Chapter 2

Oh fuck, I’ve been shot! What the hell just happened? One moment I was on top of the world, the next I’m lying on the floor in a pool of blood, my arm just hanging by a thread! In that moment I looked over at the window, and saw that the glass pane was smashed. I turned my head to face the opposite wall and I could see a spray of blood and bits of flesh around a gaping hole. Shit! Judging by the size of the hole, it looks like they’re playing for keeps!

In that moment, everyone hit the deck, shocked that our private space was invaded so violently. There were shrieks terror as everyone tried to take cover from the unknown assailants.

Frank and Maggie leapt into action. Their police training kicked in, and they moved to either side of the broken window, out of the line of sight of the sniper. Slowly Frank started to move his head around the curtains to look out the window, to see if he could locate the shooter, only to hear the sizzle of another shot just miss his head and hit the wall on the other side of the room. He moved back to his protected position almost instantly.

“We’re pinned down, and bloody sitting ducks like this! We need to figure where that bastard is, and fast!” he said.

I turned to look at my shattered right shoulder. There was blood pooling on ground, steadily growing as the seconds ticked by. I knew I only had minutes or even moments before I would be unconscious from the loss of blood; the clock was ticking.

Maggie started to move to look out the window from her side, and rustled the curtains. Suddenly another shot came through and punched a hole in the opposite wall.

“This bastard isn’t playing around! I can’t see him from here!” she yelled, as she too moved back to her position of safety.

Time started to slow down for me. My mind started to race - I need to stop the bleeding, and fast. Carol had moved to kneel by my head and could see that I was in a bad way.

“Stay with me Paul, don’t go to sleep!” she cried, as she reached over to take my pulse and check the rest of my body for injuries.

Carol looked at me with grim features. It must be bad, I thought, for her to look like that.

“Paul! ‘Physician heal thyself’ - it’s time to try and do for yourself what you’ve done for others.” She said. “It’s your only hope!”

She was right - I looked at my damaged arm and pictured the mangled ends reconnecting with my body. Almost as fast as I had imagined it, my body started responding, and tendrils of blood vessels started reaching out to each other and joining up. I reached over with my good arm and pulled myself together, literally! As I could feel the arm reattaching itself, I started sending thoughts of peace and comfort to my damaged limb, and I could feel it responding.

I glanced over to where Maggie and Frank were stationed. I could see the frustration on their face at the thought of being boxed in and sitting ducks.

“He must be just beyond the fence line of the property - there’s nowhere else he could’ve been without being spotted.” Frank said.

“Unless we can get him to show himself, there’s no way we’re going to be able to get him,” Maggie replied. “We have to do something - the longer we wait here, the more likely someone else is going to get hurt!”

Remembering what happened to the security guard outside the lab, and how I was able to get him to collapse, I tried to test my new-found abilities. Reaching out with my senses, I tried to pinpoint our target. Somehow I just knew that he was in among the clump of trees and bushes on the corner where the two fences met at the corner of the property.