Snippet #2240307

The soldiers kept firing short controlled bursts, and their leader waved his hand forward - an indication to pursue - but before they could begin running, they were halted by a calm, even voice in their earpieces.

"Secure Unit One. Let them go."

After a moment's confusion, they all reported affirmatives in their respective languages and ran forward, kneeling beside the fallen soldier, pulling the katana from its neck and bandaging it. The blade had managed to slip between his spinal column and his throat; it had cut an artery and was bleeding heavy, but for now, the monstrosity was alive.

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Valentine staggered into the huge room, his blood dripping down, staining the white tiles. The pain was beginning to mount; with the adrenaline fading, it hit him that he really had been stabbed. In his flesh, not his armour. It was a strange feeling; he hadn't been properly wounded in close to a year. Yet there he stood, bleeding out over the floor.

He managed to walk over to one of the beds, pulling some medical supplies from it before collapsing on the bed in a sitting position. He gritted his teeth against the pain as he removed his coat, the heavy garment, interlaid with small armour inserts, clinking onto the ground; he saw quite a few holes in it, caused by high-calibre bullets that had only been stopped by his heavier plate armour. Glancing down, he stared at the knife jammed into him; it was identical to his own in every way, and he actually checked the sheath on his chest that his own was still there. He closed his eyes, wrapping blood-soaked gloved hands around it; he knew full well that this was going to hurt. Then, with no small degree of force, he ripped it out of himself, letting out a broken grunt of pain as he did so. He dropped the knife, his hand plunging back onto the mattress to support himself; his breathing was erratic, violent, due to the pain. He'd been shot many times, stabbed many times, but this was different - his knives were specifically designed with tiny serration in it, as to cause maximum pain upon cutting, to tear open the wound and make it hard to heal. He had to be pragmatic; but now, that pragmatism was biting him in the back.

After a long, fuzzy pause, he realised that he was bleeding out a lot quicker with the knife removed, and thusly, he stood, grunting again at the pain caused by tensing his muscles. He quickly stripped off his plate armour, letting the heavy ceramic plates bang to the ground, before removing his shirt; he was heavily-muscled, courtesy of a decade of combat, but unfortunately, that here equated to a great deal of blood coursing through the wounded area. Blood was splayed over his chest, having been spread around by the movement of his shirt, and a veritable torrent of it was going down his stomach. His legs shook and he fell to one knee, hunched over; he didn't have much time.

He grabbed a bandage and wrapped the wound, placing pressure on it to stem the bleeding. After he'd wrapped it enough and the bleeding had mostly stopped, he lay back on the now blood-soaked bed, exhaling quietly and closing his eyes, letting his muscles rest for a minute. After he felt slightly better, he sat back up and injected himself with a high-powered painkiller taken from a pouch on his armour. Then, realising that he was A), in the presence of a woman, and B), without a shirt, his face turned slightly red and he turned around, grabbing a T-shirt from the compartment and pulling it over his head; it was slightly small for him, but it fit.

After grabbing something from the pocket of his ripped shirt, he walked over to Audra, rather gingerly on account of the painkillers not having taken effect yet. The short walk seemed to exhaust him, and when he reached her, he staggered back against the kitchen bench, sighing. He then opened his hand and passed what he'd taken to her; it was a completely black credit card, gleaming slightly in the white light.

"There's a nine-figure sum on there," he stated. "Take two million. It should easily cover anything you lost out there, and then some." After a long pause of thinking about his next words, he continued, "I don't like it, but you saved my life out there, and I won't soon forget it. The fact that you saved me makes you a friend, whether I like it or not."

((Not bad, not bad. That post was a solid effort, even by my standards :) Also, may I enquire as to what's on the video tapes?))