《Fight》

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Having to depend on Marava of all people makes me queasy. I'm sure the feeling's mutual what with the way her fingers graze the skin of my upper as though she's touching something contagious. I'm eclipsed in her shadow as she drags me from the shadow of one house to another, slithering along the ground and squatting between dumpsters in true spy fashion. I hate to admit it but she's doing a good job trailing the El Accosta without their noticing.

Overhead, hover lights skirt back and forth across our path. The orbs' internal heat sensors lock on to us and a swarm of them head in our direction. Marava swats them down as though they were the fireflies they'd been modeled after, her nails leaving behind scratches in their fibre glass surfaces. The light they produced was meant to be warm and comforting. On a normal nighttime stroll, I would have welcomed them, but darkness was our ally now, our safeguard to keep us bullethole-free.

Dodging behind a dumpster, freshly polished, I spy Quint as a few hover lights zip past his body. He's limp, the soles of his sneakers scraping across the asphalt as two Accostas drag him by the arms. Eyes closed, his head lulls, hair falling in front of his face concealing the dot he has attached to his temple. Thankfully, it doesn't look as though the El Accosta have spotted it.

Marava grits her teeth and sounds like she's chewing on rocks.

"If you're any louder, you'll alert them of our presence."

She whips her head around and snarls, but she doesn't speak. Her gaze falls back onto Quint and the El Accosta that have him hostage. One of her nails digs further into my flesh.

"You're doing that on purpose," I say as I yank my arm away.

She doesn't relent and instead grips me tighter. Having taken a beating in the explosion, I don't have it in me to fend her off so I let myself fall into her. The sudden thud of my head against her shoulder causes her eyes to burst open.

The breeze blows, sending a bit of her scent - salt mixed with a hint of vanilla - into my nostrils. Tendrils of her hair flutter like a hundred bronze-colored ribbons.

Pushing me away from her, and straightening her top, Marava says, "You can't walk on your own."

She's not wrong, but everything inside me screams at me to argue the fact. Grimacing, I say, "I don't need your sympathy."

She snorts, the corner of her lip curling upward. "Trust me, I've got no sympathy for you. But," she nods at the tattered remains of my splint. "You'll slow me down if I let you hobble on your own."

I shrug. "Could just leave me behind."

The smile fades from Marava's face, leaving in its wake a look of intense discomfort. Her eyes, which always affix to her target of choice, flit between two plate-high apartment buildings. Yanking me into the shadow of a nearby home, Marava's frown worsens. "Quint wouldn't approve." She peers out from around the corner, scraping her nails over the house's siding. "He likes you," she grumbles. I blink. Was this vulnerability from Marava? Noticing me, noticing her, Marava grunts and straightens her back, returning to her haughty, impenetrable self. "So what's this plan of yours?"

I fumble for words, but eventually I manage to force a sentence from my mouth."The comm."

I reach up, press the smooth, breathable plastic clinging to the flesh behind my ear, Marava watching intently. "Quint, you need to hold your breath." Marava's arms cross over her chest. Her eyes narrow and in her expression I can see her estimating the amount of effort she would need to expend to rip me in two. I exhale. I didn't like this either. "Those Blackhole bags monitor respiration so hold your breath, alright?" I continue. "If you can manage long enough, the sensor will register respiratory failure. Slump over, make the El Accostas stop."

Marava arcs an eyebrow as my finger falls away from the comm. "He could die."

I nod. "And he will die if we don't do something. That much is guaranteed."

She growls. "So, what'll we do?"

Picking up a nearby rock, I shove it into her hand. "We'll do what we can and try not to get killed." Her fingers wrap around the rock as she nods.

We wait. There's nothing to do but wait and in that time that stretches out before us like unwanted eternity, I wonder if Quint had even heard me. If, at some point, his comm had fallen off his temple? If an El Accosta had seen it,  ripped it off and crunched it beneath his foot? Could my voice really carry across the chasm that separates us?

Marava's attention is focused on the rock clutched in her hand. She runs a finger over a groove in its gray surface, then tosses it in the air. It slaps back into her palm and she does this a second time, a third. Her brow furrows. 

Finally, it happens. Quint falls forward, his body slamming onto the concrete. The Blackhole bag releases a frantic series of beeps. The El Accosta look from one to another. Quint writhes on the ground and I have to physically pull Marava forward. She blinks at me.

"We're up," I say.

She nods and we make our way behind the El Accosta so we can approach unseen.

"What's going on?" one of them says.

"Respiratory failure," says another.

Cradled in his hand is the control for the Blackhole bag. He looks down at Quint and frowns. There's a click as he presses a button and the cord around Quint's neck loosens.

"Now!" I yell.

Quint lunges toward the El Accosta, knocking him onto his back, the Blackhole controller flying across the concrete. The El Accosta goes for his gun, but Quint's too quick. He knocks it out of the guy's reach and lobs a right hook into the guy's face. He falls back unconscious.

I scramble toward the gun, but just as my fingers graze the grip, someone's pulling me away by my hair. I twist in my struggle to get free.

"Oh no you don't!" a voice hisses. "Stupid Liar bitch!" He snarls, but then the tension from his grip loosens and something slumps on the ground. I turn over and see Marava standing over him, the rock trembling in her hand. Blood splatters its surface. She tosses it as the shock of what she's done wears off and makes for Quint's side, brushing strands of hair out of his eyes.

"You okay?" Her fingers graze a bruise along his jawline.

He flinches but manages s smile. "I'm fine." His voice is gravelly, strained. "Thanks to you guys."

He looks toward me, smiles, but a second later, his smile fades. His eyes widen. "Ten!" His arm shoots into the air, finger pointed behind me. "Watch out!"

I whip around, see the El Accosta gun aimed. I grab the gun beside me, and without thinking, fire. A bullet screams through the air, and the El Accosta falls back, his mouth pulled into a grimace. Blood pours out of a wound in his arm. I struggle to my feet, make my way over to him, kick the gun out of his hand.

Looming over him, I can't help but notice how young he is. Fourteen, maybe fifteen. The same patchy peach fuzz that graces Tujo's face, graces his. Brown eyes fill with tears. He twists on the ground, his hand struggling to stop the bleeding.

"Ple-please." Spit dribbles down his chin. I aim the gun, cock back the hammer. "Please don't kill me. I-I won't tell them anything." He raises his arms up, flailing them in front of his body.

"But you'll tell them everything," I say. The night around the Titav table, when Della had the Sunshine Vitamins, comes to mind. Did the El Accosta have the pills, too? Did they know the trigger? Would they use the drug to pry tight lips loose? "They'll kill you if you don't," I finish.

A pained yelp escapes his lips and he winces. He shakes his head which causes greasy strands of straw colored hair to fall in front of his eyes. "I won't. Please--"

"Ten." Quint's voice cuts through the tension. "Let's just leave."

I stand my ground. Gun aimed. Fingers trembling. The boy looks up at me, eyes pleading with me to just go.

"Would you have shot me?"

The boy's eyes widen. "Wh-what?"

"Would you have shot me? If I hadn't shot you first, would you have pulled the trigger?" I gesture to the gun a few feet away. A sob escapes the boy's throat. Slowly, he bows his head.

"It's different," I say. "Saying you'll kill someone and actually killing them."

When Lilly had been Rima, she had killed someone. Cut him down in the Facility even though he had only been doing his job. There'd been no negotiating. Just a bullet whizzing through the air and finding its target. A grisly spurt of blood as it colored the back wall and then the absence of life - that endless silence.

I'd thought she'd seen everyone who'd ever hurt her - that that had been what led her finger to press that trigger, but maybe, in that horrible moment, she'd realized she had no other option. She had killed to survive.

Animals did it all the time and humans weren't above that kind of slaughter. Sure, we might have doled it up, added purpose, gussied it up to not look so senseless, but in the end, the choice came down to survival. You or them. Taking away someone's loved one in order to protect yours. Could I do it? Was Keran's skepticism misplaced or had she been right about me? Would I fumble and end up shitting my pants?

As I looked into the boy's face, I didn't see a parade of white coats or doctors. I just saw him - trembling and terrified - face bloated and red, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as if it was trying to stay afloat on a tumultuous sea.

The boy screams. Him or us."Please! I wasn't! I wasn't--"

As my finger tightens around the trigger, I realize the choice had already been made, cruel as it was. Snot bubbles from the boy's nostrils as he continues to cry, to writhe, scream and struggle on the ground, plead with his god, blood running over his quaking fingers.

I pull the trigger.