Month: December 2017

Chapter 58 – That Was A Horrible Experience

Published by Rachel Fierro on December 24, 2017

Rachel, Impact Day

Watching Charlie reassemble herself from a tiny piece was simultaneously beautiful and unsettling. It wasn’t like a body growing in high speed motion. It was more like each and every cell was comparing its current location to where it should be, and simply relocating itself in the world to be in the right spot. The visual effect was almost more like pixels appearing, one after another. The whole process took less than half an hour.

I sat over her, waiting for her to regain consciousness, hoping the others wouldn’t discover the ruse before she did. When her face was fully reconstructed, I reached out, and stroked it.

Finally, she opened her eyes. I said nothing as she sat up, holding her head, and looked around. Her gaze settled on me, and she smiled.

“Welcome back,” I said, trying to contain the rush of emotions I felt at her return.

“That was a horrible experience,” she said, but her hand found mine, and latched onto it.

“I wanna hear all about it,” I said. “Every gory detail. If you want to talk about it.”

“Man, I don’t even remember all of it,” she said. “They fucked me up so bad, I was certain the whole plan was gonna fall apart, and I was gonna regrow here early. I think something about the facility kept me there, though. I had to wait until I was outside to blow myself up.”

“We would have figured something out,” I reassured her. “But I’m glad we don’t have to.”

“You have it?”

“I do,” I said, before exhaling slowly. “But I also have some bad news. Well, bad news for me.”

Her face fell. Her hazel eyes scanned me, piercing right through me. It made me feel guilty.

I didn’t want the moment to end. I wanted for us to be happy together, to enjoy being reunited after six months. We couldn’t, though. We had to move quickly.

“What is it?”

“You’re going to have to cut me open to get it,” I said.

“What?”

“It’s crystalised,” I said. “Which is better than having to filter it out of my blood, but you are going to have to cut me open to get it.”

“Shit,” she said, looking away.

“Hey, it’s okay,” I said, grabbing her arm gently. “I was prepared for worse, and I’ve done the math. It works like a power source, providing the energy for my body to regenerate rapidly, without the need for organic processes. It also recodes the genetic material for enhanced strength and speed, but my body will replace all of that eventually. Still, I’ll be almost as strong as you for a while.”

“So it won’t kill you?” she asked.

“No. There should be enough left in my system to repair the damage of extracting it. It’s gonna hurt like Hell, though.”

Charlie made a face like she’d just swallowed something disgusting. I squeezed her arm.

“Anaesthetic won’t work while it’s in me, not that I have any,” I said. “We’re gonna have to do this the hard way.”

“I hate this,” she said.

“After everything you went through?” I asked. “This is nothing. Unless you’re saying I’m not as tough as you.”

“I think you’re tougher than I’ll ever be,” she said, leaning in. She kissed me gently, and it was very hard not to stretch that out.

Biting my lip, I pulled away, and extracted the scalpel I’d obtained for this very purpose. Charlie took one look at it, and gagged. I handed it to her, and she took it reluctantly, like it might electrocute her.

I pulled my shirt up over my head, and unhooked my bra, before lying down on the bed, face-up. There was already a plastic sheet over it. She stood over me, scalpel in hand.

“You really want to do this?” she asked, her eyes pleading with me to say no.

“Don’t be a wimp,” I joked.

“I just…”

“Charlie, as painful as this is going to be, as much as it’s going to suck, I’d do it as many times as you needed. You know I would.”

“I do,” she said, with a drawn out sigh.

“So cut me the Hell open,” I said.

* * *

“Welcome back,” she said, when I finally regained consciousness. Judging by the light, it couldn’t have been that much later. I smiled, and rubbed my chest. The pain was gone, the wound was healed, but the memory was very vivid.

“That was a horrible experience,” I said, completing the echo.

I noticed she’d dressed me again. I was still lying on the bed, but the plastic sheet had been removed. I saw it in the corner, crumpled up, stained with blood.

“I can’t believe you got through that whole thing without once asking me to stop,” she said, brushing my hair gently.

“If I’d asked you to stop, you would have,” I said. “Besides, tell me honestly you haven’t endured worse.”

“That didn’t make it any more tolerable.”

“Just please tell me it worked,” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said, and I deflated. “I got it out of you, but I haven’t done anything with it yet.” She held it up, a strange red crystal that could have been congealed blood, or could have been a precious stone.

“Why not?” I asked, stretching out. My body still felt strong, but not as much as before. “I didn’t think you’d waste any time.”

“I don’t know what it’ll do to me,” she said, her eyes lowered. “How it will interact with my… with whatever I am.” She placed her hand on mine, and met my eye. Her gaze was intense, but I didn’t look away. “I didn’t want to risk it until I had a chance to say I love you.”

“Wow, all that time apart really turned you into a sap, huh?” I joked, as my heart pounded in my chest.

“Shut up,” she said, removing her hand.

“Alright, before I completely kill the moment, I got you something,” I told her. She raised an eyebrow.

“Something?”

“A present, you idiot.”

I reached into the set of drawers nearby, and pulled out a small box. I held onto it as she watched me suspiciously.

“Why?” she asked.

“You do realise you had a birthday while you were in there, right?”

Her eyes opened wide as she processed it.

“Oh shit, I did!”

“So, happy birthday,” I said, handing her the box. My heart continued to thud as she took it, and looked back at me.

I watched silently as she undid the ribbon, and slowly opened the box. Time felt so slow, and I could have sworn she was taking her time on purpose.

She pulled it out, turning it over in her hand. It was a ring, white-gold with a pink diamond inlay. I thought it was beautiful, but not half as beautiful as she was.

“Rachel, this is beautiful,” she said, her voice catching. “How did you… Actually, I don’t need an answer to that.”

“You really don’t,” I said, laughing.

“Wow. It’s… I love it. I love you. Thank you,” she said, pulling me into a tight embrace. I felt a warm tear splash against my cheek.

“I love you too, Charlie.”

She pulled back just enough to kiss me, a kiss I so wanted to melt into. We were still racing the clock, and I didn’t want to take even a single chance.

“Now, hurry up,” I chided her. “I need to know if all that pain was worth it.”

“Alright, alright,” she said, but kept looking at the ring. She slipped it onto a finger, the ring finger of her right hand. “Okay. Let’s see what happens, shall we?”

Next Week: She Deserves This

Chapter 57 – We Need To Get You Out Of Here

Published by Liz Effe on December 17, 2017

Liz, Impact Day

A splash of cold water roused me from unconsciousness. I was chained to an uncomfortably metal chair. Aidan was beside me, dripping wet and looking slightly confused.

“So, there are more of you?” a well dressed man with a featureless face asked, pacing in front of us.

It took a few moments to get my bearings. We were in a small room with concrete walls, no windows, and a single door. The door was metal, looked heavy.

“Maybe you’ll be easier to break than your friend,” the man said, sneering with unsettling self-satisfaction.

“Where are we?” Aidan asked, looking around.

“Captured,” I said.

“Oh.”

“Enough small talk,” the suited man snapped. I looked up at him.

“Where’s Charlie?” I asked.

“None of your business,” he replied.

“I want to see her,” I insisted. “If you show me Charlie, I’ll answer any questions you want.”

“I think you’ll answer them anyway,” he said.

“Do we have to listen to this?” Aidan asked.

“Think you can find her without their help?” I asked in response.

“Pretty sure,” he said.

“Then no,” we don’t.

“We’ll separate you if we need,” the suited man said.

“Shut up,” I replied.

Breaking the chains was fairly easy. Honestly, I could have wriggled free of them without super-strength, though it would have taken longer and they probably would have noticed. Also, I probably wouldn’t have been able to get out of the room.

Aidan mimicked me, much to the suited man’s distress. He started to back away, pulling out a gun, but I got to him before he could pull the trigger. I twisted his wrist until he dropped it, then wrapped an arm around his neck until the lack of blood flow to his brain caused him to pass out.

Aidan kicked the door open, hitting it with enough force to leave a small dent. I suspected the doors weren’t as strong as they were supposed to look.

“So, where to?” I asked, as an alarm started blaring.

“Follow me,” he said, taking off to the left.

There were plenty of guards between us and the room they were keeping her, but they barely slowed us down. Bullets hurt, but not for long, and we had more than enough strength to overpower them. We didn’t even need to kill them, though a great many of them would wake up with concussions later. Hardly good, but there had to be some price for throwing their lot in with a gang like Vengeance.

The facility was huge, so much deeper than I’d have assumed from the outside. Frustratingly, they’d kept us pretty far from Charlie. I began to worry they’d have a chance to whisk her away somewhere before we could get to her. They wouldn’t fall for the same trick twice.

“Down this way,” Aidan said, ducking off to the side. I took out a thug who was aiming a pistol at my head by hitting him in the chest hard enough to snap several ribs. He dropped to the floor, wheezing and choking.

Aidan kicked a door open, and I rushed to his side, wanting to be there when Charlie saw her rescuers. Instead, the room was empty.

“What?” he asked, sticking his head in further.

“You’re sure you got the right room?” I asked, though I knew he did.

“This is where they were keeping her,” he said.

“Maybe they moved her,” I suggested.

“Well, we need to find her fast,” he replied.

My mind raced as I considered what they could have done with her. Next to me, I could tell Aidan was doing the same, running through the mental map of the facility.

“There are no easy escape routes,” he said. “And they haven’t had a lot of warning.”

“What about the interrogation room?” I asked. “Maybe they’re questioning her about us?”

“Good call,” he said, and the two of us took off again.

Thankfully, that room wasn’t far. Obviously, it was one of many, but this was the one we knew they used for her. As soon as we arrived, it confirmed it.

There were two unconscious guards outside the room, and inside, someone very dead.

“Do you think Charlie did this?” Aidan asked.

“I believe she could, but she wouldn’t kill,” I said.

“It’s been six months,” he pointed out. “Who knows what they did to her.”

I hadn’t even considered that. The amount of time we’d spent finding her, getting to her, finally saving her, she would have endured so much. The Charlie we were rescuing was not the same Charlie we’d lost.

That was a problem for later, though. First, we needed to figure out where she’d gone.

“Where would you go, if you were in her shoes?” Aidan asked.

“She doesn’t know the facility,” I said, thinking aloud. “She’d want to avoid being seen as much as possible, while figuring out where the exit might be.”

“Unless they told her about us,” Aidan said. “Which they probably did.”

“She’s probably avoiding being moved, so we can find her.”

“Close,” came a third voice, a familiar voice, behind us.

We turned. There she was, just the way we’d last seen her, only with longer, shaggier hair, and a slightly wild look in her eye.

“Charlie!” Aidan cried, rushing over to her. He wrapped her in a crushing hug, which she reciprocated.

She and I looked at each other, awkwardly. She moved towards me, embracing me in a more gentle, but no less enthusiastic hug.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she said, beaming. “Not that I lost hope, but…”

“We finally got through to Wendy,” Aidan said. She stared back at him.

“That explains the rescue, but… Where’s Rachel?”

“We can explain later,” he said, grabbing her arm. “Right now, we need to get you out of here.”

“No arguments here,” she said.

The three of us ran. Aidan led the way, and I carried Charlie on my back. It hardly slowed me down at all. The sensation was slightly addictive. It was almost a pity we’d need to give this power back to Wendy after.

The sensation of sunlight on my skin was invigorating, and sorely missed. I could only imagine how good it felt to Charlie.

“Guys… stop…” she said, sounding pained. Not what I’d have expected. I let her down.

She collapsed to the ground, clutching her stomach. Aidan and I exchanged worried glances.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, kneeling beside her.

“Get away!” she said, nearly shouting, through gritted teeth and an increasingly red face.

“Charlie?” I asked, as Aidan backed off.

“They… fuck… I can feel it…” she said, struggling to breathe. “There’s a… hnng… in my stomach, a… fucking… a bomb.”

Aidan and I took a bigger step back.

“No,” he whispered.

“A final fallback plan, in case she escaped?” I asked. He just shrugged. “What do we do?”

“Find… me…” she said, groaning in agony.

We took another step away, as a blindingly bright explosion filled the air between us. Everything about it felt surreal, like it was happening far, far away.

The light, the burning sensation, the shockwave, the deafening sound, all of those sensations completely overwhelmed, and all of them happened all at once, vying for supremacy. We were thrown back, and it was obvious that without Wendy’s blood, we wouldn’t have survived. Even still, it was incredibly painful.

I recovered from the disorientation before Aidan did, rushing towards the smoking crater left on the ground. There was no sign of Charlie at all.

Aidan joined me, looking frantically around as the burned skin on his entire front half began to heal.

“Where is she?” he asked.

“Gone,” I said.

“Bullshit,” he said. “She regenerates, no matter what. That’s what Rachel said.”

“There’s no piece here for her to regenerate from,” I told him.

“We just have to wait,” he said.

And so we waited. We waited until Vengeance thugs began pouring out of the facility, guns aimed at us, and she still hadn’t appeared.

“Maybe they kept a piece of her,” Aidan suggested, as we ran for cover. There were too many of them to take on, and we were still recovering from the explosion.

“We have to go back in, then,” I said.

“The facility would take hours to explore,” he replied. “And now they’re ready for us.”

“So, what, we just leave her here?” I asked. “We don’t get a second chance at this!”

“I didn’t say that, just…”

“I’m going back in,” I said. “I’ll wipe out their whole fucking gang if I have to. I am not abandoning her, not now.”

He looked at me, then back at the advancing thugs.

“Fuck,” he muttered. “She is gonna owe us big time for this.”

Next Week: That Was A Horrible Experience

Chapter 56 – Tell Me You Weren’t Expecting This

Published by Charlie Farrow on December 10, 2017

Charlie, Impact Day

Being dragged to the interrogation room was never fun, but there was an urgency to them that lit a spark of hope in me. Something had changed. Something had unsettled them.

My old friend greeted me, his standard impatient scowl replaced with an almost ecstatic grin. That was less encouraging.

“You look happy,” I said, refusing to be intimidated. “Good day?”

“The very best,” he said, with an air of smugness that made me want to punch him in the throat. More than the usual amount.

“Care to share?”

“Your plan has fallen apart,” he said. “There’s no rescue coming.”

Butterflies in my stomach. He was too confident.

“What did they do, throw in the towel?”

“We have them,” he said. “You’ve lost.”

“Who?” I demanded, not giving up hope. So long as he didn’t say—

“Judging by their physical descriptions, I’m guessing young Aidan and Elizabeth,” he said, and my breath caught in my throat. My heart starting pounding, and I forced myself to rest my hands on the table, betraying nothing. I would give him nothing.

“How do you know you capturing them isn’t part of my plan?” I asked, but it was a weak plan. Didn’t matter.

“They showed their hands just a little too early, I’m afraid,” he said. “You never told me they were like you.”

“What do you mean, like me?”

“You know what I mean,” he snapped. “Immortal.”

“They’re not,” I said.

“Don’t lie to me,” he hissed.

“Dude, I told you everything,” I lied. “You’d know if they were—”

“You fed me nothing but bullshit for six months,” he said. “And now, I don’t need you anymore.”

“Oh,” I said, realising the point of this meeting. “You’re not here to ask questions. You’re just here to gloat.”

“I’m going to drop you in a hole,” he said, almost whispered. There was something intimate about it. “I’m going to drop you down the deepest hole I can find, and then I’m going to fill it with acid, and seal you in. And you can sit in there for the rest of your miserable life, because I never need to speak to you, ever again!”

“Is that all?” I taunted him. “After everything else you’ve tried, I thought you were more creative than that.”

“I don’t need to be creative,” he replied. “I just need you far away from me, and suffering.”

Without warning, an alarm staring blaring throughout the facility. It was a shrieking, echoing sound that hurt my ears. I didn’t mind. It bothered him a whole lot more.

“What the Hell?” he demanded, pulling out his phone.

“It’s about time,” I said, relaxing into my chair. He hesitated, looking back at me.

“What are you talking about?” he snarled.

I wanted to milk it, but I knew time was short. I was going to have to enjoy my victory privately, later on.

“I told you they would come for me,” I said. “I didn’t think it would take them this long, but hey. I’ll take what I can get.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” he growled. “Whatever you’ve got cooked up, we can handle it. You’re not going anywhere.”

I grinned, and the effect it had on him was delicious. He looked like he was on the verge of throwing a tantrum.

“If they made it here, it means they’re capable of dealing with anything you can throw at them,” I said. “I made sure of that.”

He sat back down, staring at me. I could feel the tension emanating from him, every whine of the alarm drilling it further into him.

“What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’? You really thought you were in control? You thought you’d won by capturing me? Who the fuck do you think I am?” I asked, and he moved backwards.

“Tell me,” he said, the desperation creeping into his voice. “What are they? What’s happening?”

“I’m done talking,” I said. “I tried to help you understand. I really did. And now, you’re fucked. And I could not be happier about that.”

“You’re bluffing,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

“Believe what you want,” I replied. “I don’t have time for this. They are going to tear through your goons like a hot knife through butter, and I really don’t want them to see the next part, so we’re gonna have to cut this short.”

“I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you.”

“No, you’re definitely not,” I said. I folded my hands over one another, and before he could process what I was about to do, I snapped several of the bones in my hand. I barely felt the pain at all.

With the broken bones, it was easy to slip out of the handcuffs. He stood up, fumbling in his suit to pull out a gun, but I didn’t need to rush. I just pushed the bones back into place, letting them re-set.

“Tell me you didn’t see this coming,” I mocked him.

“Don’t even think about it,” he said, pointing the gun at me. I just smiled at him.

“You don’t think that’s actually gonna work, do you?”

“I’ve shot you enough times to know how this goes,” he said, his hand trembling. “You’ll go down long enough for me to subdue you.”

“You’ll have to hit me first.”

I rushed at him, vaulting over the table. He was quicker than I expected, though. I managed to cover the distance, but not before the echoing boom of a gunshot filled the room. The force of the bullet knocked me over backwards, and I collapsed, darkness filling my vision.

“Done, he said, his confidence returning. He crouched over me as my vision faded, grabbing the loose handcuff. I could feel his breath on my chin.

I opened my eyes.

He twitched, surprised. He tried to raise his gun.

He was too slow.

I grabbed the edge of the handcuff, driving it into his face, right through his eye. He screamed, fell backwards as I drove it in deeper, into his skull, through the gap. Into his brain.

His body convulsed. I took his gun, firing several shots directly into his head. I took one more shot, shattering the handcuffs.

“I told you,” I said, breathing heavily. “I fucking told you I was going to kill you.”

He couldn’t hear me, but I didn’t care. I felt…

Numb.

The alarms were still blaring. I needed to move, needed to get somewhere different. The armoury.

I pulled myself to my feet, trying to shake the adrenaline. Don’t focus on what just happened. Don’t think about murder.

I patted his body down, finding the keys to the room. Idiot. He was scared of being locked in with me, so much so that he risked bringing a key into my room. Either that or he was so confident I couldn’t get to him that he didn’t consider it a risk. Either way, he was stupid.

I unlocked the door, and the two guards were ready for me. They must have heard the gunshots. I doubted it was me they were expecting, but they were definitely prepared for trouble.

It felt so good to move about freely again. My body was stiff and achey, but no less mobile. I disarmed the two guards and knocked them out before either of them could fire a single shot.

Still got it.

The alarm was a constant reminder. Time was running short. More guards would be bearing down on me at any moment.

I ran.

Next Week: We Need To Get You Out Of Here

Chapter 55 – For Charlie

Published by Liz Effe on December 3, 2017

Liz, Impact Day

“This feels incredible,” Aidan said, flexing his fingers in front of his face. I just watched the rise and fall of his chest, wondering if he was feeling the same thing as me.

If I didn’t know better, I’d have described it as anxiety. My body surged with restless energy, discontent with simply standing still. It wanted to be in motion, to act, to live.

“What is this?” I asked. Wendy pushed her glasses up her nose, and smiled enigmatically.

“You don’t want to know,” she replied.

“Do you always feel like this?” Rachel asked.

“Yes,” Wendy said.

“No wonder you ran away,” Rachel said. Aidan and I swapped looks, but neither of us really followed.

“Don’t waste this,” Wendy said, ignoring Rachel. “I shouldn’t have done this, shouldn’t have given you… Just save Charlie. For all our sakes.”

“That’s the plan,” Aidan said, stretching his legs out. “Man, I could just run for days.”

“You could,” Rachel said. “Longer, even. Without eating or sleeping or resting.”

It seemed almost too good to be true, and I couldn’t help but wonder about Rachel’s cryptic hinting, or Wendy’s deliberate avoidance of the topic. What cost had we payed for this power? Where did it come from?

Wendy wouldn’t tell us. Rachel might, but she was just as likely to lie. Asking her would be as useless as asking the internet.

In the end, it didn’t matter. The power was a means to an end, and the end was saving Charlie. And I knew I would pay any price for that, even selling my own soul. If we had the chance, maybe we’d find answers afterwards, but that wasn’t what was important.

“Alright. Are we all clear on the plan?” Aidan asked.

“We’ve been over it a dozen times,” Rachel complained. “We let ourselves get shot, but make it convincing. Make them think we’re immortal just like Charlie, so they take us to where she is.”

“And then we show them that we’re so much more,” I added.

“The more you use it, the quicker you’ll run out,” Wendy pointed out. “You should be strong enough to get out of any situation they put you in, but don’t push your luck. Be smart.”

“That’s why they’ve got me,” Rachel joked. Aidan scowled at her.

“Let’s just go,” I said.

We had the location of a Vengeance hideout, a perfect target for getting attention. We were all dressed in outfits that matched Charlie’s Vigilante wear, to really sell the connection. All we needed to do was convince them we were worth taking in.

I’d underestimated just how difficult that would be. My body was so overflowing with energy, it was a challenge just to move like I used to. With a minimum of effort, I found myself launched across the room. A simple movement of my hands carried more force than I’d ever been able to muster before. It felt like the rest of the world was happening in slow motion, and I had to struggle to match that speed.

How did Wendy manage it, when she felt like this all the time? She seemed so normal, her movements so gentle. She had a dancer’s grace, but it always seemed natural.

If we’d let loose, we could have run to the hideout in less time than it would have taken to drive. Instead, we used that time to walk, and get used to controlling our movements, making them convincingly ordinary.

“Do you think there are any others out there?” Aidan asked, as we walked. “Like, superhumans.”

“I’d never really considered it,” I replied. “But it stands to reason. One was an anomaly, but two…”

“Two starts to look like a pattern,” Aidan agreed.

“Takes more than two to create a pattern,” Rachel said. “And nothing about Charlie or Wendy’s specific circumstances suggest there would be more of either of them. Not in this world, anyway.”

“I dunno, Liz and I seem… Well, you wouldn’t suspect us from what you see on the surface, you know? Or you, for that matter.”

“Anything special about us is an extension of Charlie,” Rachel said. “We’re special because she wanted us to be special.”

“What are you saying?” I asked, pondering the implications.

“I’m saying too much revolves around Charlie to call any of it a coincidence,” Rachel said. “You can figure the rest out from there.”

“You can do that later,” Aidan said. “We’re here.”

The three of us were standing in front of a large, two-story house on the edges of a fairly well-to-do suburb. There was nothing about it aesthetically to suggest it was a gang hideout.

“You sure this is the right place?” I asked.

“Yes,” Aidan said. “Now that we’ve got the obligatory uncertainty out of the way, do we all know what we’re doing?”

I frowned, but Rachel grinned. She formed a fist, taking a step towards the house.

“We get this party started,” she said.

“And we don’t kill anyone,” Aidan said.

“Yeah, yeah.”

The three of us approached the front door, Rachel in front. She banged on the door, and a few moments later, it opened.

“What?” a surly man in a surplus army jacket asked, before taking in our outfits. “Oh, shit-“

“Surprise,” Rachel said, before breezing past him, twisting his arm and slamming him into the floor.

“Vigilante!” the guy shouted, before Rachel’s boot connected with his throat, choking him up.

All of a sudden, the house was full of the sounds of clamouring, dozens of footsteps pounding through doors and down stairs. Aidan and I braced ourselves, but Rachel just stood there, as if looking forward to the assault.

The first of the Vengeance thugs poured into the front hallway, and the three of us spring into action. We moved as a unit, taking them out like Charlie would have, with reckless abandon, agility and a better understanding of the weaknesses of the human body than any of our opponents. Within minutes, we’d bound nearly twenty of them, leaving just enough of a window for one of them to call for backup.

“That was almost too easy,” Aidan said. “Maybe Charlie’s job isn’t so hard after all.”

“Charlie doesn’t have Wendy’s blood making everything slow and everyone weak,” Rachel pointed out.

“The hard part is still ahead of us,” I reminded them.

Several cars pulled up in front of the house, and I felt my stomach churn. Gangsters poured out of them, brandishing automatic weapons they shouldn’t have had access to. Any sense of subtlety they’d been adhering to was well and truly out the window now.

“This is gonna hurt, isn’t it?” Aidan asked.

“Speaking from experience, yes,” I said.

“Wendy’s blood only accelerates healing and provides the energy to do it without demanding the tonnes of food that much healing would usually require,” Rachel said. “The pain will be exactly the same, only fast-forwarded. If anything, it’ll hurt more.”

“How comforting,” I muttered.

The armed men were making their way up the lawn, guns pointed at the house. If any of the neighbours noticed, they didn’t give any indications. Well, they’d notice soon enough.

“Charlie would do this for us,” Aidan said, reaching for my hand. I took it, and squeezed.

“Charlie does do this for us. Every time.”

“So let’s repay the favour,” Aidan agreed.

We both looked at Rachel, who only rolled her eyes.

“You two can make this as sappy as you want. I’ll save mine for Charlie.”

“Suit yourself,” I said.

“You ready?” Aidan asked me.

“As I’ll ever be,” I told him.

“For Charlie, then,” he said.

“For Charlie,” I agreed.

The two of us opened the front door, stepping out in front of the house. Almost instantly, the gangsters all opened fire, filling the yard with blinding flashes, deafening booms and enough bullets to shred every muscle and tendon in our bodies.

They’re not taking any chances, huh? I thought, as Aidan and I crumbled to the ground, searing pain threatening to overtake everything else.

Just before passing out, I noticed one last detail.

Rachel hadn’t joined us.

Next Week: Tell Me You Weren’t Expecting This