too damaged to realize that one of his own friends was standing in front of him.
Then his grip on the gun loosened and he took a breath. As he tucked his gun away, Rose did the same. Still, they didn't say anything to each other. They just looked at each other, inspecting the damage that the years had done.
“You're injured,” he said to her, nodding toward her broken arm, as though he didn't know what else to say.
And having no better response for him, Rose began to laugh.
42
Marti wasn't sure what she was doing. She didn't want the Governor, or any of those people, to escape with their lives, but at the same time, she had to plan for the worst. She had to assume that they could get out of there, and she had to try her best to be with them when they did.
As she offered to lead them to the elevator and get them to the roof, she felt like a traitor. Maybe she was a traitor, technically. She didn't even know anymore. But she knew that they weren't going to just stand there like idiots while Freedom came and killed them all. If Marti didn't speak up, those people would have found some other way of getting the Governor out of the area, and her chance to make an impression would be lost.
The Governor's men were collecting as many of the essential people as they could. They planned to leave the rest in the hopes of giving Freedom enough bait to chew on until the more important people were safely in the sky.
Many of the people who were going to be joining the Governor were injured, to varying degrees. Nobody who couldn't walk was going to be taken, but Marti saw enough bandages on those people and heard enough whining from them to make it clear that they were going to need care as they left. This was good.
She headed to the medicine cart and swiped her ID badge. She started grabbing vials of medication and stuffing them into her pockets, along with several packages of syringes. She grabbed the basics—antibiotics, painkillers, sedatives.
She hurried into a patient's room and found an empty trash bag. Returning to the cart, she grabbed bandages, disinfectant sprays and bottles of pills.
Anyone who was watching her might think that she was planning to care for those people to the best of her ability, but the truth was that she was taking a number of drugs that could be used to kill. Anything else was just for show.
“What are you doing?” Geo asked her as she loaded the garbage bag.
“What does it look like I'm doing?”
Geo glanced back at his father and the security team. The gunfire in the stairwell was raging on and the floor could be full of Freedom members at any moment.
The HAND officers who were with the Governor moved toward the stairwell, and the Secret Service agents that surrounded the Governor began to move him toward Marti.
“I can come with you,” one of the other nurses from the floor called to the Governor. “I can take care of your people. See to their wounds.”
The Governor ignored her and kept walking toward Marti.
Marti finished packing her bag and started to move down the hallway, saying “This way.”
Geo was by her side as she led the group of people down the hallway. In the end, there was only the Governor, four other government official-looking men, two agents and Geo. Everyone else was staying behind.
As they moved down the hallway, Marti heard the stairwell door open and the gunfire became less muffled. The fight had reached the fifth floor.
She should have stopped right then and there. She should have turned and kicked the Governor in the nuts, and screamed for Freedom to come and finish him off. At the very least, she should have stopped walking and refused to take them any farther.
But there were other nurses who could do the job instead of her. There were agents who would take her down before she could hit the Governor. They could get out of there with or without her help.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Geo turning to look at her. He undoubtedly wanted to have a conversation with her, but didn't want to have that conversation in front of the others. It was just as well. She didn't care what he had to say. He might want her to stay there and get killed for all she knew, but that wasn't going to stop her. Her mission was to get inside the system, and the Governor was the best chance she had of getting in deeper. If Geo got in the way of that, she was sure that he could have a heart attack or some other medical issue pop up unexpectedly. People died of natural causes all the time, and she could make a lot of deaths look more natural than they were.
The whole time they were walking, Marti was trying to convince herself that she was doing this for the best interest of her mission. The Freedom fighters were responsible for this battle and taking down the authorities. Until they were taken down, her job was to maintain her cover. Justin had to arrest Freedom members all the time. Surely, her helping the Governor escape was the same thing.
She told herself that, but she had to wonder if this was the truth, or if it was just a convenient excuse. Did she want those fighters to take out the Governor? Did she want him to be killed in a volley of bullets? Or was she getting the Governor out of harm's way so that she would have the opportunity to kill him herself?
As she thought of that question, the memory of Uly's death once again played back in her mind. She had seen the actual video so many times over the years that she had never been able to put it behind her. She had never healed, and she didn't want to heal until that anger brought down every one of the sons of bitches who contributed to his death.
She remembered the way the air smelled all across the city on the night that the Garden was attacked. She remembered the ash that drifted through the air for blocks and spotted the sidewalks for days afterward.
Her answer was clear. She wanted to be the one to kill not just the Governor, but everyone like him. She wanted to slit their throats and listen to them gurgle their own blood before they died. She needed to be a part of the downfall, not just someone who happened to be in the building at the time it happened. Not just someone who slipped a piece of information to Freedom while picking up coffee. She needed to pull a trigger and watch someone's head explode, the way Uly's had. She needed to inflict that level of pain on the Mayor, the Governor, the President and all of the countless others who sat on their thrones and presided over the little people, deciding who was worthy of life and who wasn't.
Marti glanced over at Geo. He looked deep in thought. Worried. Scared.
She wondered if killing him would make the Governor feel the way that she had felt when Uly died.
They reached the
elevator and Marti swiped her badge. The doors didn't open right away, and the Governor began to fidget.
“What's happening?” the Governor asked her.
“The car isn't on this floor. It needs to get here,” she told him, taking a deep breath and giving him a reassuring smile. “It will only take a second. You'll be okay.”
The Governor looked disgusted by her words, as though she should be ashamed of herself for trying to comfort the man. As though she didn't even have a right to speak to him in the first place.
Part of her began to hope that the elevator never came. Part of her wanted Freedom to charge down the hallway and take them all out, even if it meant her own death.
The elevator car was coming slowly. The fight down the hall way growing louder. Marti could hear women screaming and gunfire being exchanged between Freedom and HAND. As she listened, she tried to remember how many officers the Governor had to defend this floor. There couldn't have been that many. It was only a matter of time before Freedom came down the hallway.
With a ding, the elevator doors opened. Marti stepped inside first, positioning herself at the back of the car while the others poured in behind her.
As the doors closed, a cell phone began to ring in the pocket of one of the Governor's men. Marti would never get used to the idea of men carrying around phones in their pockets, never outside the reach of anyone who wanted to talk to them. She would also never get used to the way people spoke on those cell phones as freely as if they were inside of a private office.
“Yes?” the man said as he answered the phone.
Marti could only hear muffled talking from the other end of the line. She couldn't tell what that man was being told, but after a moment, the man handed the cell phone to the Governor, saying, “Commander York.”
Until that moment, Marti hadn't realized how rarely she had heard anyone referred to by rank. Usually, HAND officers were 'HAND officers'. They were all equally faceless and nameless until they were granted special privileges. Justin had worked for them for six years and if he had any sort of rank, Marti sure didn't know what it was.