Chapter 16 Present #2
We climb over the mound of shattered brick, like a trail of soldiers breaking free from a trench to risk their lives in no man’s land.
Once technically inside the partially destroyed castle, we’re met with three different potential routes to search.
Up into the nearest tower, down a flight of huge stone steps, likely to the servant areas, or straight on toward what might be the castle courtyard.
We were able to study floor plans for this castle before we left, so I have a vague idea where things are, but shit always looks different when you’re on the ground.
It was decided before we got here that the courtyard would be the most likely place for OI to have stored the weapon as the only space large enough and with an open top for when the machine needs to be used.
A flood of guards spill in from the tower stairs, armed and fast. We turn our guns on them and start firing, catching them as they appear like rabbits sprinting from their hole in the ground.
It seems almost too easy to pick them off, but then another swell of guards come running in from the other two directions, and the fight becomes a lot more even.
With a minimum amount of cover for any of us, it comes down to who has the better fucking aim for most shots fired.
“Roth, we’ll cover you, just get Snow to the machine!” North yells at me. “He has the best chance of destroying it!”
Leo will be reluctant to leave his friends with so many armed OI guards, but North’s right that Leo’s power means he’s best suited to destroy the machine before OI can use it.
Dan takes the decision out of Leo’s hands by grabbing his arm and all but dragging him off toward the courtyard.
Still not used to his enhanced strength, Leo doesn’t fight him although he looks back at me with wide, fearful eyes.
With one last bullet shot through the skull of a guard who was about to do the same to Rohan, I chase after my brother and my boyfriend.
As promised, North and the others turn their efforts on paving the way for the three of us to escape down a long corridor that eventually leads out to the courtyard.
When the machine from the designs in OI’s digital plans comes into view, I’m relieved we were right.
It’s situated right in the middle of the courtyard and looks exactly like the kind of thing you’d expect a supervillain to create.
Imagine a rocket ship crossed with a very large, heavy artillery machine gun, oversized muzzle pointed directly up at the sky.
There are a handful of guards surrounding the fifty-foot machine, and they start shooting at us as soon as we round the corner.
We take cover behind a thick pillar, Dan and I returning fire from our respective corners, Leo stuck in the space between us.
Dan gets two of the guards with headshots, skulls blown out the back of their heads, merciless kills, quick and precise.
I catch the three remaining guards with shots to the neck and face.
They all go down, cleared out like stamped bugs.
Once we’re as sure as we can be that there aren’t any guards lurking around to suddenly spring out of the woodwork, Leo walks out into the courtyard and stands in front of the machine, ready to use his power.
In seconds, this is all about to be over, OI’s plans nuked by my boyfriend’s mind, the enemy of my entire fucking life finally defeated.
That’s when I find myself raising my gun and pointing it right at Leo, entirely against my will.
Finger hovering over the trigger, I shout, “Leo, stop!”
Leo’s head jerks to the side, blue eyes widening when he realises I’m pointing my gun at him. “Jack, what are you doing?”
I shake my head, frantic, afraid that any second I’ll press down on the trigger and kill Leo. “Can’t control it.”
Realisation dawns on Leo’s face. “They must have ordered you to … I don’t know, kill anyone who gets close enough to destroy the machine.”
I catch Dan raising his gun to shoot me, hopefully somewhere nonlethal, the bastard, but whatever orders I was given kick in, and I’m turning without telling my body to do it, whipping around to fire off a shot at Dan.
He darts to avoid it, and it’s only his enhanced speed that saves him, the bullet tearing through his shoulder.
Dan loses his grip on his gun at the violent impact to his shoulder, and it flies out of his hand, clattering to the ground some distance away.
He could run and grab for it but not before I could shoot both him and Leo.
Dan grasps at his injured shoulder, hissing in pain. He gives me a look that’s more outraged than agonised, though. There’s a tiny part of me that doesn’t feel too bad about shooting him, and he has to see that on my face because the outrage slips into something more exasperated.
“Yeah, alright, brother,” he says. “I owed you that one, I guess, you possessive fucking prick.”
I’ve already turned back around to point my gun at Leo again, and despite putting every bit of mental effort into willing my muscles to obey me, they don’t budge an inch.
Leo is staring at me, wide-eyed and conflicted, more focused on my face than the gun because of course he is, that absolute lunatic.
He’s probably standing there worrying about how “upset” I’ll be if I shoot a hole in his skull rather than being afraid for his own life.
If we manage to survive this, I swear I’ll spend the rest of my time on this Earth trying to force some self-preservation into this man’s thick head.
Somewhere in the distance, the sound of gunshots still ring out in a consistent cacophony, bullets hitting flesh and ricocheting off brick walls, echoing through the ancient castle, out of place and out of time.
Whatever’s going on out there, any hope of the others riding to the rescue seems remote, which leaves us with very few options.
Leo takes a sudden step toward me, and my trigger finger twitches precariously.
“Stop!” I shout at him in a wild panic. “I don’t know how this shit works, Leo. I don’t know what will make me shoot you, so stop fucking moving, okay?”
But Leo is Leo, so he doesn’t stop. “I’m just gonna make sure your brother doesn’t bleed out,” he says, and he has the audacity to sound mildly exasperated about it as if I’m not one wrong move away from killing him.
Leo swerves around me with a confidence he has no right to and kneels down in front of my brother. I’m compelled to keep my gun trained on him, but my finger doesn’t twitch again, so the order I was given must have been very specific.
Dan darts a wary glance between my gun and Leo. He seems equally unnerved at the impossible position we’ve found ourselves in.
“How bad is it?” Leo asks, brow furrowed as he looks toward Dan’s shoulder.
Dan shrugs, then hisses at the pain that movement elicits, growling under his breath.
“Yeah,” Leo says, the ghost of smile curving his mouth, “maybe don’t do that.”
Dan gives Leo an unimpressed look in response.
Leo holds his hands up and asks, “Mind if I check it?”
Dan hesitates for a second, darts another look up at the gun, then nods at Leo jerkily.
Leo grasps the collar of Dan’s shirt and rips it, drawing black fabric apart until the fresh bullet wound is revealed.
Blood is still oozing out of the hole in his skin, but I can already see the sign of healing around it.
Leo searches Dan’s back for an exit wound and sighs in relief when he finds it.
Dan notices and scoffs, “Didn’t fancy digging a bullet out of me?”
“Not without my special bullet-retrieving tools,” Leo says.
“Oh, didn’t bring those with you?” Dan asks sarcastically.
“Nah,” Leo says wryly. “Left them in my other world-saving jacket.”
“Shame,” Dan hums. “Thanks for ruining my shirt.”
“I’ll buy you a new one,” Leo placates him.
Dan goes to say something else, but he’s interrupted when OI’s machine starts making some very alarming noises.
As in, the kind of noises you’d expect from a machine gearing up to do whatever it was designed to do, which in this case is wreak catastrophic damage to the human race. So. All in all. Not good.
“Fuck,” Dan bites out, looking up at the machine in a genuine mix of irritation and horror.
“How the hell is it working?” Leo asks, looking around frantically. His eyes land on me when he can’t find any random OI scientists nearby to blame.
“They must be able to control it remotely,” I say. “The plans we got didn’t say anything about that, but … who the fuck knows, maybe Rohan was mind-controlled into giving us the wrong set of schematics for the machine.”
At this point, anything is possible.
Panic threatens to take over as it becomes clear that we’re stuck with no way out. We need to destroy the machine now, but there’s no way Leo can do it with my gun pointed at his face.
Leo and I gaze fearfully at each other. There’s nothing we can do. OI has fucked us. From beyond the grave, Ian Stone has fucked us.
But then Dan looks up with a grim set to that fun house mirror of my own face and holds my gaze for a handful of heartbeats before saying, “At least I know you won’t miss this time.”
Before I can parse the meaning of that, Dan leans forward to grasp the back of Leo’s neck and drags him in, pressing his lips firmly to Leo’s mouth. It’s over almost as soon as he begins. Leo is stunned; Dan just jerks his chin up at me and says, “Look after my brother, Leo Snow.”
I’m caught off guard just enough for Dan to push off the ground and start springing toward the machine at a blurring speed. He takes a flying leap, jumping up onto the machine and climbing up it.
My arms are up, gun aimed straight at Dan before I can process any of it.
“Jack, no!” Leo yells as he throws himself at me, knocking my aim enough off balance that my bullet pierces Dan’s back rather than his head. Dan’s entire body spasms at the impact of the bullet, and he loses his grip on the machine, falling off it to land with a crash.
With a mix of momentum and surprise, Leo takes us both down to the ground in a messy heap.
He grabs for my gun, and we wrestle for it.
Leo winds up on top of me, but I still manage to wrench the gun out of his grasp, pointing it at his face and pulling the trigger again.
We both inhale sharply, flinching back from the sound of the trigger clicking.
Nothing comes out. My gun is empty, no bullets left. I used my last one on Dan. He must have been counting them. He counted my bullets and knew that I only had one left.
Leo recovers first and takes the advantage he’s been given by pushing up off me and scrambling for the gun that Dan threw away when I shot him in the shoulder.
By the time I’m back on my feet, Leo already has Dan’s gun trained on me.
He looks at me apologetically. I don’t understand why until he pulls the trigger and shoots me in the thigh.
White-hot pain screams through the nerves in my thigh, and I collapse onto one knee, hands grasping automatically for the bleeding wound.
Merciless, Leo shoots me in my other thigh, and agony lights up my body.
It's smart, a way to keep me grounded, but fucking hell, it hurts.
Looking up at Leo from where I’m half crumpled and bleeding on the ground, all I can do is watch as he stares at the loudly whirring machine with a now-familiar intensity.
When the explosion happens, the power of the blast throws Leo off his feet and knocks me forward, face forcefully shoved into the stone as a near-overwhelming heat rushes across me like a river of fire.
Something heavy hits me in the back of my head, and my last thought is the desperate hope that Leo and Dan will survive this even if I don’t.