Viper was ahead, limping massively and grimacing every time his right leg touched the ground. Scorpio was behind him with Hacker slung over her shoulder, her arms wrapped around Hacker's bandaged back. There was no way that he was waking during the journey due to the earlier attack, so they had no doubt that Hacker wouldn't be panicked when he woke to find that they had put his backpack over his head to protect it from the flowers.
They made steady albeit slow progress. In all in had taken Scorpio about two hours to run back to the group. And even with Viper almost at a slow jog, even with his damaged leg, it was taking them a lot longer.
They had been travelling for hours when they saw the streak of light. Viper turned back to Scorpio who nodded and pointed towards the light, they were almost there.
As they got closer and closer to the beam of light it got fainter and fainter and soon enough it had disappeared from view, it was beginning to be too light and the sun was rising. They kept going in the direction they last saw it. They must have been close when the first tip of the sun arched over the horizon.
“Faster Viper!” Scorpio yelled, almost breaking into a lopsided sprint herself.
Where the hell was it? Scorpio looked around desperately, the rays of the sun were started to flood across the land. And then, a gun shot. Less than fifty metres dead in front of them. Scorpio ran, with Hacker bouncing on her shoulder, towards the noise, Viper in tow. Another gun shot, directly ahead of them. Scorpio's head started to pound, the sound of the gun shot reverberating around her skull.
“Keep going!” Viper shouted to her, and then coughed violently.
Suddenly Scorpio burst through the flowers onto the metal doors, she found the torch had been dug into the ground around the doors and that one of them was open, the old man was waiting for them down the stairs, he nodded for Scorpio to get inside. She took Hacker off her shoulder and turned, Viper was nowhere to be seen, “Viper!”
Scorpio got down on her knees and looked through the stems of the flowers, Viper lay on the floor, motionless his face had turned a nasty blue in colour. Her head pounded, she scurried forwards and stuck her arm through the stems of the flowers. She reached, and reached and touched Viper's shoulder. She grabbed it and heaved it towards her, Viper's body was dragged through the stems of the flowers to the door.
Scorpio pulled and pulled, her lungs on fire. She gave one last tug, moving backwards as she did so and fell into the underground bunker, rolling down the stairs for the second time in two days. The old man stepped over them and slammed the outer doors shut, they had made it.
The man stood over Viper, and looked down at him.
“Blue one,” he said and hobbled off into the main room. Scorpio stood up and went over to where Viper was lying, then finding her backpack she took out her water bottle and unscrewed the top. The old man reappeared, “don't do that.”
“He needs help,” she pointed to Viper's shrivelled, blue face, “don't worry we did this last time and it worked.”
But the old man shook his head, “if you did that then you did it after hours. That won't work this soon, you will have to wait.” Then he motioned for her to follow him, “come.”
She made after the old man, who turned, “you still have that book I gave you, don't you?”
Scorpio nodded, and went to retrieve it. She returned and put it down on the table, the old man was already in his seat, flipping the page to his newspaper. “Damn inflation,” he whispered under his breath, “costing me a fortune.” He looked up, “ah yes, page... oh, what was it... twenty something.”
