Cats and Mice

Foggy was forced to stop the car when he reached the barricades and the many men in uniforms protecting them. They were walking towards the car, and he didn’t like the way they were holding their guns. William was supposed to be their friend. Foggy decided to stop talking and let him handle the negotiations. He followed him out of the car, refrained from offering his help to stand in case William needed to show that he was alright, and stayed at a good distance from the weapons. 

“I need to talk to Marianne,” William told the first man standing in front of him. 

The man took his helmet off, revealing to Foggy that it was actually a woman, and shook her head. “She’s gonna kill you for even showing up here.”

“I wanted to go home, I swear,” he defended himself, “but that idiot didn’t follow my instructions.” He pointed at Foggy, who felt like being stabbed in the back. “Just put me to work.”

“You’re not going there.”

“Deb,” he insisted. 

“Try again.”

“Naomi ?”

“Nope.”

“Fuck you ?”

She sighed and turned her head to the comm on her shoulder. “Marianne, it’s Valerie,” she said, glaring at William. “Your lapdog and his new boyfriend are here, permission to shoot ?”

After a second, Marianne’s voice responded. “Let them through, I’ll do it myself.”

Valerie stepped aside. William walked through, but Foggy was now feeling much safer with her. He was even ready to go back to the car and wait there. The idea of a very angry woman whose entire set of buttons had been pushed waiting for him to show up had never been the way he’d imagined himself to die. 

“I think you chose a scared one,” Valerie laughed. 

William turned around and hurried back to Foggy. “Don’t show fear,” he whispered. “No one’s going to shoot you. Marianne wants Fleur and her father out just as much as we do, but she’s stuck with protocol. That’s what pissing her off,” he added. “Now follow me, I need you to cover for me while I raid the medics.”

“Why ?”

“Because you talk too much.”

William was already walking away. Foggy took a deep breath and ran after him, thanking Valerie for her help. He did his best ignoring the questioning looks around them as they were walking to the nearest ambulance. As William was taking everything he needed, Foggy tried to assess the amount of people on the docks. That was a lot. Too many for a simple hostage situation. Most of them were waiting, and it seemed like an entire team was walking around a building. 

As soon as William got out of the ambulance, a pile of pill bottles under his cast, Foggy asked about what everyone else was doing. William looked around, frowned, and didn’t reply. Instead, he followed the wires on the ground and led him to the command team that had opened a shipping container to set up everything they needed. 

A man immediately stood up and greeted William. “Now that’s a good excuse for not joining my team,” he laughed, looking at his arm. 

William didn’t laugh. “Yeah, nothing to do with the mortality rate of the collecting squads, uh ?”

The man shrugged and walked away, followed by four others. None of them gave a single look in Foggy’s direction. He thought that maybe it was for the best. 

Marianne was on the phone, and another woman was monitoring a few screens. Without asking for permission, William sat next to her and studied her screens, pulling them in his direction. “What are we dealing with ?”

Marianne snapped her fingers, hung up, and glared at him. “You’re dealing with being fired, that’s what.”

“Good,” he replied. “I’ll finally get the money and time to go on a vacation. Why are you not raiding the place ?”

She rolled her eyes at him and motioned the other woman to leave. She didn’t seem to mind and ran outside, only stopping to give Foggy a sorry smile. She hadn’t worked with them long enough to become a robot, he thought. 

“Bombs,” Marianne said. Foggy ran to join them, but there was nothing he understood on that screen. “We have a team taking care of it. The devices are simple, but there’s a lot of them all around.”

“He knew about Rose,” Foggy finally allowed himself to say. “He’s had her mother for a while now, and… wait. She’s not working with you, right ?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Marianne replied. 

“But she knows a few things about us,” William argued. “And if she told him about Fleur, he knows she’d have backup.”

“He’s insane,” she muttered. She looked at Foggy and sighed. “Why do you think he wants to keep us out ?”

He didn’t know what to say. No one had asked him for his opinion in a very long time. All he wanted to know was that his friends were safe. They weren’t. “I think he has everyone he needs,” he breathed out. “He doesn’t need you to ruin his plans.”

***

Matt stopped their progression underground when they reached the bottom of the stairs. The last ones, he thought. Dex was there, only two doors away from them. The hostages were much easier for him to hear. All were alive, but some in a critical state. They had to act fast. 

“Stay close to him,” he whispered to Jessica. He had no doubt that Rose already knew everything about him. “If he throws something at you, take cover.”

“What, he’s got grenades ?”

“Anything can become a bullet in his hands,” Rose explained. “And he doesn’t miss. Trained by the FBI, best physical scores 7 years in a row.”

“I see you’re a fan,” Jessica said with a smirk, but began to reconsider her decision to stay. 

They slowly got closer to the door. Rose couldn’t hear anything. She took a step forward. 

Something flew by her ear. She turned around to shoot it, but Matt pulled her out of the way before her finger touched the trigger. The projectile entered the wall in a loud bang, right where her head was a second before. 

She closed her eyes for a second, her heart pounding in her chest. That wasn’t what she’d been trained for. Poindexter had just missed her, but he’d also reminded her that she was the weakest person in that room. He’d already killed an entire team of her coworkers, and she’d be just another name on the list of his victims. 

“Thanks,” she whispered. 

Dex turned the lights on in the hallway. Rose took a deep breath, slowly allowed her heart to go back to normal, and moved forward. She didn’t have any of these people’s skills, but she knew the protocol. She pushed Matt’s hand away when he tried to get inside first. She was expecting Dex to shoot the first one to show up, but he didn’t. He simply stared at her for a few seconds, waiting for Jessica and Matt to come in, too. 

“It’s been a long time,” he said, comfortably sitting behind a desk. “How’s the shop going ?” Rose clenched her jaw and tightened her grip on the gun. She adjusted her aim and moved it to his face. He smiled and glanced at Matt. “You two had a long night,” he scoffed. “I’m not going to tire you even more.”

Jessica winced. “Creep.”

“I like to know what people are up to.”

“I feel like shooting your brains out,” Rose said. “Free the hostages, and I’ll let you walk out alive.”

“I am walking out of here alive,” he replied, leaving his seat. He raised his hands to his sides. “I’d like to surrender.”

Matt took a step forward. “Let them out.”

“No.” Dex looked away from Rose and arched a brow at him. “Is there anything you’d like to share ? A reason why you want them out so fast ?”

Rose glanced at Matt and frowned. Dex pointed at the screen, and she allowed him to turn it around. She froze. Her eyes ignored Karen, her mother, and even Vanessa. She immediately spotted her father, sitting against a wall by himself. The picture wasn’t clear, but she didn’t have to be a doctor to understand what was going on. He was sweating, shivering, fighting to keep his eyes open despite everyone next to him moving and apparently screaming. 

As she was staring at her father dying, she realized that, once again, Matt had lied to her. Her father wasn’t fine. He was barely alive, and she didn’t even know if getting him out would be enough to save him. 

Her hands were shaking when she looked to her right. “You said-”

“We’ll get them out,” Matt calmly stopped her. She wasn’t in any state to be holding a gun. She was barely breathing on her own, and her legs were about to give up. 

“Hey, maybe you should put the gun down,” Jessica whispered. 

“It shouldn’t be hard for you to get them out now,” Dex told Rose, nodding in Jessica’s direction. “You can force the door. I lost, and I’d still like to surrender.”

“Let them out,” she insisted. “Final warning.”

Everything moved too fast. He grabbed something from the table in front of him. Rose tried to shoot his hand, missed, ignored Matt shouting at her, and shot what Dex threw at her before it landed at her feet. 

***

“What was that ?” Eva shouted. 

Edward painfully opened his eyes. He rested his head against the wall, enjoying the feeling of the cold metal. “Gunshot,” he whispered. 

Karen rushed by his side and squeezed his hand. He’d rested enough, and she needed him to stay awake this time. “Now what ?” she asked. He took a deep breath, moaned when his lungs forced him to stop breathing. “There’s one last dose I can give you.”

“No,” he said. “Give it to her.”

Now aware that shots were being fired so close to her and her baby, Vanessa lost the little control she’d managed to gain over her breath. She wanted to leave, the pain was too much to handle, she had to get out. The contractions were always more painful, and she needed a doctor, not a woman chained to the wall. Karen left Edward and ran back to her, breathing through the pain and holding her hand, while Eva was keeping her hands on Vanessa’s stomach, desperately trying to time the contractions. 

As soon as it was over and the only sounds in the room were Vanessa trying to catch her breath and the constant whistle coming from Edward’s throat, Karen moved away and pressed her ear against the door. Things were moving, but the wall was too thick for her to hear anything more than that. 

What she heard however, was coming from the inside of the cell. She tried to block out Vanessa’s voice begging for a doctor and stepped to the left, keeping her ear close to the wall. If Matt and Rose were here, her friends were most likely there, too. They were cutting through the metal, and that was what she was hearing. She stopped where the noise was the loudest and ran her hands over the panel. She felt a crack on the metal. She took a pin out of her hair and used it to pull that little part of the panel up. 

Her eyes widened, her heart stopped for an instant. For a few seconds, she quietly stared at the plastic box in front of her, and the wires going in and out of it. Calmly, she walked back to the only person in the room who could’ve been able to help with that situation. She kneeled next to Edward, glad to see that he was still awake. 

“Hey,” she whispered, nudging at him. “I think there’s a bomb in here with us.”

He nodded, but didn’t show any sign of being surprised by the news. “Have they been activated ?”

Her eyes widened. “There’s more than one ?”

“At least two, from what I've seen when he was working around,” he replied. He coughed, pressing his arms on his chest. Panting, he pulled on Karen’s sleeve. “Help me, I need to take a look.”

***

Everything took a turn for the worst the second Rose had decided to use her gun. Dex jumped over his desk, Matt stood in his way and took the full force of the hit. He immediately got back up while Jessica was trying to immobilize Dex. 

It was going too fast for Rose. She was waiting for a clear shot, no matter where it ended in that man’s body, but they were all moving too much. Jessica grabbed Dex’s leg and slammed him onto his desk, breaking it on impact. On the floor, he grabbed Matt’s ankle and twisted it. He didn’t bother standing up and threw various projectiles at Jessica. Nails, screws, pieces of broken furniture, everything was denting the metal panel she was using to protect herself. 

His legs weren’t moving. Rose took a deep breath and waited for Matt to move away. That was her opening. She pulled the trigger. She let out a relieved breath when she noticed the blood on his knee. 

Something caught Matt’s attention. Dex groaned from the pain but barely stopped moving. Worse, he stood up and used Matt’s lack of attention to grab him by the neck. He violently pushed his face against the wall. He only let go when Jessica pulled him back and threw him to the other side of the room. 

Rose left her cover and rushed to check up on Matt. 

She fell on her knees with a painful scream. Her leg. Something was stuck in the back of her thigh. She crawled behind a wooden crate and winced at the sight of the screwdriver sticking out of her pants. Matt stopped by her side, said something that was surely important, but she was only closing her eyes to stop the pain. 

She’d never been like William, or even her father. She wasn’t able to breathe through the pain when her period cramps were getting too intense, and it had no reason to be any different now that there was a screwdriver inside her leg, stabbing her muscle. She couldn’t listen to anything anyone was saying, because she was in too much pain. 

Matt handed her the gun and jumped over the crate. He dodged a set of nails thrown his way and hit Dex in the face. Rose’s hands were shaking, but she held herself up and rested her arms on the crate’s lid, slowly trying to catch her breath. Dex threw a hammer at Jessica but took another hit behind the head. He fell. Before Matt could stop him for good, Jessica tore a pipe away from the wall. Rose shot him in the abdomen, missing his kidney only from an inch. He lost balance, and the pipe violently hitting his legs stuck him onto the ground. 

Instead of taking a moment to breathe and assess her current situation, Rose crawled towards the remains of Dex’s desk. The screen wasn’t in pristine condition, but it seemed to be in one piece. She gathered the wires and looked for somewhere to plug them back in. She dragged her leg to the wall, only thinking about her father. 

“Stop,” Matt said. Rose let go of the cables and Jessica finished securing a smaller pipe around their prisoner. Only Rose’s ragged breath was breaking the silence of the room. Matt walked closer to the cell’s door. He took his helmet off. “Bombs.”

“What ?” Rose shouted. She painfully stood up and joined him. Her ear was glued to the metal, but she couldn’t hear a thing. “How didn’t you notice that before ?”

“It wasn’t there before,” he replied, moving across the wall to locate all the explosives. 

Behind them, Dex was slowly recuperating. “Congratulations, Fleur. You shot the activator,” he added with a smile.

Rose’s legs gave up. She fell onto her knees before Matt could catch her. She hadn’t looked at the projectile. She knew it wasn’t going to hurt her. It was too slow. He threw it at her feet, but she’d shot it anyway. She wanted her father to get out, and he was now in a room filled with bombs. 

“You-”

Jessica used another part of the plumbing system and hit Dex’s face, this time knocking him out.

***

“Don’t listen to it,” Edward told Karen when another gunshot reached their ears. “To the left. Pull.”

The large panel gave up and dropped to the ground in a loud metallic sound. Eva threw them a questioning look, but keeping Vanessa calm was her priority. She knew that she’d have to start pushing very soon. She didn’t have the time to take the cell apart piece by piece. 

Karen helped Edward to the next panel. As they were following the wires hidden behind the metal, she noticed that his focus had changed. He wasn’t breathing the way he used to, and was instead using all of his energy studying their surroundings. 

“You were talking to someone earlier,” he whispered. “Can he hear us ?” Karen nodded. “Can he listen to me ?”

She held him by the waist and led him to their only exit. She helped him rest on the floor and started banging on the door. “Matt !” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “We need to talk to you.” She kneeled next to Edward and smiled. “Try.”

He snorted, turned away from her when his laugh turned into a cough, and took a second to spit out the blood. “Mr Murdock,” he calmly said, already resting his eyes. “Use any means necessary. Get my daughter out. I’m afraid there’s nothing to do for us anymore.”

***

Matt closed his fists and turned to Rose as she was ignoring the wound in her leg only to plug the surveillance system back in. Her father was talking about five sets of explosives. Matt had already listed six of them. The last one was coming from under the door. The sounds coming from it were different from the ones inside the cell. 

Their only hope of getting everyone out was passed out on the floor. That was the trap, Matt thought. He’d never help. They’d be forced to either leave their loved ones behind or watch them die. Someone would take care of telling Fisk about Vanessa and the baby. He’d win. 

As soon as she got a visual back, Rose stared at the screen. “What is he…” They had no sound, but she’d clearly noticed her father’s lips moving. Karen didn’t look good either. They’d put down most of the walls around them. She left the monitor and hurried to the door. One more time, she was unable to hear anything. She saw the look on Matt’s face and frowned. “What is he saying ?”

“You should go,” he calmly replied. “You, too,” he added, turning to Jessica. 

She checked that Dex was still out and joined them. “I’ve seen that movie once,” she scoffed. “Didn’t like the ending.”

Rose’s eyes kept going back and forth between the screen behind her and Matt. “He’s seen the bombs, right ?” He nodded and tried to tell her to leave again. “Shut up,” she commanded, trying to get the screen back to her. “I can’t see shit.” She looked at Jessica. “Did you have to break everything ?”

“I don’t know. Did you have to provoke him into a fight ?” She turned to Matt and rolled her eyes. “Come on, tell her what she wants to know before she shoots us, too.”

“What do you know about bombs ?” he asked Rose. 

“Enough,” she replied. “What did he say ?”

“Five with them inside, but I hear another one connected to the door,” he explained. “Something about too many and something about it not being fair. And he wants you to leave.”

“Well, that’s not happening.”

She stared at the screen, but nothing made sense. Of course her father’s mind wasn’t the most reliable at the time, but he was never saying things without a reason. She thought about calling William, but she’d left her phone upstairs and didn’t trust Matt and Jessica to keep the door open for her to come back. William would’ve understood what her father had said, because he was programmed to. He wouldn’t have shot anything, because he didn’t need a gun to be worth something. But he was outside, and she was stuck with 5 bombs and soon to be just as many hostages. 

“Oh, no,” she breathed out. 

Rose got back on her feet, hissing when the throbbing pain in her thigh made itself known again, and limped towards Dex. She kneeled in front of him and held her breath. In a swift motion, she drew the screwdriver out of her own thigh and plunged it into Dex’s. 

Jessica winced. “Oh, she’s insane now.”

Matt was about to agree with her but something else caught his attention. The same sound he’d heard when Rose had shot Dex’s knee. He hurried to join her and punched Dex in the jaw. “What’s inside you ?” he asked. 

Dex opened his eyes but didn’t reply. Matt wanted to hit him again, but Rose was faster this time. She didn’t think twice and entered her index finger into the bullet wound. Dex winced from the incomfort. He tried to move, but Matt kept him in place. 

“Hard,” Rose said. “Something’s coating the bone.”

“Metal,” Matt whispered. “I’ve never met that type before.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she replied. She turned to Dex and frowned. “You’re awake now. How do we get in ?”

He nodded in Jessica’s direction. “Ask her.”

“They never had a chance, did they ?” she kept asking. “5 bombs.”

“Soon to be 5 hostages.”

She hit his temple with the cannon of her gun. “Let me in.”

Jessica rolled her eyes and walked along the cell’s door, wondering why she had to be stuck with people who had so little care about their lives. Even more when Dex was right. She could have punched a hole in the metal. The hostages would’ve been out already. She would’ve done so, if she wasn’t certain that there was something the flower girl slash agent of an unknown agency wasn’t telling them. Something that was making her act nothing like the woman she’d met only a week before. 

Rose wasn’t ready to give up. She would never be able to convince Dex to let her take her father’s place, but she could get in. She was sure that they’d have a real shot at this if only he let her in. “Listen to me,” she said, holding his face in front of hers. “They’ll make you talk. You’ll tell them everything they want to know just for the pain to stop. And then they’ll cut you open to see what you’re made of. Do you hear me ?” He stared at her quietly. That was more than she was asking for. “Let them go, and I’ll tell them that you’ve been useful.”

“Right,” Jessica stopped her. “When you’re done threatening the psycho, you’ll come over here and check that,” she said, pointing at a small keyboard on the wall. She pressed a button. Vanessa’s screams filled the entire room, along with Eva’s encouragements. Jessica let go, and the screams stopped. “See ? You tell them how to turn the bombs off, and we’re good to go.”

Rose closed her eyes. She hadn’t heard her mother’s voice in 16 years. She opened her eyes and met Dex’s smile. He’d never let her in. “I can’t,” she breathed out. 

***

A man wearing a protective suit entered the shipping container and stood in front of Marianne. “Ma’am. We’re halfway done with the explosives, but we haven’t found any charges so far.”

Foggy tilted his head towards William. “Does it change anything ?” he asked in a whisper. 

William looked at him with more scorn in his eyes than ever. “Yeah,” he sighed. “Charges go ‘boom’, no charges go ‘plop’.” He turned to Marianne. “He wants to get out by the front door.”

She finally allowed herself a smile. “And we can get in.”

She left to give her teams their new instructions. As Foggy was trying to listen to what she was saying, he felt the vibration of his phone inside his pocket. He thought about sending it to voicemail, but instead decided to follow his instinct and reply. Even if it was a client, he’d at least feel useful, which would’ve been a great improvement from what he’d been feeling for hours. 

“Nelson,” he said, praying not to sound too desperate. 

“It’s me,” Matt replied. “Do you have any of Rose’s people with you ?”

“Hey !” Foggy shouted, wiggling his arms for everyone to come back. Marianne rushed back inside, along with the team leaders she’d been talking to. “They’re all here,” he said. “Are you okay ? What about Karen ? They’re about to get in.”

“No,” Rose immediately stopped him. “Is Marianne here ?”

“I am,” she replied. “Why are you calling the lawyer ?”

“Only number any of us could remember,” she sighed. That could’ve been funny, Foggy thought, but Rose didn’t seem like she was in any shape to laugh. “So here’s the situation,” she said, her voice void of any emotion. “Poindexter is ready to be collected, I’m losing blood, and the hostages are locked up in a room with 5 synced bombs. We believe there’s a 6th one under the only exit, but not connected to the others.”

“How do you know ?”

“It uh…” Rose let out a long sigh. “It doesn’t sound the same.”

Marianne threw William a confused look, but he didn’t seem to know what code it was for. For once, Foggy knew. “How long ?” she asked. 

“42 minutes according to my father and uh…” She took a deep breath. “Yeah. He’s not good. I’d say sepsis. He’s been in and out for a while now, so uh…” Another deep breath, but her voice was audibly trembling. “We’re looking at a possible septic shock.”

Marianne turned away from the phone for an instant. She repeated ‘42 minutes’ to herself a few times before speaking again. “All three of you are good ?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. You’re evacuating,” she commanded. “I’m sending the teams inside.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Matt replied. 

“Me neither,” Rose added. 

“You’ll do as I say.”

Marianne hung up and shoved the phone back into Foggy’s hands. It took her a second before she turned back to her people. For a second, Foggy considered asking if he could get in. He was sure to be able to change Matt’s mind about leaving. He opted against it. Karen needed Matt more than he did. 

No one inside of the shipping container seemed happy to be able to go inside anymore. Foggy hadn’t understood much of what they’d been talking about, but it didn’t look good. He thought about asking William about it, the same way he’d been doing since he got involved in all this, but the man was staring at his screen. It wasn’t clear if he was even watching something. He just seemed completely lost, and pale, as if he’d just been told that a relative had died. 

Marianne wasn’t looking any better, all things considered. Her assertive tone was gone, her shoulders were slumped, and she’d closed her fist to hide that she was shaking. “Evacuate the perimeter,” she said, finishing the new set of orders she had to give. She waited for everyone to be out and pressed a hand on William’s shoulder. “There’s no way to know for sure.”

“If that door’s trapped, they’re dead,” he replied, his voice just as empty as Rose’s was a minute before. 

Foggy leaned forward, making sure to stay out of their reach if they decided to punch him. “Do you mind explaining things to me ? I have three of my friends down there, and I don’t understand shit. You have people here, why are you so upset about the bombs now ?”

“5 year olds can defuse synced bombs,” William explained. “That’s not the issue.”

“Then what is ?”

“The number. Synced charges need to be deactivated at the same time, hence the name,” he said, looking at him. “There are five.”

“And four hostages,” Foggy finished. 

He sat down, not caring a single moment about who he’d pissed off by taking the chair. The fifth hostage was still inside its mother, who was most likely unable to stand on her own, and another was dying. Foggy really wanted to share the little hope Marianne had, but not trapping the door would’ve been a stupid mistake on Dex’s part. 

***

The leader of the bomb squad walked away from the door and joined the leader of the team supposed to collect Dex on his way out. “Hey,” he whispered, pulling him away from the prisoner. “He put a password on the door.”

“Yeah, seems like something a criminal would do,” the other replied. 

“He blew the first two tries. Do you mind if I talk to him ?”

The second man laughed. “You think he’ll talk ? He’s a psycho, man. What he’s gonna do is give you the wrong code and blow everyone’s faces off.”

The EOD specialist sighed. “Yeah, well. You keep him around until I tell you to leave.”

“Yes, Sir,” the second one replied, rolling his eyes. He walked back inside the room and sat next to Rose as she was cleaning the wound on her leg. “First, you should keep your pants on,” he joked, “and then get out of here.”

She looked up and smiled. “I’m fine. They brought me this,” she added, throwing a pill bottle at him. “And I think you’ll survive seeing me in my underwear. If you don’t, then die.” They laughed for a couple seconds before she nudged at him. “You’ve seen William ?”

“That guy’s a machine,” he scoffed. “You think he’ll join me one day ? I can handle you in your little panties, but I’m tired of him rejecting me like that.”

“He likes to remind people he has someone at home waiting for him,” she sighed. 

“Yeah. Lucky fucker.” He looked at the door, and then back at Rose. “You said he’s been pushing you to break the door, uh ?” She nodded. “Get out of here. You know it’s a trap.”

“My parents are inside,” she simply replied. 

On the other side of the room, Jessica sat next to Matt and crossed her arms. “Between us, I think he’s a catch. He doesn’t have little horns on his head.”

Matt stopped listening to Rose’s conversation and turned to Jessica. “The door ?”

“Most likely trapped,” she sighed. “They want to try and figure out if I can open it without triggering it.” She nodded in Rose’s direction. “She looks better.”

He scoffed. It hadn’t been his intention to spy on Rose. After listening to her father constantly begging for her to leave, Matt had simply decided to check up on her. Rose wasn’t feeling any better. She got calm again, which was what concerned him the most. In Rose’s world, being calm was lying. She was lying to herself, probably thinking that she’d be able to get her father out. 

He moved closer to his friend. “There’s time for now,” he said in a quiet voice. “But when there’s no time left, I need you to take her away from here.”

“What about you ?”

“I’ll have to stay.”

“For any particular reason ?” Jessica asked. “Is it a new kink of yours ?”

“Will you do it ?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Yeah, sure I will. And I’ll go to another one of your funerals.”

“There wasn’t-”

“Figure of speech.”

Rose, now wearing a fresh pair of pants, joined them and looked at Matt. “They’d like you to talk to Poindexter,” she calmly said. “We have one try at unlocking the door, and I haven’t been nice enough to him.”

“He won’t talk to me,” he replied. 

“But we don’t exactly have another choice, do we ?” she angrily snapped back, her heart calm as ever. “So you go, you talk to the guy, and you find a way to get my parents out. They’re here because he hates you, remember ?”

Matt nodded and walked away without another word, leaving Jessica to stare at Rose in shock. “That was cold,” she said. 

“Yeah, but he’s gone.” She took Matt’s place next to her and sighed. “Okay, so here’s what we’re gonna do. If we can’t open that stupid door, you have to get him out of here.”

Jessica smiled at her. “Oh, really ? What about you, then ?”

“I’m not leaving my parents.”

“Yeah, of course.” She looked behind Rose and frowned. “Next time you’re plotting against someone who can hear bombs through a wall, maybe write the plan down ?”

Rose sighed. She wasn’t getting any better at this. Now she’d been overly mean for no reason. “Then I’ll shoot him and you’ll drag him out.” She turned towards the hallway and shouted : “I swear I will !”

***

Vanessa had been breathing on her own for a while now, Edward was still begging Matt to get Rose out, but no one had checked on Eva in a long time. Karen sat next to her on the ground and gently squeezed her hand. Eva briefly smiled at her, but her eyes quickly wandered back in the distance. 

“You’re doing great,” Karen said. 

“He said he wanted her to watch us die,” Eva replied with a monotonous voice, staring at the door. “She’s here, right ?” She didn’t wait for Karen’s confirmation. She knew. She’d felt it. And there had also been a few gunshots. “I just wanted to tell her I’m sorry.” She looked up, her eyes filled with tears. “I abandoned her, you know. I’ll never get to tell her that I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure she knows.”

Karen hugged her, brushed the hair away from the woman’s face, and checked on Vanessa. She was still handling things on her own, and Karen walked to an unused corner of the cell. A baby was about to be born, and the only person in that room who knew anything about childbirth was losing her mind, which was in Karen’s opinion, only fair. Edward’s words would only make it worse. She didn’t have any doubt that Matt would find a way to get them out, but they needed a little encouragement. 

“Hey,” she whispered. “If there’s a way for you to talk to us, I think Rose’s mother needs a little help. The baby’s coming, and I don’t think I can deliver it.”

She waited, but nothing happened. There was possibly no way for them to talk. Matt could’ve been listening to something else. What if he didn’t even know about the bombs ? Karen let out a long sigh and walked back to Eva when she checked under Vanessa’s dress. 

“Okay,” she said, desperately rubbing her hands against each other, trying to get them to stop shaking. “I think it’s time.” She looked at Vanessa and forced herself to smile. “You’re gonna have to push.”

“I don’t know how,” Vanessa said, still recovering from her previous contraction. 

“It’s uh…” Eva looked at her, then at Karen, and froze. “I can’t.”

“You can,” Karen insisted. 

“She needs a doctor. The baby will need a doctor.” She pushed Karen away and went back to the wall. “I’m not a doctor.”

“Eva,” Edward weakly said behind them. “You’ve done this before. You saved me.”

“Did I ?” she shouted. She moved in front of him, dangerously pulling on the chains around her ankles. “Do you think I’m an idiot, Ed ? I have eyes, you know ! You’re dying !” she finished, her screams turning into sobs. Karen held her, but she was gone. Her entire body was trembling. “I’ll die knowing that I killed you. I can’t-”

“Mom ?”

Eva froze and stared at Karen, in shock. “Fleur,” she whispered. 

“Hi,” Rose said, her voice echoing in the cell. “I know that none of this is what you had in mind when you flew to New York, but it’s all gonna be okay. Dad’s not going to die,” she said. “He needs to rest, that’s all.”

She wiped the tears off her face and smiled. “He lied again. He said you got better at lying.”

“He’s gonna be just fine,” Rose insisted. “But right now, Vanessa really needs your help. We can’t get in for now, so you’ll have to help us.”

“I don’t-”

“There’s a doctor here with me,” she said. “Dr Kamps will tell you exactly what to do.”

Slowly, Eva’s body stopped shaking. “Are you safe ?”

“I am,” Rose immediately replied. “All good, we’re just making sure everything is safe before you can leave.”

Rose moved away, and the doctor’s voice replaced her. Eva was far from being calm, but she at least got to talk to her daughter again. She called her ‘mom’ one last time, and she was safe. She ignored all the questions she still wanted to ask, squeezed Karen’s hand, and smiled at Vanessa. 

“Ready to become a mother ?”

***

If watching the birth of a baby on a monitor had not been how Jessica and Rose had planned their Friday night, it wasn’t a great time for Matt either. At least the two women would’ve been able to stop watching if they’d wanted to. He couldn’t stop. He had to keep an ear on Karen and on Rose’s father. The man was even weaker than he’d said. Every breath was making his heart race inside his chest, every move was sending shivers down his spine. 

Jessica pulled Rose away from the screen neither of them wanted to watch and forced her to join Matt in the corner of the room. “Since none of us want to leave, I suggest we figure that password out,” she said. 

“Could be anything,” Rose sighed. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have-”

“He knew,” Matt stopped her. “He’s been playing with you. The shop, your parents, he knew that it would be the last straw.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “I should’ve told you.”

“Yeah, no,” Jessica stopped them. “What I meant by ‘figuring out the password’ was actually ‘figuring out the password’. I know, very hard to understand.” 

The doctor kept telling Vanessa to push, encouraging Eva when she was following instructions, and even tried to keep Edward from falling asleep. She quickly gave up when Matt told her that he was out again. On their side of the door, they simply watched as the bomb squad left, only their leader remaining in the room with them. 

“Sir,” he asked Matt, “do you have a clear view on the device ?” He looked at the confused look on their faces and nodded. “Yes, not ‘view’. I meant-”

“I do,” Matt replied. 

“Good. There’s something I’d like to try.”

They all rushed back to the door, listening to the expert’s plan. At some point, Matt turned his head towards the cell. He hadn’t been the only one to hear that scream. Rose dared to look at the monitor behind her and fought the urge to throw up. She’d only had a coffee since her day had started, she didn’t want to give it back. 

“Not too hard,” the leader of the bomb squad told Jessica, ignoring what was going on in the next room. She placed her hands on the door and waited. He turned to Matt. “As soon as you hear something different, tell us. We’re only trying to figure out the pressure the metal can take without risking anything.”

Rose had rarely felt so useless before. Everyone in their room was doing something, and she was the one who activated the bombs. Her job was to be a decent liar. All she could do now was wait, and she only hoped that she’d be able to make it up to the people she’d put in danger. 

“Stop,” Matt said. 

Jessica moved away from the door, but the expert didn’t. He searched through the bag where his tools were and secured another device on the door before asking Jessica to try pulling this time. Just like the first time, Matt quickly told her to stop. The expert briefly nodded, and put everything back into his bag. 

“So ?” Jessica asked. 

He looked at the door, then at the monitor, and finally back at them. “We need the password,” he calmly explained. “If we try to force the door, it will trigger the explosives underneath. According to our scans, the charges are on our side.”

“The wall can take it,” Matt argued. “The explosion won’t reach them.”

“But the blast will destroy everything in here,” he replied.

Jessica scoffed and looked at her friend. “How about you take the flower girl and you both leave me here ?”

***

“Very good,” Dr Kamps’ voice said above Eva’s head. “Now you’re going to rotate the baby to get the shoulder out. Hold onto his head with one hand, and use the other one to free his arm. Vanessa, you can stop pushing now.”

“I can’t,” she replied, now wanting nothing more than to have the pressure on her lower abdomen gone. 

The doctor’s voice was calm and comforting, but the other voices behind her weren’t. None of the hostages could understand clearly what they were saying or who was talking, but it was only adding to their stress. Karen was almost certain that if Eva or Vanessa ever heard the word ‘bomb’, everything would take a dangerous turn for the baby. 

“We can hear you,” she whispered as she was holding Vanessa’s hand. 

The other voices stopped almost immediately, but that didn’t reassure her at all. Something was wrong on the other side of that door. They had a doctor to help get that baby out, but no one was trying to free them from their cage. 

“You’re doing amazing,” Dr Kamps said. “All of you. Eva, as soon as you get the shoulder out, you can-”

“Here,” she stopped her. “I got it.”

“Now the other one. Then you take him all out so he can meet his mother.”

So small, Eva thought as she was taking Vanessa’s son out. She carefully kept his head inside her hand, and only allowed herself to take a breath when his little feet were dangling in the air. 

“He’s not crying,” Vanessa said, looking at the women around her. “Why is he not crying ?”

Instinctively, Eva turned him around and tapped on the baby’s back. He coughed once, and his screams filled the room. Still on her knees, Eva leaned forward and placed the baby into Vanessa’s arms. “Congratulations,” she whispered. 

“A little confused, but that’s a strong voice,” the doctor scoffed. She paused, long enough for Karen to look back at the camera. There was no sound coming from the other side. They cut the communication. They were hiding something. There was a small ‘click’, and the doctor was back. “Listen, Vanessa. I don’t know what you had in mind about this, but I haven’t seen any formula around you. If he gets hungry, would you mind feeding him ?”

“I’ll try,” she said, her eyes absorbed by her newborn baby. For a moment, nothing else existed around her. For a moment, the constant pain she’d been in disappeared. Until it came back. “What-”

“The placenta,” Eva calmly said. 

“See ?” the doctor laughed. “You’re ready to come work for me.”

While Eva was taking care of it, the doctor asked Karen if she had another pin in her hair. She didn’t sound pleased with the sanitary aspects of all this, but they had to clamp the umbilical cord at some point. 

Finally, after many hours of pain, the little boy met the dangerous world around him. Karen rested her back against the wall, but Eva looked at the camera in the top corner of the room. She waited for a few seconds before grabbing the jacket Karen had left on the ground and covering Vanessa’s legs. 

***

“What was it ?” Rose asked, her eyes glued to the screen. 

Dr Kamps moved away from the microphone and sighed. “She’s lost a lot of blood. It’s nothing major, but she’s gonna need a transfusion.” She turned to the EOD expert. “Can you get them out ?”

“How ?” he asked her back. 

“That’s your job to figure it out,” she replied, all calm and kindness gone from her voice. “I have three hostages in urgent need of medical care, another one on the verge of a panic attack. I can deal with PTSD, but we’re soon gonna have three dead bodies on our hands if you don’t figure something out.”

He sighed, unable to help her. Jessica pushed his arm. “Dude,” she said. “Just give me your fancy suit. I can get through to them.”

“Even if I let you do this, the explosion will most likely reach the ceiling,” he explained. “It will crumble, and they’ll be stuck on the other side. They’ll all be dead from breathing whatever this building is made of before we’re able to get to them. And you’ll be dead.”

Rose took a deep breath. They didn’t have a choice. They had to wait. “Thank you,” she calmly said. “I think you should leave, now.”

“You should come with us,” the man said. 

The doctor shook her head, pointing at the door behind them. “These people need-”

“For your own safety,” Rose insisted, her voice now commanding, “I’m going to ask you to leave. Stay on call, we’ll ask if we need anything.”

They both tried arguing with her, but no one was ready to change their mind. Dr Kamps angrily walked away, the bomb expert begged them to consider leaving one more time, but quickly followed his colleague. 

Once they were alone in the room, Rose took the doctor’s place in front of the monitor. She didn’t turn the microphone on. They all deserved some time to rest. She took a deep breath and turned to the others. “We have people to make him talk.”

“He won’t,” Matt said. 

“Yeah, and he really wanted me to push that door,” Jessica added.

Rose winced. “I know that, I was just trying to be encouraging.”