Bad Bleed | ✔️

Twenty-One// Reunion:

"Wait," I plead, digging my heels into the sand and looking back to where I was stood next to Kai who hasn't moved a muscle as someone tries to convince him to come along.

I rip my arm out of Stitch's grasp and run back to him, not without a string of profanities blistering over her mouth first.

"What are you doing we need to go!" I urge, gesturing back to Stitch who's back to half-stabbing a few people as she waits for me to return with an unbelievably annoyed expression on her face.

I can tell he was already settled on the idea of dying today, but he soon allows the boy who tried to get him to move to do exactly that. I run along with them, headed back to Stitch who seems to have gathered quite a bit of attention as she squares off with three Watchers at once. She throws one onto his back fiercely, feeds her foot to another, all while keeping a relatively steady eye on me.

"Any day now guys, I could do with some help here!" she yells.

As I run with my two companions, Kai and I are harshly knocked to the side by hulks of men who plop their weight onto us with dizzying fury. I lose track of what goes on around me when the beast on top of me grabs my full attention.

His hair is so greasy I wonder if he made it that way thinking it looks good and though the whites of his eyes stare down at me, their blemished by spots of barf-green. For the moment all I can think of is how his breath is way too warm on my skin. It makes me uncomfortable.

"Uh uh ... you're not going anywhere until we know what's going on with you two my sweet," he says with a glint of arrogance in his expression as I struggle to fight him off of me.

He has his forearm to my throat and my fingers curl around it, trying to loosen the pressure. The gap in my neck is getting smaller and I can hardly lift my chest. I launch my scalp in an attempt to head-butt him, but he pulls away with a self-serving smirk on his face.

"Don't get cheeky with me darling," he croons and my throat closes further as he exerts more pressure on me, flattening my trachea.

He smacks the butt of his pistol against my skull, forcing my eyes shut and a pain that chills and burns all at once erupts down my face. I manage to prise my eyes fast enough to spot him readying himself to hit me again, (what would surely be the knock out shot in his bid to subdue me and keep me hostage), but he's thrown off of me in a hurry. Thank goodness.

Kai gifts him a relentless string of mean looking kicks to the spine and I wonder if he'll stop until the pause finally arrives. The man is left arching his back and then Kai stands over me and gives me a hand as the boy smuggling us out of here deals the man a few more blows.

"Do you want a little more one on one with the floor there or are you coming?" he teases, a boyish smile on his face.

His innocent smile betrays the severity of his actions and I shouldn't have laughed, but I can't help it in my slightly disorientated state. I don't allow him to help me up however and instead push myself back to my feet all on my own.

"Glad to see you're back to your senses!" I respond and then take a huge breath of exhaustion, referring to his reluctance to cease his opportunity to survive.

When Mystery Boy, Kai and I all get back to Stitch she's surrounded by five flattened bodies.

"Alright, we good? We need to leave before they get reinforcements," she explains.

"Yeah ... but where's my mom and Ian?" I ask, panting, rubbing the side of my bruised scalp and ignoring the very slight complaint my right shoulder and neck have from being sat on by a manatee.