Kidnapped

I shouldn’t have shot at her!

That was Richard’s thought as he ran from the park. His heart hammered, his blood roared in his ears. His chest was burning as he pushed himself harder than he ever had before. His legs cramped and ached, begging for him to stop. To rest. To recover. He ignored them. Sheer terror pushed him on.

She couldn’t have meant that!

There was no way that Isabel could have gotten to Kara while he was distracted!

Stupid, stupid, stupid!, he cursed himself. You should have known something was up when Pump wasn’t around! Gearheart, you absolute fool, she played you like a damn instrument!

But he had no time for self-recrimination. He had no time for doubt or anything but the gear which squeezed his heart in an icy vice. The terror that poured like ice water through his veins, pumping through every fibre of his being with every **** stride.

Kara!

He had to get to Kara!

There was no way that Isabel was sane enough to come up with something like this! She had to be lying, fucking with him, trying to get a raise! Kara would still be at their shared home! They’d laugh about it! It would be funny! He just had to get there!

But when he reached their temporary home in the red-light district, Richard’s heart plummeted. The door had been **** in. Bent in two with inhuman strength. There were marks of gunfire on the walls; a crushed bullet lay in the doorway. Trampled by something heavy.

“No…”

It was a bad dream. This couldn’t be happening. He’d wake up from it at any moment!

But he didn’t.

The trail of destruction led to the inner house; right to Kara’s lab. Someone had thrown everything against the intruder and none of it had worked. He could imagine it all too well. Pump wading through the destruction, calm and collected even as bullets bounced and snarled around him.

“Kara!” He shouted. “Kara!”

But there was no answer and when he got to her workshop, a scene of absolute destruction met his gaze. The walls were burned black; the tables which had been piled high with tools and inventions and creations had been pounded into slivers of wood and metal.

In the corner, where she had opened it up and been working on it, Kara’s ****-machine was gone.

And as he fell to his knees, he knew that so was she.