Argylle: Back To You • Aidan & Elly

Chapter 10

Rachel / Elly

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Fragments of memories flooded my mind, both the fake ones about falling through the ice while skating and the real ones of jumping out the window before the explosion.

And there was the explosion again, and there was the water again. Too much water.

I felt like I was totally paralyzed and I wasn't able to swim up.

I was just starting to be on the verge of losing consciousness when someone pulled me above the water, of course it was Aidan, but I only realized it when I could finally take another deep breath.

"Are you okay?"

I nodded my head, "yeah... yeah, I'm okay... you?"

"Yeah... come on, let's get out of here..."

We headed for the shore and dug ourselves out of the water and back onto dry land. No sooner were we standing on solid ground again, Aidan hugged me tightly and I hugged him back.

God, we made it, we're alive.

"Thank you..." came out of me, though it didn't even come close to describing my gratitude.

"Kid, you'll get me to the grave someday. A relationship with you is getting to be riskier than working as a spy..."

"Maybe it's covered by life insurance for a risky lifestyle."

Aidan looked at me and his corners twitched, "and then that I have silly jokes..."

I smiled at that, yeah silly jokes are good for stress. This was really close.

I looked back towards the house. Or rather, to where the house used to be, now all I could see was the sight of burning ruins. The sight made my heart sting. Whatever the circumstances, I liked it here. After all, I'd lived here for five years with Alfie.

Alfie!

"We have to find Alfie!" I was about to start running to find him when Aidan stopped me.

"Wait a minute, tell me what happened? How did you get into the basement? How did this whole thing get started?"

I quickly explained to him that someone was in our house.

"Damn. I'm sure the guy's still around, I doubt he'd miss this show." He reached for his gun, "hell, my gun probably fell out in the lake..."

So we were unarmed, I didn't have anything with me and only now noticed that I was missing one shoe and my hands were pretty scratched up, probably from the concrete hole in the floor. This was definitely not an ideal starting position, but we were in danger of being blown to bits just a few minutes ago, so it could still have been much worse.

Suddenly it wasn't such a super advantage to live in a remote lake house that had no neighbors for miles around. Not that having a bunch of people around somehow ensured you wouldn't get shot. It made the whole thing seem all the more strange; if the fallen Division or rather someone of the few remaining, had wanted to get rid of us, they could have done something to us many times over. A couple of armed guys could have shown up and shot the house to pieces. But that didn't happen, I felt there was something personal in this.

Since we escaped out the back door, the guy could still think we stayed in the house, but we still tried to be as inconspicuous as possible as we moved closer to the woods.