ELBINA 3

Chapter 18

"I knew you'd get in the way." I tense hearing him, his glare solely focused on Lucas behind me.
He has his gun pulled out in front of him, I pushed Lucas behind me. He tries switching us but I trap him there, knowing that if he stays behind me... There was less of a chance of him being shot, I'd rather it be me.
I force us backwards, feeling Lucas' quick breaths on the back of my neck. His hands tighten against my arms that hold him in place the more that Nero steps in. It's weird seeing him like this. His sleeves pushed up to his elbows so I can see the veins in his arms popping out from the skin at the sheer pressure he has on the gun.
"What can I say, I try." Lucas quips backs, and I nudge him hoping he gets the message to shut the hell up.
"I can't believe Gerald's got to you too." I freeze,
"Don't pull that shit Nero, I saw you kill Harris. You shot him in the back of the head like it was nothing, if that doesn't show us how heartless you are then I don't know what does." His eyebrow raises, taking his eye off of Lucas for a moment before matching my stare. I'd been spoken to like this before, playing on my worries and fears. The smartest people are dangerous, and that's exactly what Nero is, smart.
"You mean the guy who let the man in? The man that tried to kill Elbina?" The feeling of Lucas pushing against my back intensifies my shock at the situation, the pure adrenaline coursing through him almost pushes me to the floor. 
"Stop lying! I know, we all know! So stop trying to manipulate her!" He was right, Nero was manipulating me. And by the way he reacts to my glare now, he knows that I don't buy him for a second more.
I can tell he's not sincere, I can see it as clear as day now. How did I not see it before?
"Why did you help me today if you're working for her?" I question him, his eyes harden in annoyance of being caught out in his lie. "You could have died, so why bother? Why not take me straight to her?"
What I wasn't expecting was the look of guilt, it's gone before it really forms but I still saw it.
"Just because this was also part of the plan, doesn't mean I wasn't completely on board with helping you today. I wanted to stop people being hurt by her, I want to stop her too!"
"Then why are you doing this!?" I shout, this time Lucas' arm circles around my waist to stop me from jumping across the room to punch Nero.
"You know what she's capable of, she's worse than Nathaniel ever was. It's because she's smarter. That makes her dangerous and inevitable." I hate that he brings up his name, I hate it. He knows that it brings flashbacks of that night, he knows that and yet he still brought it up.
And I also refuse to believe that Arden is inevitable, she's only human.
"She doesn't have to get her way, We can be the ones to put her in jail!"
"Let's be honest Elbina, you're a dead woman walking. At least this way, you get it over with."
Lucas jumps in, "Get it over with!? And I suppose the deal is that you live because you hand her over then?"
He doesn't say anything, a grind of his jaw goes before Lucas is pushing against my back as he spits back at him. "You weak motherfucker."
"Call me whatever the hell you'd like, but I'm the one with the gun here!" He said, his eyes meeting mine as he takes another step towards us.
I take one back, Lucas' arm secured tightly around my waist pulling me into his chest.
"Now Elbina. It's time. You can either come with me with a bullet in your leg or not. That's your choice." I sneer at him, sarcasm dripping from my tone.
"How gracious of you."
"Hurry up!" He snaps, "She's waiting for us."
"Where?" Lucas speaks up, an urgency to his voice. "Where is she waiting?"
Instead of responding back to Lucas, his stare remains locked on mine. A grimace of a smile, underneath it all. I know he doesn't really want to do this, he's been forced. Like he has no other option, or at least I hope that's the case. I didn't want to believe that he willingly wanted me to be tortured and killed by Arden.
"You'll just have to see."
"She's not going anywhere." His voice is hard like stone, it gives me goosebumps.
"That's not an option. She's going and you will too if you're really keen. I'm sure Arden would be just as elated that I brought you too." A smile gracing his lips, so I jump in myself. His head snapped back to me.
"Then what?" I'm met with a furrow of his eyebrows.
"What do you mean?"
This time, I raise my voice. "Then what do you do? The entire MI5 will be on the hunt for you. You'll be in hiding forever and that's even if you manage to keep off their radar. So what do you think is going to happen if you follow through with this?" I can see him mulling it over, rolling his eyes at first but the more I talk it through the more his nostrils flare. He doesn't like what I'm saying, that's for sure. "If you help, maybe then they'll be lenient."
But then he laughs, a loud choked laugh which he fails to conceal. "If there's anything I know about Gerald. It's that he isn't lenient with anyone, even if you're just trying to do the right thing."
I immediately know what he's talking about, "I know,"
He snaps at me, angry again. "I was only trying to save you! I didn't want to watch another innocent person die because he wanted to wait!"
"But now it's okay for me to die, is it? Now that it's your decision?" I point out, my own anger rising at the hypocrisy of it all.
"I don't have a choice now!" Now he's panicking, I can see it.
I manage to step forward this time, fighting my way out of Lucas' grip until I'm practically standing right in front of Nero's gun. It shakes in front of me, his eyes staring right into mine.
He doesn't want to do this, I can see it.
"Yes you do." I say.
"You said so yourself, that you didn't care how it ended. Just that you didn't want to feel like you do now forever. Believe me Elbina, everything you've done... it won't go away. Don't you want to feel better?" My head shakes, he was flawed but he didn't see it.
"Getting killed isn't going to make me feel better." I wrap a hand around the barrel of the gun, pressing it into my chest as I stare him out. My heart thumping madly in my chest knowing that any second he could lose it. "And will you feel better, Nero? Could you live with yourself knowing my death will be on you? I thought we were friends."
"We shared a common interest, that's all." He stutters out, I'd never seen Nero flustered. Which meant he really didn't believe what he was saying.
"And that was to stop innocent people being killed, wasn't it? So what do you think is going to happen when you give her what she wants? When you help let her go?" 
"We stopped it today."
"No we didn't. We prevented a lot of casualties, but we didn't stop her. It's still going to happen again so long as she's out there, and you know that." Please stop this, please backtrack Nero.
I'm counting on you to think logically like you always do.
But I don't get that, he's in too deep. Whatever she has over him is too strong and I feel it when he tries to flick the gun out of my hold.
He'd forgotten that he'd taught me, forgotten that I knew things I didn't before about protecting myself. So the minute he tries to take the gun out of my grip, I've already twisted it out of his hands and kicked him in the chest.
He stumbles back, a glare on his face as he launches himself at me.
I throw the gun behind me, it doesn't clatter to the ground so I know Lucas caught it. I use everything he taught me and it's easier than I thought it would be because his emotions are taking a toll on him. This wasn't him, this wasn't the Nero I'd come to know.
He was acting volatile, which only made his movements sloppy. It made it easy for me to block any punches aimed at me, and it was easy to throw him to the ground. The only thing he manages to do is grapple his legs around me, flipping us over so I'm below him. His fist collides with the flooring by my head as I duck it, lifting myself off the ground and clinging my body as close to his as possible. It allows me the chance to twist us back round again, his back slamming against the ground in a huff of air. My knuckles sting when it catches his hard cheekbone, a hot flush of blood reaching my hand as I go for another, each one hits quickly before he can stop me.
His hand suddenly reaches out, I grab it and twist it. His grunts of pain quick in response and I maneuver my position over him effortlessly so his arm is twisted behind his back and his cheek is pressed hard into the ground.
"You're signing a death sentence for the both of us Elbina!" His words broken up by grunts of pain as I put more pressure on him.
"Shut it, just be lucky she's the one dealing with you. I'd have no guilt about beating you till you can't see straight. Be thankful she has some mercy." I glance up at Lucas, the gun in his hand and pointing it right at Nero's head as a warning.
I tell Lucas to find something to tie Nero up with, he leaves reluctantly looking back at me just to make sure. "I'll be fine." I reassure him.
The moment he does leave, I can hear him rifling through the flat and I try to let the anger take charge instead of the uncomfortable feeling of betrayal in my gut.
"What happened?" Damn it, why can't I sound normal? Why can't I be emotionless right now?
"I saved you the same fate as Fallen." My hands tremble at the sound of his name slipping from his lips like nothing. "I think it was my turn to save myself for a change."
"If you'd told me, maybe we could have stopped her together and neither of us would be killed."
"Then you're naive, and I thought I taught you better than that."
"And I thought you cared about me. I thought we were friends." He pauses, a sigh on his lips. For a moment I think he's going to say that he did. That we did mean something to each other and that I had formed a friendship with him.
"Well you thought wrong." My jaw grinds, swallowing down a lump in my throat hearing it. Maybe he was too stubborn to say it or maybe he truly thought that, either way, it didn't make it easy to hear.
We sat there in silence, nothing left to say to each other. My disappointment in myself and him too much for me to even want to utter another word to him. Finally, Lucas comes back in with a large roll of duct tape in one hand. He drops down to his knees, hitting Nero in the face with all his weight.
Curse words spill from his lips but Lucas only smiles, helping me wrap his arm behind him as tightly as possible. Where we went from here, I don't know.
Once Nero is completely tied, Lucas drags him up and shoves him out of the bedroom door. Throwing him to the ground by the kitchen counter so his head smacks against it with a thud. Before I can stop him, he gets on his knees and brutally hits him across the face. Immediately blood falls from his nose, a split lip accompanying it. When I thought he was done, he goes again and again until Nero slumps back against the counter unconscious.
I step back away as Lucas stands up, running his knuckles along the front of his jumper and displacing the blood onto the material. My eyes meet him in shock, his shoulders shrugging.
"We need to figure out what we're doing, and I don't want him listening in." He says matter of factly. He leans down, checking his pockets and coming back with a phone.
A phone I'd never seen before and I watch him drop it on the top of the counter, before he's dragging Nero's limp body across the floor and to the wardrobe across the room.
Reluctantly, I go over and help. Readjusting his legs so he fits in within the space and allowing the doors to shut. Lucas grabs one of the metal coat hangers, bending it out of shape so he can twist it around the handles and secure it shut.
And now we're just staring at each other, my eyes turning to the phone on the counter and looking back at the doors.
"If I'd known, Lucas." He's giving me a grimace of a smile, nodding his head.
"Yeah, I know." He turns away, swiping the phone from the counter and unlocking it with ease. Clearly Nero had no worries about me finding it because there wasn't even a passcode, and I watched over his shoulder as he flitted through the messages.
There's maybe one or two, but there are dozens of outgoing phone calls to the same number. We didn't have to think for a second to know who that would be, made obvious by the message received this morning detailing the meeting point time set for today. There wasn't an address, just the time.
1330 hours
I glance at the time, 12:50pm.
We didn't have a lot of time till then. We didn't even know where it was, and I don't want to know what happens if we don't turn up.
A deep breath sounds from Lucas as he drops the phone onto the counter again, tilting his head down to mine.
"We need to think of a plan, and fast."