HOLD YOUR BREATH ─── six underground

xviii. IS IT A BIRD? IS IT A PLANE? NO, IT'S-...OH, FUCK.

"Three!" She snapped before glaring at the dead body above. "Get off."

            The useless hitman crashed to the floor in hysterics, his laughter no longer one of noise, but instead a silent wheeze. The nitrous had diminished all concentration from his masked head, and subsequently, his help. So instead of aiding Two, he used those hands to bash against the ground in entertainment.

"What are you doing?" He giggled.

Two angrily wrestled the corpse away whilst Zero took out the last man.

"Four's got the target," Seven announced into the comms and Zero smiled. "Always starts off well. You three are clear to move up top."

              Three and Two joined Zero's side now, moving back towards to the staircase. Only, before they could do so, Three paused and grabbed onto a nearby lava lamp. "Oh, wow. Look at this."

Two snatched his hand away and sighed.

"Stay behind me, idiot," she instructed.

Three nodded. "Oh, yeah."

              The trio moved once again, gripping their weapons tightly as they crept towards a shelf of modern sculptures, taking cover behind it. Upstairs, they heard yelling and gunfire. Downstairs, they heard an eerie quiet. With their backs against the shelf, Zero felt her sanity slipping away when the manchild dashed across the open space that they had been specifically trying to avoid.

"Get back here!" Two hissed.

"One sec," Three whispered before diving onto the ground like he was in some sort of movie. Then, when the coast was apparantly clear, he reached down and grabbed a dead guy's gun. Smiling, he scurried back and admired the prize. "Ooh, pearl handle. That's a cool piece."

"This is like bringing a child to a gunfight," Two muttered to Zero.

              The girl smiled empathetically and shrugged. "Believe me, if you had brought me to a gunfight as a child, I would have fucking obliterated the opposition."

Two frowned, a small smile on her face. "Yeah, I don't need much convincing of that."

Zero smiled back.

               Only, that smile was wiped off of her face when a bullet fired into the shelf behind her head, the wood splintering upon a lethal impact. The trio jumped in surprise and Zero ducked. As a result of the shot, a large hole had formed in the centre of the shelf, replacing the one of a kind porcelain that it had just annihilated. Now on the floor, Zero grabbed her assault rifle and took a second's peek around the corner. And when there wasn't a person in sight, she pulled back and shook her head at Two. Three, however, was apparantly not capable of such stealth. Instead, the gas in his system had tricked him into believing he was nothing short of invincible. Yet, when the hitman decided to poke his head through the hole, that turned out to not be the case at all. A second bullet fired and Mr. Not-so-invincible's head snapped backwards, his body crumpling to the ground upon force of such trajectory. And when he didn't move, that silence became all the more eerie.

Zero couldn't help it.

                 A gasp had escaped her lips as she felt her world still. If she wasn't already on the floor, she would have collapsed to it in an overwhelming amount of denial. Because in that moment, she hadn't just witnessed her best friend being shot in the head. She witnessed never being surprised with take-out again, never playing dumb drinking games at 3:00am again, never riding on the back of his motorcycle again, never playing stupid pranks on one another again...never being able to hear his affectionate nicknames again. Something beautiful had died and she missed it even now.