Genre Scribes: Friday Fiction Writing Challenge #49 — Paper

Darkness closed in on Kelvin again. Though, this time was different. It didn’t smother him, trying to pull him into its all-consuming hollow embrace.

A faint glow beckoned from beyond the pitch-black void; a beacon. Kelvin sucked in a breath and fire spread from his stomach radiating all over, a physical connection to the waking world. The knife wound, he thought.

The faint rhythmic beep of machines froze him. He knew that sound. Remembered it with sickening clarity. The tubes, the ventilator, the broken body that had once been his sister… Kara… He forced open his eyes to escape the memory, but the unforgiving blackness still surrounded him. Panic clawed at his throat. He’d spent years avoiding the memories; he couldn’t face her wrath.

“Shh,” a woman’s voice broke through. Amy. He couldn’t be sure it was her, but instinct told him it was — or was that hope, hope he had no right having?

He peered into the dark, straining. There was movement in the shadowed room, and then a brilliant, searing light burned his eyes. Squinting against the blazing light, he sought out the owner of the voice.

To his surprise, she was sat next to him, holding his hand. “Finally, I’ve been waiting for you to finish your beauty sleep.” Amy tilted her head. “Hmm, you could do with another couple of hours.”

Kelvin laughed at that, earning another spike of pain. His eyes were growing accustomed to the faint warm glow of the table lamp, and he could make out Amy’s gorgeous, yet tired face. He was unaccountably happy to see her. “You’re still here.”

“It’s not like I could leave you alone. Who knows what kind of trouble you’d have gotten yourself into.” She smiled, but it faltered slightly, and her eyes were red. “And someone had to make sure Harvey didn’t take you to DU.”

“You browbeat Harvey into bringing me here.” It wasn’t a question–the woman was a force of nature. He looked around the small windowless room choked with old machinery. “Where is here?”

She squeezed his hand before letting go. “This,” she stood arms outstretched indicating the room, “is the finest disused plant room in Unity Community Hospital.”

Kelvin tried to sit up, but with sweat breaking out all over, only managed a semi-reclined position. “You know this is the first place Sebastian’s going to be looking for us, don’t you? We need to get out of here.”

“It was a risk we had to take. Don’t worry, you don’t exist as a patient, on paper you’re Glenn Harmon, an octogenarian.”

“That’s not going to stop Sebastian for long.” He eased into a seated position, adjusting to the pain.

Amy rotated the pillows at his back to support him. “Harvey’s watching CCTV and has enough firepower to hold off a small army.” She reached below the bed and handed him his weapon. “Once Emma gives you the all-clear, we’ll leave.”

“Emma?” He checked his weapon over and didn’t fail to notice Amy was packing a Barreta. His Amy really was capable. Though, she wasn’t his anything. She was a distraction from his mission. A temptation to walk away from it. He dragged his eyes away from her; he had to focus on the job. He scanned the room. The bag was nowhere in sight. “Where’s the bag?”

She worried her lip. “Hidden at Harvey’s, in a safe.” Doubt crept over her features. “Please tell me that wasn’t a mistake.”

She was a civilian, not of his deadly world, and yet she’d stepped in and saved his life — and possibly that of every DU operative who wasn’t on the Consortium’s payroll. “No sweetheart, it was the right thing to do. No one knows about Harvey’s place. Hell, he’d been reluctant to tell me about it for the meet.” He caught her hand, turned it and kissed her palm.

Her face flushed. “We should be good to go in the morning. Emma said you were lucky you had no internal injuries. You just lost a fuck-ton of blood.”

There was a Band-Aid on the inside of her arm. Warmth bloomed in his chest. She’d literally saved his life in more ways than one. He pulled her down toward him and kissed her forehead. “Thanks for dragging my ass off the mountain.”

“Remember that the next time we’re starving, and you hide the cookies from me.” She gave him a smile that hit him squarely in the solar plexus.

Fuck. Kelvin was in trouble.