Another guard stood in the hall beside the elevator as the door opened. If he looked in, he'd be able to see the gun that was propped up in the corner.
Before he could turn to see who was coming out of the elevator, I stepped between his eyes and the gun. He immediately stepped back and brought his rifle around to point at me, alarmed at who he was seeing.
"Hi, sir? Could you help me? I'm looking for room—"
I had my chance when his rifle dipped slightly, along with his defense. I had that effect on people when I used my sweet voice, the one people could and wanted to trust. It wasn't in his best interest to trust my voice or the dumb look I had on my face at the moment, but he couldn't help but give. And when he gave, I took.
"El?" I heard Audi's voice from the phone, right before I knocked his rifle from his hands like I did with the guard on the elevator. This time, I didn't let the rifle hit the floor. Instead, I caught it, wheeling it around in my arms so that the butt of the gun was facing away from me, the barrel pointing behind me. I jabbed the stock of the gun into the man's crotch and he doubled over. While holding the gun with one hand, I brought the forearm of my free hand down hard against his neck several times, right below his ear. He passed out pretty quick, which pleased me.
"El? Hello? Hello?"
"Please shut up," I whispered angrily to Audi, who probably couldn't hear me.
"Why do you want me to shut up? El?"
My heart skipped a beat when I realized that Jai was the one who was on the phone now. And he could hear me as well as I could hear him, though I didn't have him on speaker.
I looked around the hallway. Thankfully, we were alone. I looked on the ceiling for cameras, and, to my surprise, there weren't any. I guess Scott didn't expect anyone to come up here to escape.
I grabbed the unconscious man by bending down and hooking my arms under his shoulders while holding the elevator door open with an outstretched foot, then began pulling the heavy guard into the elevator. All while trying to talk to Jai.
"Sorry," I told him. "I'm a little busy right now. Give me a minute."
"Are you okay?"
"Yes," I huffed, straining. "Everything's great."
"Give me the phone, Jai," Audi said, his voice muffled. I pressed the red stop button in the elevator once more to make sure no one would be able to call it and find the bodies, then grabbed a rifle and headed for the stairs to the roof.
On Jai and Audi's end I heard a struggle for the phone, though I knew that there was no struggle to be had in the first place. Jai let Audi put up a fight simply because Jai respected the man.
When I got into the stairwell, making sure no one saw me enter, I pulled the phone from my shorts and put it to my ear.
"What's going on?" I asked whoever currently had possession of Audi's phone.
It was Audi who had it. I could imagine the look of annoyance Jai probably wore. "What do you mean? You're the one who called us!"
I heard Jai in the background. "And why the hell didn't you call this morning when you got back?"
I rolled my eyes but smiled. At least they were tracking me. "Sorry. Alright?" I burst through the roof access door, the sun and wind sending new tendrils of adrenaline through me. The city once again rose up around me. Now, however, I felt as big as the city. "I'm calling now because I need you guys. You need to hurry and get here."
"Put her on speaker," Jai urged. I couldn't believe they were fighting over the phone at a moment like this, a time I told them, point blank, that they needed to get their behinds to Toronto.
Another voice popped up behind both of their arguing ones. A woman's peppy voice. "I need to remove your IV, Jai. You'll be discharged shortly."
Pain swelled up in my chest. I talked while I made my way around the concrete roof access stairwell so that I'd have an advantage on whoever came to find me. They would come. "Audi. Where are you? Are you in a hospital? What's wrong—"
"Calm down," Audi instructed me. "They removed the tracker from Jai. We're on our way right now. Phantom got a location on you and there's a team headed—"
"A team? Audi, did you not see what we did to your team that found us in China?"
"What do you expect us to do?" his annoyed voice asked me.
"I—"
My voice was cut off by the roof access door swinging open so hard that it swung back and hit the concrete wall. "El!" an angry voice boomed. Scott's angry voice.
"Please. Please hurry, Audi," I begged. I tried to will my voice to be strong, tried to will it to show no mercy or fear. But it was a waste of energy. It came out strangled and scared, like I hadn't just brought down two grown men on my own with only a few square feet of space to do so in. The empowered feeling I got from taking out the two large men had left me, leaving me with nothing.
Both men on the other side of the phone were quiet, which made me cower and walk backwards to the ledge of the building. My back bumped into the four foot tall concrete wall that surrounded the edge as I watched a guard with a drawn pistol come around the stairwell entrance.
It wasn't Scott. It wouldn't have held me back if it were Scott. I held the phone between my shoulder and ear while I brought the rifle I stole up to shoot at the guard who was searching for me.
I couldn't take any chances. I shot him in the heart and watched him drop to the ground, his bright red blood splattering against the bright white cemented roof.
Audi was calling my name through the phone, which I got tired of after a few times. After killing a second guard who came around the corner, I let the phone drop to the ground. It must have been extremely durable, because I still heard someone telling me to stop. It was Jai.
A third guard and a fourth guard came around either side of the stairwell, only the fourth guard wasn't a guard; it was Scott. They both had pistols raised.
"Drop it, El!" Scott's angry voice called from fifty feet away from me.
I wanted to drop it. I wanted so bad to drop the gun I held in my shaking hands. But I couldn't.
So Scott decided to help me out.
As the bullet from Scott's pistol hit me in the leg, the rifle fell from my hands as I fell to the rooftop. My eyes searched for the weapon, my hands reached for it. Before I could wrap my hands around it, I felt two pinpricks, one in my stomach and one in my upper left arm.
My eyes blurred for a second as calmness washed over me. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to sleep forever in this peaceful lull that had washed over me like waves washing over sand. Calm. Relaxing.
The rooftop was cool under my cheek, though the sun had been shining on it for the past seven or so hours.
I opened my eyes and forced them to focus on the black shards of glass and plastic that was my phone, my lifeline before I dropped it so I didn't have to listen to Audi call my name anymore. It was one of my tickets out of here, the ticket that connected me to my real tickets.
Feet rushed forward to me, slowly but deftly. When they reached me, one pair of feet kicked the rifle I had away from my reach, though I could no longer move.
I barely registered the gurgling noises that came from my throat as I tried to curse at the people who roughly moved me around in order to pick me up.
"Don't make this any harder than it has to be, El," Scott told me.
I tried to call him an ugly word, tried hitting him, tried to get free from the arms which held me, tried to get free from the person who was carrying me back down the stairs. But I couldn't. It was a struggle, one I didn't have energy for.
"Stop, stop, stop," Scott ordered from behind me. The person carrying me came to a halt.
I opened my eyes to see Scott staring at me, his face inches from mine. "We're going to have to do a lot more work on you. You aren't quite where we want you to be. And don't worry about Audi and Jai and whoever else they're sending here right now. We'll be waiting for them."
He drew a pistol from behind him and pressed it against my leg, the leg he hadn't shot earlier. "Goodnight," he told me, then pulled the trigger.
Lightening shot up and down my leg, causing me to scream.
"Ah, shit. That wasn't the stun pistol, was it?" Scott laughed to the person carrying me, his laughter louder than my sobs. "It was the real gloc! My bad," he put the pistol behind his back and brought out another pistol, pressing it to my stomach.
He pulled the trigger on the stun gun, and I willingly plunged into the darkness.