Black Canary felt despair. In a moment of dizziness, the pain from her wounded side caused her legs to buckle, and she collapsed on the staircase, tumbling down the steps.
The jiujitsu she had once learned saved her life. Black Canary did not break her neck as she rolled down the stairs, but her head, which slammed into the steps, felt even more dizzy from the impact.
After receiving consecutive heavy blows, Black Canary couldn't get up anymore. She curled up in a corner between the staircases, pressing on her abdominal wound with the last of her strength.
She saw Shiller lift a foot, intending to walk downstairs, but then a noisy sound came from the other side of the hallway, and Shiller turned to look.
Suddenly he walked straight towards that direction as if something had hooked his soul. The blood dripping from the Gunfish mask left a trail, mingling with the sound of leather shoes, echoing a terrifying and disorderly cruelty in the empty hallways. To the Canary, however, it sounded like the most beautiful music.
She quickly lowered her head to check her wound. The spike on the Gunfish mask was long, getting poked by it was like being stabbed with a kitchen knife, but at least it was only a stab wound.
This meant that as long as it wasn't like the corpse of the strong man before, who was stabbed right in the eye socket, it wouldn't be fatal for the time being.
Black Canary sat there, panting, recovering her strength, but suddenly she heard footsteps coming from downstairs again.
She turned her head warily and saw a head of striking red hair.
"Natasha?"
"It's me. Are you okay?" Natasha walked over, holding a small medical box in her hand. She squatted next to Black Canary, opened the box, took out an injection, and said, "Good thing I knew this wasn't going to be simple, so I brought some Cure potions. This will take time to work, let me bandage your wound first."
Black Canary didn't have the strength to speak further. She slowly moved her hand away, allowing Natasha to wrap bandages around her abdomen, and with that movement, Natasha withdrew her hand from supporting her back.
She looked at the blood on her hands in shock and shone a mini flashlight at Black Canary's back, where she also found a blood hole.
"Thank God it wasn't sharp enough to pierce through the bone," Black Canary said, gasping for breath. "My shoulder blade saved me. I'll treat it better in the future."
Natasha sighed, started to dress Black Canary's wounds, wrapping the abdomen with bandages and then the shoulder. She cleaned the forehead wound and finally gave an injection in her neck.
"Thank you," Black Canary said, turning her head away. "Did you save me?"
"I suppose so. I drew him away."
"What exactly happened?"
"I don't know. He lost control."
"But no matter how a normal person loses control..." Black Canary stopped mid-sentence. She never imagined that she could empathize with victims in those plasma movies.
It was only after she had managed to survive that she realized retrospectively just how much pressure she had faced and how much fear had driven her to make incorrect decisions.
"Damn it," Black Canary muttered, somewhat dazed.
"He's not a normal person," Natasha said as she cleaned Black Canary's bloodstains. "He has some magnificent past beyond the common man's imagination, but that's not what's important now. The most important thing is to stop him."
"Why did he lose control?"
"It's not surprising," Natasha shook her head. "He himself suffers from mental illness, and he's also severely seasick. He lost a lot of blood before and was too weak, which may be the main reason for the onset of his mental illness."
"Weak?!"
"He was weak before the attack," said Natasha, as if it were a matter of great importance. "But you know, mental patients often experience unusual excitement after an onset, which makes them feel no muscular limitations and often become incredibly strong and aggressive."
Black Canary swallowed hard, remembering the moment she was smashed to the ground along with the door.
"Why would he get on a ship if he gets seasick?" Black Canary asked. Suddenly she paused, looked at Natasha, and said, "For Oliver?"
Natasha opened her mouth and then closed it again, pursed her lips, tilted her head, and then shook her head decidedly, "It might not be entirely because of that."
"Of course it's because of that!" Black Canary said, covering her forehead. "Otherwise, why would a seasick person go on a cruise as if they had a death wish?!"
"God, this is terrible," Black Canary said, covering her eyes. "Oliver will be even more upset when he knows about this, he really can't handle any more stress."
"It's good to stay optimistic," Natasha remarked ambiguously.
Black Canary looked at her, so Natasha added, "Under normal circumstances, Doctor Schiller would appreciate your actions, which always prioritize the mental health of others."
"Can't you speak plainly? Miss, you don't seem like a Soviet."
"What I mean is, the guilt towards a friend might be the least of Oliver's troubles he's about to face."
"So the biggest trouble..."
Bang!
A sudden noise from upstairs made both Oliver and Amanda look up.
"It sounds like something hit the floor," Amanda said with a frown. "That was quite loud, I hope it isn't someone else..."
Bang! Bang Bang!
At that, Oliver couldn't stay put any longer. He glanced at Amanda and said, "Let's go check it out, I suspect it's those drug traffickers' doing; they want the gold coins and have already killed many for them."
The pair left the room and headed in the direction of the noise. Oliver fitted a small crossbow to his arm while Amanda drew her gun, moving upstairs with one in front of the other in a defensive stance.
After turning a corner, Oliver saw a lot of blood on one side wall of the stairwell. Amanda went over to check and said, "Someone was wounded and leaned here, probably with a deep wound on their back, but the bleeding stopped quickly, and then she left."
Oliver squinted his eyes, using the faint moonlight streaming in through the yacht's window to look up at the corridor. From his angle, he could see that one of the rooms was doorless, with blood all over the floor.
This made them even more cautious; they moved slowly, haltingly forward, ever vigilant for any sound in the air.
Bang!
Another loud noise startled both of them; the jolt to the nerves always felt more intense than at calmer times, and Amanda nearly made a sound.
But Oliver, leveraging the aftermath of the loud noise, dashed up the stairs in two bounds, readying a tranquilizer dart in his small crossbow as he reached the top; "whoosh," he fired, but hit nothing.
The corridor was empty, the bloodstains the silent testament to the fierce battle that had taken place here.
Oliver wasn't exactly a detective, but Amanda rose from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's ranks and had been an agent; she had experience with this and said after examining the corridor,
"Blood from two people. One must already be dead because there is brain matter here—probably a body dragged to this spot. The second might be a woman because there is a strand of her hair among the blood at the edges."
"The woman was in the corridor, the killer came over, and in desperation, she... hid in this room."
Amanda turned and pointed, and Oliver looked toward the doorless room. They both entered and swore in unison.
"Damn it, did this place get hit by a bear?"
Amanda, looking at the shattered door on the floor, said, "What knocked this door flying off its hinges? And looking at these bloodstains, the woman who hid behind the door got slammed onto the floor, too."
Amanda noticed the statue and said, "Oh, I get it. She was holding the statue behind the door, hoping to deliver a fatal blow to the killer devil, but the person didn't kick in the door; they blasted the entire door off instead."
"The woman stood too close, which caused her to be flung out as well and fall to the floor. The killer devil probably wanted to walk over and pick her up, but she slipped away,"
"The killer devil gave her a stab, she tried to pick up the statue, and then..."
Noticing Oliver had grown silent, Amanda turned to look at him, but Oliver was staring at the strand of hair Amanda had just handed to him.
"What's up?"
"... Dinah?"
Oliver murmured as he stared at the hair, and Amanda quickly realized, saying, "Is she that little lover who followed you all the way from Mexico?"
"No, it couldn't be what you think," Oliver said, his expression growing solemn as he stared at the floor and continued, "I know Dinah; she's a genius fighter and also a superpower user. She couldn't have been helplessly wounded like this."
"That's just what the scene is telling me," Amanda said, not without a hint of sarcasm, despite lacking schadenfreude, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but don't be too confident in a girl not even 20."
Oliver still shook his head and said, "I've told you, Dinah is a superpower user. Although she's always had some trouble controlling her abilities, and I've advised her to avoid using them as much as possible, in a critical moment, she can definitely..."
Tap... Tap... Tap...
Footsteps started to come from the end of the corridor once again.
Oliver and Amanda both stepped back, hiding in the corner where a wardrobe met a wall, which kept them from seeing any movement in the corridor.
Oliver, standing in the deepest part of the corner, opened the closet door and found a mirror. Hidden behind the mirrored door, they adjusted the angle to observe the corridor through the reflection.
It was too dark in the corridor to see the details from afar; all they could make out was someone slowly walking their way with a spiked weapon in hand, dragging something.
"David!" Amanda whispered, her voice lowered, "He's killed David!!!"
Oliver looked at her, and Amanda pointed at the mirror and said, "He's one of my boss's men, considered one of his most capable. How did he just die like this? Who killed him?"
A bad feeling suddenly washed over Oliver.
"Listen, I'll count to three, and then we sprint out and run downstairs as fast as we can, not looking back at anything!"
"What?!"
"Three, two, one... Run!!!"