Stephenie Meyer - The Chemist

“Proud of you, Jules,” Lowell Carston wheezed quietly. “You managed to hold on to your soul. Impressive…” The last word trailed off with a low, rattling exhalation. She listened for more, but it was silent behind her now.

She’d outlived Carston, a feat she never would have put money on. Instead of feeling the triumph she’d always expected, she was ambivalent. Perhaps the triumph would come later, when the panic gripping her was gone.

“Is it safe to lift him?” Kevin asked.

“Carefully. Try to keep his chest as immobile as possible. I’ll get his legs.”

Together they hefted Daniel carefully onto the silver tabletop. She took his wrist again, willing his pulse to stay discernible.

“Give me two seconds, Ollie,” Kevin said as he began stripping the soldier who’d fallen over Daniel’s legs, the one with the least blood on him. “How many more are upstairs?”

She glanced at the faces on the floor. She thought she recognized the shorter guard from the metal detector.

“At least one isn’t here, for sure. He was at the door. It seemed empty up there, but I didn’t see most of these guys beforehand.”

He was already in the pants, pulling socks over his mangled feet and then trying the shoes. They were too small. He yanked another pair off the other poisoned soldier. Those looked a little big, but Kevin tied the laces tight.

“You’re going to have to cut those off,” she said.

He buttoned the white shirt, then threw the dark navy coat over the top, not bothering with the tie. “I’ll do what I have to do when we live through this. Lose the lab coat, it’s covered in blood.”

“Right,” she agreed, awkwardly shoving the guns into the elastic band at the back of her leggings. It was barely strong enough to hold them both in place. She shrugged out of the coat and let it drop to the floor.

“Okay, let’s get this table past all the bodies, then you should be able to handle it in the hall. I’ll sweep ahead and take out anybody who’s left.”

In seconds she was rolling Daniel down the hall, half running while Kevin disappeared into the darkness, somehow at a full sprint. Then she was in the metal-detector room, and Kevin was waiting, holding the elevator for her. The room was empty; everyone must have rushed to the observation room when the shooting started. She darted into the elevator.

Kevin reached out to hit the button as the doors shut silently behind her. She stared at his right hand on the button, his dominant hand, and a sudden burst of understanding had her coughing out one half-delirious laugh.

Kevin eyed her sharply. “Keep it together, Ollie.”

“No, no, see, it’s his heart, Kev. It’s on the wrong side – the right side. That’s why the shooter missed.” She choked out another laugh. “He’s alive because he’s your opposite.”

“Lock it up,” he ordered.

She nodded once, taking a deep breath to steady herself.

The elevator stopped and the door opened to the supply closet. The outer door was closed. Kevin lifted the edge of the table over the lip of the elevator, then went to the door.

She expected him to ease it open, but instead he threw it wide with a loud bang.

“Help!” he yelled. “We need help down here!”

Then he was racing forward silently. She could hear louder footsteps coming for them from the other room – just one set, she was sure. She pushed Daniel forward as quietly as she could.

Kevin was in place before the guard came around the corner. The guard ran right past him, gun in hand but held low by his side, pointed at the ground. Kevin’s gun was high. He shot the guard in the back of the head. The man crumpled to the floor. Kevin stepped forward and put one more bullet into his head to be thorough.

The hallway was too narrow to maneuver the gurney around the body. Kevin grabbed it with both hands and lifted it over. Alex did what she could to help, but she knew Kevin was taking most of the weight. She didn’t know how he was still performing at this level, and she was afraid he was going to kill himself trying.

There was no other guard.

“Get him to the car,” Kevin commanded. “Let me finish up here.”

No one tried to stop her; no one shot at her from a darkened window while she ran into the parking lot. The sky was completely black now. The single streetlight near the front door cast only a dim yellow circle toward the parked cars. She fumbled in Daniel’s pockets till she found Carston’s keys. She popped the trunk and ran for her souped-up first-aid kit.

She knew exactly where the blowout gear was. She’d expected either she or Kevin – or both – would be shot, and she’d prepared accordingly. She didn’t need the tourniquet or the QuikClot gauze, but she had several HALO seals, and they would work better than her plastic sandwich bags. She also had a Mylar survival blanket, more saline, and some strong intravenous antibiotics. Bullets were dirty things, and infection would be a concern… if she could keep Daniel alive that long.

She knew she couldn’t. Maybe for twenty-four hours at most with what she had here. Despair made her hands shake as she ripped open the packages.

Then Kevin was right beside her. He threw a heavy black-and-silver square into the trunk.

“Hard drive the cameras recorded to,” Kevin explained. “I’ll get him into the back.”

She nodded, filling her arms with stopgap measures.

When she crawled into the foot space of the backseat, she could see that Kevin had done everything right. Daniel was on his left side. His head was propped up on the driver’s headrest, which Kevin had ripped out of place – violently, it appeared. She checked Daniel’s airway again, his pulse. She could still just make it out in his carotid. The ketamine would keep him under for a while. He couldn’t feel any pain. His system would remain as unstressed as possible under the circumstances.

The car started to move. She could feel Kevin was trying to keep the motion smooth for her, but it wouldn’t be smooth enough.

“Stop,” she said. “Give me a minute to get things in place.”

He hit the brakes. “Hurry, Ollie.”

It took only seconds to switch her makeshift seals for the real thing. She got the IV in quickly and then pinned the bag to the top of the seat back.

“Okay.” As she spoke this time, she could barely recognize her own voice – she knew there wasn’t anything more she could do, and the despair was starting to suck her down. “You can drive.”

“Don’t quit on me now, Oleander,” Kevin growled. “You’re stronger than that. I know you can do this.”

“But there’s nothing more I can do,” she choked out. “I’ve done everything. It’s not enough.”

“He’s going to make it.”

“He needs a level-one trauma center, Kevin. He needs a thoracic surgeon and an operating suite. I can’t clean his wounds or put in a chest tube in the backseat of a damn Bimmer !”

Kevin was silent.

Tears streamed down Alex’s cheeks, but she didn’t feel grief yet. Just rage – at the injustice, at the limitations of their situation, at herself for this ultimate failure.

“If we dropped him off at an ER -” She sobbed.

“We’d be handing him over to the bad guys. They’ll be looking at the hospitals.”

“He’s going to die,” she whispered.

“Better that than he end up in a room like the one you just busted me out of.”

“Didn’t we just kill the bad guys?”

“Pace is still in charge, Ollie, till he slaps the right patch on, and given the current stress level, he might just start smoking again. If he doesn’t die… even without his partners, he has no shortage of muscle at his command. The hospital is out.”