Disclaimer: I don't own jack.
Chapter Seven
The guards of GeneCo made their living dealing with violence on a daily basis. With Rotti Largo, it had happened while protecting him from the hundreds of people who wanted him dead for killing their loved ones or the people that hated what he had started and felt that he was a threat to the very root of humanity.
With Amber, they killed whoever made her unhappy.
In any given day, the guards would have to cart off between six and twenty people to the dumpsters. They would die because the company wasn't making enough money, or because Amber didn't like the way they had styled her hair that morning. The day after Luigi was murdered, twenty three bodies had to be disposed of. The day Pavi disappeared, forty seven people were given death sentences.
Many employees were going the way of Pavi and trying to escape before they too met their end. The bodyguards that still lingered were those who loved violence in their core and lived for murder, mercenaries taken from prisons and paid insane amounts to do what they loved.
Even those men and women were not prepared for what came through the company doors.
The survivors of the first explosion only saw a petite woman in a long leather trenchcoat before she put a bullet between their eyes. Only three people were alive to see the woman stride towards the elevator. No one survived the second grenade, thrown over her shoulder just as the elevator doors closed.
Shilo quickly pushed the button for the top floor, knowing that Amber's ego wouldn't allow her office to be anywhere but the highest point. She refilled her handgun, keeping an eye on the buttons lighting up as she passed each floor.
She had discovered her father's lab as she ran towards the front door. A whistle of wind came through from behind the fireplace, causing her to pause. After closer inspection she saw that the fireplace was not all the way back against the wall, her father obviously not having closed it properly the night he died. She pried the hidden door open and was horrified to find his lab, and yet a better plan than just running into GeneCo was forming in her brain.
Though the only weapons had seen her dad with during her encounter with him at the Opera were scalpels and a few needles, he had a small room filled floor to ceiling with pistols, rifles, shotguns, grenades, and, oddly enough, a sword.
Shilo took a spare plastic trenchcoat off the wall and cut off about a foot of fabric before it was short enough. She ripped off both sleeves and buttoned the coat all the way to her chin before strapping the grenade belt around her waist. She found her father's scalpels and tied two of them under her pants around her ankles and placed one in her pocket. A small handgun and its shoulder hostler were the next to be equipped, and she finalized her weaponry with two rifles strapped to her back.
Looking at herself in the mirror, she could barely recognize anything she saw. With the knowledge that she was going to commit many murders and likely die herself, she had taken the next garbage truck to the GeneCo building.
Handgun refilled, she swung a rifle around and checked to make sure it was loaded before stepping off to the side of the elevator as the doors opened.
It was a good call. Bullet after bullet bombarded the back wall of the elevator. Shilo closed her eyes and prayed that Zachary was still alive. Finally hearing the click of empty weapons, Shilo to a deep breath, swallowed, and stepped into view of the room.
The guards were still fumbling with their weapons as Shilo walked in. Shilo spared them barely a glance before shooting them. Her eyes were focused on the disfigured woman holding a knife to the Graverobber's throat.
"If you take another step, I will end him," Amber screamed, her eyes bulging unpleasantly.
Shilo froze. "I'll drop my guns if you take the knife away from his neck," she offered, trying to calm the other woman slightly.
Amber's left eye twitched, a very unpleasant thing to watch. Even in a city where weird surgery was fashionable, having no skin on your face was still disturbing and rare. "Drop your guns first," she hissed, chest heaving as through she was struggling for air.
Shilo slowly lowered her rifle. She knew she had about ten minutes before reinforcements arrived. She peered closer at Amber as she removed her second rifle. The woman looked decidedly unwell, discounting her obvious insanity.
"Look, all the weapons are gone," Shilo said finally after kicking her grenade belt away. "Please take the knife away and let him go. You have me, that was the deal right? I'm not going to back out of it so let him go."
Shilo risked a glance at Zachary, having studiously avoided looking at him to keep from angering Amber even more. He looked terrible, his right eye swollen and turning purple, his clothes ripped and bloodstained, and his arms tied behind him at an angle designed for maximum discomfort. He was staring at her, his eyes pleading. She knew he wasn't trying to ask her to save him but to run and save herself. Shilo shook her head at him in the tiniest movement she could and watched a tear make its way slowly down his face at her answer.
Amber pointed her knife at Shilo, coming around her desk to walk towards the younger girl.
"I never thought you'd come," Amber whispered, licking her skinless lips. "This piece of trash kept screaming that you wouldn't. I was starting to believe him. I mean, a man in that much pain has to be telling the truth right? And yet here you are!" Amber looked at Zachary and shook her head. "Naughty, naughty, she continued, and threw her knife at him.
Zachary screamed as the knife pierced his chest and Shilo's mind screamed as she flung herself at Amber, though no sound came from her mouth. Within three seconds, she had the scalpel from her ankle leveled at Amber's throat.
Amber looked up at Shilo with shock from her position on the floor, Shilo crouched over her.
"Why do you want my company so badly?" she whispered. "You gave it up."
"It's not the company I want," Shilo replied. "I just want to be free." And she slid the scalpel across her older sister's neck.
Amber never uttered another sound.
