86. Seeing Red

Jude was frozen for a moment, heart beating a sickly, erratic drum in his chest. Everything was chaos around him; he no longer had the slightest clue as to what he should do. He made the choice that seemed logical, that sounded like Al's voice in his head, and ran for cover, throwing himself behind the hovercraft that they had driven there. He pressed his back against the vehicle, panting harshly, cold sweat sticking to his skin, before quickly peeking out from behind the car.

Susan was already down on the ground, a quickly growing pool of blood coalescing around her. The amount would have shocked him once, as would the lurid, bright color; too real, too warm, he remembers with a pang. Jude looked to his left, quickly picking out Charlie from among the mass of people in time to see an officer drag her down to the ground by her hair, a gun clutched in his hand. And then, quite suddenly, as though someone had reached into his heart and gently flipped a previously unknown switch there, he stopped thinking.

He pulled out the gun Charlie had given him; I won't use it, he remembered saying to Charlie once (their conversation seems so long ago now). Aiming at the officer was done unhesitatingly, and firing was so horrifyingly simple. He would feel sickened by this simplicity later, but at the moment he could find no room in his heart, in his thoughts that were rapidly filling up with an aching CharlieCharlieCharlieCharlie, to care for this brutal stranger. As soon as the officer went down, Jude started running, the world seemingly silent but for his harsh breaths and the slap of his feet against the ground. He reached Charlie as soon as she had gotten to her feet and liberated the dead officer of his gun. She looked wide-eyed at him for a moment, a cut dripping blood into her right eye, a split second in the wrangling confusion of the whole situation, and then her hand found his, sweaty and cold, tugging him away as another officer flicked a nullifier at Jude, sending the weapon whizzing past him.

Charlie lifted the gun hand and dispatched the man easily, before using her and Jude's interconnected hands to pull him away from the chaos and behind a flipped hovercraft. As soon as they were safely behind the car, as safe as they could be, Jude wanted to haul Charlie forward into his arms, wanted to push her away and tell her to stay, wanted her to be safe and nondescript and cowardly; the overwhelming desire for these things made him tremble. He felt, with a terrible lurch in his gut, as if he was staring at someone completely new and foreign, as if he had a second chance to save someone who he loved more than anything.