ACT ii. falling in love and also 1000 feet in the air.
CHAPTER xviii. ❛ IS IT A BIRD? IS IT A PLANE? NO IT'S-...OH, FUCK. ❜
ni hai tower,
hong kong.
AS ZERO PAINTED THE WALLS WITH ANOTHER MAN'S BLOOD, her bullet splitting yet another skull, Two and Three moved out from the elevator, shooting all targets in sight. However, with the floor's rooms divided by big golden architecture, that wasn't many. The remainder of men grasped at what little common sense they had left and fled to cover. Which, for the French agent, didn't seem to be a problem. From her angle, all was exposed. But from Zero's, she couldn't see shit. Which was why it was such a surprise when she found a bullet tearing through the air just beside her ear. Immediately, Two dove forward and slid against the ground, her body stopping just below Zero's shooter's feet, who had his back turned from her. She shot him in the back of the head and in return, his body dropped on top of her, pinning her to the ground.
Two grunted as she attempted to push him away. "Help me."
Zero was occupied with another man.
"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.
Of course, that was until Zero clocked the groggy movements from a very much alive Three.
"Ouch!" The man groaned.
The girl immediately begun to beam, her breaths shaky with relief. Dropping her gun, Zero threw her arms around the hitman, trying to fight back tears. In the back of her mind, she could hear her idiot brother warning her not to feel. To feel for nobody at all in order to protect her heart. But in that moment, she didn't care. The only thing she could put her mind to was how good it felt to hug someone. It had been a while since that happened.
Pulling away, Zero gripped Three's head and examined the bullet. The bullet that had been decelerated within the material of his mask, having managed to embed itself mere inches away from his face.
"Who the fuck was that? Somebody speak to me," Seven asked and Zero tried to pull out the bullet. It burned her fingers and she retreated, blowing on her scalded fingertips. "Please tell me I did not just kill Three."
Three, still confused as to what happened, pulled a bewildered grin. "What? These are good masks."
Zero slapped his chest and he flinched.
"Ouch!" He whined. "The fuck did you do that for, Loquita?!"
"Don't act like a fucking idiot, you dick-chicken! You could have gotten yourself killed," Zero lectured angrily, hitting him again before hugging him once more. Puzzled and yet pleasantly surprised, he hugged back with a small smile. From above the pair, Two looked down upon them and was glad the mask was there to conceal her smile. Three, however, who had since removed his saviour of a mask, grinned up at her with a small shrug. Both man and woman had often discussed the enigma that was Eden Lambert and always did their best to try and spark some emotion within her since Six's death. So whenever she reacted with actual feelings, they were proud.
Yet, the moment was severed when the gun in Zero's belt misfired, missing Two's foot by mere inches.
Almost immediately, all action and disaster was restored.
Seven, after realising Three was alive, put a whole lot of sass into his tone. "The hell you picking up a bad guy's gun for, man?"
"You shot me, bro!" Three exclaimed.
"This is going great," One commented sarcastically.
"Are you trying to kill me?!" Two declared in shock.
"I'm sorry, it was a misfire!" Zero replied.
"You shot me!" Three repeated.
"Because you're an idiot," Seven defended. "You don't look through a bullet hole!"
Amidst all the yelling and the chaos, Two inhaled deeply. "I'm so mad at everyone right now."
"What's new? I like you mad," One replied through the intercoms.
Two decided to list to him what was 'new'.
"Wrong intel. Too many men."
From the ground, Three got to his feet and cocked the pearl handle gun. "Oh, no. I'm pissed now. I just got shot by my own man."
Zero heaved herself up too, using the SIG Sauer P226 from her belt instead of her M-16 now, the 20 round magazine having been almost emptied, the 3.40kg having previously numbed her arm. The girl moved forward, arms pulled in, gun at her chest.
"More guys coming," Seven warned as the elevator doors pinged open. Six men entered the floor and decided to split up, inching towards the nearest shield. In response to this, Zero exhaled slowly before sprinting behind an adjacent wall in order to cover more ground. Three shots were fired in her direction. Neither hit and neither killed. Zero pressed her back flat against the wall, eyeing Two and Three with a small nod. Two nodded back whilst Three shot her an excited thumbs up, grinning in approval.
The girl sighed.
"What's going on? You guys have one minute left," Five demanded, urging them to get the hell out of there. A goal that would have been much more achievable if Rovach's men stopped storming the place.
"We're only supposed to have seven guys working," One stated in confusion. "Where are they coming from?"
Nobody answered and Seven heeded another warning.
"We got five more targets."
From across the room, the doors burst open and said targets rushed the floor, mirroring their partners. And the leader, crouched low to the ground, barked into a walkie talkie. "Get up here now, all you've got. Watch out for the snipers."
"Shit," Zero cursed quietly before safely scanning her surroundings. And when she did so, she turned and mouthed over to Two. "Two at the bar, three in the corner."
Two muttered in annoyance at Three before whispering back to her. "Three wants to do Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."
"What?" She quietly hissed back. "But they die at the end of that movie."
"I know," the woman sighed.
Zero spared a glance at Three and regretted it immediately. In the wake of death risks, the man begun to nod his head like an excited puppy, sticking up another two thumbs and mouthing 'yeah'. The girl mouthed back an opposite answer and the hitman pouted, his thumbs going down. She nodded at his childish understanding but as it turns out, there was not an understanding at all. In fact, following a major miscommunication, Three believed he had been given the heads up to go through with such a ridiculous tactic. So, grinning wildly, he leapt out from his place of hiding and sprung into the open air, where all could lay eyes upon him. With his machine gun in hand, he let loose and shot at anything and everything that moved.
The only problem was that that anything and everything shot back.
Two and Zero exchanged a glance of reluctance before both pulling the same 'fuck it' expression. They joined his side and their enemies decided to retreat from their covers as well. Now, they were face to face and barrel to barrel, prepared for war. Zero fired second and shot the chest of her opposition. The gunfire began and rung out without mercy.
Everywhere around them, bodies dropped and bullets whirred. Zero, who had since put four men to the ground, struggled to hit the leader. A man she recognised as one of Rovach's most prominent right-hands. The craving she felt for him to stop breathing was an adrenaline rush that drove her to keep fighting. Only, before it was her gun's chance for a 'third time's the charm' attempt at avengement, a bullet just narrowly missed the side of her head and she whipped around to where another target stood. As her focus was engulfed by the new shooter, Zero was rendered vulnerable as a turned back. And Rovach's friend took advantage of this. Because as he manoeuvred himself in front of the staircase, he aimed his gun at her lower spine.
With a pull of the trigger, she would be nothing short of paralysed.
Dead, perhaps.
Only, Four did not let that happen.
Instead, after sneaking down the stairs with his abducted ━━━ yet compliant, target, the boy saved her life with the help of his new friend. Because Murat, the brother that wasn't a deranged tyrant, walked up to the man with a pleasant smile, even greeting him. However, when the henchman turned to the waving man, he was surprised to see Four jump out over his shoulder and shoot him in the face. And when Zero finished killing her current shooter, she turned to him and exchanged a grateful smile. He returned it instantly before ruining the moment with one of his arrogant quips.
"Told you you'd need me to come save you," Four smirked.
Zero said nothing.
Alternatively, she gracefully twirled and shot the man on the staircase, a man with his gun aimed at the back of Four's head, in the eye. For a moment longer, he stayed on his feet. Until finally, he crumpled to the ground and rolled down the stairs, knocking into Four in the process. Zero tilted her head to the right and pulled off an incredibly sexy smile.
Yet, when even more shots were fired from the penthouse, Four grabbed the target and bolted out of the way, leaving plenty more room for yet another gun fight to occur.
"Fifteen minutes," Five warned into the comms. "Half of China's in the lobby. We're out of time. What the hell are you guys doing up there?"
"We're stuck at the stairwell," Two affirmed. "Can we go down?"
"Negative. This place is full of police. Do not come down."
Zero killed another man at the top of the staircase and felt Three's back press up against her's. Together, with the perfected ability of reading one another's body language, Zero and Three switched positions with the stealth of two chaotic and very much dead, leopards. However, their manouvre, albeit sloppy, was still a success, and the shooting returned.
"They're surrounding us," Two declared. "Only one way out. That's up."
As the trio moved up the staircase, being shot at from both ends, Seven hesitated.
"Guys, I got a bad idea," he admitted.
"What do you mean you have a bad idea? No, you're supposed to have good ideas," One argued.
"Like a...really, really bad idea," Seven said. "One, remember when I said some shit was gonna go bad?"
"Shoot people! You're a sniper, goddamn it!"
"It's fucked up right now, so watch me work. I'm improvising," the man finalised. "Y'all might wanna grab a hold of some shit."
"What do you mean?" Three asked.
And that was when they heard it.
Right above their heads, where the vast neon pool was positioned, a bullet punctured the glass. And then another. And then another. Until finally, when the cracking in the glass had festered long enough, it shattered entirely. The three that had been previously running up the stairs had watched this in horror, trying to decipher what the hell was falling down upon them and then regretfully figuring it out, immediately turning to run the other way. But it was no use.
"The pool!" Two screamed and leapt off the staircase, grabbing onto the chandelier up above. Three did the same. And before Zero could follow, she felt the body of a man tackle her down the staircase, a great flood merely inches behind.
That was when the water hit.
Four dove behind the staircase, doing a professional roll as he did so. Following his lead, Murat was also shielded from the blow. Zero, however, was not so lucky. In fact, it took a lousy second before she was engulfed entirely, the man on top of her restricting any fight against such crushing weight. The flood gushed far past the two of them though, tearing everything once pristine in it's path of destruction. It washed away the old world of Murat's prison and brought a brand new floor of spoliation.
Not that he minded.
Zero found herself being dragged across the ground with the flow of the water, the man who had attacked her still straddling her waist. But she couldn't fight back just yet. Not when her lungs threatened to implode. Because this flood was no longer just water. It was a twisted vile shape that tore down shelves and furniture. Its icy teeth bit away at the unprotected bodies that were submerged in its glory. To say it was simply water would be horrific and most of all wrong. It was a beast with no care at all. Something so demonic its surface seemed not to shimmer like the pool before it but ooze into a dark core, torn to shreds by itself. And the relentless downpour from the rooftop above had forced itself inside of Zero's mask, unleashing it's very own battle with her head.
Inside that mask, it was as if she was being water-boarded by the entire ocean, and the struggle was almost overwhelming. As she skidded across the flooding floor, she wanted nothing more than to rip that confinement from her head. Only, the man on top of her, pinioning her arms beneath him, didn't allow that to happen. Instead, he tried to inflict as much pain as possible on the girl's abdomen.
Beneath her mask, she spluttered and choked, trying to prevent as little water as possible from entering her body.
With the blur in her vision, Zero was rendered blind to what was coming. The pressure had already shattered the surrounding windows, leaving an open outlet for the water to cascade from, falling ninety feet down below. And the masked girl was close behind, heading down the exact same route.
"Grab onto something!" Three yelled out.
Zero did just that and managed to wrap her legs around a nearby statue, fixed into the ground. Though her fall had ceased, the girl's upper back was hanging out of the side of the building now, threatening to send her plummeting to her death at any moment. So, with a surge of adrenaline pumping through her veins, Zero wriggled beneath the man and yanked her arms out from under his legs. Finally, she freed herself from the watery plague and allowed the mask to fall from the building. The man above took this as his opportunity to wrap his hands around her neck and squeeze. Zero took that as her opportunity to jab her thumbs into his eyes. He cried out in pain and after a little struggle, the girl managed to get a hold of his neck and slammed his head into the window to her left, the remnants of jagged glass still fixed to the bottom. And as those shards impaled his cheek, she scraped his face across the crystal knives. A scream of anguish escaped his lips, as did a scarlet stream of blood. When she was done, Zero tossed him aside and caught her breath.
From the chandelier above, Two lost her grip.
And when she was lost in some sort of fucked up slip 'n slide, the woman manipulated her legs forward so that when she slammed into the empty space beside Zero, her feet crashed into the bloody man and sent him sprawling into the air before evidently falling to his death. He screamed and then he splatted. Zero will admit she wasn't particularly sympathetic. When Two's body was hauled out of the building, she kept an iron grip on the bar between the windows, using it as her very own anchor. Spinning around such a bar, she ultimately collided with Zero, the two tumbling across the ground as the rest of the water escaped behind them. And when it was all over, they took a moment to pull the air back into their lungs.
Zero panted, eyeing the woman above her. Two, mounting her fellow ghost, exhaled slowly, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. They remained in that position for a few moments more.
"Is it weird to say that I'm strangely turned on right now?" Three asked.
▃▃▃▃ AUTHOR'S NOTE ▃▃▃▃
hiii, so first of all I just wanted to ask if this was an okay chapter?? I'm not the best at writing action and I wanted to make sure I put in enough detail so that you could imagine it, you know? but then I was worried I put too much detail into it and that it would be boring which was a whole other issue that my anxiety liked to fuck with.✌
anyways, (ignore my rambling lmao) this chapter is dedicated to...
thank you so much for responding to my last author's note and creating such masterpieces. I mean,,, the fLAVOUR?? you are all artists and I'm so mesmerized by your talent.
well, I hope you enjoyed this chapter!!!
(p.s. I also made a little thing but it really fucking sucks. I'm sorry for my editing, zero, bby, because you deserve your WHOLE head lmao.)