by Katy Jordan
“I think so… Yeah, she is. But, barely. I can hardly even see her chest rising,” Tide said, panicking frantically.
“Rocket to Lab, are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here, pet, what’s going on?”
“We found her, we’re on our way back, but she’s unconscious from smoke inhalation, or blood loss, or both. How can we help her until we get to you?”
“If you don’t have an oxygen mask, then do what you can to replicate it. Open windows, everything. Try giving her water.”
“Lab, it’s Tide, I’ve tried giving her water, but it doesn’t work, it just spills everywhere.”
“You need to peg her nose, tip some water in and clamp her mouth shut with two fingers at the little indent just under her chin.”
“Like CPR?” Tide confirmed.
“Exactly, darling! Just like CPR, except instead of blowing into her airways you’re tipping a tiny little bit of water into them.”
“Won’t she drown?”
“No, sweetheart, she won’t drown. But, it will irritate her, which is what we want. We need her to cough up all that gunk in her lungs.”
Tide broke down and started to cry.
“Come on, Tide. You can do this, babe!” Rocket encouraged her. “Come on. She needs you.”
“Just a little bit of water, now. Like a cap full. Don’t overdo it,” Lab instructed.
Tide pegged Bullet’s nose as instructed and tipped a little bit of water into her mouth. She put her fingers at the bottom of her chin and held her mouth shut.
“If she doesn’t cough it up right away, then gently blow into her mouth and coax it down,” Lab’s gentle but firm voice tickled their ears again.
Tide leaned down and spread her mouth over Bullet’s, and blew.
Instantly, Bullet writhed and juddered, coughing and spluttering everywhere. Black phlegm bounced out of her mouth as though from a slingshot, splatting against the window and the back of the front seat. Her wheezing was ridiculous, as barely any air was able to make its way down to her bunged up lungs.
“Good girl!” Rocket bellowed with delight.
“It’s okay! Bullet? Bullet, it’s Tide. You’re okay! We’re taking you home, Lab’s going to help you, you’re okay!” Tide said, thumping Bullet’s back while attempting to hold her steady. She started to slouch backwards.
“Lie on your side, Bullet. Don’t lie on your back,” Rocket said to her.
Bullet’s head had barely hit Tide’s thigh when she was back up again, fumbling and squirming around.
“You’re okay, Bullet,” Rocket said comfortingly.
“No… no, she’s not. Rocket, she’s choking.”
“What?”
“She’s choking, she can’t breathe!” Tide thumped her back frantically, with no clue what to do.
“Bullet, hang on, we’re almost there!” Rocket cried out.
Once more, Bullet began to feel weak and drowsy. Her lungs were a shrivelling leaf on a twig of autumn. She felt herself slump into the back seat as the little oxygen she had in her system turned into CO2, and her brain began to shut down.
Painfully and incredibly slowly, Bullet recognised that familiar feeling as she drifted into the unconscious once again.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Lab, we need a gurney at the top of the stairs!” Rocket shouted as he turned on to the private driveway and floored it until he was at the front of the building, yanking the wheel down to the left as the car scraped violently across the stones.
“Get her in, I’m on my way,” Lab replied.
Leaving the engine running and the doors open was the last thing concerning Rocket as he dragged Bullet’s lifeless body out of his car and ran with her to the door, Tide right next to him while she opened the door for him to pass through.
Lab had just reached the top of the stairs when they made it inside. Bullet’s limbs bounced all over the place as Rocket ran up the glass stairs two at a time with her, flinging her down on the bed.
“How long has she been unconscious for?” Lab asked.
“She stopped moving just under five minutes before we got back,” Rocket said, running along with Lab beside the bed, “she’s not breathing… I drove as fast as I could.”
“I know, darling, I know. Let me get her into the consultation room.”
“We’re not leaving her!” Tide stated.
“Sweetheart, you’ve done your bit. Let me do mine,” Lab said as they ran into the infirmary.
Reluctantly, Rocket let go of the bed and slowed to a standstill, grabbing Tide’s arm as she tried to pass him and go with Lab and Bullet.
Frustrated, she flung her arms around and began to pace, openly crying and not caring who saw her.
“She died,” Tide said.
“Lab’ll get her back,” Rocket replied.
“She died, Rocket. Dead. Her entire body shut down. She’s gone.”
“Lab’ll get her back.”
“There’s nothing to get back, she’s gone, it’s…”
“LAB’LL GET HER BACK!!” Rocket yelled at her, his face in hers, tears welling up in his eyes. “She’ll get her back.”
“But, what if she can’t?” Tide panicked, gripping Rocket’s arms as a means of holding herself up.
Willingly, Rocket reached out and held her.
“She will. She has to. There’s no Colour Coded without the Black Bullet,” he whispered.
They held each other’s gaze for a while, Rocket using every ounce of himself to fight back the tears.
“You don’t have to be a tough guy all the time,” Tide informed him through her tears.
“Yes, I do.”
“No… you really don’t,” she forced, stepping closer to him. “Show me the man you really are. Show me the one who really cares about his friends, who doesn’t want to lose them… show me the man that, deep down, is really fucking scared, just like I am.”
He tried.
With everything he had he tried.
It was no use.
Rocket crumpled to the floor and broke down, leaning his head on Tide’s legs and wrapping his hands around the back of her calves. She crouched down beside him, running her fingers through his gel-filled, spiky brown hair, resting her forehead on his, and cried with him.
“I’ve… I’ve never driven so fast… and it wasn’t enough…” he sobbed.
“Aw, honey… don’t do that. This wasn’t your fault. You did everything right,” she assured him. “I didn’t put out the fire quick enough.”
Tide rested herself down and held his head against her chest, rocking side to side with him as they both sobbed into each other.
Neither of them knew what the most prominent thought was; losing Bullet, Colour Coded falling through, Neon’s plan coming into effect… Losing Bullet.
Bullet was the heart and soul of Colour Coded.
Even The Spectrum said so.
She was there when it all began. She always had everyone’s back. She had the most useful skill when it came to dangerous missions. She never faltered when someone needed her, always giving them her full and undivided attention. And all of that could be ripped away from them, like a rug being swept away from under their feet.
Footsteps pattered down the hall sporadically. Flare, Sparrow and The Spectrum rushed into the hospital wing, a look of panic on their faces.
Not long after, Youth and Gecko showed up, their faces confusion stricken at all the commotion over the earpieces earlier.
“What happened?” Gecko asked. “Where’s Bullet?”
He and Youth looked around at everyone, but they were all focused on Tide and Rocket sprawled on the floor in each other’s arms. Focused on Rocket’s state of mind.
Or lack thereof.
He was beside himself.
They thought the worst.
“Why are you sitting out here?” Sparrow snapped.
“Lab wouldn’t let us go through with her,” Tide cried.
Without a word, The Sp
ectrum marched away from them heading to the consultation room where he knew Lab would have taken Bullet.
He barged into a sight that almost had him stagger back out the door.
Machines flatlining, a constant high-pitched sound filling the air, while Lab used the defibrillator on Bullet’s chest.
An incubator had been situated into her mouth, just like Jack.
“Lab?”
“I’m working on it, get out,” she said, not turning her sight away from Bullet’s lifeless body lying in front of her.
“What’s happening?” The Spectrum probed again, the shock filling him like a tank of water.
“I said I’m working on it, now, get out!” she yelled at him.
The Spectrum watched the Lavender Lab frantically shock Bullet’s body. He watched Bullet jerk as soon as the shockwave was released. He watched the heart rate monitor continue to portray a solid line.
Everything was happening in slow motion.
If ever there was a moment that enforced just how fleeting life could be, then this was definitely one of them.
The Spectrum looked at the face of the girl he came across five years ago. One that he knew just by her attitude and how she composed herself that she had been through a lot in her few years of living.
The Black Bullet had a burden to bear. A big one.
The Spectrum didn’t know what it was, but for her to be able to kill so easily, he knew it must have been something huge. He had, on many occasions, considered that she was a veteran; that maybe she had done a couple of tours and they had messed with her mentally. It would explain the weaponry expertise and the second-hand nature of which she seemed to possess when taking a life.
No histories.
That was the rule.
For this precise reason.
A thump from the defibrillator snapped him out of his daze.
He stumbled back to the door and hurled himself around the other side of it, pushing it shut with his back as he leaned on the door, eyes wide, body numb.
“Sir?” Sparrow asked as he hovered anxiously by the consult room door.
The Spectrum looked up at him and jolted as though he had just noticed him.
“She’s working on it,” he said blandly, “it’s a waiting game now.”
Gravity was sucking him to the floor when he made his way to the main section of the hospital wing. He tripped a couple of times over his own feet as he struggled to find his balance, the whole situation knocking him in every direction. The fear in each member of Colour Coded rose when they saw The Spectrum walk back to them in a daze, in shock, and in emotional turmoil.
“How is she?” Flare probed frantically.
“She’s in the right place. For now, we wait for Lab’s update,” The Spectrum said, propping himself down on the bed next to the one that Jack’s unconscious body continued to inhabit.
The hours dragged past tauntingly, and there was still no sign of Lab.
The morning sun had risen above the mountains, greeting them with a blinding glare.
Tide and Rocket had curled up together on a bed by the door and were now sound asleep. Gecko and Youth sat next to each other in silence on the bed opposite The Spectrum; Youth played a game on his phone while Gecko simply stared at the floor in his own little world. Flare sat with her feet up on the bed, her head dangling between her knees as she willed Lab to walk out of that room and tell everyone that her best friend was going to be okay. Sparrow was pacing. At first, it was fast, deliberate.
Now, it was just repetition, obligation, clueless on another way to deal with everything.
Everyone looked around at the same time; Tide and Rocket woke up, Gecko snapped out of it, Youth put his phone away, Flare lifted her head up and Sparrow stopped still.
The sound of Lab checking Jack’s machines caught their attention.
“Lab, is she okay? Can we see her?” Flare hopped off the bed swiftly.
“Soon. Not right now,” Lab replied.
“Tell us,” Sparrow demanded, “and don’t sugarcoat.”
One by one, Lab made eye contact with each of them in the hospital wing.
“You have to understand… she lay engulfed in smoke for a really long time. She had a severe wound to her leg which she lost a lot of blood from. She was unconscious but clinging on by the skin of her teeth, thankfully. I did lose her in there last night,” Tide burst into tears again, recalling how Bullet writhed in pain one minute and then slumped into lifelessness the next.
“How is she now, though?” Youth demanded.
“Alive. But, barely,” Lab replied. "I lost her for a good fifteen
minutes."
“What took you so long to come out then?”
“Sparrow!” Rocket snapped at him, stunned. “Bullet’s alive, isn’t that enough?”
“I had to do tests and monitor everything about her for the first few hours. They were crucial. She could easily have slipped away again, and I wanted to be sure. I didn’t want to give you false hope.”
“Her injuries, Lab?” The Spectrum’s voice rung out across the room.
“Aside from the smoke inhalation which has clogged her lungs, she lost a lot of blood from the stab wound to the back of her leg. The blade scuffed the edge of her femur and damaged muscle tissue, tore through a tendon, and just nicked an artery and no more. She also has a cracked elbow which I can only assume was from falling. That is the full report.”
“And now?” The Spectrum probed.
“She’s critical but stable. I have her on oxygen, much like your boy here, I’ve cleaned out as much of the soot as I can, her leg is strapped up and she’s had a blood transfusion to replace what she lost.” Lab rubbed her eyes, exhausted from the job she had with Bullet. “Tide, I need to sort your hands, darling. They’ll get infected if I don’t.”
Lab held up an antibacterial agent and some bandages, motioning for Tide to come over to her. Sheepishly, she left Rocket by the bed and went over, holding her hands out.
Amidst the silence of the room, Lab rubbed the gel gently into Tide’s hands, who stood numb despite the raging sting that sprung to life in her palms, and after she placed a cotton pad across each one, wrapped them up with the bandages she brought out with her from the back room.
“This is all my fault,” Flare’s whisper echoed through the noiseless room.
“What?” Gecko prodded.
“I set that fire.”
“Darling, don’t do that,” Lab instructed. “You didn’t know…”
“That she was in there? Yeah. I did. But, I did it anyway.”
“You thought she was going to run out, Flare. We all did,” Rocket assured her. “That was the plan. This isn’t on you.”
“I set that fire. I deliberately didn’t attempt to contain it so that it would spread faster. I did it even though I knew I didn’t know what kind of components were inside, what kind of gases could be released, if there were catalysts of any kind… but I took my flame thrower, and I blasted the fuel that I splashed everywhere.”
“Bullet told me to run. Flare, she knew as soon as I was seen outside that that was your cue to strike, but she told me to run anyway,” Gecko acknowledged, “she knew it was going to happen.”
“We went into that room together. Remember?” Rocket said, walking over to her. “Where she was lying on the floor. Other than an injured leg, there was nothing that could’ve possibly stopped her from leaving, was there? She could’ve made it out on time, but she hung back to make sure Neon stayed buried in there.”
“We should probably get proof of death,” Sparrow said coldly, changing the subject altogether.
“There’s time for that,” Rocket snapped at him.
“Not if he’s still alive there isn’t.”
“Mate, what is your fucking problem?”
“That we don’t know Neon’s whereabouts! That bothers me!”
“Does it? And Bullet lying in there fighting for her life while Flare blames herself for it doesn’t
bother you?”
“Of course it bothers me, but someone has to remain rational!”
“And you think you’re the best candidate for that!”
“Guys, come on…” Tide sighed.
“Well, no one else seems to be stepping forward!” Sparrow ignored her interruption.
“Maybe that’s because now is not the time!”
“Then when is? If we leave it too long he could have upped and left by then, starting yet another scheme to kill us, maybe this time succeeding!”
“GUYS!” Youth exploded. “Shut the fuck up, will you? Maybe now isn’t the time for mollycoddling, maybe it’s not the time to deviate from thinking ahead, but I can assure you it’s definitely not the time for acting like a couple of fucking kids fighting over who’s got the best race car!”
Stunned, everyone eyeballed Youth.
He was always the calm one, laid back, ready for anything.
To see him lose control the way he did was a shock to the system.
“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” The Spectrum added, mirthless at their behaviour.
“This… is a breakdown in team effort. It is a breakdown in communication. It is a breakdown in supporting one another. It is also letting Neon win, which is something that, under no circumstances whatsoever, I will allow. Get. Your act. Together. NOW,” The Spectrum stormed past everyone in the infirmary like a man on a mission, heading for the door.
“Flare,” he said as he passed, “my office. Now.”
Full of self-hatred, Flare shuffled awkwardly around the bed and followed her boss out of the infirmary.
It wasn’t long before she was facing the entrance to his grand office that was always so warm and always so tidy. She entered the room, noticing the back of his head as he sat on the couch pouring himself a glass of whiskey. Another glass sat across from him, already poured.
“Sit, please,” he asked quietly.
Flare did as she was told.
Lifting his glass and watching the golden fluid swish around in its fancy container, The Spectrum gathered his thoughts for what he would say to Flare. There was only one way he could think to go that Flare would resonate with.
“It wasn’t that long ago that I had the Black Bullet in here. Sitting where you yourself are sitting. Drinking this very brand of whiskey, out of this very bottle actually,” he said before taking a sip out of his glass.