"Kazz?" Ozacleese called out.
He ascended the stairs slowly, cautiously. Kazz wasn't the type to pull pranks. At best, he preferred to not even be spoken to. So why the voice? Why was the drone not responding. Despite it being a cakewalk, this was still a military operation in contested territory. This was neither the time nor the place for stupid games.
Then he realized something else: it was stone silent. Drones rarely walked anywhere. Yet there was no telltale flutter of wings. So either Kazz was about to leap out and surprise him or...
Or something had happened. Ozacleese equipped his 'bloodhand' plasma rifle and kept climbing. At the top, something shiny caught his attention. Weapon trained on the small object, its gleam vanished once his approaching shadow fell over it. He knelt down and picked it up. It was a brass shield embossed with a star and the markings 'N M P D'. He held it at an angle and once again it caught the light, blinding him.
Something suddenly slammed into the back of his knee. It couldn't have weighed more than a grunt, if that, but it struck with such force and so unexpectedly that Ozacleese's entire body collapsed backward.
Kazz?
Confusion hit him like a sledgehammer. Ozacleese's hands shot out and grabbed hold of the handrails along the banisters. That's when he finally got a look at his attacker. Not demon. Not even an imp. An insect. Rage boiled over inside him and he bared his fangs as he struggled to put himself up, giving the insect a show of what lay in store for them once he did. That, however, was in a far-too-distant and hypothetical future. The truth of the matter was, Ozacleese simply did not have leverage.
The human brought some kind of baton down onto Ozacleese's fingers and cracked each one like porcelain. His grip loosened. He was swinging back, still hanging on with his other hand when the second blow came. The baton caught him right in the teeth.
Ozacleese saw stars. For the briefest of moments, he felt completely weightless. The he slammed into the stairs as though he were made of metal. Down three flights, he flipped and rolled and tumbled, each impact more brutal and unforgiving than the last. Minutes later, he lay groaning and unmoving at the bottom. Conscious as he was, he wouldn't be walking anywhere on his own for a while. Nonetheless, the insect bound his legs together with titanium cuffs, then his wrists, and stuffed an old rag in Ozacleese's destroyed mouth before moving on.