Inciting Events

Chapter 19

Cyrus Anders

Cyrus looked over at Badger when he noticed the younger boy very noticeably clutching onto Magnus’s arm in fear of their situation. He had noticed the two of them had become substantially close over the course of their working together as a team. Magnus had seemed to become accustomed to trying his hardest to protect the two younger ones, no matter how difficult they made it.

Cyrus looked over at the clock that read 12:45 AM, knowing that everyone was supposed to arrive at the headquarters to begin the attack at 1:00 AM. Meaning that they could be arriving any minute now.

He and his friends all had special blasters that he had made specifically for them at their sides and loose clothing to help with fighting. He still felt unsure about his part in what was happening, even though he wasn’t even supposed to do a whole lot of actual fighting. His actual job was to act as a medic and repair man. If someone got injured, he would help them. But if someone’s weapon or other things broke, he was supposed to quickly and swiftly repair them for the person.

The world seemed to slow down as the air stilled and their nerves grew. All of them were wondering when they would arrive. All of them hoped that by the end of this, they would still be alive together to see another day. The three of them looked up at each other, an almost mutual bond rushing through them. In that one moment, looking in each other’s eyes, there was calm. The calm before a storm.

The sound reverberated through the walls as soon as they all heard the storm of heroes coming into the building and the fighting began. They all nodded at each other, with the knowledge that they too had to go out there and join the fight. Magnus was the first one to stand and walk to the door.

Badger and Cyrus were quick to follow their older counterpart and tried to calm themselves as he opened up the door and slipped out. Both of them followed suit in an orderly fashion, trying to keep their minds off of what was happening in front of them when they did reach the outside.

Not many were yet on the high floor that his lab was on, but there were still red lights going off and sirens in the air. Guards and other people who worked for Tempest were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Everything was just starting, and the pressure was already high.

Magnus immediately ran to the stairs to get down to the lower floors and help fight down there. He would’ve taken the elevator, but there was no guarantee that the power would continue to work well enough to get him down there. Badger said that he wanted to stay up there and wait for other people to join him. Cyrus agreed that was a safer option for him but knew that he needed to go down to the lower floors with Magnus. That was where he was really needed after all.

So, he rushed to the stairwell and ran as fast as he possibly could after his friend, taking like five steps at a time. He really liked being tall sometimes. He zoomed into the third floor just after his companion and was surprised to see the fighting there. It was expected for the heroes to cover ground quickly once they were in the building, but he certainly hadn’t expected this quickly.

Still, this was only the third floor of maybe eighty. There was still a lot of work to get done. He steadily set out to do that work. He wasn’t the best at being a medic. He wasn’t super into anatomy when he was in school, but he did know a fair amount. His mother was a scientist, just like him, but she was also a doctor and he and all of his siblings had been raised with a very knowledge of basic health and how to treat a plethora of injuries. Especially with how often they seemed to get hurt.

He tried to take his mind off the screaming and blood by focusing on the task at hand. He tried to envision that he was back at home helping one of his sisters out with a scraped knee after they fell off their bike again. His hands still shook a bit no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that that was the situation that he was in. He took many deep breaths, and after a minute, everything was good to go.

When the person stood back up, Cyrus told them that they could fight, but if they needed a break to lay down and play dead, so no one would bother them. They nodded, albeit a bit annoyedly, they didn’t think they would ever need to do that. Though, he knew they would grow tired quickly.

He followed the steady process many times of finding someone who had been hurt, patching them up, telling them how to take a break if needed, get scowled at for daring to suggest they might not be able to handle everything, move on to the next person, repeat. It became a bit tedious, and he was surprised how few people asked for weapons repairs from him. But he thought he saw some other people from Helt doing that, so they were probably assigned to that job.

He heard someone call out for a medic and turned around to see a particularly gruesome scene. Someone’s leg had been broken, and the bone was sticking out to make a ball-like shape in the flesh. He swallowed his vomit and went over there to just try to begin on what to do with something like that.

It took him at least twenty minutes to get the person's leg wrapped correctly, but he still wasn’t sure what else to do with it. He gave them some water and as many pain killers as he could without it being lethal and told them to lay there and try to take deep breaths. The person asked him to stay with him, and that was the first time that he really looked at the face of the person he was helping.

It was a little boy, maybe ten at most, and Cyrus didn’t have a single clue as to how the hell he was allowed into the operation. He was far too young, and his cheeks were stained with tears as the pain got to him. He clung on to Cyrus’s hand, squeezing for dear life while his chest moved randomly.

He felt so bad because he knew he couldn’t stay with the little boy. There were other people who also needed help and who were also fighting. Despite his responsibilities, he couldn’t just leave him alone. So he pulled over another person he had helped and told to stay down because of their injuries. They weren’t as bad as the boy, but they were still banged up. Cyrus set the two together.

“Hey bud, could you tell me your name?” Cyrus spoke in a soft voice so as not to spook him.

“Julian, but a lot of people just call me Juli.” He spoke in an accent that wasn’t identifiable through his tears.

“Okay Juli. Well, this amazing lady over here is gonna stay with you. You just stay here, and I’ll be back for you, okay? I’m Cyrus.” He continued his soft voice and gave the kid’s hand another squeeze before painstakingly walking away. It didn’t matter how much he wanted to stay with him.

He began to run around, attempting to help people as much and as quickly as possible. At this point, he really did start to get around to a lot of people, and as the fighting escalated into the higher floors, he followed. Making sure that everyone on one of the staircases was okay was a bigger task than you might expect it to be. Still, he moved on to the next floor afterward.

There still wasn’t much happening here, but he quickly spotted his friend, Brynleigh. He wanted to approach her to see how the battle was going on her end, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone putting a blaster to her back. Cyrus wasn’t sure why he did it, but he yelled at her to move and dove onto her.

Then, laying on the floor, he looked up to see the man hitting the side of it and continually trying to hit them, but it wasn’t working. He smiled as he realized that he must’ve grabbed one of the ones that he had disabled in the weapons room. He reached to his belt and brought out his own, working, blaster, and hit the man. The two of them looked at each other as he fell and cursed him.

Cyrus felt Brynleigh move under her and quickly got off of her, realizing that she was most likely very uncomfortable. He helped her get up and just nodded when she thanked him. He finally asked her the question that he had meant and that he probably should before the attack on this floor became more serious.

“How is everything going, with the fighting and stuff, I mean.” He only realized at this moment of rest that he was breathless.

“We’re making ground quickly. What is this, the thirtieth floor?” Cyrus nodded. “Right, well, it’s safe to say that we’re doing all we can.” Cyrus nodded again, thankful at the good news.

The two of them set back off to work, but they both agreed to stay at least within twenty feet of each other, just for safety reasons. But Brynleigh went back to kicking people's asses and Cyrus went back to trying to make sure no one died, or at least most people.

(Have a great day! Sorry for another double post, I'm just really trying to finish this book, and I've been on a bit of a writing kick, lol. Bye!)