Tox fires a shot. The bodyguards don’t appear fazed at all, and they bring out their own guns.
Shit.
I go to run around to the back of the closest bodyguard, but John Doe reaches out and grabs my arm. I yank my arm up to free myself, but he’s slowed me down enough that the bodyguards get off their own shots.
Tox is hit, but he doesn’t go down.
He returns fire, and one of the bodyguard grunts and falls. His gun tumbles from his grasp onto the ground.
I never stop moving. I'm behind the still-standing bodyguard, and I grab around him, hugging him tight, squeezing, trapping his arms by his side.
“Go ahead!” I scream to Tox.
He fires.
I feel the thud of the bullet hitting the bodyguard.
He makes for a good bodyguard. His body guards mine, and I can feel the shift in him as he dies and becomes dead weight.
I release my hold on him, and he slumps to the ground. Quickly, I grab his gun, but John Doe has the other bodyguard’s gun in one hand and a knife in the other.
“You two want to live?” John Doe asks as he backs away toward his car, again not a centuricar. “Let me go, and—”
I line up the shot and blow out his back tire.
John Doe scowls at me and shoots. I fall to the ground to avoid the bullet, luckily avoiding the blow.
“You two aren’t going to let me leave, are you?” he scowls.
Tox steps forward. “We killed your bodyguards. Why don’t you just surrender already, and we can—”
“You can what?” John Doe snaps. “You want to kill me!”
“We don’t have to,” I say slowly as I climb to my feet. He keeps shifting his target, pointing the gun toward Tox and then me and back again.
His eyes are wild, and he’s breathing heavily. He underestimated us, but I’m worried. Tox is bleeding for real, and I don’t know how much blood he’s lost. Will he be all right? His blood is blue, not red like Earthling’s. I doubt he can have a blood transfusion from one of us, and yes, there are Kurians who live on Earth, but I don’t know if any of them are nearby, and my heart is in my throat. I do not want him to die or risk his life.
So, yes, I’ll consider making a deal.
“We can’t let you walk away,” I say, risking a step toward him.
“Not a step closer,” John Doe snaps. “Neither of you!”
We form a triangle—Tox, John Doe, and me—and I’m a little closer to John Doe than Tox is. A shot from this short range would go in and out of him to strike his car.
Tox and I both halt where we are, but we both have our guns trained on him. Tox looks comfortable holding the weapon. It’s a bit unnerving. Has he had practice with it? He did shoot the bodyguard even while under fire himself. It’s impressive.
He’s impressive.
But we’re at a standoff, and I don’t know who’s going to win.
17
Tox
“Not a step closer,” John Doe snaps. “Neither of you!”
Sophia and I halt, and I grind my teeth. I want to end this man, but I’m grateful for all of the training my mom drilled into me. I might not have wanted to be a soldier for Kuria, and my mom might partially be to blame for that. She used to hand me various weapons from Earth and train with them, shooting at various targets. When she met my dad, they were both captains, but she ascended a few more ranks above that. With the Novans, there are officers, captains, and then just the one commander. And then the overlord, of course.
All of those hours of practice I hated, but I really am glad for them now.
“We can hand you over,” Sophia calls out. “You don’t have to die.”
“And what do you think the Global Countries of Earth will do with me if you hand me over?” John Doe snaps. “They aren’t going to throw a parade in my honor, that’s for sure.”
“No, but there might be a funeral procession.” Sophia smirks.
I shake my head. She's antagonizing him! She's a fighter, through and through, but I'm not so sure that a fight with words is for the best right now. It might be best for us to just shoot him.
Shoot him.
I’ve been shot, and it’s not fun, but I’m fine. I can handle this. The pain level isn’t that bad, all things considered.
“You’re a disgrace,” John Doe says to her.
“Why? How so? Because I’m a bounty hunter?”
“Not at all.” He lifts his nose, his gun now pointed toward her.
A snarl escapes me. I hate it when he has the gun on her.
They ignore me, though.
My finger curls on the trigger. Can I shoot him before he could shoot her?
Too risky. If the gun was pointed at me, I would risk it. Until then…
“You fucked a Kurian,” John Doe says. “You deserve to die just for that.”
“And here I thought it was because of Ali Khan.”
She’s lifting her chin, still baiting him.
“The Kurians—”
“We’ve done a lot for Earth,” I cut in. “Why do you have a problem with me?”
“You don’t understand,” John Doe says.
“We could if you would just talk,” Sophia says.
John Doe says nothing, his lips a thin line.
“Let me guess. You want the world to be in anarchy. You hate the Kurians and the Novans because they’re the reason why all of the countries on Earth banded together to stop having their individual countries and all of us unite under the Global Countries of Earth.”
“Not quite,” he spits out. “You don’t know anything.”
“Then you want to take out Madelaine Downing, is that it? Take over for her, take control of the Earth… Since you hate the Kurians, will you go after them? When they have the means and the weapons to kill us all like they wiped out and obliterated the Grots? Yeah, that’s really smart.”
“You don’t know anything!” he
