Matters Of Time and Fate

Chapter 22

Over the bathroom sink, Zhanna washed some dirt off her hand and watched as it disappeared down the drain. She and Soldier had spent some time attempting to relocate the raccoons into a small shelter, and while they had succeeded, it had not been clean work in the least. As she managed to dry off her hand on a nearby towel, Lar-Nah entered the bathroom, kneeling down to open one of the bottom cabinets.

"What you looking for, old lady?' Zhanna wanted to know, turning back to the mirror to fix her hair.

"I spilled some water on the floor," Lar-Nah responded, ignoring the title Zhanna had graciously bestowed upon her. "I'm going to dry it off before I slip in it."

"Oh. That is fine." Zhanna nodded, and she undid the bandage around the stump of her other wrist to replace it with a new one.

Zhanna proceeded to apply the clean bandage to her wrist while Lar-Nah returned to her room. Once the bandage was on, she secured it with a clip and held it up to the light, pursing her lips together. Engineer had promised to make her a robotic hand, but he hadn't said when he was going to get to work on doing that. She considered asking him about it, but everyone was so on edge lately that it did not seem –

From the room across the hall came a crash, and then an outraged shout. Zhanna froze, peeking through the doorway. "Old lady?" she called, but Lar-Nah did not answer.

Zhanna dashed into the bedroom, arriving just in time to see a frightening sight: a weird man with bug-like eyes had broken into the room. He'd come in through the ripped window screen, and he was currently standing over Lar-Nah, holding a gun to her head. Lar-Nah crouched on the floor, holding her arms up in a defensive position.

"Yell one more goddamn time and I'll blow your brains out, you damn hag!" the man said to Lar-Nah. He clearly hadn't noticed Zhanna's presence.

In an instant, Zhanna sprang into action, leaping across the room and punching the man square in the jaw. He fell to the floor with a yell, the gun falling out of his hand. Zhanna kicked it further away, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and lifting him up.

"Who are you!?" she demanded to know, getting right in his face. "Why you here!?"

The man only stared blankly at her, before reaching down and pressing a button on his belt. Zhanna noticed, and she growled, flinging him across the room. He slammed against the nightstand, knocking it over and shattering the bedside lamp on the floor.

"What was noise!?" Heavy's voice boomed from downstairs, and within moments, he came rushing up the stairs and into the room. Behind him came Pyro and Engineer, and right away, they noticed the intruder.

Heavy helped Zhanna to restrain the man, and Engineer took it upon himself to confront him. "Did Sage send you!?" Engie demanded, looking the man up and down. He then noticed the button on his belt, squinting at it. "The hell is that...?"

"He press that button!" Zhanna explained. "Is it bomb!?"

Despite the man's thrashing and protests, Engineer yanked the belt off of him, getting a good look at it. "It's a tracking device!" he realized. "That button must signal someone!" he glared back at the man. "All right, bug-eyes: who'd you call just now?"

The man glared back, before answering, "The name's Grudge. And why don't you just wait and see, old man?"

A grappling hook zipped over the window sill and through the cut screen, lodging itself into the wall. Pyro dashed to the window just in time to see yet another man, this one muscular but short, ascending a rope towards the house. Pyro swiftly pulled the hook and tossed it back, forcing the man to fall to the ground with a shout.