Snippet #1983101

Trent couldn't help a smirk. The girl had guts, more than... well, most of his current companions, actually. As endearing as that was, it didn't make his shotgun any heavier, so it was still very much trained on her as she mostly-complied with what he had said. Seeing the weapons was actually a relief. If she was infected, she would have been using them already, which meant he didn't have to kill a tween tonight.

Or did he? Just as he was about to tell girl to put her weapons down, he felt cold metal against the skin of his neck. His smirk didn't falter, though mentally, he was kicking himself. He'd even asked the girl if she was with someone, suspected she was, and now that someone was fixing to open him up a new breathing hole. On the one hand, she was a woman. That meant she was emotional and irrational, so who knew what she might do? One the other hand... no, she hadn't kept her sister alive this long just to gamble her life on completely incapacitating Trent with one knife-stroke.

"Don't know you won't just cut me open anyway," he replied evenly. "So I think I'll keep my leverage for now. I ain't gonna bleed out before I take both of you with me, so why don't you just go ahead and back off and we'll see if we can't all get out of this alive." He already had a center mass shot all lined up, and little girls like Mercy didn't have much in the way of center mass. One shell would be it for her, and Trent did have a point: bleeding to death took at least a few seconds, and his shotgun was semi-automatic.

He turned his gaze on Mercy. "Why don't you look right in my eyes and tell your big sister if you think I'll pull the trigger?" This time, he didn't use the kiddie voice. The girl had obviously grown up a few years worth since the outbreak, and she'd shown herself to have some steel in the spine.