The LoST 13

The Lone Shadow Templar

13: The Shower Room Scene

The water scalded my skin, but I didn’t care. It was refreshing after the many hours of trudging through waist high snow in a negative 50 degree blizzard. The steam enveloped me as I stood motionless in Pyrk’s shower.

Images of the past few days flew through my mind. It seemed like just yesterday when my life was still good, when Aaron was still by my side, when I bought a hundred and thirty dollars worth of groceries and he got pissed. It’s only when those good things are gone that you realize how special they are.

Something white and slippery dropped to the floor and started to circle the drain. It was only then that I realized I had been squeezing a block of soap with all of my strength. It was now misshapen and deformed, just like the world that the Dominion had created.

“Angry?” Wolfe’s voice suddenly interrupted my thoughts. I whipped around and saw him staring at me from the doorway. It was only then that I realized Pyrk had glass walls around his shower and no shower curtain. Damn him.

“The door was locked for a reason,” I quickly turned around, exposing only my ass.

“I picked it,” Wolfe replied calmly.

“What the f…”

“I had to talk to you and I couldn’t wait.” Through the blonde strands of hair that covered my eyes, I saw him move closer.

“Don’t you have any respect for a woman’s privacy?” I shot back, still angry at Pyrk for his lack of common sense when he built his bathroom.

“Look, I need you to know that there is a chance Nass has figured out what the orb does.” Wolfe said. I heard him sigh through the white noise of the shower, “And if that thing turns out to be some sort of weapon, then we all die.”

“What are you saying?” I asked, absentmindedly covering myself with soap.

“I’m saying that there is a chance that we’ve prepared so much for nothing. I’m saying now that if the orb is some sort of weapon, we could be dead in the next second.” He waited a second, and then continued, “Well that’s great.”

“Wolfe,” I sighed, “I’ve already lost everything. He’d be doing me a favor to kill me here and now. Even if this mission has a 99.9% chance of failure, I’d still do it. I’m not afraid of death.”

I shivered at my own words.

Somewhere else in the house, I heard Pyrk’s annoyed voice float up, “Hey, why is there steam coming down the stairs?”

“You know, Natalie, there’s this thing about you that I can’t quite put my finger on,” Wolfe continued, “It’s fascinating… yet deathly.”

I turned my head to face him and realized he was right at the door, a mere centimeter of glass separating us.

I didn’t have my mind powers to help, but I knew men well enough to know what he was thinking. Besides, it was kind of hard to hide myself from his eyes.

“Don’t try anything stupid,” I warned, staring coldly into his eyes.

But they just stared right on back. Our eyes were locked for what seemed like an eternity. I didn’t even know if I was feeling hatred or… something else.

Then, everything happened in a blur. He flung open the glass door and suddenly his lips were pressed against mine, our bodies entwined in the steaming hot rain. My mind went berserk, synapses fired, billions in a second. It took me a while to realize I was kissing him back.

I must have been mad, because I wanted it, I wanted more. My fingers wrapped themselves into his shaggy hair and pulled him closer. One of his arms was wrapped tightly around the small of my back while the other grabbed furiously at my hair. He forced me against the wall roughly, but not rough enough.

The animal inside me was bursting to be set loose. This overwhelming desire for him was too much. I couldn’t take it anymore; I wanted it all.

And then his face flashed into my mind. My eyes contracted in horror, realizing what I was doing, and as if an instinct, I kneed Wolfe in the stomach and elbowed him swiftly across the face. His body fell with a thud against the shower glass. My breathing came in sharp gasps.

Hastily, I switched off the water and stepped out, wrapping myself in a towel. Before exiting the bathroom, I took one last look at him. He was slumped over, looking at me with a blank expression. “The next time you do anything like that,” my breathing started to slow back to normal, “I’ll kill you.”

The steady beating of the rotor blades of Pyrk’s chopper reverberated through the dark night clouds. Where he got these instruments of warfare, I did not know. Wolfe was right about his “connections”. They seemed to run deeper than the fires of hell.

“30 seconds,” Pyrk’s voice piped up on my communicator. We were cruising high above the city of Orbis, heading straight for the Dominion’s research facility. Up ahead, I looked into the horizon riddled with tiny city lights. A tall skyscraper appeared below in the distance. Through the clouds, I could just barely make out the Dominion logo.

“Ready?” Pyrk asked. I gave him a pat on the shoulder and he pressed a button. The side doors to his chopper slid open with a mechanical whir and I jumped.

The crisp night air blew my bangs back as I free fell back towards the earth. Adrenaline coursed through my body, bringing a deep feeling of ecstasy. I was ready to bring an end to all of this once and for all.

“5 seconds,” Wolfe’s voice buzzed. I looked up and saw Wolfe freefalling alongside me.

“…Two, One. Now!” He commanded. I wrenched the ripcord and felt myself being jerked back up by the parachute. The two of us slowly made our decent to the roof of the research tower.

I flipped on the infrared vision and unholstered my silenced MK-9. Three guards ambled around on the roof, their heat signatures clear in my sights. I aimed the sub-machinegun down and fired three shots. Their bodies crumpled to the floor; I saw their white hot hearts instantly stop beating.

I reached the concrete roof with a soft thud and quickly unbuckled myself from the parachute. Beside me, Wolfe touched down and rolled to a stop. He hastily cut himself loose and hustled towards me. The both of us made it to the northern side of the rooftop and attached two sets of ropes to the railing, securing the other end to our belts. Wolfe stepped over the edge and looked at me, “Ready when you are.” He primed his weapon.

I nodded and the both of us let go. We rappelled down and immediately smashed into the topmost floor’s window. The glass windows shattered into billions of tiny shards. In a split second, the room was filled with suppressed gunfire. My feet touched the glass covered floor and my gun made its last exclamation. Everything was quiet once again. The room was riddled with dead guards and destroyed computer monitors.

“Well that was easier than I thought,” Pyrk’s voice sounded in the communicator. “I would’ve at least thought a second or two of an alarm, after all, you did hit the security room…”

“Be happy with what you have,” I whispered and turned around to Wolfe who was detaching himself from the rope. “Let’s go.”

Wolfe sat himself down at the nearest still functional computer and plugged in a USB. Pyrk’s instructions flew too fast for me to comprehend. I looked around the still dark room, my weapon trained out in front of me. Pyrk was right, this was too easy. I wrapped my left hand fingers tightly around the fore grip.

“Done!” Wolfe laughed quietly, “It’s in the vault in sector three. That’s twenty four stories below our current position.”

“Come on,” I muttered and moved forwards towards the door. My finger reached for the handle, but then I realized I was not being followed. Turning around, I snapped in a hushed voice, “What now!”

“Look Natalie, about two days ago, back in El Nath…” he started.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I tried to shut him up, but he defied me.

“I don’t know what I was thinking…”

“You weren’t.”

“Maybe, but for a moment there, I felt something genuine…”

“Wolfe shut the hell up.”

“I’m willing to bet my life you felt it too…”

“Wolfe I’m telling you to be quiet.”

“You did didn’t you…”

“Goddamit what the hell is wrong with you man!”

I lost it.

In a flash, I was on top of Wolfe. He looked straight up through the barrel of my MK-9.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Pyrk’s voice hollered, “What are you doing!?”

“Wolfe,” I ignored Pyrk’s pleas, “I’m not afraid of killing you. If you piss me off during this mission, I will make you just another statistic.”

I left him to catch his breath on the ground and walked back to the door. Turning around, I snapped, “Are you going to help or not?”

He glared at me, then sighed and quietly made his way to the door.

“Ready?” I asked, sensing that his professionalism had returned.

“When you are.” He smiled.