Heritage (Under Revision)

Chapter 25 - Leon

I release my hug from Stella after what feels like an eternity compounded into only a minute. I kiss her with more emotion then I have ever felt before, and I smile in absolute joy at Stella.

“I’m so glad you’re safe,” I say.

Before Stella can respond to me a wild round ricochets off the wall beside me and snaps all of us back into reality as we dive for cover behind the corners of the hallway.

Dad and I keep mom and Stella back while blind-firing our weapons around the corner, trying to suppress the horde of Sekrid on the opposite end of the hall. I catch a glimpse of something to my left and begin to turn to fire at it, but, before I can react, Stella lifts her weapon and unloads on two Sekrid soldiers attempting to flank us.

I watch as the limbs of the soldiers corrode and fall off of the bodies before finally dissipating completely.

“Holy shit, Stells, nice gun,” I say with a somewhat surprised look on my face.

She gives me a token smirk of her own and continues aiming through her scope, waiting for more commandos to come around the corner. I look over at dad, bringing myself back into the fray.

“Dad, we have to move now! They’re flanking us!” I scream through the muzzle bursts. He gives a quick nod and continues firing.

I begin to see commandos coming from every direction of the hall, enclosing us within one confined quadrant of the ship. My dad starts to look around, his face becoming more and more frustrated as he glances in each direction.

He shakes his head.

“Fuck this,” he says. “Everyone get inside one of the rooms now, no questions asked!” he yells giving us a command.

We do as he says and I observe as he pulls a grenade from his belt while simultaneously firing at the enemy. He presses a button and spikes jut out of its sides. He throws it at the ground, embedding it into the tiling and then jumps behind a wall himself.

“Stay down!” he yells once more.

A few seconds seem like an eternity waiting for the grenade to go off. I close my eyes and anticipate the blast as the grenade explodes sending a hail of shrapnel in every direction, eliminating some of the Sekrid soldiers down the hallways.

I shake off the shellshock quickly and hop out from over the wall Stella and I were behind and Stella follows me in the same fashion. I cover my father as well as everyone else in our small space as my dad kicks the hole in the floor further open.

“Everyone down!” he screams, as he finishes widening the hole. I continue my steady rate of firing at the enemies at hand as Stella and my mother drop into the hole.

“Leon, let’s go, you next!” my dad yells once more at me.

“I’m fine dad, just go! We don’t have time to discuss this!” I yell back.

I glance back a few times making sure that my father is jumping into the hole himself. I slowly back my way towards the hole, still firing, trying to suppress the Sekrid soldiers so that I’m not overwhelmed before I myself could jump into the hole.

As I lower my weapon to drop down to the floor below, a stray round darts through the gun-smoke and pierces my shoulder, knocking me down the rest of the way into the hole.

“Gaahhh!!” I scream in agony while clenching my shoulder.

“Oh my god, Leon! Are you shot!?” Stella screams in a concerned voice.

Dad crouches over me and puts pressure on my shoulder while examining it.

“Elena, you have pliers in that kit?” he asks mom.

“Pliers for what?” Stella asks as my mother hands him the tool. My father looks Stella in the eyes.

“We have to pull the bullet out and cauterize the wound, otherwise he’ll bleed to death. You may want to cover your eyes and ears for this, it won’t be pretty,” he says in a serious tone.

To avoid any gunfire from the Sekrid, my father drags me behind a wall where mom and Stella follow. He then pulls another two grenades from his belt from what I can see through my blurry vision and tosses them up through the hole. I can hear them go off while hearing screeches of death on the floor above. Rubble piles over top of the hole, and we seem to be safe for that point in time.

“Alright, let’s get that bullet out of you son,” my dad says returning to us. I nod my head while gritting my teeth in pain.

My mother uses a small torch from her tech pack to heat up the pliers, sterilizing them, then hands them to my father. Stella looks away, closing her eyes and covering her ears.

“Alright Leon, ready?” dad asks.

“Just do it dad,” I say in a pained voice. Dad nods his head then plunges the burning pliers into my wound.

“AAAHHHHH!!!!!!” I scream in agony as my father probes the pliers around in my shoulder.

“Gotcha,” he says as I feel him clamp something hard within my shoulder.

He begins to pull on it, but something isn’t right because I feel the bullet wriggle its way deeper into my shoulder, then angling down as if it’s intelligent. It squirms like a parasite in my body trying to get away from the plier’s grip like prey from a predator. I feel a release as the pliers are removed from my shoulder and I breathe heavily in relief.

“Son of a bitch, they’re using driller rounds,” father says in frustration.

“What the...hell are driller rounds?” I ask hardly forming the words.

“Exactly what the name says Leon. You try to pull em’ out and they burrow deeper into the body. If you mess with them too much, a kill switch is engaged and the round goes for the nearest vital organ. There’s nothing we can do right now.”

“Great...just fucking great!” I yell hitting the wall I’m leaning against.

“How do you get it out?” Stella asks with a concerned look on her face. Dad sighs a heavy sigh and looks at Stella.

“We need to short out the circuit in the bullet. That requires a high electric charge, about the same as a defibrillator. Something like that would actually work perfect but, the round is too close to his heart, if we do that, we could stop his heart and kill him either way.” my father explains.

“So, what do we do then, just let him sit here and bleed to death?! We have to do something!” Stella screams out of anger and fear.

“What else can we do Stella? It’s either that bullet kills him or we do,” mother says, seemingly losing hope.

“Then why not take the risk?” I ask. Father looks at me with a shocked expression.

“No, no way, I’m not going to risk killing my own son, fuck that,” Dad says, trying to refuse.

“Father, what other God damn choice do we have at this point? It’s my body, I will choose what happens to it, and I say do it damn it.”

I watch my father clench his jaw and tighten his fist, digging his nails into his palms.

“Fine, get me a defibrillator then,” dad says calmly. Mother and Stella begin to search the various rooms on the floor, there’s a defibrillator in almost every infirmary room on every floor.

“Found one!” mom yells from the distance.

Dad takes my vest off and lifts my shirt as mother wheels the defibrillator beside us. Father lays me down and places the leads on my chest and takes the pads off the machine and begins to charge them.

“Charged,” mom says checking the machine.

“Alright, I’m not even gonna ask this time, let’s do this. Uh...clear,” dad says placing the pads on my chest over the central area of where the bullet is.

My father takes a deep breath and presses the buttons on the pads. I feel a white-hot surge of electricity course it’s way through my body and I feel as if my veins, muscles, and arteries are searing and combusting into flames. I feel my body spasm uncontrollably as the electricity takes over my body, making me its puppet.

My eyes flash white and then, black...

“Leon...Leon...Leon!” I hear screaming faintly.

My eyes open faintly and I feel air rush into my lungs. I gasp and take the oxygen into my lungs as I lurch into a sitting position, breathing heavily and shaking at my experience.

“What...happened?” I ask slowly, in between breaths.

“Your heart stopped as I said it would. You were gone for five minutes. Took us forever to revive you. Luckily, we were able to,” my father explains to me.

“Wait...you mean...I was dead?”

“For a little bit there, yeah son, you were.”

“Holy shit, no wonder it felt like an eternity in the dark,” I say shocked that I’m still among the living.

My dad forms a smile, happy that I’m alive and pats me on my shoulder, then helps me up. I look at my shoulder, noticing that it’s cauterized and that I don’t feel the pressure of the bullet inside of my body anymore. I rotate my shoulder, wincing a bit at the left-over pain, but feeling relieved that the pain is much less than before.

I hear a feedback sound somewhere in the distance as we walk down the hallway.

“Guys stop, you hear that?” I ask.

“...Yeah, it sounds like a com unit,” Mother says.

“Why don’t we check it out?” Stella contributes to the conversation as well. My father nods in agreement and we follow the feedback sound until we reach a room, where a walkie-talkie sits on a desk.

“Po..don, d-..you..co..y,” we hear from the device. My father grins wide and picks up the com unit.

“This is General Ethan Blake, we read you, I have three others with me, which includes Commander Elena Blake and two Cadets,” my father explains.

“So... General huh? That what they’re addressing you as these days?” a familiar voice responds. My father pulls the com unit away from his face with a shocked expression.

“Damien, you son of a bitch, are you really here to help?”

“You bet your ass bro. RAID team 3 and I are en route now, we’ll be there soon, so just hang in there.”

“Got it brother, careful when you get in here though, they’re crawling all over the damn place. They have driller rounds too. You need to use stealth,” my dad warns my uncle.

“Haha, you know me though, Ethan, can’t make any promises.”

“Yeah, I know, just be careful Damien. Anyway, I think it’s best we get off the line for now, I’ll keep the com unit on me, but it’ll be better to maintain radio silence until you get here.”

“Agreed, we’ll talk when I get there, out.”

“Out.” Dad puts the com unit on his belt and turns around with a wide grin, Well, I think we have our rescue en route.

“Was that really Uncle Damien?”

“Yeah it was, Leon. What? You think he would retire from the field? Hell no, crazy bastard isn’t gonna retire until he’s dead,” my dad says with a little excitement.

It had been ten years since I last saw my uncle. It was about the same amount of time for my father and mother. They had a few phone conversations here and there, but my uncle always liked being the field, kicking ass and taking names.

I always kind of looked up to my uncle Damien when it came to a combat attitude. He’s fearless, and he takes on anything that’s thrown at him. He always figures out a way to get through it. He’s a master tactician and a damn good field leader, completing well over a hundred successful Ops.

“Alright, I say we hole up here for a while, shut the door and hit the lights and wait for them to get here, agreed?” my father asks.

“Agreed...” we all say in tandem.