I was five floors above them when they opened fire into a pitch-black elevator shaft. Clinging to the wire, I held my breath and hoped the shots would miss me.
That's when I realized they were shooting down, not up. Where the hell did they think I was going? Confidence regained; a bullet might hit the wall and smash into me but the chances were low, I continued my climb. The gunfire was agonizingly loud, every animal within me begging not to have to listen to it anymore, but I tried to let that wash over me.
I reached the top of the shaft and wrapped my legs around the cable, digging those powerful fingers into the crease of the door. With every bit of strength I had in me, I pulled until I couldn't pull any harder. Finally, the doors gave and popped open with another little ping!
Fuck. I looked down and saw a pair of helmeted heads turn from their current position and directly up to mine. I threw myself through the doors as they lifted their weapons as one, aiming them for my head. The first shot grazed my leg, but the rest fell on an empty shaft that left them looking like idiots.
I landed on my back and breathed a sigh of relief. The hallway was empty. Perhaps they'd thought I'd go find Izzy, since she'd been sort of part of our little group for a whole two days, give or take a little bit.
No. I wanted answers from the boss himself. I allowed my hands and feet to go back to normal and peeled myself off the tiles. The giant double doors that opened into Scribe's office were already cracked apart. I slid through them, tense and ready for anything that might go down.
Scribe put a gun to my head the second that I stepped foot inside. I sighed at him. "That's a really bad idea, boss. You, more than anyone, are perfectly aware of what I'm capable of when I'm pushed to it."
"You aren't going to shred me," he said, all self-assurance and comfortable. "You're just here as a distraction while the others run off to..."
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. "You really think I'm going to tell you?"
"I'll find out eventually, whether you do or not. I'm not going down in some blaze of glory just because my powers were ripped apart."
Ah. I turned to face him, slowly but surely. Few people were willing to gun down someone that was looking them eye to eye. Scribe was one of those that I thought likely to do so, but if he were about to kill me I wanted to make sure he saw me go. I wanted to haunt him until he left this worthless world, too. "Is Allison telling you that shit? Is she scaring you? Because you're the one who got the Zaps banned, not her. And no one is going to take you away from the job you love so much if you don't scream it to the world."
He thumbed the hammer back and rested his finger on the trigger. That wasn't good gun safety. I surged forward to let him know it, cutting off whatever it was he was about to say. My elbow caught him on the chin, tipping his body back and away from me. The gun went off at a deafening distance, my ears ringing as they tried to restore themselves.
I didn't have time to be deaf. Scribe recovered quickly enough, making me resort to a low blow that had the old man drop to a knee. I disarmed him in an instant and it occurred to me just how old he was. A part of me felt bad for hurting him, but he'd been willing to kill me. And I had to keep that in mind.
The gun fit well in my hand. I aimed it at his chest. Sometimes people lived through chest shots and I didn't want to be the person who killed our mentor, though it certainly looked like it was coming to that. "Talk me through this and I'll leave peacefully. Cross my heart. Because you and I don't have problems like this, boss. You putting a gun to my head is a step too far."
"Pull the trigger. Be a real man about it," he snarled. "You've done it a thousand times before. I'm no different."
I held the gun on him for another moment before I let it drop, then I slung it across the room. Fuck that, it wasn't right. Even if he'd blown my brains across the room, he was the reason I was the man I'd become. And, despite all the blood staining my hands, I liked who I was.
Scribe was on me in an instant, slinging me into a wall and coming at me with both fists clenched together, clearly intent on breaking my neck. I kept him turning, not striking out but trying to exhaust him. "Boss, I don't know what's wrong with you, but Thomaston can fix it. They have a full medical facility. They can make it better."
Trying to keep your voice casual as someone hurls their body at you is difficult, to say the least. He caught me across the jaw with a wild punch but I sent the others away from me. He was panting, gasping for air, his lips darkening. I slid up inside his blows and drove my knee into his diaphragm, trying to deprive him of oxygen. It was possible that he'd just pass out, collapse on the floor and be no more a threat than I was.
He didn't. Instead, he fell into me and clawed at my face. I raised my hands to defend myself and jumped as
