Keegan's advantage was short-lived, though he didn't quite anticipate how badly it would turn out for him.
His finger had only closed around the trigger of his sidearm when she'd made that noise of frustration, cold and clinical determination rushing through him before she closed the distance in unnerving speed.
"Shi— "
The man barely had time to curse before the gun, too, flew out of his gloved grip. His eyes widened in a mixture of shock and alarm, and before he could shoot out his hand to stop the lithe assailant, her hands were fisted in his collar.
His plate carrier did little to dull or soften her knee striking his spine, the impact sending painful jolts up his back as he let out a strangled choke of pain. His fingers spasmed where they'd attempted to wrench away from her, temporarily numb.
Paralyzed, Keegan could do little but inhale painfully as she took hold of the back of his head and slammed it into the desk in front of him hard.
"Agh—!"
Pain and nausea instantly bloomed at the impact, vision blacking out for a moment. Though it jolted his paralyzed limbs into motion again, palm instinctively raising to cradle his spinning mind, it barely mattered when she wrenched his arm back.
The muscles in his limb strained and tensed when the spy pulled, and then spasmed uncontrollably once again when the electricity ran through his veins.
Keegan grit his teeth, jaw forced into a painful clench, his noise of stifled agony stuck in his throat. The shock lasted but a moment, yet his body still jolted with the residual electricity as he slumped forward, consciousness fading for a few secods, eyes rolling back.
Though his body crashed onto the ground with a dull thud and rattle of his gear, Keegan's awareness flooded back in agonizing haziness only seconds later. His eyes felt slick with blood, a miasma of throbbing pain in his skull.
Still, he wheezed, rasping in breaths that scratched at his dry throat as he waited for her footsteps to fade.
...
"F-fuck..." he gasped, pushing himself up on violently unsteady elbows as blinked the crimson out of his eyes. His head throbbed with a piercing headache, vision swimming as he keyed his comms.
"Enemy is—highly... highly trained and dangerous. Secure exits and prioritize capture," Keegan murmured, tuning out the sharp buzz of static that came next, coherence quickly being replaced by dizziness. Keegan collapsed again when he tried to push himself up on his knees, landing on his side with a grunt as vertigo strangled him, yet he persisted anyway. His head felt like lead, the thoughts in his mind fizzling to ribbons of fraying memories, no matter how hard he tried to grasp at them.
Swaying, Keegan got to his feet, limping towards his dropped weapons.
Fuck. Where'd... there.
His muscles felt like ground meat, tendons strained and painfully tender after the shock, however mild it was. The weight of his rifle was almost too much as he crouched to pick it up, despite how it usually brought him a grounding sense of control, heavy and burdening in his grip as he stalked out of the room with unsteady steps, unfocused eyes attempting to track where that woman had slinked off to.
God, he was right. Bad fucking idea. Keegan was no easy man to defeat by any means, yet this? To be felled this badly, this quickly by a single enemy?
He had zero fucking idea what he was dealing with.
Still, she was human. Humans bled, same as him. Could be defeated.
So as Keegan stumbled, the likely concussion making his weight slump against a wall in a bout of nausea and lightheadedness, he clenched his jaw and plotted, his hand raising to his comms once more.
And but a litte while later later, the room the lethal spy was in rattled with the closing of heavy metal panelling, a shuddering hiss sounding out as thick gas started to billow out...
