“There. Practice away,” Felix said. Taking a few steps back, Felix leaned up against the pillar from earlier.
Lily let her hair fall and glanced at him from over her shoulder. “Hmph.”
Breaking eye contact with him, she walked back to the changing room.
Felix let out a slow, even breath as she went. Lily made him uncomfortable.
Maybe it’s because she’s too damn pretty. Kit and Andrea have their own thing going for them, but Lily is just… forbidden fruit, maybe? Soul-eating seductress. Maybe I should rename her to Succubus instead of Mab.
He chuckled, giving his head a shake.
An explosion of sound went off behind his head, and his entire head felt like it’d been struck by a hammer.
He felt his legs go out from under him, unwilling to respond to him in any way, shape, or form. There was another explosion from feet away, and this time his side exploded in red-hot agony.
The world flashed white as screams echoed throughout the department store.
Felix couldn’t do much of anything. The cold of the tiled floor felt great on his face. The rest of him was a bubbling quagmire of pain and heat. Everything hurt.
In fact, he was pretty sure he was dying. There was too much pain for it to be anything else. Or so he believed.
He tried to roll over onto his side and accomplished… nothing. Fingers flexed against the tile, his shoes squeaked, and that was it.
A hand grabbed him by the shoulder and flipped him over.
Everything was blurry. Blurry and red.
Someone leaned down into his face. They said something. He couldn’t figure out what they were saying. Now that he thought about it, those weren’t screams he was hearing, but ringing. His ears were ringing.
Yanked to his feet, Felix tried to stand up but his knees wouldn’t obey. He began to collapse as fast as he’d been stood up. His eyes felt heavy and he blinked.
Felix must have blacked out for a moment, because the next time he opened his eyes, he was being carried. His arms were held across two people’s shoulders and they were practically sprinting with him between them.
“Hang on, Felix,” said the one on the left.
“Stay with us,” said the one on the right.
Oh, they’re both Andrea.
Felix tried to ask what had happened, but only made a gurgling noise instead.
“He’s awake!” the one on the left said.
“Good, keep him that way. Being awake is better,” came back a call from up ahead. There was a burst of light, followed by an intense explosion.
“I need two Andreas up the left side. Clear out that hallway!”
Felix felt himself pressed up against a wall.
An Andrea appeared in front of him, smiling at him from an inch away. “Going to just take a peeky peek now. See if you’re a leaky bottle of ketchup again.”
Her fingers slipped along his side, which was apparently now bandaged and very red.
Red like blood.
There was a black marker line where the bloodstain ended, all the way around.
“Nothing new, but that’s no guarantee,” Andrea said. Then she stood up and gently turned his head to the side.
Felix’s brain slipped out of his skull and hit the ground. Or that was what it felt like, at least.
Felix focused on the tile beneath him and the fact that he wasn’t dead.
“No change here either. Damn. I wish we’d spent more time in that hospital. We need to send an Other there after this,” whispered the Andrea in front of him.
“Nn, nn,” said the second Andrea.
“Is he okay?” Eva asked. Her voice wasn’t far, maybe behind Andrea. Maybe. Things didn’t sound right.
“He’s… alive. Lily! We need to move!”
Another explosion came from further ahead. “Clear, move up. Garage is right ahead of us. You think Chauffeur Andrea is still there?”
“We would never leave. We would die first,” the two Andreas said in unison.
Before he could really start to follow the conversation, it was over. They picked his arms up and pulled him back over their shoulders again.
His head lolled forward, his eyes watching the tiles pass underneath his dragging feet.
Body parts and blood were liberally painting the floor.
As he watched, the tiles became dark pavement. A burst of gunfire tore through the air.
Return gunfire came from the Andrea on his right and from up ahead.
“In, in, in,” shouted Andrea from ahead of them.
He heard car doors opening, then he was being shoved bodily into the rear seat. Eva was already inside and pressed up against the glass on one side.
As the Andrea who was guiding him in got him situated, her clothes blew out around her.
She dropped bodily into the car, her head falling into his lap.
In a last burst of strength, she somehow got the door closed and lay still, staring up at him from his lap.
Chauffeur Andrea got in and stomped on the pedal.
“Where’s the other—” Eva started.
“I absorbed her. No room,” Chauffeur Andrea said.
Felix laid his hands on the Andrea in his lap. Her mismatched eyes stared up at him. Her mouth was wide open as she gasped for breath.
“It’s… my lung. Shot in… the lung,” she got out between gasps.
Felix understood that at least. She was probably dying faster than he was.
Carefully, he brushed her hair back from her face. He gave her a smile and ran his thumb along her eyebrow.
“Sorry,” Felix said lamely.
“It’s… okay. I’ll… come back. Myriad… never really dies,” Andrea said, giving him a bloody smile.
Her face twisted for a second and she pressed her hands to her mouth, coughing into them.
Blood seeped up between her fingers, splashing down the sides of her face and neck.
“I’m sorry, Andrea.”
Felix gently stroked her forehead, smoothing her hair back. She coughed into her hands again, blood spilling unendingly from her hands. Her eyes gazed up at him, full of pain and fear.
“Andrea, can you absorb her before she dies? I-I think she’ll suffocate at this rate,” Felix said lamely, looking up to the driver’s seat.
Sunlight poured in through the windows as they escaped the garage.
“Kit, this is Lily. Felix has been shot. We’re on our way back. Tell Felicia she needs to come up with something quick. Do we have any supers with healing powers?”
Chauffeur Andrea looked back at him when they hit a stoplight. There was no way she could run it since there was a constant stream of cars driving in either direction.
After what looked like a moment of indecision, Chauffeur Andrea reached back and pressed her hand to the Andrea in his lap, and she vanished.
She was there one moment, and then gone the next.
All that remained of her was the blood that stained his pants.
Letting his head sink back into the seat, Felix felt the world slip out of his grasp.
“Lily? Felix is…”
Chapter 17 - Catching Up -
The world was a groggy haze. Filled with snatches of conversation and alternating bright lights and deep darkness.
Occasional words would slip through, but none of them stuck.
In time, Felix began to feel as if he could keep a thought for longer than a few moments. Longer than a single breath.
His eyelids felt heavy. So heavy he couldn’t open them.
That’s good. Heavy eyelids means I’m alive. Right?
Swallowing, he concluded he must have eaten a desert, considering how dry his mouth was.
“Oh! Felix? Are you awake?” asked a soft voice.
“Mmnnuugh… wwaaaa…” Felix explained patiently.
“Water?”
“Yuuuuuuu,” he energetically agreed.
A straw slipped between his lips. Felix set to the task and drank quickly. The cool, very wet, very delicious water brought life and happiness back to the wasteland that was his mouth.