Something Shot

Both Ian and Ed sat in silence then. The email hadn’t said anything that wasn’t expected, but neither did it say anything that was. Ian had noticed that Ed and Elizabeth had lately become a lot friendlier, which was surprising as Ed used to have a tendency to have his hormones running away while on assignment with female tag-alongs. It was a good strange, though, and just as Ian thought that Ed could just maybe finally get someone to share a bed with, it all gets screwed by a stupid email.

            ‘Never meant to hurt you. We are all liabilities. Expendable. Never had another choice.’

            “She did have a choice, though,” Ed said after quoting the email aloud. “She could just have fucking told me to go screw myself, and I would never be in this predicament.”

            “That’s not what they wanted though,” Ian replied, after which Ed jumped up and glared at him.

            “Are you really going to go and defend her?”

            “You know full well that’s what it had come down to.”

            “So what! Who the fuck are you anyway!”

            Ian got up slowly as Ed fumed to his side. He then closed his eyes and opened, expecting Ed to retaliate at any moment. “Listen to me and listen well. Sure, she played you, but remember that you’re not the only one that got screwed over.”

            Ed hanged his head and turned to his side, still glaring at Ian, though his face had become softer and his expression loosened from the death stare that he had just activated. “Yeah. Sorry,” Ed then said and jumped down to the balcony below and entered the hallway.

            Ian made his way down to the balcony as well. He saw Ed stand in front of the room he had made ready for Elizabeth, then turn down the hallway and skulk in his own room’s direction. Ed had his own collection of whiskeys in his room, specially put there by CNet when Ed had first claimed the room. Ian figured that the collection would be cut by a few bottles come sunrise.

He then walked down the hallway, entered his room, and joined Danny.

The next morning, Ed skulked down the stairs and entered the kitchen, where he rummaged around for some sort of headache tablets, but swore quite loudly and resorted to asking CNet for the location of the tablets after he couldn’t find any. He took the bottle that he had brought, which was almost empty, down with him, and was busy drinking its contents straight out the bottle after giving up.

            CNet had answered him, to which he merely rolled his eyes and turned around. He looked straight into the face of one of De beer’s men before the agent before him knocked him out. He had heard the agent mumbling something to another before one of them picked Ed up and hauled him over their shoulders. He then faded away completely.

Ed opened his eyes to find that he was not the only one who had been deceived. Safu, Connor, Elizabeth, De Beer and a few of his team, as well as JR and his new girlfriend Laura, had all had their hands tied behind their backs. They were in the main hall. A few of De Beer’s other men stood around them with their guns drawn.

            “You won’t get away with this!” De Beer called out in Afrikaans, at what seemed to be the leader of the mutiny, a twenty-something who’s name Ed had never bothered to learn.

            The twenty-something kid had a broad smile played across his face, as if he could not wait for the day that he had finally “earned” the right to talk down on his superiors.

            “You think you’re so smart! All of you! And guess what; here you all are, at our mercy!” The kid laughed and some of the others joined in, like little kids in school. “Guess what old man! We are getting away with this right now!”

            De Beer spat at him, which made the kid retaliate in a way that Ed had seen coming: he ran toward De Beer and hit him square in the face with the butt of his pistol. Ed wondered where Ian had gone off to, and where Jacks could have been, but then got his thoughts answered almost right away as three agent brought both Ian and Jacks down the stairs.

            “Oh how good of you to join us!” the kid said and swung around cheerfully. Both Danny and Liz was quiet. Laura was only quiet because JR had asked her to be, since he was afraid of what they may do to her.

            “I’m going to rip your eyes right out of your head, you fucking coward!” Jacks retorted.

            “Oh tut tut! And you, dear sir? What do you have to say?”

            Ian shook loose of the two agents that held him. He then paced up and down while looking over at his captured friends, and fiancée in the centre of the hall. “You’re smart; I give you that – having blasted the building with an EMP, more powerful even for the backups to kick in. But you’re not that smart.”

            “Oh?”

            Ian continued to pace up and down. Ed wished he would stop – it only made his headache worse. Ian then stopped pacing as the kid walked closer. He looked in no way phased at what Ian said. A few moments passed, and the mutiny leader even made a mock “I can’t hear you” gesture before laughing aloud. Ian seemed to slightly taken aback at what had not transpired right that moment. He then took a step back and launched at the kid, but had to stop in his tracks when he heard Danny scream. One of the Others agents had retrieved her out of the group.

            “So tell us: why are our task forces being hunted down and killed like animals, all over this country?”

            To that, Ian had no idea. The bit that he did have, did not really make any sense in the greater scheme of things; all that he was sure of was that the actions of the whole group now under Prime’s roof, was in some way responsible for it. Though he didn’t know whether it was due to the Oracle, or due to them hunting down and destroying the facility where Ed was held, or something else entirely.

            “Tell us or her head gets blown in!”

            Ian stood in silence and balled his fists. Fortunately, Safu was breaking out of his binds, and in good time, too. When one of the Others noticed that he was struggling, the leader of the mutiny was distracted long enough for Ian to swoop in, and get a hold of him. Ian held him by both of his hands, one twisted behind his back, and the other with the gun, pointed firmly at his own face. “Tell them to let go,” Ian breathed into his ear. “I learned a thing or two back in the day. Things that have been made illegal for quite some time now.”

            “Okay okay, let her go!” the kid moaned as Ian applied pressure to his arm behind his back. The agent let go of Danny, who hurried back to the others and started untying their binds, Ed first, followed by Safu and Connor, then JR and his girl. “What more do you want?” he cried.

            “I want all of your lackeys to eff into the next room, of which Danny will be locking the only entrance.”

            “You heard him! Move!” And at that, all of them dropped their weapons and slowly creeped into the library where Danny, with the help of Connor, got both of the huge rustic doors (of which neither one had ever been used) closed and bolted. Ed’s headache was still too severe for him to do anything rash, but he had recognised the agent that had knocked him out, and had taken personal custody over him as Connor ushered the rest into the library. Safu was busy picking up the weapons that all of them had put down all over the room, put them all together, then picked the magnum from out of the crowd and made his way toward Ian, forced the pistol out of the kid’s hand, almost breaking his index finger, and replaced it with the magnum. “What is this for?” he cried, following the yelps and grunts that came from the other agent as Ed took his frustrations out on him.

            Ian let the agent go, along with the magnum, who merely toppled forward awkwardly as he tried to make sense of Ian handing him the gun. “Well, you wanted to shoot someone, now man up and do it.”

            Safu smiled and crossed his huge arms, boxing the Others agent in between Ian and the book rack.

            “Well?”

            He merely looked at Ian, then after a while raised the gun toward him shakily.

            “Now do it!”

            The agent then dropped his hand and tried to get by Safu, who merely pushed him back. He tried doing this repeatedly, until the other agent had stopped begging Ed to stop hitting him, after which Ed had ushered him in to the same box Safu and Ian had created.

            “You think you should really be doing this?” JR asked from across the room where he was trying to keep the peace between Connor and Jacks, and De Beer. None of them answered JR, though.

            “I give you one chance to get this over with,” Ian said. “Shoot me, or you’ll never be shooting anyone again in your sad, miserable life.”

            The agent contemplated this while staring down at his friend, who Ed had broken one too many times. He then picked up the magnum and pointed it at Ian, who stood motionless.

            Tick.

            The kid’s eyes shot open.

            Tick.

            Tick, tick, tick, tick.

            “You unloaded the shells!” he screamed at Safu and pointed it in the huge brown man’s direction, and tried to unload it in his face.

            Ian said nothing as the kid looked back at Ian and started to cry. He then stepped forward and hit the gun out of the kid’s hand, stepped forward again, and the kid tried to run past Ed, who merely tripped him over.

            He was crawling toward the front door when Ian walked around and stood in front of him. “Be glad that I don’t like to see people suffer,” Ian said and pulled the trigger on the pistol that Safu had forced out of the leader’s hand earlier. This weapon was indeed, loaded.

Ed walked over to the library doors, not believing that those were still there after all this time. He then kicked the door to make sure it would hold. A dull thud emanated throughout the thick wood. Ed then turned around and grimaced at the pain in his head. “So, what are we to do with them?”