Shadow Walker

Reveal

"All of this for him?" the hooded man said, stooping to check Lazar and Montague's necks for pulses.

Teegan drew a sharp breath. "Chook?"

Dec stared. Stocky, top heavy but with a short, bow-legged centre of gravity, it was a stance that belonged to a trained grappler.

"What are you doing here?" Teegan jerked her head. "With them?"

Chook tugged his hood down with shaking hands. His grin was as much a smile as it was a sarcastic sneer. "I could ask you the same thing," he said slowly. "What are you doing here ... with him?" He nodded towards Dec.

Teegan stared at him with a look on her face like she was having trouble juxtaposing the man in front of her with her memory of the man she'd dated. "So you're their number one bruiser now? I thought they promised you some special assignment that would take you at him with out of the city for months."

"They gave it to someone else," Chook said dismissively. "And if they discover that I was the one who knocked Lazar out, I won't be their number one anything anymore." He looked up. "I did it for you, you know."

"How could you say such a thing when someone has just been murdered?" Teegan said.

"I'm sorry." A heavy breath. "I made a mistake, okay. I'm sorry for everything."

Dec drew a sharp breath, then groaned as the rise of his chest inspired fresh waves of pain. He didn't want to listen to the idiocy of the grappler any further, despite the fact that he might have just saved his life. A young boy was dead, he'd almost forced a man to kill himself and every moment wasted brought them one step closer to civil war and sunrise. If he didn't get in to the post office soon, he might lose his chance to get his mum into the sun and save her life.

Chook, hearing Dec's groan, placed a foot on Lazar's back, and applied enough pressure to make Dec writhe with agony. "I should kill you now that I know Teegan's safe," he said. "For insurance purposes should Lazar suspect I knocked him cold."

"Don't touch him," Teegan said, standing and wiping her blood-covered hands on her bright white lab coat, smearing it dark red. She might have been shaking from head to toe, but her voice was deadly.

"He's a traitor," Chook said, refusing to relieve the pressure of his foot.

Teegan crossed the space in four, long strides and shoved her ex-boyfriend, leaving red marks on the reflective shoulder straps of his vest. "If you think that, then you're nothing but a bot."

"So, you're saying he's not conspiring with the Northerner?"

Teegan fell silent.

"Tell me what's going on?" Chook exclaimed, taking his boot of Lazar's back and releasing the added pressure on Dec's shoulder. "Please, Teegan."

"Why would I tell you anything? You can't be trusted to think for yourself, let alone keep a secret." Teegan bent down and with shaking hands, rolled Lazar off Dec's body.

Chook did nothing to stop her. "You really do love him, don't you?" he said, recoiling when Teegan threw him a look of violent disgust.

"You let an innocent kid get killed, doing nothing to stop it and now, all you're concerned about is if I like him?" She paused to let how words sink in before saying, "You're disgusting." She gripped Montague's arm and heaved him off Dec as well.

Dec's vision pooled with tears. Somewhere in the pain-numbed part of his mind, he felt Teegan grip his arm by the elbow, pull and twist it back into place. His shoulder made a crunching noise as bone and cartilage found their correct positioning. For a split second, he must've partially blacked out, for when he came to awareness again, Teegan had moved beside Lazar and Montague and had begun removing their bullet proof vests.

Chook leaned against the wall, watching her work, sadness tugging down the corners of his eyes. "I was never enough for you, was I?"

"You broke up with me, remember?" Teegan said, strapping Dec's arm to his chest with a tie from her lab coat. "And you were enough. When you weren't so strung up on being enough."

"I did everything for you. I changed everything. I am made one mistake and all that means nothing now?"

"What did you do for me, Chook?"

"I won smackdown."

"I never asked you to win smackdown," Teegan said, securing the sling around Dec's neck. "You wanted to win smackdown. I couldn't give a flying fox about your fighting career."

Chook closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against the sandstone. "Why him?"

When Teegan didn't answer, Chook pressed on, "I know you Teegan. You like him. I can tell. I just want to know. Why him?"

For the first time, Teegan seemed lost for words and Dec thought he caught a sudden flush of red to her cheeks. His stomach sunk. Surely Teegan didn't like him. She was too smart for that. They'd kissed, sure, but he was still convinced the only reason that had happened was because she was entertaining some morbid curiosity over the fact she thought he was gay. Since then, he'd pushed the memory of that kiss out of his mind.

Chook made a noise, halfway between a groan and a mewl that seemed to mirror exactly what Dec was feeling, and his head went to the safety of his hands. His words slipped between his fingers. "Look. Maybe I don't want to know. Maybe—"

Teegan interrupted, "Dec and I are the same. Always underrated, always overlooked." Her voice grew louder as she gained confidence. "He's never once laughed at my experiments, or made me feel like a freak because of the way I see the world."

Chook made a face like she'd stung him between the eyes, before he pushed himself off the wall. "I'll stay here until they wake up," he said brusquely. "You've got until then to leave. Otherwise, I can't promise I won't kill him." He pointed at Dec.

Teegan nodded, all animosity falling away from her expression as she pointed to Mark on the ground. "Find his family. His name was Mark. His brother was on the demolition mission."

Chook shook his head. "I can't. I'm already in deep shit. They'll know I hit Lazar. They'll kill me like they killed ... him."

Teegan placed one hand on his shoulder. "Lazar never saw who hit him. If they ask, tell them I hit Lazar on the back of the head."

Chook glanced at her, mouth sagging with relief and a touch of genuine sadness. "Are you sure?"

"So long as you deliver the boy to his brother."

Chook sighed and gave a resigned nod. "Fine. Thanks, Teegan. And I really am sorry... about everything."