Red vs. Black

Chapter 12

Overhead, a sharp popping sound goes off. When Liam looks up, the sky's painted a bright red near the distinctive UFO that he's come to hate. His vision's directed upwards for no more than a second, just enough to make sure that he needn't be concerned that whatever's just exploded above him won't come crashing down. But that's a window plenty big for Mr. Stretch, as Liam likes to call him, to wind one of his arms around the labyrinth of metal they're surrounded by and push Liam off the platform he's standing on.

Tumbling down, Liam refrains from closing his eyes like his fight or flight instinct wants him to. He reaches out for the closest pipeline to grab a hold of to stop the freefall, but before he can, his head hits something from behind, cracking loudly like an egg being dropped on a slab of pavement. Liam's body jerks forward in response to the strike, his vision blacking out for a second. He can feel himself continue to fall further at a newly angled trajectory, but it's difficult to tap into reality.

His body lands on a flat patch of scaffolding with a heavy thud. Slowly, he blinks picture and colour back to his vision; along with it comes his situational awareness. Close to forty yards above him, Liam can make out Mr. Stretch going for the silver box that Liam had watched him hook up to the largest spire of the facility.

The image gives him enough energy to gain back his focus and begin the climb for a second time. To help him gain speed, Liam ditches zig-zagging from platform to platform and wields a nearby stair path into an elevated slide that he can run up. Along the way, he rips a fire extinguisher out of its glass confine with his mind and sends it hurtling towards the box Mr. Stretch has thrown into the air. But he misses. A beam of light from the UFO's underbelly sucked it up before the red cylinder had a chance to knock it off its course.

It's not the outcome he wanted, but there's still a chance for Liam to make an even bigger get.

As he runs, he channels all of his focus into flattening the stairs in front of him. Only when he deems himself high enough does Liam switch his attention to creating another spear out of the remaining steps and willing it up at his only target.

The tip hits the edge of the man's foot as it retracts back to normal length from being stretched several meters long. But there's no telling how much damage the weapon's done, the villain's beamed up into the UFO in the blink of an eye.

"No!" Liam yells into the night, watching as the saucer zips off, leaving him defeated and gasping for air.

Somewhere on the ground, far below, Liam can make out the sounds of police sirens. He'd rather not face the embarrassment of failing at his job as much as he'd like to stay where he is, catch his breath for a little bit longer and wait for his head to stop bleeding, he needs to get out of here.

Back home, he barely gets one foot through the front door before Niall's off the couch, hounding him.

"How'd it go?" The male stops dead in his tracks when he sees the amount of blood that's soaked through the mask Liam's taken off. "Shit," he mumbles, not able to tear his eyes away from the dark red that stands out from the suit's usual cardinal. "Are you alright?"

They both know the answer. Although this time, Liam will admit that he felt slightly woozy on the ride home as his skull pieced itself back together. The pool of blood had stopped advancing down his neck and shoulder blades by the time he got on the bike, but he had lost way more than he's used to. And with the laceration being so close to his brain, he considers himself lucky that all he's had to experience is a concussion. It's just a bummer that he's going to have to throw this in the wash as soon as possible to make sure it doesn't stain, he already did a load yesterday.

"I'm fine," Liam dismisses, making sure no blood drips from the latex to the floor as he kicks his shoes off.

Irrespective of the answer he was given, Niall still huddles close to inspect Liam's head. "Are you sure?"