The Starling Saviour

Chapter 24

'Is he even here?' Isaac breathed, running back to us, clad in scarlet leather. 'I've searched the perimeter and Martel isn't there. I think we've picked the wrong day to find him.'

Just as we were about to leave, we were confronted by the sudden sound of silence. The customers were stood as one, facing us, trying to scare us. They moved as one, coming closer and closer to our hiding spot. They had found us. But where was their controller?

'What do we do?' I hissed. 'Lena?'

'The stairs on the outside of the old apartment block are still safe to use,' Helena answered back through the earpieces we all had. 'Run as fast as you can up to the top of the building so you can get some high ground.'

We ran as fast we could, Isaac swinging from railing to railing to help us up a bit faster. The group soon became further and further away from us, their drone-like behaviour giving them a disadvantage.

'Now you can shoot,' Ted smirked as though we were dealing with an easy task.

Taking my tranquilliser, I knocked a few of the fastest ones out like skittles, slowing the rest of the congregation down. Ted stood ready to fight, his nunchakus at hand. Isaac joined me in the attack, his recreational skills paying off as he threw his tranquillised darts at our opponents.

Without warning, our earpieces screeched and screamed, impairing my hearing as I tried to remove the device from my ear. The sound made my whole body cringe and crouch to the ground, my eyes scrunched up to try to tolerate the pain of the noise tattling through my ears.

When I recovered, we were not faced with the group of doped up bodies, but one man. And that man was Martel. He looked as though he was in a rage, completely annoyed at is tackling his customers like we did. And that he hadn't been able to stop us without doing the dirty work himself.

'The famous Vigilantes of Starling City,' he spat, seething. 'I wonder why you're here. Probably to stop me and bring me to justice. But you'll never stop me!'

Taking a tank to the front of his chest, he sprayed some sort of gas in to our direction, blurring our vision and making it hard to see where Martel was. As the substance dissipated, we found that Martel had Isaac by the throat, threatening his life with a knife at Isaac's neck.

'Stop fighting my customers or the red one gets it,' Martel shouted over the late night traffic below and referring to the red colour of Isaac's suit.

'Put him down,' I shouted over protectively.

'The girl standing up for the man?' Martel smirked, as if it was some joke. 'That's something you don't see everyday. I thought girls were supposed to be the damsels in distress.'

'First of all, you sexist scum,' I said disgustedly. 'I am no naïve little girl who needs saving. And second of all, I am pretty good at distracting people like you.'

Ted had snuck up behind Martel and had him at gunpoint, ready to shoot. This was a fairly rare sight; we didn't kill lightly, as we had decided to keep the city safe as well as keeping the body count low. But this was an exception.

However, Ted wasn't as quick as we had thought.

The next few moments were such a blur, but I constantly replayed them in my head after they happened. I hadn't realised what was going on until I saw Isaac fall to the floor, his body nearly lifeless and crumpled with a large gash in his chest. Ted broke down and wept as I came to my senses and draped Isaac over my shoulders with a struggle, the weight of Isaac's muscular body making it hard for me to move. Ted soon helped me out, also supporting Isaac'a body on his shoulders.

The quick journey back to the gym was a silent one. Helena and Elliot had realised what had happened through the CCTV cameras surrounding the area, and so Helena drove us back to the lair. Although it was silent between us all, the muted company of each other gave us strength and a strange hope, thinking that Isaac would pull through.

Elliot was ready for the medical procedure as soon as we entered the lair, his eyes already red and shiny. He tried reviving him, resuscitating, and even injecting solutions into Isaac's muscles to somehow bring him back. But nothing worked.

Isaac was dead.

'Why?' Elliot cried out. 'WHY?'

The whole room sobbed, none of us being able to accept that Isaac had gone. It couldn't be real, none of it could. But it was.

'He- he can't be d-' Helena started with a sad stutter.

'No! Don't you say it!' Elliot yelled. 'Don't you dare say that word!'

'Shh,' I whispered just so Elliot could hear me, holding his hands. 'It's going to be alright. It'll be...'

But I couldn't carry on with the lies I was trying to tell myself. It wasn't going to be alright, or fine. It was going to hang over us like a dark cloud and split us apart.

And it really did.