Zak falls into Darryl's arms, breathing heavily. Darryl checks his backside and finds that the bullet didn't make it all the way through his body. It didn't cut his spine since he was still alive, but it's still possible that it hurt something else inside of him. Darryl carefully sets Zak down on the floor and leans him against his bed.
"We need to stop the bleeding," Zak struggles to speak. His eyes water as he listens to his ears ring. "Shit, this fucking sucks."
"Language!" Darryl whispers to him, doing his best not to panic.
Zak glares at him as he grits his teeth. "We need to do this before I bleed out all over the carpet!"
Darryl nods and takes his hands off of Zak as he looks around the room. "Would a belt help?"
Zak shakes his head. "It wouldn't apply enough pressure. Go to the bathroom and grab one of my rags. I don't care which one." As Darryl leaves, Zak looks down at his bloodied hand and slowly lifts it from his wound. "Wow. It's a lot grosser than the textbooks made it seem like it'd be."
Darryl returns to the room with a rag in one hand. He was no longer able to contain his panic as he yelled at Zak, "Those kids are gone and they took Nick with them!"
Zak nods slowly, then looks down at his creek colored carpet, now stained a deep shade of red. "This is going to take forever to clean out."
"Do you know where your phone is?" Darryl asks as he paces the room. "We need to call for help and they took mine."
"I don't know, but find it quick," Zak demands. He rubs his hand across the pool of blood forming and lifts it up, watching as the blood trickles off of his hand and back onto the floor. "If I don't call someone to clean this soon, my carpet will be ruined."
"CAN YOU FORGET ABOUT THE CARPET ZAK?!" Darryl screams, finally breaking. "You just got SHOT because of me!"
Zak looks up at Darryl, removing the red stained rag from his wound. "What are you talking about?"
Darryl notices his exposed wound and dives to the ground to cover it back up, his knee landing in the pooling blood. He takes the rag from Zak and cringes as he places it against his wound. "I'm the one that shot you. I thought it was pointed at that other agent, but they turned it the last second and I shot you instead. I didn't realize it until after he left."
Zak rests his hands on top of Darryl's. "Hey, it's okay. Accidents happen."
"No! It's not okay!" Darryl cries, pushing his hands more into Skeppy's abdomen, causing him to wince in pain. "I-I shot you! I hurt you!"
"And you're going to kill me too if you push harder," Zak's face fills with pain as he pulls Darryl's hand slightly up.
Darryl shakes his head and presses onto him. "No, I need to put pressure on it! You're losing too much blood, Zak."
Zak's breathing begins to stutter as he scrunches his face up, doing his best to fight through the pain taking over his body. The pain turned to numbness and he found himself unable to feel his legs. "Darryl, you need to call for help."
Darryl nods. He takes his hand off of the rag and presses Zak's hands onto it. "Don't move, okay?" Zak leans his head back against his bed as he holds the soaking rag against his wound, groaning as he nods.
Darryl leaves the room, feeling incredibly sick. He couldn't believe he shot Zak. He wanted to scream, cry, and vomit all at the same time. And thinking about the fact that they got away with Nick only made him feel worse. He swallowed back the burning sensation at the back of his throat and eventually found Zak's phone on the table by the front door. He panicked at first when he saw that it required a password to get into, but found that his thumbprint still worked to unlock it. When they were still together, Zak had programmed Darryl's thumbprint into it for emergencies. He must've never deleted it. After unlocking the phone, he quickly finds Vincent's contact and calls him.
As soon as the phone stopped ringing in his ears, he word-vomits into the phone. "VINCENT! Zak was shot and they took Nick the kids took Nick I don't know what to do Zak can't walk or anything-" The front door opens, cutting him off.
Clay enters first, holding his gun out in front of him. Vincent and Jake were right behind him. Vincent's worried eyes meet Darryl's. "Where is he?"
"He's in his room!" Darryl shouts, pointing down the hallway. Vincent and Jake both take off as Clay stays back to talk to Darryl.
"So they took Nick?" Clay asks.
Darryl nods. "I don't know where they took him. They have our earpieces and I think they have my phone. Did you find Dylan?"
Clay nods. "We have him. They beat him and broke his finger. We need to find Nick before they do something worse to him."
"HE'S UNCONSCIOUS!" Vincent yells from the bedroom. Vincent and Jake come out of the bedroom, carefully carrying Zak in their arms. They go out the front door, followed by Darryl and Clay. They all load into the van, leaving a space for Zak to lay down in the back.
"Is he dead?!" Darryl asks as Geo begins driving towards the nearest hospital.
"I think he passed out from blood loss," Jake observes. "When he found him, he was out already and the rag was on the floor beside him. He's lost a decent amount of blood. Do you know what kind of bullet was fired from that gun?"
Darryl shakes his head. "I have no idea."
Jake sighs. "Let's hope that the bullet is still in one piece. We'll be screwed if the bullet fractured inside of him."
"I'm awful," Darryl mumbles. "I did this."
Once at the hospital, Darryl and Vincent both rush out of the van, carrying Zak into the emergency room. George was close behind them, carrying some medical records that Vincent told him to hold on to. He also had on a backpack that Clay handed to him which felt unnaturally heavy. He wasn't about to waste time asking what was in it, though. They were running out of time. The team bursts through the doors and don't have to wait long before they are helped. Zak is tossed onto a stretcher, but his teammates are asked to stay out in the waiting room because they weren't family. Vincent takes the papers from George and slides them onto the reception desk, then begins talking to the woman behind the desk about Zak's medical history.
Darryl sat right next to George, lowering his head into his hands. "Hey," George reassures softly. "Everything will be alright."
Darryl shakes his head. "I shot him, George."
"Not on purpose, though," George points out. Darryl doesn't respond. He just keeps his face covered, his elbows propped up onto his knees. George moves around in the squeaky faux leather chair, attempting to get into a more comfortable position. His awkward shifting only gains the attention of the people around him. Realizing that there was no getting comfy, he settles back into his original upright position.
After finishing up with the receptionist, Vincent sits on the other side of Darryl. He puts a hand on Darryl's shoulder and rubs circles into it with his thumb. "They will do everything they can to help him."
"What if their everything isn't good enough?" Darryl asks.
"It will be," George states, sounding more like he was trying to convince himself more than anyone else. "It has to be."
The doors creak as they open up, grabbing George's attention. Clay walks in, followed by Dylan. Outside, George can see their van drive away. Clay scans the waiting room then spots George. He looks at Dylan and nods his head towards George. Dylan crosses his arms and looks around, seeming to be quite uncomfortable. The two make their way to sit with the others. Clay sits beside George and grabs the backpack he carried in off of the floor. He unzips the bag and pulls a bulky laptop out. It boots up in just a few seconds, allowing him to log on.
"You know, when I asked if the backpack was full of bricks, I didn't realize there was a literal brick in there," George jokes.
"Hey, it may look stupid and uncool, but Dylan and I built this thing to be the best laptop there ever was!" Clay brags. "While we wait, I'm going to see if I can track the missing earpieces to see where they are taking Nick. If we're lucky, we should be able to track them down before they realize it!"
"Are Geo, Jake, and Jude coming back soon?" George asks.
Clay shakes his head. "Jude needed to get back to the club and needed Jake and Geo's help to get into the boss's computer." He begins typing away in some sort of program while George finds himself drifting to sleep in his seat. In the last twelve hours, he learned that Clay and his friends were agents, met a beautiful man, attempted to seduce Wilbur, saved Dylan from being kidnapped, heard his best friend was taken, and now had to sit in the hospital while one of his teammates suffered from a gunshot wound.
George couldn't even begin to process Nick's disappearance. It still felt like some sort of sick joke to him. He was waiting to get a text from Nick saying that it was a joke or something. But the text never came. He was really missing in action and it was scaring George way more than he'd like to admit. So finally, after feeling like the world was caving in on him, he let himself drift to sleep.
Clay was too busy typing to notice George drifting to sleep. He was typing so many words per second, it was impossible to count. Clay repositioned himself as he continued typing and eventually felt some sort of weight fall onto his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees George laying on him with closed eyes. He looked so peaceful laying there. He had gone through so much that Clay understood that he needed a break. Everyone was used to this sort of thing. Staying awake and active for twenty four hours at a time was normal. But for someone who is so new to this? There's no way he would've made it without a nap. Clay freezes and does his best not to move a single inch while he continues to type.
Unable to find a free seat by them earlier, Dylan took a seat across from Clay and decided to mess with his phone while they waited for news on Zak. When he notices that George is sleeping on Clay's shoulder, he begins to giggle to himself. He opens up his camera and takes a picture. He then sends it to Clay with the message, "You two are cute."
Clay looks at his phone, then looks back up at Dylan with an unentertained expression. "Really? Now is not the time dude."
Before Dylan could make any more snide remarks, a doctor comes out and begins to explain to them what is happening with Zak. He had been shot right in the stomach and would have to undergo immediate surgery before any more damage was done. He then leads the group into a waiting room behind the receptionist desk that was right by the room where an anesthesiologist would administer the anesthetic to keep Zak out during the surgery. This new waiting room was empty at the moment and George groaned when he found that the chairs were even less comfortable than the ones he saw earlier. These didn't even have a padded back to them.
Darryl begged the nurse by Zak's door to let him in, but the woman turned him away. After multiple attempts at trying to get in, Darryl gives up and retreats back to a seat beside Vincent, returning his head to his hands. Vincent looks at Darryl, almost as if he wanted to say something, but instead stays silent.
While they all eagerly wait, the anesthesiologist bursts out of the room and begins yelling for a doctor, claiming that Zak's respiratory system was failing. They all watch in horror as multiple people enter the room. Darryl clutches Vincent's hand as he holds his breath, unable to think about anything else besides the fact that Zak was dying.
Clay glances at Dylan and nods, giving Dylan the signal he needed to get up. Dylan quietly walks closer to the room and leans against the wall, listening to the conversations inside. He then walks back and leans over to Clay. "Someone tampered with the gas mixture as well as the alarm that was supposed to go off when the process was done."
"What does that mean?" George questions, his face starting to fill with worry.
Clay takes a breath as he closes out of the program on his laptop and opens a new one. "It means that someone was trying to kill Zak. And I think I know who." He takes a moment to type into this new program, disabling lines of code before getting into the hospital's local network. "That was scarily easy."
"Is there a way to check on the machine?" George asks.
Clay nods and locates a ground of text that George couldn't understand. Based off Clay's reaction, he could tell that it wasn't good. "Those agents are in the system! Shit!"
"Can you tell which one?" Dylan asks.
"It's Thundah."
Dylan nods. "Makes sense. Her brother is a tech genius. I'd be surprised if she didn't have any experience with these sorts of things."
"Can you kick her out of the system before she does anything else?" George asks.
"I'll try." Clay then starts deleting all of the chunks of code that Thundah was typing into the program remotely. She was typing fast for someone who wasn't an expert on technology. George watched as Clay's eyes became intense as he continued to kick her out of the system. "Ok, she's almost gone, but she stole medical records."
"Why would she want Zak's medical records?" George asks.
"They weren't Zak's," Clay explains. "They were Nick's. Apparently he gets seen here too."
"Why would they want his medical records?" Dylan asks.
"I don't know, and I don't think I want to find out," Clay mumbles. "Ok, I got her out of the system!"
"Great! Save the IP so we can track her down!" Dylan suggests excitedly.
"I can't. She was using a VPN," Clay explains. "I really hope that Zak's okay. She pumped way too much gas into his system."
But judging by the worried expression on the medical staff's faces as Zak was rolled on his bed from his room to down the hall, he was not okay.
———
Word Count: 2542
This was the first chapter edited by my lovely beta readers! Thank you to those of you who submitted editor applications. I'd like to introduce the readers of Bang and Burn to my editors:
Kagiharas
Wildsprite
Lazycat
RollingThundah
And Maximum!
Also, special thanks to my brainstorming buddy Strawberry!!! I love and appreciate all of you guys so much!!!
Don't forget to join my discord server where you can talk to some pretty awesome people! I'm currently taking OC submissions, so if you would like your OC to be possibly featured in this story or in a future story, join the server! I will post the link below as well as in my comments!
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https://discord.gg/f42e8V9dQD
Published: August 11th