The Dragon Awakens

Chapter Nineteen

The entire world was silent in the few seconds it took the missile to fly right into the mountain. There was a loud boom, some smoke, and loose snow, but nothing happened. Lanie gapped openly but Shaun grinned at her as he pulled a knife from his side. Lanie had read up on the HUNS leader profile from the DA. Long story short he was ruthless, manic, a born killer. Before leading the HUNS he'd been investigated before for murders linked to a mob but there wasn't enough to identify him. He would never blink to hurting a young soldier like Lanie, lying helpless in the snow. 

"Shame on you for thinking you could stop the HUNS." He swung down with the knife just as Lanie was turning her head to look at him. She reacted quickly, swiping her hand up to block him. She heard a shout behind her but Lanie rolled away from Shaun and then gasped. 

The loudest crack she'd ever heard was coming from the mountain, and with it came an avalanche of snow and rock. All making its way down towards them. It sounded like an airplane or a freight train as she scrambled onto her feet and started sprinting towards her unit. 

   "Go! Run!" she shouted. Shang looked panicked as Yao grabbed his arm and his horse and began sprinting towards the mouth of the pass. If they all managed to make it behind the wall they would live. The snow would spit out and fall straight down the cliffside. Along with anything that dared stand in its path, like the HUNS. 

Men begin yelling and screaming around her as the snow hit the hill and began rolling down it at neck-breaking speed. Lanie stumbled, falling and rolling down the hill. She looked up, disoriented as to which way to run. 

"Ping! Ping!" Shang was running straight for her like an idiot and the roar was getting louder. Khan galloped past Shang and up to Lanie who seized his mane and hauled herself up. She threw bags off him as she ran, trying to eliminate the weight as he ran towards Shang who was still running at them. 

"Go, you idiot!" Lanie pointed to the mouth of the pass where the last man was disappearing and Shang's eyes got wide as he looked past her and a shadow fell over his face. Lanie turned and looked at the snow was only feet away from them and pushed Khan to run faster than she thought he ever had in his life. He would've made a winning racehorse indeed. 

Lanie grabbed some rope as the snow began brushing her cheeks and she tied it into a laso. They were only six feet from the pass when Shang slipped on the ice and began sliding towards the cliff's edge. Lanie threw the rope, praying her aim was as good as it used to be and it wrapped around Shang's waist just as Khan rounded the corner of the pass, also sliding on ice. Six men grabbed her and the horse as the rope tightened around Shang's almost 300 pounds-of-pure-muscle body, launching Lanie forward. 

"Oh no, you don't!" Yao grabbed her legs and was also pulled forward by the momentum. Linc grabbed him and then Po grabbed Linc who easily pulled them all back over the edge. 

Lanie collapsed in the snow, the rope still gripped in her hands as Clark ran over to Shang and began fussing over him like he was his mother. 

"Ping? Ping, are you okay?" Po slowly rolled Lanie over who curled up in a ball on the frozen rock. The rope had burned her hands badly and they were bleeding onto the white snow. 

"Where's the medic? We need a medic!" Po shouted. 

Lanie groaned and Po rolled her onto her back and gasped. Blood was seeping from her uniform into a puddle on the snow from her stomach where Shaun had stabbed her with the knife no one saw. Lanie's hands were pressing hard against the wound as she tried to control her breathing. She'd never been stabbed before. She'd been shot in the shoulder once and got a nasty cut on her leg from running in a saw factory but she had never felt pain like this before. It felt like death was holding her tightly in his arms while she tried to fight him off with only the power of her gaze. Except she couldn't open her eyes. 

"Where's the medic? He's been stabbed!" Po shouted again and Lanie opened her eyes briefly and saw a crowd of men around her. She smiled up at them, happy that the people she cared about were surrounding her in her final moments. Even Mushu was there, but she guessed it was fitting that a member of the DA be there when she died. They were, after all, such an important part of her life. 

"Ping? Ping!" Shang shoved through the crowd and he looked down at her and she laughed that he was upside down. 

"He's sweating, someone set up a tent for him. Start sterilizing the instruments. Where's the morphine?" A deep voice yelled. It might have been Shang but she wasn't sure.

Lanie's eyelids fluttered and Shang kneeled down, placing a warm hand on her shoulder. Death was very warm. She enjoyed feeling this warm; they'd been freezing their asses off for so long. The DA would never make anything easy or comforting. Nope, they didn't care about their agents. Just the job. Stuck on a frozen mountain, sandwiched between two options for dying? Better find your own way out. 

Lanie's eyes wandered over to Mushu who had tears in his eyes and she realized he was kneeling beside her, holding her hand. He was squeezing it rhythmically and in her fevered state, she recognized it as morse code. He was saying "sorry" and "love" over and over. She squeezed back with the little energy she had to say, "I no". 

"Lift her carefully please." Lanie groaned as her body was lifted, Shang's hands under her shoulders as they carried her into a tent. There was a very small fire in the corner and some instruments resting over the flames. They were going to cauterize her wound. This was going to hurt like hell but if the medic knew what he was doing, wouldn't kill her. 

"Ping, you're going to be okay, just hold on okay?" Shang laid her down on a mat and she frowned at him as the medic ripped open her jacket and shirt. "Hold on, hold on..." She felt a soft prick in her arm and her eyelids fluttered closed. Shang took her hand and kept mumbling hold on as she felt a burning on her skin. His words morphed in her drug-and-pained state so the last thing she heard was, "hold on, Mulan, hold on."