The longer we walked the more fearful I became. I got lucky that we only encountered about one guard on the way. Melina had some special type of jurisdiction here. If I was with anyone else I wouldn't have been able to walk around as freely. Even with Melina as my shield I saw the man do a double take on me. Maybe he was a veteran and had been working here for years. Maybe he was one of my abusers. But really, there were too many of them and I wouldn't be able to recall their faces even if I tried. Beside Bucky, I couldn't remember any specific faces.
I followed her into a small space with a lot of controls panels. There were buttons all over the wall in the small space. If I was taking a guess I could imagine that all of these buttons had something to do with keeping this whole thing in the air. I would think that maybe it would be way more secure than it was. No one stood on the outside to guard it.
Melina seemed to know exactly what she was doing. It seemed like Alexei was being used as a distraction while Melina hacked into the control system. I didn't know what my mom or Yelena was doing or what I was supposed to be.
I lifted my eyes to Melina and took a step closer to her. "Where is my mom?" I asked while watching her fingers move across a clear screen. She didn't take her eyes off of it to respond to me.
"She is with Dreykov," she told me dismissively. That wasn't a comment that should have been dismissed to me. My eyes drew wide and I had to do a double take to make sure I understood correctly.
I narrowed my eyes and took a step closer, getting my face into her line of sight. "Why would she be with him?" I asked, trying to get a better understanding. I was assuming this had to be part of the plan but it was still way too dangerous.
Melina shook her head and let out a deep breath. "You and your mother worry too much," she said, continuing to shake her head. "You do not trust each other to do anything. You need to trust your mother," she told me almost accusingly. But she never met my eyes.
It was a funny thing to hear from her, seeing as she staged being My mom's mother for two years. There was almost no personal trust between her and my mom. I found it odd for her to tell me such a thing. And I had already trusted my mom for these nineteen years of my life. Maybe sixteen of them, since that was when I first met her. But when she finally came to get me from Wakanda, and after I had spoken to my real father, she lost those sixteen years worth of trust. I didn't know how she would get it back.
"I already tried that," I muttered bitterly before directing my eyes toward the ground. "Maybe I get it from her; not being able to trust my mother," I added sarcastically. Melina rolled her eyes as soon as the words came from my mouth.
She shook her head again. "You don't know me, Zola. And I don't know you," she said almost like some type of warning. I couldn't help but roll my eyes in return.
"But you sure knew that I was stuck behind those bars with Mama and you did nothing to change that. You knew that my own father was beating me and you did nothing to change that. You could've saved us. You have probably brought us back here to die aga-"
My body jumped when I heard a crashing noise coming from the small entrance we'd used to come in here. My head jolted to look in the direction of where I heard the noise come from. By the time I had looked, there was a steel door trapping us in here and blocking any way out.
I turned back to the control panel and it was decked out in red, replacing the green color that it was before. I felt my heart drop. We were stuck in here. I would have rather been stuck here for the rest of my life and die a slow death instead of being taken to Dreykov to be killed or tortured by him instead.
He wouldn't have killed me. Knowing him, I was sure that he would have turned me into one of them. He would have made me one of those widows that were controlled and fully tracked by him. And he would have never killed me like he did them. He would make me suffer and I know that.
I didn't even bother jumping and looking around the small space. I wasn't alarmed by the red colors flashing in my eyes, indicating that we had been caught. I wasn't as alarmed as I would have been any other time. I don't know why I was so calm, because at the same time, I was scared out of my mind. I was scared for my mom but also for myself. I didn't know what to do next.
All I did was shut my eyes and suck in a deep breath. I was running out of the energy to care every time this place hurt me in a newer way. It was less shocking now. I was used to the disappointment, the failure, the exhaust, the agony. I was used to this. It was funny to think that I could have gotten out of here alive anyway.
I turned to lean my body against the wall. We were helpless.
I stared up at the ceiling waiting for something to happen. Anything. Melina kind of just stood and felt around all of the controls. I figured at this point she had some idea of how to get us out. Whether or not we were making it out of here before we were killed or sent to be tortured, this feeling of helplessness had already washed over me. I had no interest in watching Melina try to get us out. I don't know why, but I already felt defeated.
"I've had a slight setback," Melina admits into her comms. She had to have known what she was doing then. I turned to look at her briefly before shaking my head and throwing it back against the wall. I could hardly see her through the red lights that were flashing the entire room. It was like a pool of red, and maybe, that was what we would be next.
"You'll need to get to the widows," Melina tells Yelena through the comms. I saw her starting to struggle with something in the corner of my eye. I turned to see what it was. I saw her trying to pry off the cover of an air conditioning vent with a small looking crowbar.
I shook my head. "We can't go through there," I say stubbornly. She had to be kidding. She built this place; she had to know another way.
"Then," she grunted, still trying to pull it off. "We can die in here," she finished in annoyance, pulling the cover off and placing it on the floor. She looked away from me quickly and did not hesitate to climb through. I walked over to look down inside of the vent as she started crawling. It wasn't very tight which was good. It was probably the most spacious vent I had seen, like they had built it expecting someone to crawl through.
Rolling my eyes with a heavy groan, I climbed in after her. I hated crawling through vents. The spaces were so small and they took me back to worser days of my childhood. I hated to re-live and re-imagine them.
By the time it felt that we had gotten even a couple feet away, my arms were aching. Usually I was more fit for these type of things but I was getting older and I was changing. I didn't want to do this in the first place, but the fact that I was doing it with Melina and in the Red Room intensified that unwilling-ness and made it worse.
I didn't even know if my mom was alive right now. I didn't know where she was. But I had more faith in her than that.
We made it out in a time that felt like it had been thirty minutes later. We jumped from the vents and the first room that I followed her into had a guard waiting right by the entrance. I figured she could handle just one on her own, so I silently agreed to back her up and cover. Once she hung her over and took him out from his legs, I grabbed his gun that went sliding across the way. We were elevated on a high level, only being held up by four pathways that met almost like an intersection. I smirked at the way that the guards body hit the ground. Since I was now in front of Melina I lifted the gun and started to scan the area around me.
But as soon as I lifted my eyes, I noticed that we were completely surrounded. The entire area was circled with guards. I let out a deep breath immediately. I couldn't fire, they all had guns too. I couldn't kill them all before they would kill me.
There was nothing else for me to do. Hesitantly, I lifted my hands up into a surrendering position with the gun facing upward. As the guards got closer to the two of us, closing us in from every corner, I tried to stay calm. Melina backed up into my side. When she stood right beside me I realized that I didn't have much time to figure out what to do next.
The only way out of here was a distraction. That distraction may have had to possibly take us two down as well.
I bit my lip. Scared, I pulled the trigger on the gun. It was the only way. The bullet fired up into the ceiling and dropped all of its decay onto us and the abyss below us. I could hardly see through the sudden fires that were burning beside us and the rubble that was falling in front of us. I tried to stay still so that nothing would knock me over and take me with the rest of them.
The rubble from the ceiling was breaking the pathway into different sections. I watched as the metal began to bend out of place and break into pieces. It was falling down into the engine that was right below us, which was throwing pieces back up toward us and setting everything else to fire. We needed to get out of here.
I looked at Melina, hoping she was a little more prepared than I was. The second I turned to face her she grabbed my hip and held me close to her before she lifted a grapple from the holster around her hips . She shot it up somewhere toward the ceiling, and just like that, we were flying out of the decaying space.
I jumped out of her arms once we were safe enough. There was a small walkway along the side of the room all the way at the top. The metal hadn't been demolished like the metal down there. We landed effortlessly and immediately Melina our her hand up to her ear.
"Slight change of plans. I completely destroyed one of the engines and we are going into a controlled crash," she must have told Yelena. She said it with such ease, as if this had happened all the time to her.
"Let's go," she insisted, waving me along. "I am almost positive that Alexei could use some help," she told me while she jogged down the path and out of the space. I followed her, walking and disinterested.
"Maybe from you," I responded stubbornly. I didn't really like Alexei very much. Melina much less.
She sucked her teeth like she was annoyed with my response. She was still jogging down the halls but I continued to walk.
"You are just like your mother," she shook her head slightly. "Terrible," she shrugged her shoulders and said it as if I was some type of lost cause.
I narrowed my eyes. "Well, I did spend a lot my years starving in a cage next to her," I reminded harshly. I didn't care if she didn't want to hear it because she was part of the reason that my mom was stuck here so long, and part of the reason I was there at all. Part of the reason I was born.
"You say that like it is my fault," Melina threw her hands up in defeat. "I do not control this place. I did not lock you in a cell and starve you." I rolled my eyes.
"Who designed the cells again?" I asked sarcastically. I already knew the answer. "You upgraded the cells instead of helping us. You just trapped us in a more modern way. It is the same thing. We are not animals," I complained, raising my voice as she continued jogging ahead of me.
She shook her head. "God, Zola, it is like you forget that I was a widow myself. Cycled more than four times before you were even born," she bit the words as she neared the end of her sentence. I could tell that she was just about through with me. I didn't care very much. I rolled my eyes and I tried to bite my tongue so that I didn't raise my voice as loud as I anticipated I would. But I could feel it, and her dismissive attitude just made it worse.
"I don't care! My mom was cycled and she never gave in. My mom was cycled and she turned out a good person. My mom helps people. You had a choice," I told her, trying to swallow away the defensive tears building in my eyes. "Being a former widow means nothing. I have a choice, and I choose it to make better ones than you," I finished, calming down as I whipped my sleeve across my eyes angrily. I couldn't be vulnerable in a place like this.
After that, Melina didn't say anything else to me. I didn't really want her to. By the time I had finished talking we were back in the room with the cells that had designed; back where we had left Alexei to fend for himself. I stood by the door, wishing to take no part in this battle because it wasn't mine to fight. If Melina thought that Alexei couldn't handle it, she could go off and help him.
She did the exact thigh-gripping chokehold that my mom had taught me to perfect. She dragged the Taskmastering robot into the cell with her legs around its throat. As quick as the flip of a switch, she had released her grip and jumped out of the cell before closing it. The robot was stuck inside. I knew there had to be one way that it could have freed itself, but if it couldn't, I was thankful for that.
It felt like we had a better chance of getting out of here. My eyes were darting from Melina and Alexei to the robot slamming on the invincible walls of the widow cells. If I had any chance to get away, it was now. I would never lie about how unhappy I was with my mother at the moment, because my anger was off of the charts. I didn't like talking to her, but he comfort was better than not having her around at all. We didn't have to talk. But having her in eye or ear shot made me way more comfortable than not knowing where she was at all. Without a second thought, I turned on my heel and darted away from the hallway. I needed to find my mom. If I died in here I needed it to be with her.
One engine was out. I could only imagine how much more damage this place needed to go through before falling to ruins.
I knew that Melina would not bother looking for me. She was part of the reason that I was trapped in this hell-hole; she knew that I could figure things out on my own.
I ran through the corridors and checked my shoulder about every three steps. I couldn't say that I was scared, but I was frantic. For some reason I had suddenly gained this confidence in myself. I didn't need Melina or Alexei with me to get to my mom or to get out of here. I was born here, I was made here. I was this place. It was in me. And I could fight my way out of here, even if I was going to die doing it alone.
I had been to Dreykov's office on multiple occasions. It was just never on one that took place in this floating aircraft.
There was no way that I would have ever been able to find his office on my own. It took minutes of running up staircases and punching and fighting and pushing and shooting my way through before I could have gotten anywhere. I was loaded with guns after the amount of guards that I had to take out, I was bleeding in so many places that I couldn't feel the blood running anymore, I had been running for so long that it felt natural now. I would have never found that office if I hadn't caught Dreykov walking right out of it.
"Make her suffer," I heard him mumble as he stalked down the opposite side of the hall. I was thankful that he hadn't seen me. Maybe I was more thankful for not fully having to see him.
I ran up into the doorway, but I could hardly see through because there was a crowd of widows looming over the entrance. I could see my mom barely, standing in the room with a small weapon in her hand. I didn't want to draw any attention from the widows and make them target me instead. I wanted to back up my mother.
Quickly, I tried to think of another way in. I backed up into the wall behind me, as far against it as I could possibly get. If I couldn't get through the widows I had to get over. I used the small amount of space between me and the doorway to sprint the fastest that I could muster in the small area. As efficiently as I could, I boosted myself off of one of the widow's shoulders so that I could land a front tuck into the room, right next to my mom. And thankfully, I timed it pretty well.
I lifted my eyes to look back at the many widows starting to inch their way toward us. I wasn't scared but I was conflicted. These were just girls, all being controlled. I didn't want to hurt them. If it was up to them, they wouldn't be attacking us. I didn't want to kill them like I wanted to kill Ultron or Loki. I wanted to help them.
"I don't want to hurt you," I told them, backing up slowly just like my mom was. But the girls didn't stop coming forward. "You don't want to hurt me," I tried to reason but they were already charging forward.
My mom tried to get them away with some kind of stick. It had a shocking device on the end, like a taser. They dodged every swing and started to swing the same technology at her. She was able to shake two of them, so a new group came at her. I stepped in immediately.
They kicked at her shins so I did the same to the widow. I pulled my arms around her neck and pulled her backward until I could get a knee in her back and take her out from her legs. I yanked her to the ground and let. her body fall from my grasp, hoping it would keep her down there longer.
Another widow came for me and a second one with her. One of them immediately went for my legs and the other went for a punch to my face. I anticipated both before they could fully pull them off. I dodged the punch then used the other's vulnerable leg to sweep her off of her feet. I grabbed the outstretched hand of the other and yanked it quickly, hoping it was out of place. I threw her body across mine and body slammed her into the hard floors. As the other stood back to her feet, I kneed her in the stomach and kicked her in the back to be sure thats he wouldn't be on her feet for some time.
The next came for me with a knife. I was good with knives. She immediately went for the stab, which was not what we were ever taught here. Maybe my teachings were just outdated. I grabbed her fist, battling her strength in contrast to my own as I tried to force here away. I knew her focus was fully on getting that knife into my skin, so I knocked her off balance quickly with a knee to her stomach. Before she could drop her hands into my chest I twisted her wrist, causing her to release the knife. I caught it instead and took her out with a punch to the face, knocking her out temporarily.
The next Widow came so quickly. We were always taught to slice somewhere in the skin first. It throws them off. They lose their balance. You have to be precise. I may not have liked living here, but the skills we were taught were efficient. And maybe, back when I was younger, they were even more efficient. There were so many flaws in these girls tactics. My mom and I shouldn't have been able to take on dozens of widows on our own.
It wasn't easy, though. Reacting to the way I had cut her skin she immediately punched me in the face. That was something that I distinctly remembered being taught. The show must go on. That was what they would call it.
I smiled brokenly at the nostalgia of it. I went blank for a second, and she caught it. She took that to her advantage and tried to get the knife from my grasp. I knocked myself out of it and used my heel to kick her knee in, throwing her completely off guard. I heard it crack and I felt a little bad. I could feel fresh blood starting to trickle from my nose. A feeling I knew all too well.
I shook her and stopped when I heard a suddenly loud slam to the floor. It was clearly a body and I knew that just from the sound of it. My head turned immediately because when that body slammed, everything in the room stopped. It had to have been my mom. And it was.
I would have panicked if she didn't get up immediately. My mom was a strong woman and I knew that. She stood to her feet and before anyone could charge at her, I could tell she was done. She was broken, she was hurting, she was tired. She raised her fist and straightened her arm. Just like that, she started firing Widow's bites at every woman in the room. The rings of red electricity rang through their skin and burned them all over their bodies. It hurt to see. These poor girls.
I ran up to my mother's side so that she didn't accidentally hit me. I could see the agony and fatigue in her eyes as she used every bite to shoot at the widows. One by one, they started to drop like flies. There was just one that she missed, and I caught her coming toward us before my mom did.
When someone gets tired, we learned that the first thing they will lose is their peripheral vision. Everything becomes straight focus. They start to focus on one thing; what is ahead of them. I jumped in front of my mom before the widow could get to her. She had a double ended weapon with both sides ringing with red electricity; like a taser.
The woman dragged one end of the weapon down my arm and tore my skin open. I winced and groaned in pain but I did what I was taught. I quickly threw something back instead of feeling the pain. I tried to get a punch in while staying out of the way of the long stick she was holding. I was at a disadvantage- I didn't have anything like it.
I saw some of the Widows recovering from the electric shock as they ran back up to us. The woman with the stick held it up to my neck and started to back me into a corner. I couldn't shake her. I couldn't get a breath in. I saw three other widows rushing over to worsen the shoving and make it even harder to get any breaths in. As they did it, though, I felt around on the stick. I couldn't sit here, barely gasping and heavily groaning as a way to die. We were always taught to keep looking. There was always a way out. And if this thing was double ended, that meant that there had to be a part in the middle of the stick where I could dismember it.
I found the latch that detached the two and I pressed it immediately. I gasped for air when the sticks broke into two pieces and released from my neck. I there them to to the ground and tried to get off of the wall as quickly as I could, trying to win back some type of advantage in this war.
I grabbed on end of the stick from the floor as I slid between the widows crowding me. Tirelessly, I swung it at them without a purpose of direction. I bared my teeth like an insane animal, I limped away because I couldn't regain my balance. My head was spinning. I could hardly keep track of what was happening anymore. The next thing I knew, I was being kicked across the room and landed stomach-first into the pointed end of Dreykov's desk. I could feel every ounce of the pain but at the same time I almost felt nothing at all.
I blacked out for seconds and grunted in pain before I could even move at all. I fell to the floor, down on all fours, but I had to get back up. Just like my mom did every single time.
I got up. I mustered to at least get to my knees. I knew I could get myself up to my feet. Before I could fully pull myself up, I felt a boot kick into my nose, sending me falling and flying backward. I could hardly even see, I didn't even see a boot coming. I think my vision was lagging. It was unclear and slow. My eyes were closing. I was fading. And I figured that this was definitely going to be where I would die.
All of the widows had found their feet again, recovered from the bite. I prayed to god that my mom was still alive in this room. Because if she was, I needed her right now. I didn't want to imagine what would happen to me next. But by assuming that there were at least a dozen widows standing over me, I could make an educated guess.
I tried to crawl away with no idea of where I was even crawling away to. I got a boot to my face. A boot into my side. I grunted in pain, but I kept crawling. I used my knee as retaliation but it wasn't good enough. I was immediately dragged backward with arms tugging around my neck forcefully. I had done all I can. I figured this was where I was going to have to give in.
They cornered me. I was surrounded. They circled me like this was some type of cult ritual. One woman held me, choking me to death, and the others closed the circle in. There, they took turns...One would swing a punch, another would have a kick to my ribs, another would knee me in the gut. Another would swing...
And I sat there, praying and waiting for some type of miracle. because if this was it, it was going to have to be. I couldn't do anything more and I knew that.
I sat with this feeling of defeat for some time.
Punch to the face..
Knee to the gut..
Boot to the head..
Knee against my ribs..
I could hardly hear it, but the ticking of a bomb suddenly rang through my ears. I hoped that it could just get this over with already. Kill all of us and just finish this off.
But when the last tick of the bomb ticked off, there was no crazy explosion. I heard a couple pieces of glass shatter and I heard a gust of wind. I could hardly see, but if I could see anything it was a sudden burst of red particles.
I was waiting for the next punch to my face. Waiting patiently... but one didn't come. The arms that were pulled around my neck fell away quickly, so I immediately took in a breath of air, gasping quietly as I tried to recover. I lifted my eyes, opening them fully. It was the chemically subjugated gas that Yelena spoke about. It was falling from the sky, raining on all of the people in here.
I looked down at the ground with nothing but relief. I didn't have to fight any longer. The fight was over. But now, I had a completely different fight to fight. More of the fight to get out of this failing aircraft before it plummeted. That was my newest concern.
I didn't even try to find my feet. I stared at the ground, shaking, trying to find myself instead. I could hardly gather my feelings, mentally and physically. I couldn't sit still. It was over but I was panicking. Why? I could feel my throat tightening up as I could feel the tension loosening in the room.
Before I knew it, my mom was helping me up on one side and Yelena on the other. I stood up quicker than I would have wanted to. I felt so absent, I could hardly feel. It was such an odd feeling. I could barely pick up my head.
"Hey," Yelena asked, trying to knock me out of it, trying to get my attention. "Are you okay?" She questioned. I know my mom didn't ask because I was assuming that she witnessed everything that had just gone down.
As much as I would have liked for her to intervene, this was my fight to fight. My mom knew that. My mom was also a part of whatever plan they had going on. She had the comms that I didn't. She was in communication with Yelena this whole time, she knew what was going on. She knew that Yelena was coming. She wasn't afraid for me. She knew I could handle it. And that trust was what I needed from her. I might have been in less pain if she intervened, but I needed to feel the pain every once in a while. I needed to go through the motions like her every once in a while. My mom wouldn't be by my side every time I engaged in a fight, I needed to be able to take it on my own.
"Yeah, yeah," I tried to muster the words as one of them pressed against the wound in my arm. It felt deep, it absolutely burned to her touch.
"That looks like it hurts," Yelena commented, leaning over to get a closer look. I figured they were talking about my arm, but there was apparently something stabbed into my back. I had no idea, I hadn't even felt it. The pain was so equivalent to every other stab and punch and knee I had felt in the past hour, I guess I didn't even feel it anymore.
"I take it out in three, okay?" I didn't respond because I knew I didn't have much of a choice. "One, two-"
""Ah!" I cried loudly as she yanked some type of sharp object out of my skin. It was all the way stabbed through, it felt terrible. I lost my balance for just a moment and they both made sure to adjust me so that I didn't fall.
"I'm sorry," Yelena muttered after, rubbing the small puncture wound.
One of the girls asked my mom some kind of question. It was in a language that I didn't understand. I couldn't even put a finger on what language it might have been. I felt my senses slowly beginning to recover. I leaned on my mom and aunt's support less and less and started to hold myself up.
"You get as far away from here as you can," my mom instructs, the fatigue seething through her breathless words. "You get to make your own choices now," she told them, nodding her head faintly. Before she could get any more words out, there was a sudden explosion. It rattled the floor beneath us. We could see a cloud of smoke and fire breaking out through the window. This thing was definitely going down. It was time for us to leave.
"We need to get out of here," I told my mom, shaking my arms from both her and Yelena's grasp.
"We need to find Dreykov. Are you coming?" Yelena asked, looking toward me and my mother.
I was about to agree, but before I could my mom limped away back into his office again. "I'm right behind you," she said instead, so I chose to follow her. The widows ran out following Yelena. My mom climbed behind the desk with hopeful eyes.
She grabbed a ring on the desk and pulled out a keyboard before sliding the ring across a pad. I was guessing that this was how Dreykov did his work.
A file opened up before us. It was a transparent screen like the ones Tony had. It was a wide globe that read "loading..." across it. My mom inserted a USB into a small port. As she did it, I could read the words "data transfer" across the screen. She was collecting all of his data, all of his files, so that his work wouldn't be swept under the radar or forgotten. It would always be on file. I hadn't even thought of that. My mom was a smart woman; and every time we worked together I realized that I still had so much to learn.
It felt like we were waiting for hours. I slowly watched the percentage of completion increase by one every few moments. My eyes never left the screen, even as debris continued to fall from the ceilings, continued to fall in the halls, continued to burn fires and explode all over the place. I saw girls that were being targeted by Dreykov's faces appear and flash on the screen. Each of them for milliseconds at a time because there were just too many. Girls all over the world, different races and ethnicities and places, all being watched by this man.
I felt my heart start to beat a little faster. If we stayed here any longer they would be no way to possibly get out. We were going to have to die along with the rest of this thing.
I watched as the data transfer finally completed. I jumped on my toes and booked it out of that office. My mom grabbed the USB and followed after me. With a raging cloud of smoke and fire rushing toward us and down what used to be a hall, I whipped out two of the stolen guns on my holster and shot out the windows ahead of us. It was the only way we were getting out for sure. Plus, it would be a little less messy if the glass was out before we jumped through.
My mom shoved her way in front of me before I could jump.
"Follow me, we don't have chutes," she reminded. I had completely forgotten that we would need one of those. I lost my brain in this field sometimes. Recklessly jumping from the window would have definitely resulted in our deaths.
I nodded my head and dropped the guns behind me. I didn't have time to put them away. I watched my mom jump from the window but she made sure not to jump too far out. I figured she was going to try to latch on to one of the parts of the bottom of the aircraft. I didn't have the time to stand there and watch her to see what she would do. The smoke was chasing us, so I had to jump and do it hoping that I was right.
The air carried me quickly as I fell down the side of the ship. As soon as I caught the Iron bars, I latched on to one. I saw my mom just a couple of feet away. I was wondering what was going to come next. I watched her use the bar to swing back inside of the building, so I did the same.
I couldn't imagine why we were racing through these halls. Every step we took, the ground beneath us cluttered and caved in, the ceilings fell to pieces, the walls fell sideways. I fell to my feet every five seconds, struggling to even find them.
"What are you doing?!" I shouted over the ear-raping sound of the world around us falling apart. My mom had to be completely insane to think that we were going to get out of here alive, as far in as we had come.
I saw my mom stop suddenly. The look in her eyes told me that she had found what she was looking for. I tried to make it up to her side so that I could get a look as well. I realized that this used to be the hall that I stood in with Alexei and Melina. I knew that because the person in the robotic suit was still standing inside of the same cell, standing still, giving up.
She rushed over to the walls of the cell, and with regret in her eyes and sorrow in her voice she slammed her fist against it almost helplessly.
"No!" She shouts as the person tried to punch her. From what I was seeing, this person had a distaste for my mother, and whatever she did to them, she regretted. "It's okay," my mom tried to tell them, looking up into the eyes of the person looming over her. "I know you're still in there," she continued, shaking her head. "And I'm not gonna leave you in that cell," she said as she raced over to press the buttons that should release the person- that I could only assume was a girl. She was stuck here and she clearly had a history with my mother. She had to be a girl.
The doors opened before the girl and I watched while holding my breath. As the girl in the suit inched closer and closer to me and my mother, I backed up the closest to my mother that I could get. I watched the eyes of the girl like I could see through her mask. Just as I started to somewhat feel intimidated, something feel from the ceiling. I watched it fall in between us and it exploded right there, erupting flames and smoke and causing more debris to fall.
I couldn't find my voice, so I didn't yell. But I know that I started to panic when the floor slanted and started to empty every fallen article out into the sky. I tried to get a grip on the ground as if it would save me. I tried to find something loose to hold on to. More than anything, I tried to find my mom.
I can't describe what I felt next. My body was thrown around the debris that was falling out of the craft. After a while, I found my feet on a flat, still-standing piece of the Red Room. My mom landed beside me, squatting her eyes and looking off into the distance. I followed her gaze and immediately saw Yelena. She was standing on top of a jet with one of those double ended sticks in her hand. I am guessing that she was standing over an engine, and I was certain when I saw her separate the two ends of the double stick, I knew that she was going to try and clog the engine.
"Yelena, don't!" My mom shouted over the endless cry of the sputtering engines, over the loud crashing of irons and metals that were once used to rip apart our childhoods.
Yelena looked back at her with a faint smile on her face. She held the two sticks just above the engine. She wasn't going to listen to my mom- that was way too tame for her. Yelena had a free mind. She was going to do what she wanted to.
"This was fun," she admitted, smiling. I would have tried to reason with her if I thought it was gonna change anything. I just decided to keep my mouth shut as I watched her stick the two ends into the engine, causing it to fail and explode within moments. She disappeared behind the explosion, and my mom immediately panicked.
I saw her dart back into the line of fire, back toward the falling debris so that she could grab one of the parachutes. I watched her recklessly sprint then jump from the piece of the building after her sister.
I rolled my eyes and shook her head. I ran back to grab myself one of the same parachutes before I jumped out as well. I wasn't sure if we would land in the same spot or if I would even find my mom, but I could only hope that I would.