Absolution

3. Enigma.

Morrigan barely had time to dive out of the window before the wall collapsed. She recovered from the drop, her ears still ringing. She looked up to see the soldiers running towards the house. A sudden smack of something hard hitting another hard surface followed by a hoarse
"Cunt." caused her to turn suddenly, to see Kwang-Joon crouching and clutching his right thigh in pain on the street beside her. 
"You alright?" she asked quickly, knowing that the soldiers were coming.
"Yeah- it's nothing-" he grumbled. 
"Then get moving." 
Morrigan darted back into the house, knowing better than to abandon the squad on their first outing. 
Ray was lifting up chunks of brick and mortar to free Klein from the corner, where he was trapped. 
Uzo had blood dripping from her nose and Jeffrey was holding his arm close to his body, probably broken. Ray looked unscathed, asides from the dust. The same could not be said for Klein. In fact, he looked incapable of walking. 
"They're closing in. If we go out the back way we might get away." I said. 

Ray pulled Klein up, but Klein's knees buckled. Klein was then positioned on Ray's shoulder, and the squad left out the back, being fast and quiet so as to not alert the other soldiers that they were escaping. 

"That was close. Too fucking close." Kwang-Joon said with frustration. This guy sure liked to swear. 

"Kwa-" Morrigan began.
"Call me KJ. It's easier, and less embarrassing." 
"Right. Okay. Is your leg alright? It looked pretty painful when you landed outside the building."
"It's fine." he replied through clenched teeth. Morrigan began to feel slightly intimidated by him. It wasn't as if he was any better than her, but he was short-tempered, hiding things, and his constant state of anger was rather worrying. 
"Sorry for asking." Morrigan retorted, then realising it was a bad idea to respond to him like that. 
He gave her a dirty look, but didn't say anything, much to her relief. 
"After you've stopped scrapping, it'd be helpful to establish a game plan." Ray said loudly. 
"We should try to get back to the bunker." Morrigan replied.
"While that may be obvious, we can't go back without a strategy. We left behind at least a squad of soldiers, and who knows how many are swarming around there now?" Uzo said.
"The faster we get back, the better. We should just plough through with our weapons at the ready." Jeffrey added. 

"It's the best we can do for now, I guess." Ray shrugged. 
Klein stayed unconscious over Ray's shoulder, showing no signs of moving any time soon.
"I envy Klein right now. Staying still. It's a lovely thought." KJ said wistfully. 

"Oh, so you want to be born as a stone in your next life?" Jeffrey joked.
"I wouldn't mind it." KJ admitted. 
"Shut up and get moving!" Uzo yelled, unable to stand around waiting. 
The squad then headed back to where they came from, as stealthily as possible. The streets were silent and empty, and night was beginning to fall. It was a beautiful sight, but there was no time to appreciate the beauty of anything when you could be killed where you stood at any time. 
Morrigan quickly noticed that KJ walked with a slight limp, but thinking hard, she realised that he had walked like that since she had met him, so what was wrong with his leg?

She didn't mention it and instead focused on the task at hand. A gunshot rang out from further ahead, but none of them could see who fired it, or which direction the bullet came from. They continued down the road but there was nobody in sight. 
Another shot echoed, and this time the bullet hit a wall only inches to the right of Jeffrey. He moved quickly to the side, to avoid another shot but there wasn't one. 
Hushed voices could be heard, so the squad prepared to shoot. Another shot came from the right, and buried itself in KJ's right leg. He didn't cry out in pain, just looked down at the hole, then back at the direction in which the bullet came from with a murderous scowl and took a sub-machine gun from the holster that was strapped to his un-wounded leg. 
"Wait," Ray said quickly, "Don't shoot." 
"Tell them that! Look at my fucking leg!" KJ fumed. 
"Keep going. We need to find out who they are before running into a fight where we're at a disadvantage." Ray ordered.
The squad continued, and shortly they discovered a squad of their own faction, two soldiers with their guns out, obviously the ones who fired at them. They seemed to be guarding others who were injured. They realised that they were to be trusted, as they put away their weapons. 
"Apologies for the shots earlier, we weren't aware that there were more of us in the area." one of the two said. He spoke confidently, despite his stupid blue quiff and suggestive smirk. 

"It's fine. None of your shots injured us. The others however..." Ray replied.
"They came close to taking us out. We barely just escaped." The second stranger added. His voice was annoying and high-pitched. He was short, and didn't look like the fighting type. He was chubby, and his short fingers looked hardly able to pull the trigger of a gun. 

"Same here really. You're squad seems like you need somewhere to stay. Feel free to come back to our bunker for the night, and you can set off tomorrow morning. Saves taking refuge somewhere that it isn't safe." Ray said. Morrigan wondered how he could be so friendly. 
KJ looked more annoyed than usual, which brought her back to thinking; what's the deal with his leg?
She didn't like not knowing things like this about the squad she was meant to trust. It appeared that nobody else knew about it either, or they were just really good at hiding it. 

They took their time helping the squad back to the bunker, where Morrigan discovered that there was actually a bunk-room underneath. There were three bunk beds in the room, and a large box with some folded sheets in. Morrigan was shown her bed, which happened to be the top bunk over KJ. She was not looking forward to that. 
The other squad were supplied with blankets and Ray helped them patch up their wounds before heading to bed himself. Klein woke up and was fine, apart from some bruising. 

Morrigan didn't want to sleep that night. She was too distracted by the mysteries within her own squad. She liked to think of herself as an enigma, but hated it when other people were the same.