Keeping my back pressed to the brick wall, I count the seconds, one finger tapping against the brick as I strain my enhanced hearing to pick up on the sound of anyone marching up the stairs to the roof. I send a shudder of power through the glass shards still littering the ground, and they quake like someone picked up the building and shook it. I keep the strings that tie me to my power pulled tight, at the very edge of my conscious mind, so I'm able to call the shards into action when they're needed.
It takes longer than I thought it would for the OI agents to come, seconds stretching out into tension-filled minutes. I tally five pairs of feet on the stairs leading up from the fourth floor. One of them is far lighter than the others, suggesting either smallness in stature or a better calibre of training. I probably wouldn't be able to hear them at all if it weren't for my genetically mutated senses. The lighter one seems to be trailing behind the others as well, indicating some hesitation or unwillingness to be included within the group.
When the first OI agent comes striding out onto the roof, I let the door swing open and partially conceal me from view. It's only once OI numbers Two, Three, and Four enter my field of reach that I spring into action and take them unawares, grasping for the closest to me, Four, and grabbing him by the head, yanking to the side and twisting his neck until it gives a satisfying snap.
Without looking behind me, I kick the door, sending it flying backwards and slamming closed with a bang, preventing Lightfoot from joining the fight straightaway. If I'm right about his training being better than his fellow agents, then I'll want to put off our altercation for as long as possible even if it's just by a handful of seconds.
The remaining agents already on the roof turn to engage once they realise Four has been eliminated. They bring their guns up and fire, but I use Four's body as a shield, exploiting my strength to raise the man off his feet to cover my body and face. They shoot their first couple of rounds into their dead comrade's chest as I push forward, shoving Four hard into the next nearest agent, which is Three.
Three takes the full impact of Four's corpse, which is larger than average and packed with heavy muscle, and he loses his footing. He stumbles backwards and falls, sprawling to the floor with a pained yelp of surprise and outrage, temporarily trapped underneath the bulk and weight of Four.
Two and One must have used up their entire clips, uselessly trying to shoot me through Four's body, which is some nauseatingly amateur-hour-type shit. It isn't like the movies, where guns have endless ammo, and you never need to change out the clip. Some OI agents have clearly been playing too many shoot-'em games, spending not nearly enough time in the field or the shooting range to know better. OI doesn't bother training their people very well unless they see true value in dedicating their time to it. Seems this lot was viewed as future cannon fodder and not much else; either that or they're relatively new recruits without any military or agency backgrounds.
With the use of Four's body as protection, I'm close enough now to snatch the gun away from Two and twist it around to shoot One before he can refill his gun's clip and get off another bullet of his own. My bullet catches him in the throat rather than the head due to the odd angle of having to shoot over Two's shoulder.
As One goes down, Two makes a valiant, if badly executed, effort to take his gun back from me. He launches himself at me and gets a bullet to the stomach for his troubles. It obviously doesn't kill him right away, but when I push him back, he goes to his knees. Blood bubbles up and spurts out of his mouth, spraying onto the stones in front of him. I fire off another shot to his head, and his body jerks violently to the side from the momentum of the bullet penetrating his skull at close range.
Turning back to Three, I'm just time to witness him free himself from Four's body. He heaves the other man off with some effort and points the gun he managed to hold onto at me. I fire off a shot before he can, the bullet piercing the middle of Three's forehead and causing his head to snap back and hit the ground with an audible crack.
From my peripheral vision, I see the door to the roof start to open, belatedly acknowledging how strange it is that it's taken whoever this is so long to come out. It took me less than twenty seconds to kill the first four OI agents, but that's still plenty of time for them to have rushed through the door and joined the fray. It's like they were waiting for me to be done with the others, but that doesn't make much sense.
I bring my gun up and point it at the door, ready to shoot whoever comes through it. My senses are on hyper-alert, my tendons seeming to hum with barely restrained energy, my head pounding with adrenaline.
What comes next feels like it happens in slow motion, the entire planet coming to a near standstill as The Impossible steps out from behind the door. My heart pulses like it's going into shock, the delicate organ convulsing inside my rib cage. For a moment, all I can feel is thatbeatbeatbeatof static disbelief mixed with uncontrolled horror.
It takes far too long for reality to come crashing down on me again, but when it does, it's paired with a slam of pain to my chest. Truth comes into focus, rippling over my brain like wind on the surface of water.
My fingers loosen on my gun enough that the fucking thing drops straight from my hands. I don't watch it fall, my eyes fused to the sight before me like melted plastic when it dries, but I hear the gun clatter to the ground despite the rushing sound in my ears, which is more like screaming than anything else.
"Jack," The Impossible says, green eyes blazing with a fury I find both familiar and ominously foreign at the same time. He nods down at the dropped gun at my feet. His mouth slashes upwards on both sides, revealing teeth which seem sharper than they should be even though they're the same as they always were, the smile more of a wicked snarl. "You better pick that up, brother."
Another wave of pain hits me, and it's like the first was a warning shock wave, and this next one is the real thing because hearing his voice, however distorted by malice, almost brings me to my knees with how much it hurts.
"Dan?" I rasp, like it's a question. I don't know why. There's no doubt in my mind, it's my brother I'm looking at. I spent over two decades working side by side with the man, watching and trying to emulate him, gazing at him with admiration and hope and what passed for love in my fucked-up head. I'd know him anywhere, anytime, with my eyes closed, and just feeling him with my hands. I'd know him.
Instead of responding to my non-question, Dan raises his gun and points it at me, firing off a shot and catching me in the shoulder. My body armour stops the bullet from piercing skin, but it still throws me off balance, and pain momentarily disables the arm on the side he hit.
If nothing else, the impact of the bullet finally knocks me out of my agonised stupor. When Dan fires off another shot, I drop to the ground, dodging the bullet this time, and with my working arm, snatch up the gun I dropped and bring it up in defence. Thanks to my training, my gun hand automatically aims the muzzle at Dan's head. But my higher brain kicks in just in time to stop me from killing my brother for a second time. I change up the angle and wind up shooting at Dan's gun-wielding hand instead.
Dan moves his hand slightly, so the bullet hits the gun instead of his hand, knocking it out of his grasp and sending it flying off to the left, smashing into the wall behind him. It bounces off the wall and lands far from his reach.
Without a weapon, I have a clean shot, another chance to end this with a bullet to the head or heart. But I hesitate, unable to do it, my hands wavering on the gun. Dan notices this and offers up another cruel smile, mouth opening, a laugh I remember all too well erupting from it. This is the first time I've ever heard it aimed at me, though. He usually reserved that laugh for when OI agents or guards were torturing him, or trying to humiliate him, or otherwise attempting to show the superpowered freak his place.
There's a frightening edge to him right now. More so than ever before, he seems strung out, eyes red rimmed and wild. He's twitchy, movements harsh and reckless, like he's barely holding onto his mental tether. He was always too much like the material we can manipulate, sharp and dangerous, easily able to cause harm when handled without care.
As if reading my thoughts, Dan's eyes dart to the ground and zero in on the glass I left there just in case I needed it against the OI agents. Dread punches me in the gut. I can't help but think about the last time we used our powers against each other and what that led to. Something tells me this time, Dan is less likely to give ground.
"Dan, fuckingstop!" I mean it to be an order, but it comes out sounding more like a desperate plea, which it is. This is all too much to take in at once, and I can feel my psychosis spiralling downwards into the abyss of my worst memories. Memories I've alternated between viciously kicking into my subconscious and replaying over and over again until I feel like I'm going to explode, fly apart like a thrown grenade.
Between one breath and the next, Dan has a flurry of glass shards rising from the ground and flying at my hands, slicing away at the backs of them, slashing open thin wounds that ooze black blood. The pain barely registers, and I pull the trigger, aiming my gun over Dan's shoulder as a warning. The bullet whizzes past his ear and lodges in the brick wall behind him with a definitive crack. They're reinforced rounds, so they won't ricochet unless they hit something with real staying power.
Firing a shot was meant to show him I'm not playing around, maybe even to get him to snap out of whatever mind fuckery OI must have put him through for him to look at me with so much bald-faced hatred. Because that's what it is, the emotion on his face, swamping through his eyes like hot sludge from the moors, a rage too acute to be anything other than genuine loathing. I had been forcing myself not to see it, to pretend it was just shock or Dan's craving for violence, momentarily overtaking him in the heat of the moment.
But when the bullet hits the brick and Dan's expression shifts into something mocking, bordering on amused disbelief before returning to that same furiously hewed mask of hate, I have to face up to reality. Dan's mouth becomes jagged all the way along when he snarls, "Gonna make you regret that, brother. Should have taken your shot when you could."
His use of the term “brother” confirms things for me. It's not just that he isn't seeingme, it's more than that. I don't know why, but when my brother looks at me, he must be seeing an enemy rather than the lifelong ally we've always been to each other.
However much it confounds and fucking destroys me, I have to accept what his behaviour is telling me. I also have to accept the fact that warning him won't do shit. He's not in a mental place right now to understand it, for whatever reason, and all that shooting the wall did was prove my weakness to him.
