PART 2 of Hard Feelings series. As your life begins to grow around Five's, you're not sure what you find more sinister: the machinations of an evil soda corporation or the ideology that Five is starting to encourage in his bullied nephew...
When doe...
Five had been tapping away furiously in the IT department when the sound of gunfire erupted through the suspended tile ceiling.
"Shit. Those morons."
"We gotta go help them," the desktop was the room's only light, illuminating Viktor's face in a ghostly hue, "Do you have anything?"
"Nothing." He said, through gritted teeth. "Not a fucking thing. I need more time!"
At a particularly deafening crescendo of automatic gunfire, Viktor pulled at him insistently.
"Come ON, Five."
"I TOLD them to wait."
With a yell of frustration, Five allowed Viktor to pull him away, blinking out of his grasp when he heard Luther yell.
With a stroke of luck, Five appeared directly behind one of the gunmen crouched behind a desk, taking him by surprise. The guy and his comrades were suited and booted in a way completely alien to all their expectations: they're all wearing body armor like a goddam SWAT team and shooting to kill. Five was able to break his neck in less than a second, ducking behind the desk himself and taking the guy's gun (an M4...for a soda company?).
Five popped his head out for the barest of seconds to take stock of the situation. Viktor entered via the stairwell, pressing himself immediately against the wall and behind the cover of a supply cabinet. There have gotta be twenty guys here. Five ducked back behind the desk as Viktor's eyes turned white: a targeted blast exploded through the room and took two of them off their feet. When the wave passed, Five blinked to Luther and Sloane.
"You guys Ok? What did I say?!"
Sloane, levitating a flailing goon, turned back to him,
"You're gonna say 'I told you so'- now?"
"FIVE!"
Luther's panicked shout warned him just in time, drawing his attention to the guy on the floor with his gun aimed at Five's chest. Five blinked across the room before he could pull the trigger.
When he re-emerged by the water-cooler, he felt impact that made him jerk his shoulder a little, but nothing else; he was intent only on getting rid of these guys and getting the fuck out of here. He raised the gun he took from the first one and shot the guy on the floor before spinning to aim at the critical mass of a guy a little behind him. After taking him down, he blinked again outside into the stairwell to regroup.
And then he felt the ache and the familiar rush of adrenaline. He was hit. He looked down to discover thick, dark blood soaking his shirt. He unbuttoned it hastily to inspect the damage. It wasn't good but wasn't bad either. The sight of bone worried him but he'd recovered from worse without the benefit of antibiotics. His ever-increasing pulse brought more and more blood. His mind, used to this, took on the ice-cool state necessary for survival. Ripping his shirt off the rest of the way, he tied it around his shoulder and the gaping maw in his chest, going under his arm and pulling as tight as it would go.
Patched up for now, he re-joined the fray, taking two guys out on his way to cover. He was planning his next move when flashing police lights from the windows caught his eye.
"I'm aborting this! We need to get out of here- now! "
"Agreed!" came Viktor's voice from somewhere in the room.
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