CHAPTER 8

PREPARE FOR THE FIGHT SCENE

The streets were empty. We made pretty good time, seeing as Graham drove 150kmh the whole way. We were still three blocks away when we first heard the commotion coming from the old Genetics building. Pulling up to it with a squeal, I gasped. It was no longer the tiny, dilapidated buidling I had spent the better part of three years working in. It had been completely renovated, and it was now seven stories tall, and very imposing.

Tearing my eyes away from the building, I called up Mike on my mobile phone and handed it to Larry. The gunfire coming from within the building was echoing through the handset as Mike answered his phone. I heard his screaming even at five paces.

"The fourth floor!" he cried. "We're on the fourth floor! Get up here, NOW!"

The fourth floor. In Japanese, the word for four, shi, was the same as the word for death. I tried not to think of it as a bad omen. It didn't work.

Unholstering our weapons, we charged through the front doors. I knew the building. I made the initial set of directions.

"Graham, head to the left, take the second set of stairs next to the chem lab. Larry, to the right, there's a set of stairs behind a row of offices. Daniel, straight through, there's a fire escape outside the building. Tamara, you and me will take the two lifts up. Everyone got it?"

Everyone nodded, and silently disappeared. I tapped my microphone to turn it on, and four others did the same. I could hear heavy breathing as everyone ran.

"Guys, I don't know the floor plan of the fourth floor," I spoke quietly as the lift went up. "We're all gonna be on our own when it comes to rescuing JC."

I was startled by the sudden incessant beeping that came with more people linking into the microphone network. For a moment, there was silence. Then:

"I was hoping you'd trained these guys well, Bec."

"Matt!"

"Good to see you're still working to the same game plan as we always did."

"Well, now the odds are a little bit better, now it's ten of us against fifty of them."

"Uh, Bec? The bad guys called in reinforcements about five minutes ago. From what we can tell, there's a few hundred of them on their way here."

"Oh great…"

"And we know the floor plan about as well as you do. Basically, we're screwed. By the looks of things, this could turn out to be a suicide mission."

"Nuh-uh, no way guys."

Daniel, butting in like always.

"All ten of us are gonna make it out of this building alive, you hear? All ten. We're working together now. Wait, hold on a second, I'm at the fourth floor…"

I waited with nervous anticipation. Why was my lift so slow???

"Okay, I'm in a lecture theatre, I can see about ten hostiles at the front, firing at what looks to be a turned-over whiteboard halfway up an aisle. Who am I looking at?"

"Me and Buffy," came Brett's tired voice.

"Hey, the whiteboard's moving!"

"Yeah, we're kinda trying to get out of this place, you numbskull."

"Wait, I'm going to try something. We've been relying on guns until now, which is pretty dumb. Let's get some mitochondrial power going."

"Buffy, NO! If you do, they'll know who we are!"

"I don't care. We're pretty much stuck here, and if they've got reinforcements coming, we're toast!"

I could hear scuffling in the background. Then, Buffy screamed.

"Jesus Christ! It's not working! What the hell is going on here??"

"What??"

"I was going to try Apobiosis, but there was something… blocking it. What's happening? Why can't I do it?"

"Blocking it? What do you mean?"

"Try to cast something, anything, you'll see what I mean."

I figured I was good to try as well, so I tried to cast Antibody. Nothing happened. I tried again and again. I tried spell after spell. Nothing.

"Celgro are shifty bastards, aren't they?"

"If we survive this, there's going to be all hell to pay."

"How are they doing this? Stopping us from using our neo-mitochondria?"

"No idea."

Ding! My lift finally reached the fourth floor. Anticipating the worst, I climbed the walls of the lift, and held myself above the line of the opening doors. It was a clever move. As soon as the doors were fully open, the entire lift was shredded by about a thousand rifle rounds from the hallway.

"Damn! Tamara! They're outside the lifts! When your lift gets there, you gotta do something so you don't get hit!"

"Bec, you're in a lift?" It was Mike.

"Yeah."

"The one closest to the entrance, or the other one?"

"Closest to the entrance."

"Okay, the fifteen guys firing on your lift? They're just outside my office. They captured me a few minutes ago, they've got me chained to a damn wall in the office. See if you can get in here and break me out."

"I'll try. With no PE, this isn't going to be a fun fight."

"You're telling me."

I waited for a few moments, until there was relative silence outside the lift. There were still people there, talking and joking around. Something about "JC not being what they used to be."

Holding myself above the doors, I managed to find a compact in my pocket, complete with little handheld mirror. This thing proved useful sometimes. I held it just below the doors, and tilted it so I could see what was happening outside. A few of the guys must have walked away, because I could only count eight lounging around in the elevator hall.

"No PE? None at all?"

"You got it, Bec."

"Not even using an auto-aim? Technically, it's not PE."

"I'm not sure, try it."

Hooking my feet over railings that circled the top of the lift, I swung down, so I was in full view of the eight soldiers. I concentrated hard, and felt the auto-aim channeling into the P229 in my hand. Quickly, I fired eight Spartans, then swung back up out of view. I heard six of the bullets hit their targets. Intense screaming followed.

"JC! The auto-aim is good to go! Use it!"

"Bec, you didn't hit them all! They're coming after you!"

I swung back down again, ignoring the pain in my ankles as they bent out of shape. Hanging upside down in the ruined lift, I fired again and again at the two soldiers charging towards me. They were firing too, firing rounds out of what looked like modified M4A1 rifles. One of the rounds came so close it flew through my hair, and the smell of singed hair filled the lift.

I kept missing with my shots, couldn't concentrate well enough to use the auto-aim, and my marksmanship was poor, mainly because I was hanging upside down. Within moments, the two guys were within arms length of the lift, and my clip was empty. They knew it too, and they grinned at me. Putting down their rifles, they made moves to disentangle me from the lift, to capture me.

"Got room for one more in there, Mike?"

"Don't let them take you, dammit!"

I wriggled away from their outstretched arms, before I had an idea. Reaching back up, I grabbed onto the ledge above the elevator doors outside the lift. Releasing my feet, I took aim with them as gravity worked its magic, and I felt a sickening crunch as my heels connected with the soldiers' faces. They slumped to the ground, unconscious.

Dropping quietly to the floor, I surveyed the foyer I found myself in. There was an office directly in front of me, with plate-glass windows, and I could see Mike's grinning face.

"Nice acrobatics, Bec."

"Thanks."

"Well, what are you waiting for? Get me out of here!"

Only then did I notice the cacophony of other voices in my ears. Larry's voice: "Everyone report in, what's happening, where do we stand?"

Daniel's voice: "I'm still in the lecture theatre. There's too many of them! I need back up here!"

Buffy's voice, slightly strained: "Still stranded behind the whiteboard with Brett. Why don't you people carry hand grenades, anyway??"

Brett's voice: "I'm gonna run out of ammo soon, dammit!"

Phil's voice: "Daniel, me and Larry are on the way to bail you out!"

Tamara's voice, sounding a bit sheepish: "Am I on the right floor? There's no-one here…"

Matt's voice: "I'm in the computer room, I've found some good stuff, someone get here and guard the damn door, it's gonna take a while for me to download all this."

I didn't hear Graham's voice at all. I panicked.

"Graham! Where are you?"

For a moment all the voices were silent. And there was no response from Graham. I waited. Nothing.

"Bec, there's no time to waste! I'm sure he's fine. Just get me out of here!"

Snapping back into focus, I hurried into the office to set Mike free. Finding a set of keys on the desk, I tried key after key until I found one that unlocked the padlock holding Mike to the wall. He fell to the floor, groaning in pain.

"Damn, that hurt… where's my gun? We're gonna kick some ass now, let's go find Graham and the rest and get the hell out of here."

Spying his M93R across the room, he jumped up and grabbed it.

"Now what are you waiting for? C'mon, let's go!"