Someone's In My Head (WATTYS AWARD WINNER 2015)

Chapter Twenty-Three (Pt.2)

Phil gave me a sly wink. "'Cause we're about to."

Right on cue, the door burst open, and a guy who looked exactly like Agent Smith from The Matrix came dashing into the room, gun in hand, looking really badass. It was a shame that he'd barely taken three steps into the room when he was knocked into next week.

Phil was indeed a CQC pro. Slinking out from the toilet, he was completely silent and I couldn't really blame Mr Smith for not hearing a thing when Phil swung the heavy porcelain cistern cover like a cudgel and thwacked him right in the face.

Phil smirked. "Home run, bitches."

Okay, great, one down. That's the good news. The bad news is there were still two more burly Agent Smiths standing on the threshold, with their guns trained on me.

"Okay, okay, don't shoot!" Phil shouted frantically as he dropped the blood-stained cudgel to the ground, his hands flying into the air. "I surrender! Please don't―"

"What the hell are you doing?" I hissed.

The Agent Smith closest to me stared on in confusion, his gun wavering uncertainly in mid-air. Expecting a heavy onslaught from Phil, I guess he must've been pretty baffled when Phil turned out to be a knee-wobbling sissy. Well, the brief moment of hesitation was the only window Phil needed.

Quick as lightning, Phil lashed his now-empty hands forward and swiped the gun from the surprised Agent Smith. It was a total blitz attack. As Phil grabbed the gun, it snagged the finger of the hit-man, dragging the poor man along. When the man was close enough, Phil dislodged the gun from the guy's strangled twisted finger and spun him around, securing him in an arm-lock with his torso facing outwards.

Having effectively procured a shield (poor Agent Smith #2), Phil aimed the gun at Agent Smith #3 left thigh and fired a round.

"Arrgh!" Agent Smith #3 crumbled to the floor, clutching his wounded thigh and possibly-fractured femur in agony. Oh, and did I mention the cursing tirade that he was going on? It was nothing less of 'f', 'b' and 'd' words.

Then Phil released his arm-lock on the Agent Smith #2 guy. At first, I thought he was about to let him go, or at least, knock him into dreamland, but he did neither. Instead, he raised the gun and fired a shot into the guy's head.

It was a silenced round, but I yelped nonetheless.

"HOLY SHIT!" I had nearly jumped out of my skin. "You fucking killed him!"

To my horror, Phil answered me by adding two bullets into Agents #1 and #3's heads. "Yeah. It's better not to leave any loose ends."

"Loose ends?" I yelled, not sure whether to freak out or to be sick. Or both. "These guys have like...I don't know, families; brothers, sons, daughters―"

"―and so does everybody else on the battlefield. But that doesn't stop a random nobody to pick up a gun and fire a bullet into your brain, just because you're not fighting on the same side as he is." Phil retorted.

I shook my head in exasperation. "This isn't a battlefield, Phil."

Phil wasn't convinced. "Well, to me? With these motherfuckers pointing Glocks in my face? It sure as hell is."

Just at that moment, a fourth Mr Suit 'N' Tie ('Agent Smith' is getting too damned old-school) appeared at the door, gun in hand. Caught between planting bullets in Agent Smiths and debating with me over moral conscience issues, Phil had no time to react. Well, at least he calculated that he had no time to react, as I could see the numbers flash through his head:

· A handgun bullet travels at more than 700 miles per hour.

· The distance between the enemy Joe and I is around 5 metres, so it would take the bullet around 0.016 seconds to reach him.

· It would take me at least 0.05 seconds to aim the gun and fire it, then another 0.016 seconds for the bullet to reach the enemy Joe.

· Conclusion? We're fucked.

No, seriously, I never thought Phil was this good at math. All those calculations in under sixteen-thousandths of a second? That's pretty impressive.

Then, as Phil stood stock still, waiting for his (and mine, dammit) 'inescapable' death, blood spewed out from the right side of Mr Suit 'N' Tie's head, splashing all over the carpet outside. The guy's eyes glazed over, and he collapsed to the floor with a dull 'thud'.

"Jesus Christ!" Although I've seen my fair share of bloodshed in movies, this sudden live carnage scene was seriously testing the limits of my esophageal sphincter. As in, its ability to keep down my stomach contents, I mean. Goddamn biology classes.

On the other hand, Phil was not so surprised that he'd just evaded Death. I guess having shared an intimate relationship with the Grim Reaper once makes you not that afraid of the prospect of dying, nor that stunned at the prospect of deus ex machina either.

And that's probably why he grinned knowingly when Layla stepped onto the threshold with a gun slung over her shoulder, as if he'd been expecting her to save our asses all along.