Rosemary shook her head. “Dear, I honestly don't know if I could ever shoot another human being.”
“Even if they're trying to shoot you?” Emily asked.
They reached the ground floor and continued down to the basement level. There were no windows here, no viewing panels in the doors, and the stairwell was dark and functional. Jack took a small torch from his rucksack and lit their way.
“Something has to set us apart from them,” the woman said. And though Jack was still angry with her, his respect for her doubled.
The hotel's basement corridor was illuminated by a few narrow, dirty windows at high level. They looked out past iron railings at the street before the hotel. Something was burning out there, and Jack thought it was one of the Choppers’ trucks.
“What the hell are those two Superiors doing?” he asked. “How can they take on an army?”
“I doubt there were just two,” Rosemary said. “And they have such powers, Jack! I know of a fire starter, a woman who can confuse senses so that she's almost invisible, and someone who can change the colour of things.”
The sounds of fighting had ceased for now, but the air was heavy inside the hotel, as though people with death on their minds still stalked its corridors and searched its empty rooms.
“I hope Sparky and Jenna are okay,” Emily said, voicing a fear which Jack had been harbouring since seeing them exit the stairwell. Jenna had been wounded, and he hoped that Sparky would be sensible; no heroics, and no revenge for his dead brother. Not yet.
“They'll be fine,” he said.
“And Lucy-Anne,” Emily added, but Jack could think of no easy way to respond to that.
“We should leave,” Rosemary said. She was gasping for breath, but looked like she would never give up. “If your friends made it down this far, they'll be waiting for us behind the hotel.”
The basement was warren of store rooms, cupboards and corridors ending at closed doors. The air was grimy and grey. Emily pulled a penlight from her rucksack and it complimented Jack's torch, giving them enough light to find their way to a set of doors to the outside.
“Wait,” Jack whispered. He held out his hands for the gun.
“Jack…” Emily said.
“Dear…”
“I'd rather shoot them and be damned, than be dead and morally superior,” he said.
Rosemary handed him the weapon. He'd never fired a gun, but he knew the basics. He checked that the safety was off and held it in both hands, finger resting across the trigger and guard. It made him feel safer. It made him think he could do something to protect Emily, if he really had to.
He remembered Gordon's head flipping back as the bullets took his face apart.
He thought of the soldier he'd just seen shot, the blood and other stuff splashing from her shattered skull.
Slowly, he nudged the door. It was unlocked. It creaked open into the courtyard he'd seen from the hotel room. They could be hiding anywhere, he thought. Ready to take us to Miller, just me and Emily. The fact that the Chopper had said he wanted at least one of them alive did not make him feel the slightest bit safer.
He listened for Lucy-Anne; crying, shouting, screaming. She was not there.
They heard more shooting. It seemed to come from the front of the hotel, the shots echoing from abandoned buildings and giving them voice for the first time in years. There were shouts, yet more gunfire, and then a heavy whump as something exploded.
“Jack!” Sparky said. He appeared from behind one of the cars, and Jack almost did not recognise him. His denim jacket was darkened with blood, his hands red with it, and the look on his face was that of a child. I'm scared, it said. None of this is happening…none of this is real…take me home…
“Sparky! Where's…?” But Sparky had already turned and looked down behind the car.
“Oh, shit,” Jack said. He ran across the courtyard, nursing the gun across his chest as he went.