Does It Matter

27

   

   Wu Xie woke with a start to loud banging on the door, and immediately registered the smell of smoke permeating the air. He gasped and forced himself up, looking around the room for his companion, only to remember that the other had left to scout the area earlier in the night, and most likely had not returned yet.
  A cough climbed it's way up his throat as he breathed in more of the contaminated air. He had to get out. Now that he was more awake he saw that the wall in front of him was flickering with burning light, which he didn't have time to investigate the source of but still noted with a sense of relief appeared to have originated near the outlet. So we are not under attack then.
Being the stupid person that he sometimes was, he first paused to gather all of their belongings, not much, but still necessary, before feeling his way to the door. He found the handle just as the wall opposite the beds crumbled in a pile of flaming wood. Ugh this is annoying.
Wu Xie yanked on the door handle but found with a frustrated growl that it would not budge. With a growing sense of urgency he stepped back and took a deep breath before surging forward and kicking the rusted door with all the strength he could muster. It gave way with a groan as the latch snapped under the pressure.
He burst through into the cleaner air with burning lungs, coughing til his eyes watered.  
  He vaguely registered the rest of whatever unlucky travelers had stayed the night there were also crowding out in the open, while some others were ushering the crowd away from the burning building. Wu Xie didn't question when he felt himself being jostled in a random direction, assuming that one of the good Samaritan usherers was guiding him away from the fire like the rest, his guard was let down while he choked on air.
He only realized his fatal mistake when he felt himself being pushed into a car, and a rag was promptly thrown over his mouth.

He felt his mind become clouded as his body refused to move. Ah, this is tiresome. He thought sadly as the fight left his body the longer he breathed into the cloth. His eyes slipped closed against his will and he drifted into an old dream, where memories of simpler times played on repeat.

_____________________________________

  A tall figure stood just outside the light of the flames, looking over the crowd of hacking, soot covered travelers, and frowned when he had studied them all and not yet found who he was looking for.
He had just come back from his personal scouting mission when he saw the flames engulf the building, he didn't panic as much as he might have, as he had come to know his companion as an alert to the point of being almost paranoid, and highly capable individual. However now he realized that that was a foolish way to think, as many circumstances could contribute to an inescapable situation. For instance a falling beam could have landed on his companion while he slept.
Zhang Qiling was preparing himself to run into the building to find the younger when he suddenly saw it.
A team of three large men were leading a coughing Wu Xie into a car, just outside the lit area, and said young man barely seemed aware of his surroundings until the last second, when he was shoved into the backseat and a pair of hands swiftly snatched him back and pressed a rag to the young man's face.
  He could almost see a struggle taking place in the car, but it quickly died down as whatever was in the cloth took hold, and two of the three men climbed into the car and handed the third a large suitcase out of it before driving away.
The car drove off as the last man ambled his way over to the crowd, and exchanged words with the motel owner. At the end of the exchange the suitcase changed hands, and the man left to another car.
The motel owner grinned as he felt the weight of the suitcase.

Zhang Qiling felt his blood boil, of course this man had sold them out, he should have kept a better eye on him. But no matter, these maniacs had caught their main goal, but had also forgotten the more blatantly dangerous of the duo. They probably believed that he himself was burning inside the building, suffocated in his sleep. Ugh this was annoying.
Zhang Qiling took a cursory glance around before bolting to the place where they had parked the bike the day before.

  He finally found it after pushing his way through the chaos, and climbed on, ready to go. However he found that it was a waste of time as he patted down his pockets and realized that he did not have the keys to start it, meaning that they were either with Wu Xie, who was currently unconscious and on the way to an unknown location, or they were somewhere within the motel room with their scarce belongings.

The man turned his dark eyes back to the building, the flames flickered bright in his vision, reflecting his internal inferno with it's physical one.

Suddenly his eye happened to catch something else— the motel owner unlocking a cherry red sedan, about to make his getaway.

One brow twitched with his eye as he made a split second decision. Zhang Qiling ran at the man in a blur of black, kicking the middle aged man in his sternum, and knocking him back and away from the vehicle.

The owner managed to steady himself and looked up just in time to see blazing eyes and a fist rapidly approaching his face, before he was knocked out in the dirt and gravel.