Paint it Another Colour

Chapter 54

"Pens; books; notebooks; pencils; rulers..." Toris growled as he flung the ruler over his shoulder, not noticing when it hit the wall behind him so hard it stuck through the plaster and buried itself in the wall behind.

"Toris?" Raivis stood on the opposite side of the desk, watching him. Toris didn't look up, just tore the drawer out of the desk, tipped it upside down and went for the next one.

"Paper" Toris shouted, throwing the paper to the floor and starting on the next drawer

"Toris" Raivis said louder. Toris hesitated and glanced at him.

"Yes?"

Raivis nearly took a step back at the other's coldness. "Just calm down okay. It's alright."

Toris looked at him like he was mad and stood up straight. "Feliks is out there trying to take down a madman with a gun. We can't run far - we're too weak to – and the closest room we could find that wasn't locked when Feliks sent us on our way is this stupid office with nothing but a fancy pen collection in. If we'd have gone the other way, the doors would have probably all been open: that's the direction Feliks came from, but no, we came the other way, and now we can't find anything to help him."

"He'll be okay" Raivis nodded as though trying to reassure himself. "Feliks can look after himself."

"Against anyone, yes" Toris sighed. "But you can't just make an assumption like that about someone that you know nothing about apart from their name." He glanced down, peered in the bottom drawer, hissed and turned his back to Raivis, starting on the cabinet behind them.

It didn't look promising. A selection of carefully sorted folders in the colours of the rainbow spread out across the shelves making them look fairly appealing and bright, but that was the only bright thing about them. Toris spent a moment staring at them before sighing and moving away from them, knowing too that they were slightly too hopeless to even try.

"What're we going to do?" Toris asked, leaning against the wall and folding his arms, fixing his eyes on his boots.

Raivis shrugged, not quite sure what to say. Toris glanced at him and then back at the floor.

"I suppose... we could try another room?" Raivis suggested, gesturing to the door.

Toris looked up at him again, then turning his gaze to the walls of the room as though investigating for a randomly appeared door that hadn't been there when they'd first checked. "I suppose, but we'd get in Feliks' way."

"So?" Raivis shrugged. "We're trying to help. Does it matter?"

Toris took a few steps towards the door and put his eye to the keyhole. "I can't see anything" he muttered. Almost straight away, a gun went off, followed by another, and another, and another. "I can definitely hear something though" he joked, standing up and putting his hand on the handle. "I'm just peering out to begin with. If they're took close, we don't want to move just in case anything happens that makes everything worse. We'll find something in here... probably."

Raivis nodded and moved himself around so that as Toris opened the door, he could see the corridor for himself.

Franciszeck and Feliks were closer than he'd thought they were, within throwing distance, both holding up their guns at each other with shaky, tired arms. Neither looked very good. Franciszeck had a saggy arm that dripped blood in numerous places and was more resting on the gun for support than trying to help the other arm hold it up. He was leaning heavily on one of his legs, the other turned inwards at an awkward angle and the material around his knee was a darker colour than it should be. Feliks had a hole through his shoulder, another a little lower and a third that seemed to have ricocheted off his left hip and disappeared somewhere as the mark there stopped midway. Both were pale and sweating, although the odds seemed significantly in Franciszeck's favour, if the odds preferred either of them.