Colour Coded: The Black Bullet

by Katy Jordan

  “Me-ow!” Gecko purred.

  “Sparrow, give me a boost?” she asked, although it seemed more like an order rather than a request.

  Sparrow clasped his hands together and bent over slightly as Tide lodged her foot on to his palms and launched herself up towards the door, Sparrow rising with her.

  Tide fiddled and fumbled with the latches on the underside of the panel, but to no avail.

  “Nothing?” Bullet enquired, tucking her gun away.

  “Nope, hee haw,” Tide replied, dropping down from Sparrow’s grip.

  “Right, well, use this then,” Gecko instructed, rummaging in his jacket pocket. He pulled out a small container.

  “What’s that?” Sparrow probed.

  “Lab gave me a few of these, it’s hydrochloric acid, she said it would definitely be a good help in getting in here.”

  Tide and Bullet looked at each other, despising the fact that there was such a thing called hindsight in the world. She took the bottle from Gecko as he ushered her to be careful with it, and this time, Sparrow gave her a boost instead of Tide.

  “Go for the hinges, Bullet. When it dissolves, we’ll just push the panel,” Tide instructed.

  “Okay,” she said, getting ready to splash the acid.

  “And try not to get any on you, or you’ll be severely burned,” Gecko reminded her.

  “Yeah, I got it,” she sighed.

  “And remember I’m right underneath you,” Sparrow groaned under her weight.

  “Aye, okay, I get it!” she snapped, her voice carrying up the tunnel.

  Everyone went quiet. Anxious. Anticipating the next stage of the mission.

  “Sparrow, move backwards a little bit. I’ll splash it forward,” she instructed.

  Sparrow shuffled as far back as he could, his feet slanting up the curve of the tunnel edge. Bullet carefully took the lid off of the bottle, and slowly pulled back her arm.

  She splashed the acid.

  The hinge to the right and some of the outside rim began to bubble and sizzle like something from a sci-fi movie. Being cautious as to not step underneath the panel, Gecko handed her another bottle.

  As steadily as she did before, Bullet removed the lid and reclined her arm behind her, and splashed. It was a little squint. She got more of the panel itself than the hinge, and none of the rims was touched at all.

  “I might need to do that one again,” Bullet considered, studying the acid searing through the iron pipe.

  “It should be good,” Tide confirmed. “Gecko can you lift Sparrow?”

  “Why?” he squinted at her.

  “Because he’s the stronger one out of the two of you to lift the panel. I’ll give Bullet a buddy up since she’s got the gun,”

  Gecko rolled his eyes that were filled with reluctance.

  “Guess I don’t have a choice then, do I?” he sighed. “But, we’ll need to wait five minutes for the acid to settle.”

  “Why five minutes?” Sparrow probed.

  “Because that’s what Lab said, and this is her thing,” Gecko retorted.

  “Okay, so let’s plan,” Bullet suggested. “We lift the panel and do a preliminary 360 check. Have you got your mini-drone with you, Sparrow?”

  “Sparrow Junior is tucked away safely in my backpack,” he replied proudly.

  “Okay, so you release the drone into the warehouse and stay down here to scope the place out. Keep it high to the ceiling, we don’t want to fly it around a corner and bump into a guard. Now, if you’re Neon, where would you hold a prisoner?” Bullet asked.

  “In the bunker,” Gecko said, “it’s restricted access, it’s underground, there’s no electricity: it’s the perfect place.”

  “So, Sparrow flies the drone, I’ll read the blueprint and give him directions to the bunker, Bullet sits up there in the warehouse keeping a lookout, and Gecko… does what?” Tide asked.

  “I’ll just stay here with Sparrow, that way there’s an extra person to go to the panel we got in through to keep a lookout up there when it’s needed,” he offered, “unless there’s something else?”

  “Did you bring that uniform with you?” Bullet requested.

  “Yeah… you want me to go back in there?” he gasped.

  “No. I want you to leave it here,” she replied, “I’ll wear it.”

  As Gecko jumbled around in his bag, Sparrow, Tide and Bullet continued to discuss their next objective.

  “Sparrow, when you find Jack, wherever he is, keep the drone there so that Bullet has a way back that’s clear of guards. Or a way that has the least amount of guards,” Tide suggested.

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Bullet confirmed.

  Gecko threw the uniform to Bullet who caught it and threw his bag over his shoulder, giving her a nod.

  They were ready.

  Bullet put her finger to her ear.

  “Bullet to The Spectrum, the door is open and we have a plan in place. We’re about to make entry.”

  “The Spectrum to the Black Bullet, run your plan by us all please.”

  “Bullet to The Spectrum, we’re doing a preliminary 360 check when we lift the panel, Sparrow’s mini-drone will be released into the warehouse to seek out Jack while Tide gives him directions from the blueprint. Once we have a location and know what we’re up against, I’ll enter.”

  “Youth to Sparrow, isn’t the mini-drone the device with the short life span?”

  Bullet’s heart sank.

  She turned to look at Sparrow, annoyed and frustrated.

  “Sparrow to Youth… I was just about to tell them about that.”

  He stood in front of them looking nowhere in the vicinity of their eyeline, the whole six feet of him felt very small as he felt their gaze bearing into him.

  “How long will it last, Sparrow?” Tide pried.

  He shuffled awkwardly, still trying hard to not catch anyone’s eye.

  “After some previous tests on this particular drone, its battery life is approximately fourteen minutes.”

  “Fourteen?” Gecko exploded.

  “It’s a really small machine! There’s only so much it can do!” Sparrow defended.

  “Well, that’s fine, but you could’ve mentioned that before!” Tide snapped.

  “You never asked!”

  “Oh, is that the only time we get information now?”

  “GUYS!” Bullet butt in, standing between them. “All this is doing is wasting time that Jack really doesn’t have a bucket load of. All we can do now is change the plan. Sparrow, locate Jack and get the drone back here once you do. I’ve dealt with terrorists, I can deal with this.”

  Bullet turned to face Tide and put her hands on her shoulders, ready for her boost up to the panel.

  “Gecko to The Spectrum, we’ve amended our plan slightly, however it remains pretty much the same.”

  “Youth to Colour Coded, I’ve deactivated the pressure point in the earpieces, we can all hear everyone all the time so… watch who you bitch about,” Youth smiled.

  “The Spectrum to Colour Coded, the distress code word is ‘battle stations’ if you need back up. Stay safe everyone.”

  Gecko and Tide had Bullet and Sparrow at the ready for hiking them up to the pipe door. In silence, they nodded their counts to three, and thrust. Bullet and Sparrow slammed their hands flat against the base of the panel and pushed hard, Gecko and Tide tried to remain as stiff and still as possible as they were pushed down on.

  After some force, the panel lifted and wobbled on their hands, as Bullet and Sparrow navigated it over to the side.

  “Careful,” Bullet whispered.

  They placed it down, slowly, steadily, straining to keep their balance as well as to keep the noise level down.

  They looked around. The room was run down, dank and musty. Abandoned and silent.

  Bullet swung her arms over and pulled herself up through the floor.

  She stayed in crouch, shining her torch around. It was as though they were outside, but they
weren’t really. This was a part of the warehouse that was forgotten about right at the back of the building. She looked at Sparrow and nodded, and he took the drone that Tide handed him and sat it on the warehouse floor.

  Gecko lowered him back into the sewage line so that he could activate the control pad, while Tide set a timer for fourteen minutes. She held up three fingers and began to count down.

  Three. Two. One.

  NOW.

  The drone sprung to life.

  Thankfully, it was a lot quieter than Bullet had anticipated as it slowly lifted from the ground and glided through the air away from her. She could barely hear a thing. Her heart was racing like a driver of an F1 tournament.

  They might get away with this.

  Bullet looked down through the trap door, watching Sparrow do a virtual tour of the warehouse on his tablet.

  “Anything?” she hissed.

  “Nothing so far,” Gecko replied.

  More silence, as Sparrow concentrated on keeping the drone higher up out of sight but not too close to the ceiling that he might hit it and lose control, or more frighteningly, break the drone.

  The sweat was dripping from him as he felt the pressure heighten more and more with every second that passed. After some twists and turns down corridors, he made his way into the main hall.

  “Tide, I’m in the main hall facing east,” Sparrow informed her in hushed tones.

  “Okay, that means you’re facing the entrance to the warehouse,” she explained, “Neon’s bunker is to the north, Jack said it’s through the door in the north-west corner.”

  He navigated his way over to view said door.

  “It’s shut,” he growled.

  “There’s a gap up there you might be able to get through,” Gecko pointed to his screen, “must’ve been where the extension began a couple years back.”

  Sparrow aimed for the gap that was pointed out to him and carefully guided the drone through. He rotated the cameras, looking around. It was a tiny hallway type of room, with only one door facing west.

  “That’s the entrance to the stairs down to Neon’s bunker,” Gecko announced.

  “And it too is closed,” Sparrow groaned.

  “Bullet what do we do?” Tide looked up at her.

  In all honesty, she had no idea.

  It was too much to risk waiting for someone to walk through the door, especially in the small hours of the morning. Bullet pulled out of sight of them, sitting herself down on her backside, looking around, taking a breath.

  Thinking.

  There was only one thing they could do.

  She went back to the trap door.

  “Pull the drone out,” she ordered.

  “But, we haven’t found Jack,” Tide expressed anxiously.

  “Pull it out of there, and keep a look out for as long as it’ll last until you need to bring it back here. I’m going in.”

  She pulled out her handgun to check it was fully loaded and emptied a box of bullets into her jacket pocket.

  “What if Jack isn’t down there, Bullet?” Gecko asked.

  “Then I’ll come back out of the bunker and go with places Tide suggests that he could be. You know where his room is?”

  “Yeah, I circled it on the map,” Tide confirmed. “Bullet, I really don’t like this.”

  “Neither do I, but we’ve got to keep going. The drone is running out of time and so is Jack. Sparrow, you remember how to set up the sniper?”

  “Yeah, but I’m a little busy at the minute, Bullet,” he countered.

  “I can see that, darling,” she came back sarcastically, “I want you to walk Gecko through it. When it’s set up and you’ve brought the drone back, I want you on the ground two yards back in the direction we came from, aiming up at the entrance; you’ll know it’s not me because I’ll tell you I’m approaching. If anyone comes, shoot them. Gecko, I want you at the panel we came in through, and Tide I want you to never walk in front of Sparrow whatsoever. Understood?”

  They all nodded, for the first time in a long time openly showing an expression loaded with fear and severe anxiety.

  It was a waiting game for them now.

  Bullet held her gun out in front of her and tried to remember where the drone went. The corridor walls were a bland, cream colour and the floor was plain cement. She tried to recall the drone’s route to the main hall.

  Two immediate lefts, a second right, a second left and then a first right.

  Glancing around every corner before she moved, she proceeded through the warehouse. It felt like forever, and then, all of a sudden, it was as though the main hall swallowed her up.

  She made it.

  Bullet went straight for the door in the north-west corner like Tide had said, constantly checking behind her.

  Quietly, she opened the door and went through into the small hallway.

  “Bullet, we have you in our sights,” Tide informed her.

  “Just open the door and I’ll fly Junior down first,” Sparrow instructed.

  “How much time do we have?” Bullet breathed.

  “Six minutes and thirty-two seconds,” Tide announced.

  Split second decision.

  “Fine,” said Bullet, who carefully and steadily twisted the doorknob to the bunker. It opened.

  “Okay, I’m going in,” Sparrow confirmed.

  “WAIT,” Bullet hissed.

  The door was ajar. She stood behind it, straining her head to the hinges.

  She could hear something.

  Talking. Maybe shouting.

  Maybe Jack?

  “Take the drone back, he’s down there. I’m going to get him.”

  Without giving anyone a chance to argue with her, Bullet entered the torch-lit passageway gun first and began to make her way along. The noises got louder.

  Her breathing got faster, her heart racing more and more.

  It was screaming.

  And shouting.

  It was Jack and Neon.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Did you really think you’d get away with this?” Neon yelled at Jack, dragging the sharp blade up his arm. “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Jack screamed.

  The sweat poured from him relentlessly as he struggled in his restraints, never taking his eyes away from Neon’s knife.

  The side of his face was throbbing, a neat bruise starting to show through. His bare torso was covered in blood after Neon had messed with his bullet wound that he had attained a few days before.

  The room was dark, lit only from a candle that Neon had set down nearby.

  Other than them and two men standing completely still a couple of yards behind Neon, it was totally empty.

  A sharp, excruciating pain burst across Jack’s thigh as Neon scuffed him with the knife. Blood began to trickle from the exit, slowly and tauntingly, like lava in a volcano.

  “Please…” Jack begged, “I did everything you said.”

  “You didn’t call at nine p.m.,” Neon hissed. “WHY?”

  “I couldn’t! I was bound and gagged,” Jack lied.

  “And the camera in your jacket?” Jack’s mind raced. He didn’t know how to explain that one away.

  He didn’t know how he knew about it in the first place.

  “They must’ve planted it on me…”

  “How could they have if you weren’t ever caught by them?” Neon pried arrogantly.

  “When I went back, when they had me restrained, they must’ve attached a camera on to…”

  “The camera was stitched on, Jack! And it was BEFORE I sent you back to them. Do you really think I’m that stupid?” Neon snapped. “I took you in. You were a lost cause, but I took you in. I gave you a bed, I gave you food. I trained you, taught you everything I know, and this is how you repay me?”

  Neon was barely even an inch away from Jack’s face holding the tip of the knife just centimetres away from his eye. Jack leaned away as mu
ch as he could with his hands bound behind the metal chair on which he sat. His wrists began to nip from the strain of him leaning as the tightly bound cable ties rubbed through layers of skin.

  “I don’t know how they got there then.”

  Jack didn’t think it was possible, but Neon’s face grew even more infuriated by his persistence to lie to him. Without looking away from Jack’s eyeline, Neon placed the tip of his knife into Jack’s wound on his shoulder, and slowly twisted it, torturing him.

  Jack writhed and squirmed, panting through gritted teeth, his eyes shut as tight as they could go, trying to endure the harrowing pain Neon was causing him. The nerve shocks flooded down his arm and across his chest like a tsunami hitting a tiny village.

  “I just want to know why,” Neon hissed, removing the knife and watching Jack slump with relief that he had done so.

  Jack remained quiet, trying to get his bearings back.

  “Why, Jack?”

  Jack stayed silent. His brain wouldn’t allow him to perform such a simple task as speaking, words would not come to him, his jaw would not unclench.

  The truth could not be spoken.

  “WHY, JACK!” roared Neon.

  “Because I had to make them believe I was on their side!” Jack bellowed.

  The dizziness was beginning to get intolerable as he continued to hyperventilate, his lungs feeling as though they were the size of an avocado. As though there wasn’t enough air in the world to keep him alive.

  “Still going with this story, are we?” Neon growled.

  “That’s the truth,” Jack breathed. “I swear.”

  Jack looked away from him, forcing himself to take deep breaths and try and steady his heart rate.

  Try and ignore the pain pulsing through him.

  He glanced around the room. The bare floorboards creaked with every move that was made by any party, and the stone walls seemed cold and ancient. Jack had no idea where he was. That fact filled him with nothing but dread and anxiety.

  If he had no clue where he was, then there was a good chance that Colour Coded didn’t know either.

  This was the end for him.

  He wasn’t going to be rescued.

  His mind drifted off with him, as he recalled the feeling that soared through him when he kissed Bullet. When she held him. When she smiled at him. When she clung on to him like there was nothing else in the world that she wanted to cling on to.