Capítulo 11: Tiny Iron Fingers
He was certain that the red bearded giant making the weird face could reach up above the door and pull down the camera if he'd wanted. If that man wanted he could have broken down the door, all of the doors. Even the reinforced door to their little headquarters. This man scared the bejesus out of Mitchell.
The man knocked again, harder. Maybe he would break down the doors. Mitchell turned to speak with Rosa and she was keying in a command sequence that he didn't recognized. He studied her quietly as she typed. She finished her work in a few seconds and put her finger to her lips, signaling for Mitchell to be quiet. Not for the first time he noticed her soft plump lips and wondered what they felt like to kiss. He dug a fingernail into his palm. Stay focused he thought.
Rosa held down a button and spoke, "Be right there." The man stepped back away from the door.
Removing her finger from the key she said to Mitchell, "The handbook doesn't cover this. I'll uh, I'll head up and talk to him." Mitchell looked at the monitor and he had stepped forward to try the door handle.
She made as if to walk to the door and Mitchell hunted for the key she had pressed down to work the intercom.
As she reached the door he held the button down while feeling ten different kinds of unsure, "Um, actually, if you could head back to your room, we'll be along shortly."
Rosa charged towards him silently mouthing the words , "WHAT THE FUCK". Her hands balled into fists, both slightly in front of her. With each word she mouthed they shook to emphasize her anger.
As she reached him, Mitchell wasn't sure what she was going to do but he was far to flustered to explain his thought process. He didn't step back but he shied away from her, flinching slightly.
"We need to talk this through." He said weakly. That was about a fifth of what he wanted to say but he couldn't articulate more than that.
"Nike. Nike.��� She sputtered, " Don't do shit unless I tell you and when I tell you to do something, fucking Nike." Those lips that he had thought about the texture of a few long moments ago were pressed into a tight angry line across her face
"Ok, don't knock on the door when you come to get me, just stand outside. I'll know you're there." A voice said faintly.
"What did he say?" Rosa asked, the words flew out of her mouth faster than any he'd ever heard her speak before. She reached for the headphones.
"He said he'd be waiting in his room. Don't knock when we want to talk, just stand outside and he'll know to come out." Mitchell responded, surprised at how well he'd heard the man's faint voice.
Mitchell relaxed and flopped into one of the chairs. He felt vindicated but said nothing and avoided looking at Rosa. He was annoyed at her but at himself as well. He was wrong in jumping in like that but he didn't feel like it was the wrong choice. He watched the man walk back towards the only room in the entire motel that they didn't have eyes in.
She stood next to him, with him sitting in the chair they were almost eye level. She reached out towards him, he expected a soft touch and a light apology. Instead her grip was a vice. Tiny iron fingers pushed into the flesh of his shoulder.
"You bought us time, but you bought him time to think too." Her eyes searched for his, he avoided contact for a second but reluctantly met her gaze.
"We're in life and death territory now, no two ways about it. You know your roll," all of the fingers on her free right hand came together in straight lines and her thumb tucked in towards her palm and her hand looked like it could be used as a knife, she pointed her knife hand at his face, inches from the bridge of his nose, "I need you to operate within it. Do what I ask." She broke eye contact, looking around the room as if she would find other words on the walls. Her eyes found his again, "You know what, there is no ask anymore." Her grip tightened on his shoulder and he reflexively swallowed, "You will do what I tell you to do. We're on our own. Something big is going on, we're cut off here and I don't know what importance she has," she indicated towards the monitor bank with her freehand, "in any of this. She might have none. She might be the most important person on Earth. Regardless of anything else, you will do what I tell you too. Understood?" Her head bobbed up and down, insistent.
"I'm with you. I got it." He didn't feel like he had it. The world turned upside down just when this job had started to feel… not normal but there was a groove and he was in it. There was no groove anymore. He decided that he would just have to trust Rosa. She was his friend, she knew what she was doing. Right?
"Nike. Just do it. I'll just be doing it, whatever the it it is that you say. I'm with you." Mitchell wanted her to believe what he said as much as he wanted to believe it himself. An ever-present apprehension tickled at the back of his mind.
She released his shoulder. Christ that little woman had a grip. Mitchell felt sure it would bruise. She dropped into the seat next to him and pressed the heel of her palms into her closed eyes.
"I need to trust you." She told him, still covering her eyes.
"You can." Mitchell spoke as he leaned forward, he moved to place his hand on her knee but thought better of it. They had been flirty off and on during their time together but she had always shied away from casual touching, even in efforts to comfort one another.
He placed his hands on his own knees, sat back in his chair watching her. She moved her hands away from her eyes while keeping them pressed against her skin, sliding them over to her cheeks and down her face. She took a very deep breath as her hands moved down off of her face and dropped them in her lap. Her deep breath turned into a yawn, her eyes squeezed tightly, a bit of moist at the edges.
"Ok. Good." Her eyes had watered and she blinked and brushed it away.
"You'll to stay here, keep an eye on everything. I need to go and speak with him. First…" She stood up out of her chair. She walked towards the crates and began to read the invoice on the first one.
He stuffed down the impulse to talk. He held back his questions and suggestions. Instead of speaking he clenched his jaw tight and nodded. Her back was to him so she didn't see the nod. He'd have to say it out loud.
"I'll sit tight and keep an eye out and let you know if I see anything." It hurt him to say that. He had grown accustomed to listening to her and doing what he was told but this new situation had brought him almost back to square one with the obstinate behavior that had held him back most of his life. The trust he'd built up for her and for the HPI had always rested on thin ice, now that it was heating up, his old suspicious self was emerging.
You're better than that! He thought to himself. Follow her lead, she knows best right now! He imagined that he was shouting these phrases at himself. You're out of your depth and you might die if you don't do what she tells you. That thought brought him back down to earth.
Mitchell worked to get a handle on the situation. Weird alien creatures came to get an LTC runaway that was hiding out at his observation post. They had been stopped by an NFL lineman sized person and now that large killer wanted to talk to them. The HPI is in trouble. He and Rosa were on their own for God knows how long, maybe forever. They needed to talk to the man that was guarding the woman that they needed to get to safety. The scenario spun around in his mind.
"…these will help you stay frosty." Rosa finished saying, he saw her tossing something underhand towards him.
The green bottle looped slowly through the air between them and he caught it neatly.
"Nice catch." Rosa said sounding genuinely surprised with that compliment.
Mitchell examined the bottle, small and green with white writing on it. A bunch of 12 letter words that he couldn't figure out. He looked at her with the question on his face.
"Take one every six hours, you won't have to worry about not sleeping for a few days." She instructed, popping a two of them into her mouth and swallowing them dry. Taking twice the recommended dosage and swallowing them dry, Mitchell wondered if she'd been through stuff like this before.
She pocketed the bottle and began moving things around in another one of the crates, not waiting to see if he would take a pill.
"It's non habit forming. It's like Adderall. Kind of. It's perfectly fine. Better than falling asleep at a time like this at least." The last bit of what she'd said was the only convincing part. He placed a pill between his teeth and looked around the desk spotting a bottle of water.
Done swallowing the pill, Mitchell put the cap back on the water and made his way over to Rosa. She was pulling boxes out of the crate and setting them to the side. She was standing on one of the boxes, she had to in order to reach deep into the crate. As he approached she held out a box to him.
"For me?" He asked. The question injected with the fake joy of a receiving a surprise gift.
She smiled, "Yeah, Merry Christmas."
The box was hard plastic, black with white spray painted numbers on it. When he opened the case, it was exactly what he expected, a sleek black pistol.
"You shouldn't have!" His false excitement keeping the joke going. Mitchell hadn't used guns much. It had been years since he'd fired a friends shotgun. He hadn't fired a pistol since he was a teenager.
Rosa pulled a pistol from her own case, inspecting it. She knew exactly what she was doing.
She paused her inspection and looked at him, "Be careful." She indicated the pistol in his hand with her chin, " You'll shoot your eye out." He forced out a laugh.
She was saying the right words and the humorous intent was clear but Mitchell found the joke macabre in their situation. He was a tad offended, she was being so blasé about something that he wasn't comfortable with and that thing he wasn't comfortable with could kill.
"I'm not too good with these." His mouth filled with saliva and he swallowed it down. Probably a side effect of the pill he lied to himself.
"I mean, I get basically how to use it but I haven't really used it. One like it. You know what I mean. I'm not a big gun guy. It's been forever."
"Hopefully you won't have to. Just incase, lets go over the basics." She clipped a holster onto the waist of her pants and pushed the pistol into it. She pulled two extra magazines out of the box and put them into her back pocket.
Taking the gun out of his hands, she showed him how to work the slide, how to put the safety on and take the safety off. In about 5 minutes he felt confident that he could work the pistol and not shoot himself in the foot.
She handed the pistol back to him and had him go through all of the different actions that she'd shown him.
"We don't have time to do all of this the right way so listen closely. When you aim, you want to focus on the top edge of the front sight, that's where the bullet will hit. You want it perfectly in the middle of your rear sight, an equal amount of light showing on either side of it. You want the top edge of the front sight and top edge of the back sight to be level. When you're going to fire, pull the trigger. Not slowly but don't jerk it either. Don't anticipate the recoil or be afraid of it. Aim center mass. You're not going to be shooting bottles out of the air if you end up having to shoot. I want you aiming dead center, the biggest part of whatever you're trying to hit. Got all that?" She asked.
He was surprised realize that he felt like he did. He repeated the instructions back to her as he aimed the pistol at a near by crate, following the instructions as recited them. This, he was sure, had to be the pill. He could feel his heart thumping steadily in his chest.
"Great. You did great." Her eyes were wide and she smiled.
"The last thing. Treat Never Keep Keep." She paused as if expecting a question before continuing. "Treat every weapon as if it is loaded. Never point your weapon at anything you don't intend to shoot. Keep your weapon on safe until you're ready to fire. Keep your finger straight and off the trigger until you intend to fire."
"Treat never keep keep." He repeated, "Yeah, makes sense. Keep it on safe and don't point it at anything I'm not gonna shoot." Mitchell hoped he sounded confident.
"Close enough, keep your finger off the trigger too. People walking around holding these like they're nerf guns is probably the leading cause of accidental discharges." She was in full on teacher mode, talking slowly and clearly, checking to see if it looked like he was absorbing what she had to tell him.
"Finger off the trigger. Absolutely." He said, assuring Rosa that he heard and understood her.
"Hopefully I'll never have to even pull it from the holster." As he said it he worked to put the pistol into the holster, successfully getting it to click into place after his second try. It wasn't until his third try that he was able to get the holster to properly latch onto his belt. He reached into the case and grabbed out a few magazines, looking around himself before deciding to put both into his front left pants pocket. They bulged awkwardly and he moved one of them to his front right pocket.
She had been staring at him throughout his entire struggle.
"Hopefully." She muttered. He had a second of feeling hurt before she smiled and slapped him reassuringly on the arm.
"You'll be fine." Rosa said.
She moved to another crate without a word. Whether she meant it or not, he took heart in her encouragement. She found what she was looking for quickly, a small black box with small white lettering on it. Mitchell was impressed by the consistent packaging for all of their equipment down here.
Opening the case Rosa pulled out a small peach colored ball and handed it to him. It wasn't a ball he realized, it was an ear piece. So small he was worried that it might get stuck in his ear.
"Two-way coms. They're paired, we've got a few miles of distance." She popped it into her ear and he followed suit.
"Touch it to turn it on, touch it again to turn it off. That's all there is to it." Rosa explained.
He touched it and heard beep.
"No muting? We can just hear everything the other person is doing?" Mitchell asked. He heard his own voice in his echo quietly, each word he spoke was repeated in his ear a millisecond later.
"No muting. Just off and on. While you're down here and I'm out there, I only want updates on what is happening in the area. Don't ask me questions, I don't want him to know you're in my ear. Just listen and let me know if you see anything." She looked at him expectantly.
"Observe and report. If there's one thing in the world I'm comfortable with right now, that's it." He said it and he meant it.
"Good." Her face was a little slack, she bobbed her head as she spoke. "We've given him to much time to think up there, I need to get out there. Plant yourself at the creep station, I'm heading up." As she walked through the door, her head continued bobbing.
Status de energia semanal
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