by Katy Jordan
The door was open.
Taking a breath, Gecko stormed in.
He sprawled out flat on the floor, moaning and groaning, stumbling to his feet.
“What is the meaning of this?” Neon bellowed, stomping towards him crazily, eyes wide, his back hunched and blood part of the way up both his sleeves. “How did you get in here!”
“Your shitty guards opened the floor and threw me down. Go shout at them!” Gecko growled.
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
“The one who escaped,” Gecko admitted, “but, I came back because I got the information I thought you’d want to hear.”
“I don’t care! I’ve got more pressing matters to deal with, and my friend here has been doing a wonderful job of helping me with that,” Neon said, stroking the side of Jack’s face, and then punching it.
“More pressing matters?”
“YES!” Neon roared.
“Like the Black Bullet?” Gecko said, knowing he’d grab his attention.
Neon stopped dead and turned around slowly to face him again.
The smile on his face was that of the devil.
“You have information?”
The look he gave was as though Gecko was offering him a cigarette and Neon hadn’t had one in decades but really wanted one.
“I do,” Gecko admitted, a smile shown through slightly due to his smugness that his plan was working.
“Tell me,” he uttered through his teeth, the psychotic smile never fading.
“And then what?”
“What?”
“If I tell you, what will you do for me?”
“I’ll let you live,” Neon threatened, raising the knife he had by his side up in front of him.
Gecko looked at it, terrified.
“Deal!” he announced, watching Neon lower the knife, watching that God awful smile creep even wider to the sides of his face.
“She’s outside.”
“Outside?”
“Yep.”
“She’s here?”
“Yep. She’s hiding, of course. Lurking somewhere in the shadows but yes, she’s outside.”
“And you know this, how?”
“Because I brought her here. She was asking questions about Jack and I told her I knew him; but as soon as I walked on to the grounds, the guards recognised me and practically dragged down to the bunker and then sent me head first through a trap door and… here we are.”
“She’s… she’s going to kill you…” Jack breathed from behind him.
Gecko couldn’t see much of him, but he knew he looked terrible.
“SHUT UP!” Neon boomed at him.
“…she’s lurk… lurking in the shadows… waiting for you to… go outside… and then she’ll shoot…”
“WHAT DID I JUST SAY!”
Neon smacked him over the head with his knife, splitting Jack’s head open.
Jack didn’t scream; he didn’t even whimper or groan. His head merely dropped forward and hung there.
Gunfire exploded through the bunker loudly, ricocheting off of every surface. Neon dropped to the floor, flopping on his back and lying completely still, eyes closed.
Bullet ran through the door and straight past Gecko. There was so much he could have said, but knowing the situation, he too went straight to Jack.
“JACK!” Bullet shouted, taking his head in her hands and lifting it up to see his face. “Jack, wake up!”
Gecko leaned down behind him and checked for a pulse in his wrist.
“He’s still with us, but barely,” he said frantically.
“Untie him,” Bullet commanded. “Flare, do it! Do it, now!”
“I’m on it!” she bellowed back.
“Jack,” Bullet whispered, patting the sides of his face, but Jack was not waking up or even stirring, “Jack, come on, honey. Wake up. We’re here. We’re going to take you home, but you need to open your eyes.”
“Got it. Who’s carrying him? Me or you?” Gecko asked.
“Do you want to take my gun and potentially have to shoot people?”
Gecko bashed her out of the way and leaned Jack over his shoulder, that was his answer to her question. He stood upright and manoeuvred around the chair to head for the door, Bullet right at his back.
A sharp pain in the back of her thigh took her straight to the ground at the bottom of the stairs. Twisting awkwardly to find the cause, she was faced with Neon crawling menacingly towards her, clearly filled with anger; although a sense of glee was present as well.
Grimacing and groaning, Bullet pulled his knife out of her leg.
“Bullet!” Gecko’s voice shouted from behind her.
“Get Jack out of here, Gecko! RUN!”
Gecko knew better than to argue with her and disappeared up the winding staircase with a limp Jack over his shoulder, his green T-shirt now stained a deadly shade of red.
“You don’t get to do this to me. YOU left ME!”
“For a reason!” Bullet screamed. “One you know all too well!”
Neon started to cackle disturbingly, making his way slowly across the floor towards her.
“Does David Watt still haunt your dreams, Georgina?”
“That’s not my name anymore.”
“That’ll always be who you are, Georgina Wells.”
“Stop.”
“Does Jenna still smile at you in the park when you shut your eyes?”
“Shut the fuck up!”
“Do you remember me teaching you how to break someone’s neck?” he taunted, gesturing to the two men hanging from the wall behind him that Bullet tried to ignore.
“Do you remember doing it to David Watt?”
“YES!” she cried. “I remember. I remember everything, now please just shut up!”
“Bullet, shoot him! NOW!” The Spectrum cried into her ear. “Stop wasting time. Talking to him is no use, you know that!”
“Flare’s doused the warehouse exterior with petrol and managed to dodge the guards, Bullet. If Gecko comes outta there with Jack she’s going to light it,” Youth warned her anxiously. “Just do what you have to do, and get out of there!”
“We need to stick to the plan, Bullet,” Sparrow added.
“Come on, honey. Trap him down there and let him bake to death, just get out!” Tide encouraged her.
Bullet maintained eye contact with Neon as she listened to her colleagues. Her friends.
Her family… She knew they were all right. She knew she had to get out. Neon’s beady eyes looked right through her as he continued to prowl towards her frighteningly, like a panther cornering its prey.
“What’re they saying to you?” he said.
Not that Bullet was paying particular attention to this, but she couldn’t remember the last time Neon blinked since they began their staring competition.
“Are they telling you to run and trap me down here? Are they telling you to maim me and take me back with you as a prisoner? Are they convincing you to kill me?” he taunted. “If you do any of those things… you’ll be in a lot more danger then than you will be if I’m alive.”
“What makes you say that?”
She had latched on to the hook that Neon had dangled in front of her. His eyes beamed with pride as he knew he had her.
Instantly, she kicked herself for taking the bait, but even she knew now that she was hooked. She wanted to know.
“Because I’ve been working hard these last few months. If I die, people have been instructed to act against you in the event of my death. People you don’t want to mess with, and people you’d never see coming. Also, a lot of people, to the point that even your little team with all of your skills combined would be outnumbered,” he explained, beginning to crawl towards her again.
Bullet found herself shuffling back towards the stairs this time, the knife he had plunged into the back of her leg still in her hand.
“However, if you keep me alive, not only do these people then have no instruction to attack you, b
ut I then still hold all the cards. I can keep you all safe. I can keep your identity hidden. You just have to trust me.”
“TRUST YOU?” Bullet yelled. “You blackmailed me! I killed a man, in cold blood, because you somehow convinced me, brainwashed me into thinking that it was okay because I was ‘special’. Because it was special circumstances! But then I had to give up everything I’ve ever known and go into hiding. Become that missing person that would never be found.”
“It didn’t take much to convince you, darling. You were hurting. And you… HATED… that man. Despised him. And rightfully so, I mean, he did defile your friend without her permission,” Neon said, almost sympathetically.
“I just wanted you to feel whole again. I wanted you to feel accomplished.”
“And now all I feel is hatred. Towards myself. But, towards you even more,” Bullet threw the knife with much force at Neon, who flung himself backwards and dodged it. Dragging her injured leg behind her, she pulled herself up the dark, tight staircase as fast as she could, making it to the underside of Neon’s office.
Fumbling frantically, she lifted the slab up ready to shut him in the lower bunker. His pale, angry face appeared out of the darkness, lunging for her furiously.
In a frenzy, Bullet slammed the slab into its slot in the floor, jamming Neon’s entire arm.
She listened to him scream.
It wasn’t so much an outcry in pain but more like a roar of fury.
Exhausted, she rolled over, placing her entire body weight on to the slab and watched Neon’s arm squirm and shake uncontrollably in pain. She could almost hear the bones crushing under her and the slab’s weight over the noise of his bellowing cries.
Adrenaline flushed through her like an avalanche down a mountain as she tried to steady her hands to latch on to the hoop on the slab and lifted it slightly. Like rubbish into a bin, Neon’s arm dropped into the stairwell, and Bullet repositioned herself back on top of the slab. Neon banged on the door causing Bullet to bounce with the impact of his angry attempts to free himself.
It was only then she noticed the smoke cuddling the ceiling above her.
Placidly, it glided over, swirling around in the air, and it wasn’t long before it haunted the entire room since Flare lit the blaze.
With her good leg, Bullet tried to pull the solid oak table towards her, looping her foot around its leg. It moved slightly, but it was tough to drag over the concrete stonework beneath her. She was never going to move it in time before her body gave out from the effects of the fire. The smoke invaded her lungs maliciously, her coughing was out of control, and the drowsiness was very real.
Jack’s smiling face looked at her. He held out his hand encouragingly, gesturing for her to take it. She remembered the feeling of his touch, his kiss, the silkiness of his short brown hair.
How her entire body sprung to life when he merely looked at her.
If this was the last thing she’d ever remember, then Bullet was ready to go. Jenna would be waiting for her, anyway.
She’d be in good hands.
Bullet always wondered how it would end; she always had it in her head that she would get shot. That was the situation she was in more often than not, so, to her, it made the most sense. Perishing in a fire had never crossed her mind.
But, there she was.
In the depths of the burning inferno of the warehouse, Bullet could feel herself drifting away.
“Bullet to Colour Coded… Go. Neon’s trapped, but… so am I…”
On the floor of the bunker, nothing but blackness enveloped her.
It was neither hot nor cold there.
Nor was it scary yet, it wasn’t a comfortable feeling either.
It was just a whole load of nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Red Rocket sat at Jack’s bedside jiggling his foot nervously as he prayed that his new-found friend would wake up. A frenzy of tubes and wires extended from Jack’s body, monitoring everything in his anatomy.
He was a mess.
A one-on-one with Neon turned out to be a lot more lethal for Jack than fighting off a group of guards.
The scoring around his wrists looked nippy and sore from having them bound together with wire behind his back. The entirety of his left leg was in a cast, leaving only his toes visible. He recalled the events of the night vividly in his mind, as the beeping of Jack’s monitors echoed between his ears.
Gecko’s frantic whining as he hauled Jack to the van from the warehouse, the building bursting into flames behind him, causing the guards to scatter and run while Flare sprinted back to them behind Gecko and Jack. His lifeless body slumped over Gecko’s shoulder put the fear into everyone that they were too late, that they had failed their mission.
He kicked himself at not being more like the Black Bullet.
For following orders he didn’t agree with; The Spectrum had demanded that he leave Flare and Tide at the warehouse to maintain and then put out the blaze, while he drove everyone back to headquarters, and let Sparrow travel back alone to join the girls in putting the fire to rest.
And hopefully locating Bullet.
But, the worst memory of the night for Rocket?
Bullet on the radio.
Weak. Fading away.
Giving her life to take Neon’s.
Having changed their clothes, Gecko and Youth joined him in the infirmary.
“Any change?” Gecko enquired.
“His heart rate has sped up a couple of times. Lab reckons he’s dreaming,” Rocket replied, not pulling his line of sight away from Jack’s body.
“I honestly couldn’t feel him breathing when I was carrying him back to the van,” Gecko explained, “I thought he was dead.”
“So, did I,” Rocket admitted.
“Well, you heard what Lab said,” Youth told Gecko, “you saved his life. If you hadn’t performed CPR, he would’ve died.”
Gecko rubbed his eyes, exhausted and full of disbelief.
“Do we know anything about Bullet?” Youth probed.
“The Spectrum hasn’t left his office since we got back. He’s monitoring every word spoken by Sparrow, Flare and Tide. He said as soon as he knew, we would,” Rocket explained.
“This is crazy,” Youth said, “she risked her life to save Jack, who risked his life to keep us safe, and then she risked it all again to make sure Neon didn’t escape. I can’t believe he was ready and willing to have us all leave her in there.”
“I think considering the situation, The Spectrum’s doing everything he can,” Gecko counter-argued.
“But, it’s Bullet. The Black Bullet. Colour Coded wouldn’t be a thing without her. None of this would be real. She’s the glue that holds us together, if she dies…”
“She won’t die. It’s Bullet. She’s gone through too much to let this be her end. She’s built for more than this,” Rocket thought aloud.
“I wonder what Neon was saying to her,” Youth considered, “I mean, whatever it was, it was working. He was getting under her skin.”
“He was using her past against her,” Rocket said.
“Yeah, apparently she murdered someone?” Gecko chimed in again. “That can’t be right. She wouldn’t murder someone in cold blood.”
“I don’t know much about it,” Rocket said.
Youth and Gecko looked at each other suspiciously.
“But, you do know something?” Gecko probed.
“I know that Bullet was in Prismatic before me. When I came, it was just her, Sparrow and Neon. Something had just gone down. She was all over the place.”
“A mission?” Youth pried.
“I don’t know. All I know is that when I came, they decided that personal pasts were forbidden from then on. Everyone had to drop everything for the organisation to work, and no one was allowed to ask people about their history.”
“So, Bullet and Sparrow knew each other before that was implemented… do you think Sparrow knows about what Neon was saying?” Youth offered.
“Maybe… maybe not. I don’t know. And I don’t want to know. I like the system the way it is. It works. We know the people we know because of who they are now. Pasts make things complicated,” Rocket snapped.
Lab entered from the back room. Her clothes were bloody and her hair was damp. Silently, she came to Jack’s bedside and checked his drip, his pulse. She checked the incubator that was assisting with Jack’s breathing and observed his heart rate monitor.
“What’re you doing? Is something wrong?” Gecko asked, distressed.
“He’s struggling to breathe on his own. He took a good couple of blows to the chest, his lung muscles are in shock,” Lab explained. “Basically, it’s like he’s been winded, but it’s more long-term; it’s taking a while to wear off. But, since his body is so weak, I’m trying to help him breathe.”
“Is there anything else life-threatening?” Youth probed hard.
“He’s had severe head trauma. Gecko told me that Neon actually smacked the back of his head with the blade of the knife and that’s when Jack became unresponsive. The blow fractured his skull ever so slightly, but a knife wouldn’t be able to do that, so he had obviously been taking a lot of crap from Neon for quite some time, particularly to his head. His eye socket is cracked and his nose is broken, all of which could have been the cause of the blood coming out of his ears.”
“His brain bled?” Gecko cried, horrified at the extent of his injuries.
“Slightly, yes,” Lab confirmed.
“Will he be okay though?” Youth implored. “Please, Lab, tell me he’ll pull through this.”
Lab gave him nothing but a look of sympathy after she placed covers back over Jack’s beaten and burned body.
“I can’t promise you that, pet. He’s not out of the woods yet. Right now, it’s up to him to wake up and then we can assess how far he has to go before potentially making a full recovery.”
She hated herself for making the three young men in front of her look nothing but disheartened and full of remorse at her words.
“Bullet?” she asked Rocket gently.
“Still waiting,” he muttered.
Lab nodded, trying to remain hopeful.
“Right… okay. Well, I’m going to see The Spectrum. I have my earpiece in, I believe they’ve been put back on to pressure control?” Lab aimed at Youth, who nodded in confirmation.