Mitchel dragged me into the corridor. By the time we were out, a loud siren was screaming throughout the HQ, and guards were moving orderly to their positions, rifles armed and ready to unleash a hail of bullets. Looking at the elevator that brought me here, Mitchel cursed and turned in the opposite direction, bringing me along.
’What’s happening?’
He just glanced at me without stopping.
’Be quiet.’
The lack of usual rudeness made me uncomfortable.
We moved quickly down the corridor, approaching its far end. There, Mitchel fished out a black keycard from his pocket and opened an unassuming door, pushing me inside. I saw a set of stairs leading down and almost stumbled after taking a few steps. Mitchel caught me by the collar with one hand, while taking out a gun from its hidden holster with the other.
’Don’t try anything, zero six eleven’
I stared at the gun, tense. Was this the first time he addressed me by my number?
’I, I just lost my balance.’
Mitchel grinned.
’Clumsy.’
He pushed me again, making me walk in front of him. We went down several floors before stepping to the side to let a team of guards run past. Mitchel stopped one of them.
’Is the main exit secure?’
The guard blinked, trying to understand the question.
’Unclear. I suggest you use vehicle bay S, sir.’
Mitchel sighed and let the guard go. Then he used the keycard to open the nearest door and dragged me forward, cursing under his breath. Disoriented and at a loss about the cause of all this chaos, I just followed, trying to understand what was happening.
The Protector was calm and in control until I told her Zero’s name.
No, not his, Tanya’s.
Why was she so afraid of Tanya?
Unless...
I was so engrossed in my thoughts that I lost awareness of the surroundings. Mitchel opened several more doors and led me down another set of stairs before the building suddenly shook, throwing us both off balance. He caught himself before falling, but with my hands still cuffed behind my back, I simply dropped down, hitting my nose on the hard floor. The pain of the fall was bearable, but the violent pull on my broken ribs left me pale and breathless.
The siren suddenly gurgled and stopped, and we found ourselves enveloped in ominous silence.
Mitchel looked up, back the way we came, with a dark expression.
’Damn.’
Shakily, I got back on my feet and studied him. I didn’t like what I saw one bit.
The mask of a violent brute slipped off his face, finally revealing Mitchel’s -- or whatever his real name was -- true self. His eyes were cold and calculating, and there was a dangerous, ruthless spark in them. Mitchel looked at me, and then back up, thinking about something with grim intensity.
Another tremor hit the building.
I made a tentative step back, suddenly feeling a veiled threat.
However, at that moment Mitchel seemed to have come to a decision and turned to me. The gun was still in his hand.
I licked my lips.
’What?’
There was no cruelty in his eyes anymore, just detached finality.
’I’m sorry, kid. The situation is not good, and leaving you behind would create a liability.’
’What do you mean?’ I said, knowing exactly what he meant.
The fucker had decided to kill me.
Not because of blood-thirst or hatred, but simply because it was an optimal course of action to achieve his goal, whatever it may be.
He was going to kill me right now!
’Wait! The Protector forbade you from hurting me!
He just shrugged with indifference.
’Plans change. I’m sure she’ll understand.’
I looked at him with horror as the gun started to move up.
’Don’t feel bad. It’s nothing personal.’
A long time ago, Tanya and I talked about how different Affects really work. The most common Affect, accessible to almost every wraith, allowed them to manipulate the temperature of different objects. Only, in reality, they didn’t change the temperature: instead, they changed the speed with which molecules moved.
She told me that, in theory, a greater mastery of that Affect could allow a wraith to not only speed up and slow down the molecules, but also influence connections between them, effectively turning things -- or people -- into stone, or making them crumble into dust.
I’ve never tried something like that, but in that moment, seconds away from death, it just came naturally to me.
My Affects moved through my skin into the cold metal handcuffs, pulling their nature apart. The metal resisted, as though it possessed its own will to live, but the force of my Ability was too much for such a simple and uniform piece of matter. Destroying a living organism would have been a hundredfold harder.
But I wasn’t planning to.
The handcuffs became deathly cold and then turned into dust. My fist flew into Mitchell’s face, wrapped in Affects that first decreased its weight, allowing me to strike with an appalling speed, and then increased it instead in the last moment, allowing me to hit like a truck.
I briefly saw surprise in Mitchel’s eyes, and then the fist connected, sending him flying back. The tall Protector was thrown several meters back and crashed into a wall with a disturbing thud, crumbling to the floor like a broken doll. His right cheekbone was shattered, nose bleeding. He was knocked out cold.
My hand didn’t fare much better.
’Ah! It hurts!’
I slumped on the floor, cradling my damaged wrist, tears of pain in my eyes. How the hell did Mickey do it without breaking every bone in his arm? Heavens are my witness, I was not born for fighting.
With a dejected moan, I crawled to Mitchel’s unconscious body and frisked his pockets, searching for the keycard. For a few seconds, I stared at his gun, but then just pushed it away with disgust.
Then, holding the black card in my healthy hand, I stood up and looked around.
The path to freedom was open. I had no idea where that vehicle bay S was, but it had to be close. With Mitchel’s key, finding it should not be a problem. I was pretty sure that I would be able to avoid most of the guards, too.
And yet I was hesitating.
A strange feeling of morbid curiosity was calling me back.
It felt like... fate. Or something even more profound.
Any sane person would choose to escape, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. My life was finished either way. Even if I managed to leave the Agency’s HQ, and even if my disappearance would somehow go unnoticed due to the chaos, and even if my traces were to somehow be erased... I was doomed to live the rest of my life on the run, looking over my shoulder in fear.
Such life was not very appealing.
Why shouldn’t I see this mess through to the end?
At least, that way, I will have closure.
I looked at Mitchel one last time. That day in the warehouse test chamber I ended up on the floor, bleeding, with him towering over me with clenched fists. But now the situation was reversed.
’Who’s laughing now, asshole?’
I smiled, winced in pain, and went back the way we came.