Chapter Text
“I got fifty on Sarah,” Cosima Niehaus says after a moment, practically resting her head on the window to the training room as she watches to the two figures throw punches, dodge swings.
“No way,” Art Bell says next to her, sipping his cup of coffee. “Beth’ll get her. She hasn't missed a single mark in, like, years."
"All the more better for a slip up." Cosima tilts her head toward him, tongue poking out from underneath her top row of teeth, almost punctured by sharp canines. “That mean you’re taking it?”
He nods, digging into his pocket for his wallet. Slaps some bills into her outstretched hand.
Cosima looks at them lovingly. “I’m about to be fifty bucks richer.”
.,.
It’s unconscious, the way her arm blocks and how her feet move.
Sarah Manning is predictable in her unpredictability, lashing out where you’d expect it and catching you where you wouldn't. Sarah Manning stands her ground and does not back down and Sarah Manning is primarily easy to fight, if you know how she works. And Beth Childs does, knows that Sarah is about to try and kick her sharply in the side and she moves accordingly. Sarah’s foot whistles through the air as it hits nothing and she spins, hopping as Beth attempts to kick her remaining foot out from under her.
“You’ve gotten better, Childs,” Sarah says, grinning. Her fists are held up in front of her face, fingers wrapped tightly with tape, as are Beth’s.
“I think you’ve forgotten that it’s 55-56,” Beth suggests, bouncing on the balls of her feet. She’s the one who is controlled in this, the one who has had military training, the one who is one sparring match ahead of Sarah.
At age nineteen, Sarah Manning relies entirely on instinct. The exact thing Beth was taught over and over again how to fight.
Sarah snorts. “You wish. ‘Bout to be your ass on the ground.”
Sarah punches and Beth dodges it deftly, bouncing to the left. Sarah grunts and they’ve been going at this for nearly an hour, their longest yet. A sheen of sweat coats Beth’s skin everywhere there isn’t a tank top and shorts plastered to it and Sarah is almost identical, her messy, wavy hair pulled carelessly into a ponytail.
Beth pushes strands of hair out of her own face. Smirks. She moves toward Sarah quickly and punches twice, one of them hitting home on Sarah’s shoulder. Her foot sneaks out and catches Sarah on the back of her ankle and Sarah’s falling, hitting the mat with a dull thud. Beth lunges, ready to inflict some sort of damage; it’s kind of a rule that the loser is the first one who bleeds.
Sarah rolls out of the way just as quickly and springs onto her feet. “Thought ya got me there, din’t ya?”
She lets Beth get up because kicking someone when they’re down is just too easy. She flexes her fingers as Beth gets to her feet, cocks her head. “We both know it’s going to be you that Alison’s yellin’ at.”
Beth shrugs, wiping spit from her lips. “At least I’d actually enjoy it.”
“Oh yeah, forgot about your huge crush.”
“You would,” Beth tells her, rolling her shoulders. Sarah goes for it again and she’s a series of dodges, punches before they’re both forced apart, breathing heavily. Beth can see someone in the window give her a thumbs up and guesses that it’s Cosima. She’s saying something, mouthing something like… I’m sorry?
Beth Childs hits the mat, hard. Sarah’s sound of victory is loud and painful in her ears as blood gushes from her nose. So much for always keeping your eyes on your opponent. “Jesus Christ, Manning! Did you just fuckin’ kick me in the face?” She probes at her nose, oblivious to the torrent of blood, winces and Sarah is laughing at her.
She’s doubled over, almost on her knees, hands on her stomach. She tries to contain herself, wipes sweat from her brow. “Yeah, right in the bloody nose.” She bursts into giggles (the most giggling a scary, punk-looking teenage assassin can) at her own words and finally falls to the ground, laying flat on her back. “Red’s a good color on ya, Childs.”
“Fuck off,” Beth grumbles, standing up and tilting her head back. She glances at Sarah. “Think I need medical attention?”
Sarah nods, smiling. “Gotta make sure you don’t pass out from blood loss.”
“Hey, hey Beth!” Cosima’s voice drags them from their little sparring bubble and Beth turns after shedding her shirt and holding it up to her nose, gazes at the small woman at the edge of the room who’s waving at her. “You just got me fifty!”
“Glad you have faith in me, Cos,” Sarah yells. To Beth, she adds, “Get your ass to medical before ya have a bloody aneurysm.”
"I would doubt you even know what that is," Beth mutters.
She doesn’t need to go to medical, however, because a shrill voice splinters the thick air of the training room. “Elizabeth Childs, are you kidding me?”
“Ah, shite,” Sarah mumbles. “That’s my cue. See ya, Beth.”
Alison Hendrix, wrapped in a blazer and her lab coat slung over her arm, stalks over to where Beth is standing (pathetically, dripping blood) and scowls. She doesn’t even say a word, just grabs Beth’s free arm and drags her to the infirmary, muttering about how she was on her way home, how she should not have to deal with this all hours of the day. Beth kind of wants to point out that yeah, she kind of does. Comes with being the doctor for a super secret spy organization. People bleed.
She makes Beth sit on the small bed in the corner and rolls up her sleeves, preparing some gauze. She crosses the room and stands before Beth, touching the bridge of her nose lightly.
“This is going to bruise,” she comments idly, lips curling slightly when Beth winces, “...badly, I might add.”
“Good thing I’m - ah - off for the rest of the week, then.”
Alison shakes her head, hands Beth another towel. The flow’s slowed a bit by now. “You’ve been in here way too many times.”
“Well, you know,” Beth starts, dabbing under her nostrils, “I am a spy. It’s kind of in the job description. For a really, kickass spy.”
“I like it better when it’s just bloody noses,” Alison admits quietly, turning away to gather up her things. She clears her throat, tries not to think about Beth-the-spy, instead just Beth, who jokes with her on her infirmary table, who spars haphazardly with other… not-spies. She comes back over to Beth, gives her more clean gauze. “There. I think you’ll be fine for now. All cleaned up.”
Beth hops down, instantly way… too close. “Thanks, Alison.” She slides over and goes toward the door, Alison’s voice tugging her back.
Beth turns around. “I don’t want to see you in here again, okay?” Alison’s smiling, hoping that it hides the worry in her eyes.
Beth lingers in the doorway and gives her that smirk. The one that lets a flock of pigeons free in her chest, the one that probably gets the best of fat, rich marks. “How else am I going to see you?”
And then she’s gone.
.,.
“Hey, Paul?” Sarah’s voice cuts into the silence of the hallway and Paul Dierden stops, turns around, grinning easily. The girl stalks up to him, her hair a sweaty mess and her tank top sticking to her skin. “You seen Rachel?”
Sarah, sweaty and a little worked up, figures that Rachel might appreciate her like this. If she could find her.
“Yeah,” Paul tells her, straightening the lapels of his suit. “We just got back from Taiwan. I think she went up to her room, she might be a little tired -”
“Yeah, thanks!” Sarah says, brushing past him to go to the second floor. She scales the stairs easily, grinning to herself. Rachel’s door is the farthest in the hallway, a corner suite, lots of windows, but none anywhere near her bedroom. No cameras there, either. Sarah laughs quietly as she approaches the door.
“Duncan, I swear if you’re not bloody in here…” She shoves the door open and stops, falters, as she finds Rachel standing there, jumpsuit half unzipped. Her black tank top is what she works in and it molds around her skin. Sarah rakes her eyes up and down, smirks.
“Can I help you with something?” Rachel’s smile is all lips, demurely curved as she finishes cleaning her knives, wiping blood from underneath her fingertips.
“You’re back,” Sarah points out.
“Clearly,” Rachel responds, her voice dripping with want. “And?”
Sarah crosses the room, grabs Rachel’s hips and turns her around, presses her against the edge of the table. “And…” she growls. “I’ve missed you.” She kisses Rachel hungrily, fingers curling into the jumpsuit where it’s bunched at Rachel’s hips, pulling at it needlessly. Rachel kisses back and they’re both desperate in their own ways. Sarah, all teeth and movement and Rachel, all neat and control.
And in the next moment, Sarah’s got a knee shifted between Rachel’s thighs and a hand up her tank.
“How many’d ya get this time?” Sarah wonders lowly, her breath hot behind Rachel’s ear.
“Thirteen,” Rachel tells her and she’s quite proud she’s remaining to keep her voice steady.
A low sound rumbles in Sarah's chest and she's pulling at the rest of the jumpsuit until it’s down by Rachel’s knees and she wastes no time with putting a hand between them, curling fingers inside of the other girl. Rachel’s fingers tangle in Sarah’s sweaty hair, her other hand pressing against Sarah’s abs and Sarah’s bottom lip is between her teeth when she comes and yes, she thinks idly, dizzily, the taste of blood suits her.
.,.
Cosima’s department is almost homey, with the couch in the corner and the gadgets strewn every which place. It’s slowly becoming the place she spends most nights, even though she has an apartment all her own, as she stashes her weed here, she stashes her favorite things here (gadgets and that wickedly hot new specialist). And, speaking of wickedly hot women, Delphine Cormier is strewn as well, stretched out on Cosima’s couch, tinkering.
“Thought you’d be here,” she says after a moment, when Delphine hasn’t looked up at her arrival. Hazel eyes finally raise, a smile accompanying them.
“Well,” Delphine muses, “I do work here.”
“Yeah, but I meant, like, on my couch. My office.” It feels good to taunt Delphine. They’ve come so far, Cosima thinks, from workplace enemies to friends. It’s nice (and she’s so, so hot).
Delphine shrugs, gathers up her limbs and climbs off of the couch, arms falling to her side. “It’s quieter when you are not here.”
“Wow, low dig, man,” Cosima says, picking up a few sheets of paper, gazing at them idly. “Listen, I kind of got this thing…”
Delphine steps toward her, leans against her shoulder as she looks at the blueprints as well and Cosima finds that she smells like smoke and relaxation. “A thing?” Delphine murmurs, so close to her ear.
Cosima gulps. Hopes it’s not loud enough for Delphine to hear. “Yeah, it’s kind of like this mix between lipstick and a knife, but small enough to be inconspicuous? If you get me.”
“I do,” Delphine says after a moment, after examining the documents. “I do have some ideas, actually, but I’ll have to do some of my own work first.”
“Right, yeah, of course.” She watches Delphine go through the door to the other office, thanks some higher power that the other woman’s office is only a few short steps away, just behind that other wall.
Cosima goes to work setting some sort of order to her chaos, puttering around and gazing at several prototypes. She puts some final touches on something she’s been meaning to give to Beth, an armband she can wear while she’s running, with an “ipod” in it that’s actually a knife. She’d made that one special. And the fucking stilettos, still in the beta stage, still not quite working right. She spends about ten minutes looking over her notes.
“Euh… Cosima?”
She’s definitely onto something here so she doesn’t quite perk up when Delphine calls her name. “Yeah?”
“I think you should see this.”
Cosima gets up, ignores the irritated murmur in her chest, and walks into the other room where Delphine is pointing at something on her computer monitor. It’s obviously a feed of video, probably one of the cameras on the first floor, where the legal activities are held (aka, their cover as an insurance company), and Cosima sees a large group of men on the floor. They’re moving fast and it’s obvious that they’re trained professionals.
Delphine’s fingers go to her mouth as one of the men pulls a gun on the receptionist.
“Are they dumb?” Cosima wonders, leaning over Delphine’s shoulder just watching the feed. “Because they must be. Kind of, like, a headquarters for one of the biggest spy organizations in the world. Also one of the best.”
“Maybe,” Delphine is suggesting, already picking up the phone to make sure security is notified, “they do not know. Maybe they are simply robbing an insurance company.”
Then, they are plunged into darkness, the computer screen going black, the lights flickering off. It is a moment later that the back up generators kick on with a whir of sound, small amounts of red light shining through the windows.
“Shit,” Cosima breathes and at the same time Delphine murmurs, “Merde.”
Scott comes running in, breathing hard. “We’ve got a problem.”
.,.
Sarah’s leaning up to kiss Rachel and it’s bruising, the way the blonde’s hand curls around her ribcage, the way her lips feel, and the way her thighs tighten around Sarah’s waist. Her hips press into Sarah’s and Sarah is reminded that it has been so long since they’ve actually had time to do this. Since they’ve been alone for more than ten minutes or not on a job. Since they’ve-
The lights go out and with them, Rachel’s attention span wanes.
She sits up and Sarah almost whines, falling back onto the bed with a loud, dissatisfied huff. “You’ve got to be bloody kiddin’ me,” she groans and Rachel tilts her head as the backup lights turn on, casting bloodred shadows across Sarah’s bare chest.
Sarah sits up, tows her lips along the sharp edge of Rachel’s jaw, lets her teeth ghost on skin. “It’s probably one of Cos’s fuck ups.”
And Rachel, completely oblivious and entirely curious, waits.
"Rachel, c'mon, ignore it."
After a moment, she sighs. “No, actually.” It’s a sense that she’s honed in for years, something she’s come to rely on. And right now, it’s a very large inconvenience. “I think we’re being infiltrated.”
Though Sarah would never admit it to her face, she trusts Rachel’s judgement. Trusts Rachel’s intuition. Enough to understand that she’s probably not getting laid in the next ten minutes. She shifts and Rachel climbs off of her, hastily pulling on her clothes and glancing in the mirror to make sure she doesn’t look entirely disheveled. Sarah follows after her, slipping into her work out clothing and feeling way too exposed.
“Please tell me you’ve got a gun in here somewhere,” Sarah says, watching as Rachel opens a drawer and within it, countless knives from which she chooses three.
She gestures to another drawer and Sarah pulls it open. There’s a thrill in her chest at the sight. “Shite. And I thought Cos spoiled me.”
Rachel’s knife catches the light and Sarah cocks her pistol, holds it up and smiles at the other girl. “Ready to see who’s dumb enough to fuck with us?”
Rachel steps forward, tangles her fingers in Sarah’s shirt, pulls her closer to kiss her. “Of course,” she murmurs against Sarah’s lips before turning sharply on her heel, leading the way into the hallway.
.,.
Beth smiles to herself after leaving Alison’s wing. It’s become Alison’s in her mind, not the infirmary, not the medical wing, just Alison’s. And it is a place she has visited considerably more times in the last few months ever since Alison Hendrix joined the team. And no, it’s not because she’s really cute or, or because her bangs are super adorable. No, it’s entirely not her fault that she’s conveniently gotten hurt more in the last few months than she has in her entire career. A coincidence.
You’re so dumb, she thinks idly and can’t quite wipe the smile from her face. She gets her keys from her locker and unwraps her hands, heading over to the back staircase that leads to the parking garage across the street. She’s looking forward to picking out a few movies and settling down with a bottle of beer. Can almost taste the bitter tang of it already.
The hair on the back of her neck stands up as she pushes through the first floor door. The next thing she knows, there are three guys on her and while she delivers a good kick to the groin to one of them, the other two each have one arm and another one is rounding the corner to tie a thick cloth around her head, muffling any sound she’d be able to make. In the next second they have her wrists zip-tied behind her back.
“Hey,” one of the men says, “I think we already got one. Piece of fuckin’ cake.”
And the only word in Beth’s mind is Alison. She just hopes that Alison is okay.
Even as they roughly pull her along and shove her behind one of the reception area desks, she wonders how far they’ve infiltrated, if Alison had gone home yet. She thinks that if she hadn’t been careless, hadn’t have been bleeding, Alison would already be home and curled up on the sofa reading a book. Beth breathes hard against the gag in her mouth and can’t help but feel like if Alison gets hurt at all, it will be all her fault.
She rests her head against the desk, experimentally strains against the zip-ties. It’ll be easy to get herself out of them, but once she’s out… there’s the not so easy part. There are seven in the room, all armed with guns out, and only two of them are close enough to catch by surprise.
“Okay,” another one says, not even glancing at Beth, “We have to get the Manning twins. Them, specifically, they want the most. The teens are wanted too, but not necessary.” He looks over at Beth, who glares with all the hatred she can muster. “Boss wants them and casualties made of everyone else. Have specific orders to dispatch the R&D specialists, too. This is a big one, boys.”
And Beth thinks that they must be stupid, must be idiots because she knows there is no way in hell Helena Manning will be taken alive. No way in hell Sarah and Rachel won’t go down without a fight. And Cosima, with her disturbingly charming will to live, will no way in hell let any of these men leave able to tell the story of what happened today, alive or no.
Beth knows she just has to stay alive. Don’t be stupid and stay alive.
.,.
Delphine runs a hand through her hair and Cosima’s grinning, pressing buttons on her table of magic (that’s what she calls it, basically she can pull a hell of a lot of strings from here) as Delphine is wondering, precisely, what she plans to do.
“Okay,” Cosima says after a moment, looking up to gaze at the double doors at the entrance of her department. They’re the only way in and out. Lucky her. “We gotta… kind of lock this place down,” she finishes. “Scott, can you, like, push a table in front of those doors? That’ll buy us some time.”
“Can’t you just press a button?” Delphine asks her and her voice is frantic, nervous. She’s never really been directly in danger, before this.
“Oh, I forgot that you’re new here.” Cosima smiles at her, adjusting something on the table. “Ha. Well. Not really. The doors aren’t lockable. Kind of a safety hazard thing going on because we’re underground and all. Case I blow the place up. But also kind of shitty when trying to keep something out, you know?”
Delphine stares, thinks blissfully of her old lab, that had doors that locked, secret exits, various things that kept her out of harm’s way.
Cosima reaches over and grasps her hand. “I do have some wicked shit if everything goes sideways, though.”
And Cosima is not a killer, Delphine thinks, at least not directly, but she decides that she feels as safe with Cosima now than if she were with a trained assassin.
.,.
Paul’s in the hallway and Sarah feels like she should’ve just borrowed one of Rachel’s spare jumpsuits. He has his gun out and it looks serious (though, she thinks idly, he never looks anything other than serious) and she wishes that she’d been prepared. Okay. She wishes she wasn’t wearing a very thin tank top and running shorts. She spares one last longing glance at Rachel’s door before they’re moving toward him.
“So,” she says casually, “we’re being infiltrated, yeah?” Rachel sends her A Look and Sarah can practically feel the roll of Rachel’s eyes.
“Correct,” Paul says slowly. “Most of the senior agents are already home or out on a job. Hendrix is in the medwing and in total lockdown. Nobody’s getting in there without a fight. I sent someone down to Niehaus and Cormier, just in case they can’t handle themselves.”
“Who’d ya send?”
Paul checks his watch. “Helena. Why?”
Sarah nods. “No, yeah, that’ll work. She’ll want to be with us asap, though, so we have to stay on our toes. And Childs?”
“She’s off for the rest of the week. Should be home.”
Rachel, conveniently silent and timidly jealous that Paul knows more than she does, clears her throat. “Not to interrupt,” she enunciates, high born accent shaping her words, “but who is the enemy here?”
“Not sure,” Paul coughs, kind of just realizing she’s there. He won’t admit to anyone that Rachel scares him a little, but… “They’ve taken over the ground floor, which means that, unfortunately, they’re between us and everyone else.”
“Mm,” Rachel hums, a small dismissive sound coming from her lips.
.,.
Paul says, “go to R&D and see if they need help. We can’t afford to lose them.”
Her mind counters, “Sarah?”
Sarah Sarah Sarah.
Walking through the hallways, a dull sound echoing as her knife crawls along the wall, she can’t help but think of her sister, Sarah. What is Sarah doing, is Sarah okay, who is Sarah with. The man that Helena kills around the next corner calls her “one of the twins, hell yes” and his last words to her are “bitch” and “shit”. It doesn’t take long for Helena to figure out that they intend to leave with prizes, teenage assassins notched in their belts.
This screams in her chest as wrong, as they’re looking for Sarah.
But Sarah, Sarah can handle herself and she’d told Helena so, the last time they went on a mission together. It was seamless, though Helena had hurried a bit on her part to make sure Sarah was okay and had gotten an earful.
So she’ll keep on toward the basement.
She does not mind the specialist, Cosima Niehaus, ever since she had made Helena a knife with a small compartment for things (sugar, sugar, sugar) in the handle. Cosima is not Sarah, cannot wield a weapon as Sarah can, and therefore needs her help more, even if it means the small twinge in her chest as she rounds around corner.
Two guys, with instructions not to kill and yes, she can work with that.
She does not stop walking, goes straight into them and her hand lashes out, catches the throat of one. She slams him against the wall and her knives are not even out yet but the other one is having second thoughts. After curling her fingers, her nails bite into flesh and she digs deeper, harder, keeping eye contact with the second man as she quite literally rips the first man’s throat out.
He tries running and Helena whispers, “coward,” under her breath and throws a knife from her boot into his back. He falls to his knees and Helena grabs a hand, pins it to the wall with one of her smaller knives. She wants to cut out his tongue, render him unable to make the pathetic screams he’s attempting now, but decides that he might be useful, later.
His second hand is a lot quieter (after he passes out from the pain).
She keeps going toward Cosima’s department because Sarah can handle herself, Sarah is okay (will be okay), Sarah has no need for her, probably.
“No need for Helena,” Helena says and wipes her knife on her pants.
.,.
Beth breaks her wrist. It’s when the only guy left guarding her isn’t looking and she just grits her teeth, jerking her hand against the awkward angle and snap. She’s never had to do it for zip ties before and is only slightly curious to see if it actually works. The pain isn’t something she hasn’t had to deal with before and once her wrist is pliable, it’s easy for her to slip it free. The man on the other side of the room remains enraptured with the corded phone of one of the desks and blissfully unaware.
Beth’s phone rings.
His head snaps up and he’s on his feet a moment later, stalking over to her. She tightens her arms as he pats her down, thinks about how easy it would be to take him out right now, and he digs out her phone from her jacket pocket and silences it. He glares at her and she glares right back.
He kicks her, out of nowhere, and she knows that it’s going to bruise. “Knock that shit off,” he growls and she rolls her eyes, cheek pressed against the ground.
Her foot catches his and he tumbles at the same time she’s springing to her feet. She keeps her left hand at her side and rolls her shoulders. He isn’t getting up and it’s only after she realizes her mistake that she hears the gunshot. She hears it before she feels it and she’s diving toward him, ripping the gun from his fingers and turning the barrel so it lands between his eyes.
She doesn’t hesitate with pulling the trigger. She slumps over, the gun hitting the floor, and grips her stomach. Blood coats her fingers and it doesn’t hurt that much, she realizes, if she doesn’t move. Something crackles and she glances toward the man’s belt, spots the walkie.
Her vision swims when she tries to move to get it.
.,.
“Beth isn’t answering,” Sarah says, shoving her phone into her pocket. The three of them, Sarah, Paul, and Rachel, are making their way through the compound, guns in hand (in Rachel’s case, knives). They work well together, able to read each other fairly accurately, Sarah and Rachel especially.
“Lovely,” Rachel murmurs because it isn’t lovely at all. She’d worked with Beth a few weeks ago and had enjoyed it. It would be a pity if the other girl had gotten hurt; they would lose a very strong player for their team.
They hear a few voices coming from the hallway and fall silent, keeping forward toward the sound. Bullets fly when the voices cut off abruptly and Sarah shoots one of them between the eyes. Most of the firefight is evasive maneuvering and ducking into shallow doorways. There are five of them, Rachel figures out from the gunfire, leaning the back of her head against a doorframe. She runs her fingers along the handles tucked tightly into her palm, squeezes briefly, lets instinct take over because that’s what it is by now, instinct.
She steps into the hallway, in clear view of their enemy and throws both knives, hitting one man in the neck and another in the groin. The first grabs a second on his way down and Sarah finishes him off with three bullets to the chest. The other two have stopped shooting back, just lowering their guns with shaky hands as Rachel stalks down the hallway and she almost wishes she was in heels; there’s something satisfying about staining a pair of two hundred dollar stilettos with blood. Sarah’s at her shoulder, holding the remaining two at gunpoint and no doubt Paul is behind them.
“Show’s over,” Paul says and Rachel exhales. He’s always about one-liners and honestly, they’re professionals, they don’t need to impress.
Rachel bends at the knee and retrieves both knives, wiping blood on the lapels of the men’s suits. She gazes at the glint of light on metal before they’re in the air again, splintering into both of the men's’ chests.
Blood. A gurgling cough from the back of their throats. Show’s over; idly in the back of her mind. That rush flooding her spine.
She’s tilting her head at the bodies while Sarah crouches, digging through pockets and inspecting weapons. She finds a radio, fiddles with the connections for a moment before she’s found a working line. “Hey, shitheads,” she says and Rachel would smile under different circumstances.
“Manning?”
Rachel feels something in her chest when Beth’s voice crackles over the bad connection, but she’s not giving it a name, not yet.
“Childs?”
“Dipshit,” Beth mutters. “Of course it’s me.”
Sarah presses the walkie against her forehead and grins, tongue poking from underneath her teeth while Rachel worries her bottom lip. “Thought you’d tripped and knocked yourself out there for a minute,” Sarah snarks, but it’s cautious.
“Mm, nope,” Beth responds. “Still in one piece.”
“Okay,” Sarah says after a moment. “Okay. I’ve got double D with me” - Rachel fights the urge to roll her eyes forever - “and we’re making our way. Switch to texting, yeah? This isn’t secure. Stay alive, okay?”
“I’m handling things,” Beth says instead of agreeing and Rachel doesn’t want to ignore the uneasy feeling she has in her stomach.
“Alright. Manning out.” The crackle of static silence comes back to them.
(They don’t hear the gurgle in Beth’s throat, not unlike the men that Rachel had killed earlier. They don’t hear the grunt that tumbles out when Beth slumps against the desk, hand pressing into the wound so hard she’s on the verge of passing out.
They don’t hear Beth’s mutter of “fuck” as she glances down at the blood on her fingers.)
The three of them are continuing, the hallways blissfully empty. Most of their intruders have figured out how much of a bad idea this was, it seems, and the stragglers are left in the basement to fend for themselves. They won’t make it, Rachel knows, glancing toward the door that leads to the ground floor. Sarah and Paul scatter down the stairs, tennis and dress shoes hitting the metal loudly. Rachel waits, shakes her head, calls after them, “I’m going to clear this floor.”
Sarah stops and looks up and Rachel shrugs. After a moment, Sarah nods. “Gotcha.” No, Sarah doesn’t watch blonde hair disappear through the stair exit, not at all. She tightens her grip on the gun and heads toward the infirmary.
Red lights wax and wane, creating long shadows in the training room. Everything is silent and Sarah and Paul move precisely, quiet, until they come upon the medical wing.
It’s a red flag when Sarah sees the broken glass on the floor, absent from the sliding door, and she’s careful to avoid stepping on any shards. She’s worried that she’s going to find Alison’s body in here and she pauses before crossing the threshold, nodding to Paul before taking that last step, gun in the air as she clears the room quickly. She sees the two bodies on the floor first, dressed in suits. One of them is horribly, horribly mutilated, blood coating every inch of his clothing and his head barely attached. The other one could be unconscious, except years of experience tell Sarah that he’s not breathing.
“Alison?” Sarah calls softly, her gun lowering as she straightens.
Alison comes out from the back room, a bloodied bonesaw in her hand. She crosses the room and the saw clatters to the floor, painstakingly close to the man’s almost detached head, before she’s throwing her arms around Sarah’s shoulders. “I’m so relieved,” she breathes.
Sarah hugs her back, regrets hiding from Alison for the last few weeks (only slightly; obviously she can take of herself), breathing in the scent of blood and cinnamon.
When they part, Sarah goes over to the second guy, kicks him with her toe, and says, “What happened to this guy.”
Alison glances at the AED Machine in the corner of the room and simply says, “Heart attack.”
Sarah’s mouth falls open at that and then her phone is vibrating. She digs it from her pocket and answers, the voice on the other end a little too loud in her ear. “Sarah,” Rachel says slowly, taking a pause, “Childs is hurt.”
Alison hears and Alison’s eyes go wide; she’s out of the room before Sarah can protest. Still, she yells after her, “Alison, wait!”
Sarah knows that somehow, Rachel knew and wonders why she didn’t tell her. She’s stuck between following and moving on… Should she? She looks at Paul and he wipes his lip with his thumb, the gun in his hand stained red by the light. “You go,” he says eventually. “I’ll clear the rest of this floor.”
.,.
Helena walks through the double doors of Cosima’s department and almost gets shot.
Helena holds her hands up, one palm flat and the other brandishing a knife. “I am here to help,” she says and she thinks that she hears a muffled, “Oh thank God,” coming from Cosima’s blonde scientist friend.
“Helena!” Cosima exclaims, lighting up from where she’s halfway hidden behind an overturned table. “I almost shot you… sorry ‘bout that.”
“With a marshmallow gun, Cosima,” Delphine, Helena remembers her name now, points out.
Cosima smirks. “What, you don’t trust my methods of containment?”
“Not when one of them is to slam into any intruders via roller chair.”
“Whatever. People die, Delphine, when you shoot them with staple balls via homemade marshmallow gun.” Cosima stands up, holding her makeshift rifle aloft for everyone to see and yes, Helena can see why it would hurt. She is glad she was not mistaken for an intruder any longer than she was.
She turns a split second before the hairs on the back of her neck rise, whirling around and catching a man in the shadows. Helena’s on him, thumbs pushing into his eye-sockets and he yells, loud and screeching and please, do not do this. His gun clatters to the floor and there are three more of him as soon as he’s down and Helena grabs the gun because sometimes, in some cases, bullets are easier.
Cosima barrels into Delphine, throwing the lanky girl down onto the ground behind the table as the bullets ricochet against the walls. Scott hides with them, repeating “holy shit” over and over again. Cosima peeks around the table, Delphine pressed flush against her and she can’t even appreciate that because there are three guys on Helena and Cosima’s worked with her before, knows when she’s getting tired.
Knows that she wouldn’t ask for help if it meant putting someone else in harm's way.
Cosima crawls across the floor to her desk as fast as she can, carefully pulling something from one of her drawers. “Helena, get down!” she yells and hopes to Darwin that Helena listens before throwing it in the other girl’s general direction.
Helena hits the floor because she learned along time ago to listen, follow orders, when it comes to safety. Usually, she is not given orders, but when she is, from people that she trusts, she listens. She sees something white sail through the air and hears Cosima yell, “For Alison!” before she recognizes it as a pillow. The moment it hits one of the men still standing, aiming bullets at the table where Cosima, Scott, and Delphine are hiding, it explodes. Taking his entire face with it.
Helena jumps up to her feet and her ears are ringing but the men are dead. And that was. Amazing. Do it again, Cosima. Please.
She grins, fangs out, and Cosima grins back, holding a hand in the air as Delphine runs her fingers through frizzy hair. Helena high-fives her, curling her fingers into the spaces between Cosima’s for a moment. “That was very pretty,” Helena says, eyes still reflecting the small explosion.
Cosima bows a little. “Thank you. S’posed to be for Alison, but she can deal.”
“Cosima,” Delphine says, a little shakily and the smaller girl turns, dreads cutting the air.
“Hmm?”
Delphine’s to her in two long steps, gathering Cosima’s face in her hands and kissing her, forcing the smaller girl onto her toes if she wants any chance to kiss back.
“Woah,” Scott breathes and Helena watches curiously, the way the two smile at each other after the kiss, the flush in Cosima’s cheeks and finally, Helena allows herself to think of Sarah. She slips out the door and goes off to find her sister.
.,.
Sarah takes the stairs two at a time, her thundering heartbeat in her ears. She thinks of Beth, with the bruises on the bridge of her nose. She thinks of Beth, with her killer right rook and aim with a pistol. She thinks of Beth, her best friend.
Her feet move faster and she uses the railing to pull herself up.
She slams through the door and has her gun up, glancing down both ways of the hallway before making her way to the lobby. She edges the door open and reels back when she sees police flooding it, notepads open and cameras on, documenting the scene. She doesn’t miss the large puddle of blood or the yellow tape around several bodies on the floor. Sarah continues down the hallway a little, ducking into a closet and hiding her gun in a bucket.
She tucks hair out of her face, pulling out the hair tie and shaking her dark hair loose. She goes back to the floor, opening it and pulling herself through the crowd, moving even faster when she spots the ambulance pulling up outside. She brushes past uniformed officers and goes through the lobby doors, spotting Beth on a gurney and Alison informing several EMS personnel about what happened.
Sarah nods at Rachel, who’s standing politely to the side and out of the way, before making her way to Beth.
She’s rolling, conscious, and Sarah runs while they move her, tears pricking her eyes. “Wow, Childs, you got yourself shot.”
“Shut up, Sarah,” Beth mumbles, though she’s grinning between each sound of pain coming from her lips. Her eyes are fluttering.
“Just… don’t die,” Sarah tells her, like making Beth promise will make everything better.
Beth nods and Alison takes Sarah’s spot, climbing into the ambulance to help and Sarah falls back, watching the doors to the back of the vehicle fall shut. She stands there, watching it drive away.
She turns around, rubbing at her eyes furiously and pretends Rachel isn’t seeing her cry. She ignores the blonde, walking past her to Paul, who appeared at the doorway with Cosima, Delphine, and Scott. Paul’s looking around and zeroes in on her when she comes up and her brows knit together. “Something on my face? Blood, or something?”
“No,” he says, expression impassive as Rachel comes up beside her. “Your sister’s still in there.”
.,.
Helena hears the sirens and figures it will be faster to go around the building rather than deal with the police. In the staircase, she is blissfully alone though she does not feel alone. She is full of Sarah, needing Sarah, hoping that Sarah is needing, missing her. Helena wants to see her sister standing, possibly hugging Helena because of those Helena misses; she doesn’t not get enough of them. Faster, harder, stairs are over.
Sarah. The only thing that matters.
On the ground floor, Helena pushes through the exit door, into her favorite alley. This alley has fire escapes and garbage bins and one time Sarah and her stumbled through this alley, alcohol in their blood, and Sarah kissed Helena on the brow and slung an arm over her shoulders. That was the first time that happened and Helena has not forgotten. Helena makes sure to take a moment to run her fingers over the corner of the dumpster where she had stumbled that night, and Sarah’s hand had covered her own when she’d held on to not fall.
This alley has memories and Helena likes them. Helena thinks of Sarah and thinks of sister things, like hugs and head kisses and she mistakes pure instinct for memory.
Her instincts tell her stop, but she hears Sarah.
A black bag is thrown over her head and her arms seized, zip ties cutting into her wrists with a zip. She fights, thrashes as they lift her feet and body, and hears a van. She also hears the crackle of electricity a moment before it meets the skin of her neck, and she falls into black.
Sarah.
Sara.
Sar.
Sa.
S.
.