“I figured that it would feel better that way. As long as your hands are still healing,” she explained. Wolverine was stretching his fingers, squeezing them in to fists and curling them open. She had tied several rolls of gauze around his both palms, wrists and forearms. She had bandaged them tightly to lower the swelling. Wolverine nodded and twisted his wrists experimentally.
“It is better. Good idea to leave the knuckles bare. Won’t shred the bandages if I need my claws.”
“I don’t want you to use them anymore. Not before you’re healing properly.”
“You a doctor?” Wolverine asked, his left eyebrow quirked in a questioning manner.
“Fine! Do as you like! I was just thinking that it would be pretty stupid from you to bleed to death when we’re this close of getting out!”
“What ever… Lets get going. We have already wasted enough time. You know, these partly chopped and chewed up schmucks we keep running in to aren’t our only problem. They have probably sent more teams after us already,” Wolverine said.
She hadn’t even thought about it. She had been just happy that they had gotten rid of the first two teams. Of course they would send in more people. As many as it took to capture them. Or capture Wolverine. They hadn’t seemed to be all that interested about her. She hurried after him when he opened the door and strode out.
It didn’t take them long to find a working elevator that would take them all the way down to janitorial level. And if the map were correct, the air ventilation shaft wouldn’t be far from the elevator. Couple of hundred meter down the corridor, and they’d be standing right next to it.
“Here goes nothing…” Wolverine grunted, punching the button that closed the car and started their descent. Lights of the elevator flickered on briefly and it shuddered as if it was going to stop at any given second. Wouldn’t it be a joke of the century? To get trapped in to an elevator of all the possible cool demises this place had to offer?
“Don’t worry. If this thing breaks down, it’ll probably just fall all the way down. You might break a few bones if that happens, but I’ll fix you up. Have to keep you mobile,” Wolverine promised as if he had read her mind. She didn’t know which should have worried her the most. The easy tone of his voice when he promised to touch her to heal her broken bones, or the feel of calm acceptance that washed over her. Of course he’d let her drain him if something happened.
Nothing happened, but as they were approaching their destination Wolverine raised his head and took a whiff, his nostrils flaring. He grabbed her shoulders and moved her in front of him.
“Turn your skin on when the door opens. There’s at least three alive one waiting for us. You take care of them. If there’s any dead ones, I’ll take those.”
“Aren’t you the gentleman…” She muttered. She heard Wolverine snorting behind her and he let go of her shoulders, backing away few steps.
“Gentleman? Hardly. Just calculating the odds…”
“Calculating? And what’s the end result of your calculations?”
“Possibility to get out of here alive for you about 100 percent. Give or take few notches.”
“What about you?” She asked, but he didn’t have the time to answer when the car stopped and the doors slid open, and the elevator was suddenly packed to the brim with growling and drooling people who were tearing in to her, tearing in to him and tearing in to each other in their haste and yearning for fresh meat.
“Change of plans! This is where you get out!” She heard Wolverine growling. He shoved something down in to her jeans, then she felt hands on her upper back and she got pushed out of the elevator just before the doors closed and the car started to rise again.
She attacked against the cool metal doors, pounding them with her fists until her knuckles bled.
“What about you!” Her scream echoed in the empty and dimly lit corridor. She slid on the floor and felt something hard under her buttocks. Reached in to her tight jeans and pulled out the map, keycard and the notebook with codes written on it. She unfolded the map with shaking fingers and smoothed it on the floor. The way out was drawn on to it with black marker. Clear, dark line stretching along the corridor, turning behind one corner, and there it would be. Smack dab at the middle of the facility’s east wall. Little over one meter wide, five hundred meter high shaft. Just crawl through it, and she’d be free.
She folded the map fast when she heard the elevator starting again. Car was returning. But who was in it? Wolverine? The blood crazed pack of doctors? Or yet another clean-up crew armed to teeth, ready to wipe her from existence?
She backed from the door, pushing the map, notebook and the keycard in to her jeans again. Ready to run, but still waiting. If luck were on her side, it’d be wolverine coming through that door. If it wasn’t, it was time to scream and run.
The elevator stopped, and it felt like eternity, just to stand there and wait for the door to open. When it slid open with a soft ping she let out the breath she had been holding and hurled forward, pounding her fists against wall of solid muscle.
“You bastard! You fucking bastard! Don’t ever… Never pull a stunt like that again! You hear me? Huh?” Wolverine growled and grasped her wrists, shoving her away from him and stepped out of the elevator just before the doors closed and it started to rise again. He unsheathed claws from his right hand and plunged them through the control panel next to the elevator, taking it out of commission for good.
“Took those bastards to the first level. Thought the clean-up crew up there could use some company…” He sheathed his claws and flicked off droplets of blood that clung to his knuckles. He was bruised and bleeding from small gashes and bite marks, but he looked more pissed off than really hurt.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Like what?”
“Well, I don’t know… Wait for me?” She huffed.
“And why the fuck would I have done that? I didn’t know if I was coming back.”
He started walking down the corridor, and for a moment she could just stare after him, completely flabbergasted. He hadn’t known if he was coming back?
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