Bullets, for the uninitiated, are noisy little fuckers. I don't mean their explosive expulsion from the barrel of a rifle. Technically, that is the casing and the explosive charge contained within. But an actual bullet racing past your ear at a few multiples of the speed of sound makes a pretty unique "zipping" effect.
The physics of this noise is fairly complex, but it essentially boils down to the angle of your eardrums in relation to the corona of mini sonic booms being created behind the bullet as it rips through the air. There are lots of other factors as well: the size and density of the bullet, its velocity, the ambient air pressure, the direction of any wind, how near or far away from your ears it flies, and, oddly, the direction you are facing when it passes. There is even a position that, if you are facing away at a certain angle, you wouldn't be able to hear it at all. It's all very complicated.
There are, however, a few commonly understood truths. The one that seemed the most apt in my current predicament was the one that said, "If you heard the shot, the bullet wasn't meant for you." I mean, assuming that bullet actually hit you and hit you somewhere important enough to kill you outright, that is actually true. The bullet flies faster than the sound of the explosion that fired it, so it hits you before the sound wave of the gunshot would. It sounds pretty in a movie, but instant kill shots are actually pretty rare; a direct hit to the heart, the brain stem, or a few parts of the brain itself (and even that last one isn't a technical guarantee). Unfortunately, being shot in the vast majority of places in the body leads to a delay of death for either a mercifully short time or a brutally long one...
If you were ever going to be killed by a bullet, then the fabled "being dead before you felt a thing" was what you would be hoping for. Most people didn't get that wish fulfilled.
I suppose it would depend on where you were hit that would determine the amount of pain you would feel during that delay... the very lucky got very little pain for only a few seconds. The very
unlucky
would feel the most acute of agonies for a pretty long time before their body finally gave up, dying of blood loss or shock rather than the damage to internal organs caused by the bullet. The majority of people fell somewhere on the scale between. And all of that is assuming the bullet actually kills you. The pain of being shot and surviving is arguably more horrific than being killed outright.
It is odd the things that pop into your mind when people are shooting at you.
The zips of bullets shot through the air around my head as I ducked back down behind the wall, the cracks of the gunshot arriving a split second later as our assailants opened fire on us from three sides. The fourth side was, predictably, the only wall in the building left fully intact, meaning it cut off that vector as a means of escape. We were in an expertly orchestrated kill zone. Even though the bullets being shot at me were either sailing over or thudding into the cover that I was crouching behind, that cover did nothing for the men on the opposite side of the room, whose cover protected them from the opposite direction and left the wide open to the attackers on my side of the building. Conversely, the bullets being shot at them were starting to skip off the floor and slam into the pillars around me.
My eyes were still on Henry as the echo of my warning was swallowed up by the deafening cacophony of our attack. I could almost see the surprise on his face as our predicament dawned on him, but his reflexive training was already kicking in, and his body dropped to the ground in a heartbeat.
"Return fire!" he yelled out, his voice as deep and authoritative as it always had been despite the obvious tension etched into his face. This was not his first rodeo, but that didn't make each new rodeo equally as terrifying. Familiarity didn't breed complacency here, or contempt, just experience, and dread, both of which were telling Henry and every one of the rest of us that we didn't want to be here. "Conserve ammo and pick your targets!"
The question as to my skill was answered in short order. I had downloaded everything I needed to know from Henry and the rest of our escort, but whether that translated into theoretical knowledge or into actual combat proficiency was hitherto a mystery. But it was a question that was answered quickly as I rose, leveled my rifle at the muzzle flashes in the darkness across the plaza outside the building, and squeezed the trigger.
The rifle kicked back into the firm grip I had on it, jolting sharply backward into my shoulder with each of the three shots I sent downrange to the enemy positions. I had absolutely no idea if they hit anything or not. I was firing blind.
Jeeves was already working, filtering the parts of my "red alert" program which crossed the line into overt use of my powers. I could very easily reach for the enemy soldiers' minds, find out exactly where our attackers were hiding, and send my rounds out with pinpoint, even guided precision. Hell, I could make each one of them stand up, step out of cover, and start line dancing in the middle of the plaza. Or.. you know... just use that energy ball thing. But if the enemy had a way of tracking the use of our powers, as Jeeves and Jerry suspected, then that would be a good way to set many alarm bells ringing. Instead, I could only use the powers that altered something in me. My bulletproof skin was a good example and was as active as ever; it was going a long way to smothering that ball of abject panic that was throbbing in the pit of my stomach. My ability to hear the thoughts of others was obviously working, too, although it was doing nothing to help me pinpoint the source of those thoughts. Both of those powers, however, did nothing to the outside world; they were entirely contained within me and, at least according to Jeeves' reasoning, could not be detected by anyone outside of my own skull.
There were other powers that Jeeves was adding on the fly, though. A new one called "cat eye" allowed me to see in the dark. Not the same as I could in the cold light of day, it was almost like the low light setting on a camera, but with a bluish tint to it. It at least allowed me to see our assailants firing from cover in some abandoned buildings directly opposite us. Another he called "snapshot." That one drastically improved my shooting reflexes and made compensating for things like the need to lead a moving target almost instinctual.
Henry crawled his way back to cover as another few bullets skipped off the ground around him. The way he just fixed his sight onto a spot on the wall that Jerry and I were using for cover and not flinching away from the little kicks of dust as the bullets landed close to him as he moved was practically fucking heroic. Without my bulletproof skin, I would be absolutely shitting myself in the position I was in at that moment, let alone his.
I must have raised and fired another half a dozen times before he made it to the safety of cover. I was just firing the last of a five-round series of shots as he pulled himself up to a crouch, looking over the wall just as I crouched back behind it. "Good, keep them pinned. You may not hit much, but if you are able to keep them distracted, it will stop them mounting a charge or even being accurate with their own shots." He pressed his fingers to the comms switch on his throat. "Six, how are you doing?" he barked into the mic. Six was the shorthand callsign for Hans.
"Holding them off, sir, but things are looking a little hairy for two; he's on his own." Two was Jakob.
Henry nodded, although Hans would never have seen that, before shouting into the mic again. "Two, how's it looking?"
There was a pause before Jakob answered, the rattle of almost a full mag being fired on auto reverberating through the foyer before the breathless voice almost yelled into our earpieces. "Fubar! The fuck d'you go? I'm not gonna be able to hold these bastards for long. I need another gun."
Henry flashed me a look. "I'm on my way, two. Thirty seconds."
Jakob didn't answer, but the sounds of gunfire restarted from the part of the building he was defending. "Keep it up, guys," Henry nodded to Jerry and me as Jerry launched a few more rounds at our targets. "If you start running low on ammo, call it in, and we will fall back to the stairs and one of the upper floors."
"Got it," Jerry called back.
I stood up again, watching as one soldier tried to move out from the blasted building and make a run to one of the concrete and marble flower beds that lined this once picturesque plaza. He must have been one of those guys who played too much
Call of Duty
because he was making no attempt to stay low or to avoid being spotted. I zeroed in on him and put three bullets into his center mass. A geyser of blood erupted from his coughing lips as his back hit the ground. I turned around in time to watch a wide-eyed Bob appear from the doorway to the stairs. Henry spotted him too.
