Jack has no choice but to leave Raven to Hiro, since he just acquired a plethora of his own problems. At least, he reflects as he ducks a scythe, these robots do not have guns. He slices the bot just above its legs and then reverses his grip on his sword so as to stab a robot that's trying to get him from behind. After giving the sword a twist, just for good measure, he pulls it out, changes grip again and slices another robot diagonally in half.
He has to find some place where he will have a tactical advantage over his opponents. Staying in the middle of the floor, where they can surround him as they are doing now, would not be a good strategy for long-term, or even short-term, survival. Well, there are plenty of tall machines here. These drones are not good climbers, so that will give him some respite from their attack. He spins around, scything down the nearest beetle bots, then "jumps good" to the top of a towering machine. As he had predicted, the beetles are unable to climb after him, nor can they jump high enough to reach his perch. Since there are no other immediate threats he takes the opportunity to see how his partner is dealing with his own difficulties.
Hiro and Raven have moved somewhat from the spot where their clash originally began. The beetle bots seem to be making an effort to keep away from them, so wherever they go they are always within a clear circle. Hiro is not fighting the way Jack would in his situation; he is not really trying to attack his enemy. Instead, he is fighting a defensive battle, avoiding Raven's attacks with deft economy of motion. It looks as if he is trying to wear his opponent down, a prudent strategy since he cannot match Raven for strength. The two of them seem to be evenly matched, at least with the strategies they are currently employing. Jack tries to think of a way to help Hiro, but he is interrupted by a new problem.
These beetle drones are marginally more intelligent than the ones he has encountered in the past. Instead of trying to jump at him or scramble up to his perch, they are using a different strategy – some of them are trying to organize themselves into ramps so that their comrades can climb on top of them to get to Jack. He starts slicing at the ones closest to the top, but they are forming multiple sets of stairs and he has trouble keeping up with them. To make matters worse, most of the bugs that are not involved in the attack on his tower are doing the same thing at other towers, so he does not have the option of jumping to those.
He draws in a hissing breath as he feels a scythe cut diagonally across his back. With a loud cry he spins around and cuts the offending bot apart with an upward-curving slash, then ducks the scythe of the one behind him and swings around to cut its legs out from underneath it. He lifts his sword just in time to parry the downward thrust of a third robot. Jack realizes that he is completely surrounded, and that unless there is some kind of miracle, he will soon be dead. And with the way his luck has been running tonight, he cannot count on a miracle.
But, much to his surprise, he gets his miracle, although he does not recognize it as such on first sight. The drones around him suddenly freeze up, becoming inanimate hunks of metal for a few seconds. Now that the drones are not moving the room is filled with an oppressive silence, broken only by the sound of Hiro's sword and Raven's staff coming together, and a metallic scraping as one slides along the other. Jack risks turning around so that he can see the two opponents with their weapons locked together. Hiro is facing him at this point, so Jack can see him grin wickedly just a moment before the drones go haywire, possessed by the Backstab virus.
The robots surrounding him suddenly start moving again, but this time they ignore Jack completely and start slashing at each other. He stays low to avoid being hit by a stray swing of the scythe, rolls almost off the edge of the machine tower to avoid being crushed under a fallen robot, and takes a look around. Even though the drones are made of metal and not flesh, the sight of them ripping each other to pieces is gruesome in the extreme. It actually makes him feel a little nauseous. Jack shuts his eyes and puts his hands over his ears, but he can still hear the sounds of the mechanical horde consuming itself.
It lasts only about a minute or two, but it feels like forever before the noise fades away. Jack opens his eyes and uncovers his ears, looks out at the spectacle of mechanical carnage. He doesn't see Hiro or Raven, nor does he hear them. Feeling slightly panicked, he stands up to get a better view – still no sign of them. And he has no way to contact his allies. Jack decides that it would be best to get out of here through the open bay doors, since searching for Hiro would be futile. Perhaps they can meet up again outside. He can think of no other options. So he jumps from one piece of machinery to another, avoiding the floor that is slick with oil and strewn with drone parts, until he gets close to one of the bay doors. Then he leaps to a clear spot on the floor, vaults over a fallen beetle bot, and runs out into the night, keeping an eye out for friends and enemies alike.
~***~
The security system is up and running again, but its own IFF algorithms have been altered by the computer virus, so it's working to Hiro's advantage. The guards are having too much trouble with it to think of messing with him, which is a good thing because he doesn't want to loose track of Raven. He ran off after Backstab started working, since the robots classified him as an enemy, too. Raven may be twisted, but he's not crazy enough to lack a sense of self-preservation.
Hiro is not satisfied with the idea of just chasing him off and leaving it at that. He wants to make sure the bastard is dead this time, because if he doesn't he's going to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for him, and he would rather be killed fighting him now, when he's exhausted his capacity for fear, than live that way. So he's tracking the person he so much wanted to avoid as late as a few hours ago, through corridors and stairwells and chambers all over the building. Raven suffered a minor wound on the way out of the factory, courtesy of one of the beetle bots, so there's a blood trail for him to follow. He hasn't seen any sign of Jack since starting on this chase, and just hopes that he's decided to get out of the base or stay where he is rather than search for Hiro. He would probably get lost or trapped somewhere, since he doesn't have the know-how or equipment to navigate through here by himself.
The trail ends at a smashed window on the end of a seventh-floor corridor – well, at least he thinks it's the seventh floor, he's sort of lost track. Beyond it he can see the steel skeleton of what will eventually be the new section of the CMC, stark, jagged and cold in the illumination cast by the bulbs mounted on some of the girders. Maybe Raven is trying to climb down to the ground that way. Hiro sheathes his sword in favor of the blaster pistol, since the latter will probably be of more use to him in this situation, and climbs out the window, being careful to avoid the jagged edges of glass.
He finds himself standing on a steel girder about three feet in width and nine floors up from ground level (higher than he thought). There's a strong wind blowing up here, so he'll have to be careful, since it can interfere with both his sense of balance and his sense of hearing. He moves cautiously along the girder, looking around for Raven or other hostiles. The wind stings his eyes and they start to water – he blinks a few times to clear them.
The soft noise he hears behind him is probably the only thing that keeps him from getting killed. He turns in time to see the metallic flash of a flying knife, which hits him in the left arm close to the shoulder instead of the back as it was intended to do. He grits his teeth at the flash of pain that follows and the fingers of his left hand go slack. He turns completely to face Raven, who is now between him and the window – he must have climbed up and dropped back to the girder behind Hiro in order to catch him with a surprise attack. He dodges backward just in time to avoid the swipe of the staff, but he's off-balance, and when Raven brings the end of the staff up again it knocks the pistol out of his hand. The gun goes flying, glittering in the night for a few moments as it arcs upwards, then succumbs to gravity and falls to the ground. By the time it has reached the high point of its arc Hiro has drawn his sword and dropped into a defensive crouch. He tries to move his left arm so he can hold the sword two-handed, but the knife wound has effectively rendered that arm useless. He can't block that staff one-handed, and the narrow girder is going to make dodging it a problem.
Hiro ducks under a swipe of Raven's staff, then leaps to a girder down and to the left of him. He starts running along it as his opponent jumps onto the girder behind him. Unless he gets down to the ground, he doesn't have a chance. Even then it's going to be a slim one.
~***~
After the jamming field went up, Juanita told Y.T. to descend and lay low, so she's doing just that, waiting on top of a building not far from the CMC, where she can see without being seen. And there's certainly been a lot of weird – and very unsettling – stuff to see over the past quarter hour. Her observations confirm that Backstab is working, but other than that she can't tell what's going on.
She sees a black figure zigzagging across the space between the building complex and the wall. Judging from its behavior, it's either Hiro or Jack, though she can't tell which from this far away. Y.T. watches nervously as he approaches closer and closer to the boundary, and jumps when someone starts shooting at him. He starts running faster, then when he is within a few feet of the wall he leaps of the ground and somersaults right over it. It's Jack, then. He's the only person she knows who can jump like that. "Jack just got out," she informs Juanita over the headset, "But I don't see Hiro."
There's a pause of a few seconds before Juanita responds. "Go down and meet him." Her voice sounds very shaky, the way Y.T. feels.
She does meet him, but not by flying down on her board as she was planning to. After she waves to him from the roof of the building to get his attention he just jumps up to her, and doesn't even pause to catch his breath before asking "Where is Hiro?"
Y.T.'s still rather surprised by that jump – forty feet, she has a hard time getting her mind around it - but she recovers quickly to answer. "I don't know. I haven't seen him." Jack turns around to scan the CMC. She notices a long laceration on his back. "Are you okay?" she asks him.
He looks over his shoulder at her as if surprised, then realizes what she's talking about. "I am all right. It is not as bad as it looks." Then he looks at the complex again. He has obviously caught sight of something – he's squinting in an effort to see it better. Y.T. gets a pair of binoculars off her belt and hands it to him. "Thank you," he says as he lifts them to his eyes. He adjusts the focus a little, pauses for a few moments, then quickly hands them back to her.
"What is it?" she asks. "What'd you see?"
He makes a quick bow in her direction. "I am sorry, but I will need to borrow your board," he answers.
Before she's managed to get over the confusion he is already putting his feet in the control slippers. "Hey! Are you nuts or something? You barely know how to use…" But he's already taken off in the direction of the CMC.
~***~
Y.T.'s stream of vicious curses fades behind him as he heads for the forest of steel girders on the west side of the complex. How did one make this thing go up again? He presses down with the ball of his left foot in the forward control slipper and the board begins to ascend, but a lot faster than he intended to. The disorientation caused by this sudden change in altitude makes him lose control for a moment, and he almost does a barrel roll. He manages to stop his ascent and get himself straightened out. Then he descends a bit by pressing downward with the ball of his right foot, more gently this time, and gets to the altitude he was aiming for. The rest of the controls, as Y.T. told him, are all about balance and how you move your weight.
Now that he has the knack of the board, he heads on a straight course for the construction site, where he saw Hiro and Raven through the binoculars. But, as with so many other efforts he has undertaken tonight, it is not going to be that simple. A hovercraft – not a PAB car, but some other type of military vehicle – rises directly in his path and turns to train its guns on him. He goes into a dive just before the gunner inside pulls the trigger. There are other, similar craft honing in on him. Jack reaches over his shoulder, draws his sword and swoops back up beneath the first hovercraft. He raises his sword and slashes it along its underbelly, then peels off to the right as it goes down. He pulls up in front of another approaching craft and hacks off one of its mounted guns. It turns to try and shoot him with the remaining gun, but he spins away from the stream of bullets.
One of the other hovercars starts firing at him, and he jerks to the side to avoid being hit. The car ends up hitting one of its comrades instead; smoke pours out of the damaged vehicle as it spins toward the ground. Jack heads on a swerving course for the construction site, the two remaining cars on his tail, trying to shoot him down. He ducks and darts in among the girders. One of his pursuers manages to pull away in time. The other does not, and it slams head-on into one of the vertical posts with a loud boom. Jack makes a U-turn, being careful to avoid hitting the girders as he does so, in order to take out the last craft. It changes course to meet him as he emerges from the forest of metal, then opens up with its twin guns. He pulls up quickly, but not quite quickly enough; one of the bullets hits the hoverboard, and it starts emitting acrid-smelling fumes. He swoops down and uses his sword to tear a long, deep rent through the hood of the car, then pulls up again as it spirals into a crash.
His own board gives out a moment later, starts jerking wildly, and then begins a rapid and dangerous descent towards the ground. He tries to make it turn by leaning to the left, but it does not respond. The control slippers tighten around his feet for a moment before loosening their grip completely. Jack looks up to see the cable of a crane in front of him – the board is heading almost straight for it. He sheathes his sword quickly and grabs the cable with his right hand as he passes it in his flight, then grips it with his left hand as his feet come out of the board's control slippers. It continues on its erratic flight for a few moments before dying completely and falling more or less straight down. Y.T. is going to be very unhappy, but that is the least of his worries right now.
He cannot use the cable to swing to the girders – it is too heavy. It is also too far away for him to simply jump the distance. He has to climb up to the top and go along the arm of the crane instead, which seems to take forever. At last he makes it and drops onto one of the steel beams on the topmost part of the construction site. From there he surveys the scene – Hiro and Raven are about thirty feet below him and on the other side of the site. He draws his sword races toward them along the beams, leaping from one to the other, and lands neatly on the beam above the two combatants. Now that he is this close he can see that Hiro is wounded, and that his strength is failing. If Jack had taken a minute longer getting here…
With a blow from his staff Raven sends Hiro flying backwards into an upright steel beam. Hiro crumples into a heap, tries to get up, only to collapse again and nearly go over the edge. Raven advances on him slowly, drawing back his staff so that he can swipe his enemy off the narrow beam and to his doom. Jack drops onto the beam behind him; Raven hears the sound and turns as Jack is lashing out with his sword. He brings up his staff to block Jack's weapon, and sparks come up at the contact between them. Whatever the staff is made of – perhaps the same metal as Hiro's swords – Jack cannot slice through it. Raven shoves with the staff, forcing Jack backwards a few steps, then brings one end around in a low swipe, trying to take his opponent's legs out from under him. But Jack jumps over the staff, then ducks as Raven reverses direction to try and hit him in the head. Jack lets his opponent push him back, bit by bit, trying to draw him away from Hiro.
Then Raven does something unexpected: lashing out with a kick, he hooks his foot behind Jack's knee and makes him loose his balance. He topples off the beam, barely manages to catch the next one and arrest his fall – and loses his sword in the process. The sound of it hitting the ground far below is so faint as to be almost inaudible. Jack pulls himself up onto the beam just as Raven drops onto same, with that sadistic grin on his face.
Jack glares in return and takes up a fighting stance. If Raven thinks that he is helpless without his sword, he will find himself much mistaken. Raven jabs the staff straight for his ribs, but Jack moves aside and throws a punch, catching his opponent in the jaw. Then he grabs the staff and tries to yank it away while Raven is shocked from the blow. But Raven twists around in a move too complicated for Jack to follow, and he finds himself being held against the other man's chest with the pressing against his neck, cutting off his air supply. He reaches up and holds the staff, trying to force it away from his neck, but Raven is too strong for him. No matter how much he thrashes and struggles he cannot get loose. His lungs burn for lack of air, and the edges of his vision start to go fuzzy and dark.
But a burst of inspiration hits him – as it tends to in such situations – and he acts on it. He lets go of the staff and swings his fist above his head, smashing Raven right in the nose. The blow has the intended effect, stunning his enemy enough to allow Jack to push the staff away and dart out of reach, struggling to regain his breath. He gets his balance and his wind back as Raven recovers from the blow. His nose is broken and bleeding profusely, and he is no longer grinning – his teeth are bared in a snarl now, and though it is fearsome it is not nearly as chilling as his grin.
Jack, however, is not looking at his grin. He has noticed something else above and behind Raven – Hiro is looking down from the beam above. He has sheathed his katana and removed the bandolier to which the scabbard is attached, and he is holding it out so Jack can see it clearly. Though he must be in a great deal of pain, he manages a conspiratorial smile; his intentions are clear. Jack turns his eyes back to Raven, hoping that he did not notice that brief exchange, and waits until he rushes to the attack. Offering silent thanks to the Shaolin monk who taught him this trick, Jack leaps over his head and does a neat twist in the air, so he lands facing Raven. He backs up quickly, so he is under the spot where Hiro is lying across the beam. Then he holds out his left hand and makes eye contact with his comrade. Hiro obligingly drops the scabbard. Jack catches it in his left hand and whips out the katana with his right just in time to block Raven's next attack.
This time Jack fights more aggressively, forcing Raven back along the length of the steel beam. Raven manages to meet the sword with the staff on every attack, but just barely. Finally Jack manages to get his opponent backed up against a post. Jack makes a thrust with his borrowed sword, and this time Raven fails to block the attack. He looks down at the blade, which Jack has just stuck into his heart, and then into the eyes of his opponent. His expression is one of utter disbelief. Then his hands go limp and he drops his staff, which rings against the steel girder before sliding off it and dropping to the faraway ground. Its owner follows it a moment later, after Jack steps backwards and withdraws the sword. He does not watch his defeated enemy fall, but he does hear the heavy sound of him hitting the earth, though only faintly.
He cannot clean the sword, so he simply sheathes it and buckles the scabbard to his back, to join his own empty one. Then he jumps up and pulls himself onto the girder above. He is relieved to see that Hiro is still conscious, and is in fact sitting up against the metal post. Hiro smiles, though somewhat weakly, when Jack approaches him. "How many do I owe you now?" he asks. "I lost track."
Jack smiles at him. "You do not owe me anything. But I owe Y.T. an apology." There are some small medical supplies included in his equipment – he starts getting them out of his pockets and belt, so that he can do something about the wound in Hiro's arm.
"Yeah, she's gonna be OW!" Hiro exclaims as Jack pulls the knife out of his arm, more from surprise than from the pain. Jack uses the knife to cut off the sleeve above the wound before applying some gauze and antiseptic packets to clean it. Then he bandages it as well and as quickly as he can. "You could have warned me that you were going to do that," Hiro remarks as Jack helps him to stand up. Jack is about to apologize when he is blinded by a flash of bright light. He doesn't think he can take any more of…
The light, as it turns out, is from the headlights of a hovercar, the one that brought them here. It pulls up alongside the girder and the rear passenger door slides open. Y.T. is sitting in the front passenger seat, leaning back so that she can see them through the open door. She looks angry at first, probably because Jack's actions have resulted in the loss of her board, but the look turns to one of concern as Jack helps Hiro get into the car. "Damn. Are you all right?" she asks him.
"I will be," he says as Jack gets in after him. The passenger door closes. "We have to go down and get Jack's sword before we go," he says to the driver. The driver nods and steers the car into a slow descent. It takes a bit of searching, but they find Jack's sword and retrieve it. They aren't bothered by any guards or other hostiles, which is a source of immense relief to all of them.
As they are en route to Ng's hideout, Jack reflects on the prophecy of the soothsayer that brought him to the Hub in the first place. "You will find something of great importance." Well, her prediction turned out to be true – and despite all he had to go through for it, it was worth finding.