She was ninety percent sure the main access way into the ceiling was just outside the sysadmin guy’s office, Omega’s only full-time employee apart from Henstridge, Savin, and a couple of low grade lab workers. The daylight hours working for Yamamoto had crawled past, so boring they’d almost sent her mad.
Maybe it was why she’d been a bit snippy with him?
Nah, everything about the job had rubbed her the wrong way. Especially having to defend the jerk at the repellent clubs he’d visited, when she’d much rather have helped his victims beat him up. Still, he had caused a few fun fights, she had to admit.
The heavy thuds had stopped, but as she reached the access hole, she heard the lab door open. A second later Yamamoto screeched from there, “Henstridge!” his cry followed by multiple sets of running booted footsteps. I guess he noticed I’m not there.
Hearing nothing directly below her, she lifted the hatch, blinking in the office light. After a quick look, she dropped silently to the floor.
“She’s gone! Find her!”
“She can’t be!” Henstridge’s voice. Followed by a lot of swearing.
She could circle around to the main light switch…. Or…. The sysadmin guy’s office – he had all sorts of bits and pieces there.
Slipping inside, she found a metal strip. That’ll do. She bent it into a small ‘U’ shape and crept out, pausing to listen, working out exactly where everyone was.
She heard the Doctor ask Mason if he could get a call out, and Mason say the cell access was being jammed.
“Shut up!” Savin’s voice growled, and she heard a meaty impact. At a second impact, the Doctor grunted in pain.
“Where is she, Truman?” Yamamoto was screaming. “And you are incompetent, Henstridge. A fool!”
She couldn’t understand any of the Japanese that followed, but it didn’t sound complimentary.
Thud.
Uh oh. That felt… heavier somehow. Nearer. Was she the only one who heard it? Were they all really that hard of hearing?
Crouching low on the carpeted floor, exposed in the office lights’ white glare, she darted from cover to cover. But although her hunters trod softly, it was child’s play to follow them all by their sounds. Henstridge and Yamamoto were heading back out of the lab to Mason and the Doctor in the main viewing area. One of the searchers was approaching from her right.
But there was another not far from him. Around to her left, she could hear one in the kitchen cafe area, alone, searching cupboards. For her?
It might be fun to take them down one by one. Also, sensible. She eyed her U-shaped metal. In the dark.
Thud.
She sprinted down the corridor between the elevators and the toilets, toward the cafe and her solo hunter, thinking.
Assuming Nelson’s malware had done its job, she needed to kill Yamamoto at least. And what about his backup files? The sysadmin guy kept them in the safe bolted to the floor of the room next to his. At least there were none off-site to worry about. Yamamoto had screamed at him the one time he’d recommended it.
“Never! Everyone wants my research, Mr Raphael! No so-called secure vault can be trusted!”
Of course she hadn’t mentioned to either of them that the Department agreed. It was why she was there.
Yamamoto was screaming now in the same screeching tone of outrage.
“Where is she? How did she escape?” he demanded.
“I have no idea,” the Doctor replied. Then grunted in pain.
“I think you do.” Henstridge’s voice.
Thud.
That was definitely closer. Stronger too, like it was shaking the building more. Sure, it was a low sound, but couldn’t they even feel it?
Time was running out. Okay, Leeth.
She eyed her strip of metal and then her naked body, and winced at what she planned, remembering being tasered. Slipping into the Ladies for some insulating paper she shut her eyes for a few seconds, then rammed the metal into a power socket, hoping for the best.
Thud.
A pleasingly strong spark then the lights failed, to cries all around. Mentally thanking everyone for giving her their locations, she exited the restroom at speed, her eyes already adjusted. With light flooding in from the city the kitchen area wasn’t dark at all really, yet her hunter was fumbling around like he couldn’t see.
The expected thud didn’t come. Because of the dark? But it didn’t seem to worry Dr Y. He just ordered Henstridge to send the cook-cleaner to turn them back on. Hah. As if I’d use the light switches!
“Your bleeding has slowed, Doctor. I can fix that.” Again the sound of a meaty impact and her uncle’s grunt of pain. “How did she escape?”
I’m still in Mode One. And he’s an idiot when it comes to spying or fighting. If he orders me to come charging in to-
“Seshoestus desstussten,” he said, and Leeth froze for a second, stunned that he’d freed her.
“What?” Henstridge demanded. “What language’s that?”
He freed me!
There were nine searchers, plus Henstridge and Savin. And what if they used Mace or her uncle as hostages?
Thud.
Uh oh. Crouched low, she rose behind the armored man in the kitchen, grimacing. “Sorry,” she whispered.
He didn’t stand a chance. One down.
Sprinting silent and barefooted to the next closest victim, she counted thuds like slow heartbeats, not knowing how many she had left, just certain there were none to spare.
“Sorry,” she whispered to the second man. She didn’t have time to be gentle. It gave him time to turn toward her before she swept her claws through his neck, catching his head and body to lower them softly to the ground.
She checked his gun, but as soon as her finger slipped onto its trigger an ultrasonic whine started. Unauthorized fingerprint. Dropping it, she watched it zap and spark against the ground.
For some reason, she felt awful even as she sprinted back toward the sysadmin guy’s office. Andrew. That was his name. She slowed as she approached, so the two searchers nearby wouldn’t hear her. Positioning herself outside Andrew’s door she waited while a hand fumbled from inside to open it. As the man stepped out she struck up into his chin from below, wincing as his neck cracked and he collapsed. Three dead.
Thud.
“Sorry,” she whispered again. This should have been fun: something bad coming, nine armed men hunting her in the dark, and her on her own. But she wasn’t enjoying it as much as she’d expected.
“Jace,” someone whispered. “I heard something.”
That was the second searcher. She saw a handheld mirror poke around the corner.
Rats.
She hauled the body upright in front of her, hoping it’d give a moment of confusion as she walked it around the corner.
“Jace, what-?”
She sprang over Jace’s falling body to snatch this one’s assault rifle away, her other hand lopping off his head. It bounced away, loud in her ears as blood sprayed. Four.
“Sorry,” she whispered. What was wrong with her? She kept his rifle, not sure why. Maybe it’d make a nice club.
Thud.
And couldn’t anyone else hear that? Couldn’t they feel its vibration in the floor?
Someone moved with a soft but heavy tread down the corridor between what she thought of as Andrew’s part of the office, and the secondary labs. She sprinted past the computer backups room, the computer room, then slowed as she saw the back of a figure moving away from her, toward the T-junction onto the space circling the floor, with views north into the city.
“Miller? Stravinsky? Marrs? Davos? Respond. I’ve lost your life signs.”
She didn’t recognize the tiny voice from the earbud of the stocky man ahead of her, scanning left and right, but the same voice was coming from inside the secondary labs on her right.
On bare feet she padded silently forward, crouching, using his own body to block her reflection from the floor-to-wall windows he faced. She rose silently behind him, her eyes in line with the back of his neck.
This isn’t right.
Killing him from behind was unfair. She could make a sound, so they could fight face to face. But then he might warn the others. And this wasn’t a game.
Thud.
With her last opponent’s assault rifle held loosely in her left hand, she let the claws of her right stretch silently out in the dark.
Then from his earbud, so close she could have plucked it from his head, the same voice. “’Toon, I’ve lost four life signs! Jace should be ten meters from you, west. Go look.”
“Okay,” the solid figure whispered, her voice husky.
The solid figure in front of her was a woman! For some reason, it made a difference. I don’t want to kill her!
The woman was already turning left. Leeth danced to the right and forward, staying behind her. Retracting her claws to change hands on the rifle, she slid a finger onto its smart trigger to let it read her print, and reached out with her other hand. At the first sound of the capacitor charging up, she wrenched the woman’s belt backward and rammed the rifle barrel-first down the leg of her pants. The woman spun around, too slow. Leeth ripped the weapon from her hands as blue eyes flew open in shock. Then arcing electricity slammed into the woman, sending her into spasms and taking her down, gasping and jerking for long seconds until the battery cut off. Leeth winced. She’d be out of it for minutes. Five down.
Thud.
That noise was getting to her. Keeping low, beside the walls of labs two and three and wincing at the lights from the city-scape on her left, she scampered to the T-junction between the labs and meeting rooms.
Slowing at the corner, with the lights of the city streaming in through Omega’s mirrored windows, she stepped out – and almost ran into a man standing silent in the dark.
This one she hadn’t taken by surprise. But she was too close for him to use his rifle. His hand flashed to draw a knife as she dropped the woman’s rifle.
Invisible blades struck, lopping off his wrist, the other his head. Two rifles hit the carpeted floor. Six.
“What the fuck is going on? Blade, you there? ’Toon – how’s Jace?”
The voice still came from inside the lab on her right.
Thud.
But the shiver in the floor this time was followed a moment later by an echoing muffled tread inside the fire-stairs.
“Mr Henstridge, I think something in here is killing my people. Sound off, everyone.”
She heard nothing for several seconds, then, a hesitant and distant “Jackson.” Straining, she heard it faintly from inside the lab too. Then one more name she didn’t get.
She rested her fingers on the heavy lab door. The man inside was freaking out. But it’d take too long to kill him, even assuming she could reach him before he shot her. They were alert now, ready for her. By her count, she still had three hunters she hadn’t dealt with. Plus Henstridge, Savin, and Dr Y.
Inside the lab, she heard the panicked man call out those other names who hadn’t responded again, but she was already racing through the dark, back to the wide-open viewing area for Mason, her uncle, Henstridge and Savin.
It was time to take out the real bad guys.
Thud.
And, by the sound of it, she had maybe ten or twenty seconds before whatever giant thing that was, arrived from the fire-stairs.