Sinner's Game

12 - Downwards

Hendrick

A loud clanking hissed through the air as metal hit metal, then noise faded to silence.

The slight buzzing of nearby lightbulbs was the only thing audible for a moment.

Hendrick had used his half-scissors to block Jim's strike, the two blades now leveraging against each other.

Hendrick felt Jim's force disappear.

Anna was no longer weeping, stared upward to the crossed blades. The infection in her arms had stopped spreading. Jim stumbled backwards, dropped his weapon.

"I'm... so sorry."

Anna's eyes were flat orbs, but their depth started to return. She looked back at her hands as she started to move them around slightly. Her movements were slow and abrupt.

"Am I... safe?" she asked.

"You only got hit by the smoke briefly. That's not enough to infect your whole body... at least not for now." Hendrick grabbed Anna's hands, examined them closer. Their appearance had changed drastically, and they now looked like out of some cheap science-fiction movie.

He turned to face Anna, asked, "How do you feel? Are you able to keep going?"

"You must be joking, right? There is no way she w-"

"No, I am fine," Anna interrupted. "It still hurts a lot, but I can handle it."

"Are you sure?" Hendrick asked.

"Yes." She looked down at her arms, said, "These are the consequences of my actions. I can deal with it."

Jim swallowed, moved back closer to Anna. "But..." He looked at her arms.

"You saved me, now I saved you. We lost Jack because of me getting caught, so..." she stopped, swallowed, "...I am going to make up for it by being useful to the group from now on."

"Let me check..." Hendrick put his hand on Anna's arms, tested how severe the injuries were.

"Anna," he said. "If you wouldn't have acted as fast as you did, Jim would have ended up like that cyborg deer. He would have lost any control over himself, and since the price was only your arms, it is more than worth it. You also did the right thing, so don't be too hard on yourself please."

He knew that keeping the group together was essential now. Everything had somehow worked like planned so far, and he wanted it to stay that way. He once again had gotten a gentle reminder that every wrong step could cause fatal consequences. Everything could be ruined at every given moment.

The infection had managed to go rather far up, had stopped not too far away from Anna's shoulders, but it wasn't enough for the infection to take over her movement.

"And like I said earlier, Jim," Hendrick added, "if it would have been a serious infection... you would have saved her life with your reaction."

Jim seemed like he wanted to say something, but he remained silent. He looked down to where he had dropped his weapon, nodded.

Hendrick hoped that the words he said calmed Jim down a little. He had changed since they entered the first stage. It was quite impressive how much the ball of joy had matured over the course of the last few days, his whole behaviour more serious and calm than before.