The Elites

Chapter Twenty

Lara bound up the stairs quicker than I could; the dress she was wearing should have given me an advantage, but the pain in my shoulder was slowing me down. She reached for the handle and pulled on it hard, but it would not budge.

"Locked from the outside?" I asked her. She shrugged. Her head drooped and rested against the wood, the low muffled sound of fighting from the other side just audible. I couldn't make out any voices, but I hoped that Will and Blair weren't the only ones out there. It seemed like every worker had broken free from their stations to launch themselves after us. Mr Hetley better have made enough groups to handle them. Hopefully the thuds of bodies weren't any of ours; that would probably mean they were dead.

The fighting started to die away, the pattering of footsteps being the most common sound. We could hear faint mumbling as the handle began to move. Lara jumped back, narrowly avoiding crashing into me and sending me down the stairway again, as the door swung open. The light of the corridor outside burst through and, out of reflex, I tried to shield my eyes. Unfortunately for me, I instinctively lifted my left arm; the one with the tight bandage around it. I grunted while Lara steadily moved through the doorway; the pain momentarily blurred my vision, but I hoped I was seeing Will and not just some other random blonde guy.

Will, who by the time I got to the top was clear as day, had wide eyes staring down at the large lump underneath my shirt; it had been a hard task for Lara to pull it back on without getting annoyed at my constant winces.

"What the hell happened to you?" he said, holding onto my front as if to steady me.

"Oh, you know, the usual," I said.

"What about the jacket that cost more than my first house?" he said light-heartedly, but his lack of breath just made him sound ragged.

"One of them can use it to wipe the blood from their chin."

I started to assess the corridor: Will and Blair were by no means the only Agents there. Chase, Dexter, Marv and Alice were all there, as well as some others that I didn't know. I wondered where the girls had gone off to; surely they would have heard the fighting down here? Unless there were more up above too...

The harshest thing about the scene was that not all of the bodies on the floor were dressed in head to toe black. Some wore dresses and suits, meaning they were ours. And I doubted they were breathing. Alice was bent over one woman in particular. I couldn't tell who she was - she was face down. Alice must not have had the stomach to spin her over.

Then I started to notice that hardly any of the black wearing bodies were rising and falling. Then there was the fact that some had their eyes wide open as they stared up at the ceiling in an awkward position. Then there were the pools of blood flooding the ground, deep wounds in almost every single one.

"Why the hell are these people dead," I said through gritted teeth, staring down each standing Agent with as much anger as I could muster.

"We tried to-" Chase started and, in a way I'd never heard before, he sounded sorrowful and weak. "We tried to argue but-"

"But I told them to be ruthless," Alice said far too proudly for my liking, and suddenly the pain in my shoulder didn't bother me much any more.

"You what," I said. "Why did you-"

"It's what Mr Hetley said," she said, straightening up and leaving the woman perfectly still below her. "Do not hesitate."

"He meant with Violet, you stupid bitch!" I said, surprising myself and everyone around me. "He meant with Violet! These are families of your colleagues! Innocent people!"