“Open it,” I mouth again.
He fumbles with it, making me realize he doesn’t even know how to open it.
“I think they’re in here,” the man outside the door says.
“That’s really fucking bad if they are,” the woman grumbles. “I’m not going up against Ender alone. Fuck that shit. You watch the door and I’ll get the others.”
“I’m not fucking watching the door. You watch the door.”
Ender finally pulls the magazine free. I try to mime breaking it and he’s as lost as ever. I’m pretty sure he’s tempted to just throw the whole thing at me and call it a day for fucking up his life.
“Break it,” I whisper.
He snaps the magazine in half, and I decide that I really should have been more specific.
“A single cartridge.”
He pulls a round out and I nod vigorously as he finds a narrow metal rod to puncture it. I wave him over and carefully take it before slowly pouring what they use to make the bullet lethal into the vial. Simple as that.
“I fucking heard someone. I heard them,” the man outside says as I decide that at this point, I need to just make this quickly and stop caring about what noise I’m making. I rush past Ender and set the vial down on the counter.
“What the fuck are we doing in here?” Ender snarls. “They’re going to kill us.”
“You’re nearly already dead. I told you, we’re keeping you alive,” I say as I start opening every drawer I can until I find a needle. I draw up the liquid from the vial and look over at Ender.
“You’re going to inject me with the shit that nearly killed me? If you want to fucking kill me, chop my head off.”
“I know it sounds really weird. It’s lethal alone but mixed like this, the components work with each other. Trust me. It’s that you can’t handle one of the components without the others.”
“Have you ever tried this before?” he asks.
“Well… not… straight out of a round, but it’ll work,” I assure him.
“Absolutely not.”
I rush him and he pushes me away. Even half dead, he’s unbelievably strong and I’m immediately shoved back. “I’m wasting precious time. Trust me.”
“I don’t trust anything about this,” he says, but when I come at him again he doesn’t move. It strangely makes me feel good that even if he acts like he doesn’t, he really does trust me. I stab him right in the heart with it before pressing the plunger.
He jerks back as I toss the needle so I can concentrate on my next set of plans. I hear multiple people running down the hallway while I turn the burner on.
“It fucking burns,” Ender hisses.
I send him a reassuring smile. “It’s fine.”
“Fucking hell, this feels worse than what I was shot with.”
“You’re fine.”
“I sure don’t feel fine.”
“You’re very much fine.”
I can hear them outside the door and realize that there are far too many of them. I bet there are at least fifteen or twenty.
In a low voice, I tell Ender, “When that door opens, I need you to run. That’s all we’re going to do. We’re going to run, okay? Don’t fight them. Don’t hesitate. If you turn right, there’s a window there. Get through it. Got it? Say you got it.”
“I’m fucking dying over here, and you think I have the energy to run?”
