"Absolutely," said Oliver, and Hugo nodded emphatically.
"Right," Fergus said. "Who knows how to drive a tank?"
Mark
I sat in that bloody chair while the weak light that filtered in through the dirty window set high up in the wall disappeared, and was replaced by a heavy darkness. It's difficult to describe exactly how I felt then. Tired. Mildly enraged. Strangely intrigued. Still no guilt, but who needs that kind of crap anyway, especially when you're sitting alone in a dark room with your hands nailed to a chair.
The pain in my hands had disappeared, and I could feel the nails dissolving, but I knew it would be a while before they crumbled like their predecessors had. An hour maybe? I had no way of checking the time, and not much else to do, so I closed my eyes, and concentrated on my heartbeat again. There was no peace to be found there this time, so I slowly pushed outwards, in a gently widening spiral, until I felt the faint beat of another. I focused on the current, and reached out further and further, straining at the leash of my physical body that held me back in that room, in that chair. I had no way of knowing who that individual was, but chances were that he was a part of Anne's little gang and therefore was pretty much guaranteed to be up to no good. I prodded the glittering current that flowed through the heart muscle, and it skipped a couple of beats. I grinned in the dark. Should I, shouldn't I. Hmmm.
It took me a few moments of intense deliberation to decide I probably should. One less minion meant a better chance for me to escape. People make choices throughout their lives, and whoever this person was, they had made the choice to align themselves with Anne and her criminal gang. People should expect choices like that particular one to end in tears.
I stopped his heart, and waited to hear his body fall to the ground. He stayed upright longer than I expected, and when he fell there was an almighty crash, as if he'd dragged the TV over, or something like that. The crash was followed by hurried footsteps, and then loud voices. The door to my room burst open a few seconds later, and a click of a switch flooded the room with glaring light.
Snake Eyes stood in the doorway, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
"You little bastard!" he spat at me. I grinned at him and flicked my eyebrows upwards in a deliberately provocative way. Man, did that make him mad. He looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel. He stepped forward into the room, suddenly overcome by his rage. I hadn't figured him to be strong on impulse control anyway, but he looked like he'd seriously lost it and just wanted to kill me if it was the last thing he did. I was about to seek out his heartbeat and stop him when Anne's voice from behind him suddenly halted his progress.