[MAX]
"Why haven't you killed us?"
It was such a simple question, but it was painful to hear Logan Jaeger ask it. The strain behind his words was obvious — he was strung up from the ceiling and bleeding in too many places to even count — but equally as obvious was the defiance in his dark eyes.
What I knew of Jaeger caused me to have a considerable amount of respect for him, even though we had never met.
Logan Jaeger grew up in a tough neighborhood and had a difficult life before he joined the CIA. Yet in spite of his hardships, he was honorable, he was brave, and he was a natural born leader. Honestly, the way Danny talked about him made the guy sound like Captain America — if Steve Rogers had been a hispanic black guy who grew up in Manhattan instead of Brooklyn.
It helped the image, too, that he currently stared down Vipera with the same resolve a comic book hero showed on the big screen when facing the antagonist.
Vipera was ... younger than I had expected. By that, I mean that she looked like she was close to my age, and, well, that's not normal.
I'm not normal.
The process of deduction meant that she wasn't, either.
Vipera gave an open-armed shrug with a casual air about her that by no means fit the situation. She wielded a fighting knife in her left hand which looked to be somewhere between six and seven inches long. There was fresh blood on the blade.
Though I couldn't see her face, I could see her physique. She walked like someone with power, like a queen surveying her country, like a woman with the world wrapped around her finger. Dark blonde hair was tied into a long ponytail that swung between her shoulder blades. Her clothes appeared military in nature and were remarkably clean.
I didn't know if she genuinely didn't know we were coming, or if it was all a show.
The answer she gave to Logan's question made me lean toward the latter.
She shrugged her shoulders and flipped her knife fluidly with one hand. Then a melodic, American accent chuckled; "Someone else has bigger plans." She gestured between Logan's teammates; a huge black man I figured to be Xavier Sparrow, and a tall, fit Native American woman I figured to be Sawyer Robinson. Neither of them looked as good as their file pictures had. "And you ... you walked right into this trap. The exact thing—" She got very, very close to Robinson, and her voice dropped so low that I almost missed what she said, "you taught us never to do."
We all sprang into action right before Vipera could carve another mark into Robinson's skin.
Vipera's words resounded in my ears as we launched into an attack — almost as loudly as the gunfire. Someone else has bigger plans.
The world exploded in violent pandemonium.
Her people were good, I'd admit that much, and there were more of them than there were of us, but the Fugazis were used to coming out on top in uneven odds, not to mention that we had Griffin watching as a sniper. His shots were silent but effective, as every once in a while I'd see a man just ... collapse.
Dylan and Flynn made it their mission to unchain and extract the CIA agents. Danny and I kept any of Vipera's people from taking them out in the meantime. At some point Luca joined the extraction effort, when most of the Romanians had been incapacitated. Getting the agents out without further injury was going to be a hassle — they were all bleeding pretty badly, and Sparrow was the only one who indicated he could walk on his own.
"Just get out of here!" I shouted at Dylan once he had one of Robinson's arms draped over his shoulders. I narrowly avoided getting shot at close-range before I disarmed my attacker. "We'll catch up!"
No sooner had I spoken than did someone else come at me from behind to vie for my attention.
At the same time, I saw Danny close in on Vipera.
Vipera swiped at him with her knife and almost made contact; Danny was only a couple of inches from gaining a brand-new scar.
And it distracted me, I'll admit it.
I screwed up.
I don't care about that many people in this world. Watching Danny face an armed, visible furious woman with his own hands open and his guard initially down ... it threw me. I had pieced enough of the picture together to have my suspicions why Danny wasn't as aggressive when facing Vipera—what she had said to Team Grimm suggested maybe she had been part of the junior program with Danny—but that didn't stop the panic at his decision.
I hesitated and didn't track my own surroundings for just a moment too long. And soon I was facing not just one attacker, but three.
I could hear the crack of one of their arms breaking when I hit it the right way.
The momentum of shoving off the knee of that one into the other two only did me so much good. I landed a solid hit to the first one's abdomen and knocked the air out of him, but the second one got me. It was a mean right hook, hard enough that my ears rang.
It was more than enough to remind me of the clear and present danger I ought to have been focusing on the entire time. It was also enough to knock my world sideways and take me off my feet.
I'm not sure which part spurred me to get back up. It was either killer instincts, or the boiling rage directed at the smirk on the man's face as he towered over me.
The jump I executed caused the world to spin again, and my movements stuttered once I was back on both feet. The guy's face once I was up, though, that was priceless.
At least, temporarily.
He dropped like a deadweight a few seconds after I steadied, and somewhere in the back of my mind I told myself I'd need to thank Griffin later.
Everything after that was a blur.
I remembered Danny yelling that we had to go, that we needed to get out, that we had to "Leave! Right now!"
I remembered throat-chopping a guy as Danny and I ran to the door, and taking a stray fist to my left side in the process.
Running was ... weird. The streets swirled, colors blended together, Danny kept asking "Are you okay?" and my stomach churned.
I remembered seeing the SUV from afar, seeing Dylan jogging toward us.
The last thing I remembered was seeing Dylan's concerned expression while he shouted "Max?"
And then I passed out.
