I'm sorry about the formatting issues with last chapter. I'm not too terribly good with a computer, but I know my way around. Unfortunately, this formatting stuff seems to have me stumped. That big clump of text...oh, that was horrifying. Ugh. Well, lets hope that this one chappie looks better.
Harry pulled out Onde's address from his pocket. Diana had gotten it for him from her father's desk. He looked it over. Of course, he had no idea where the address on the little sheet of paper was; he figured he'd solve the directional problem as he went along.
His slowing down cost him. Diana had caught up to him. She was breathing hard. "Harry!" she gasped out. "Harry, would you wait?"
Harry resumed walking, forcing Diana to catch up again. "I'm doing this, Diana," he said. "You're not going to talk me out of it."
"I don't intend to," she said. "But how are you gonna find that place?" She indicated the piece of paper in Harry's hand.
Harry looked down at it, then back at her. He stopped walking.
"Aha!" Diana said. "I've got you!"
"I could find it," Harry said, but uncertainty managed to creep into his voice.
"No, you couldn't," Diana said. "But I can."
Harry regarded her sternly. "Fine," he said, finally. "But as soon as we get there, you turn around and go home."
"Okay," Diana said. "Follow me."
She started off walking again, having caught her breath.
"What do you plan on doing when we get there?" Diana asked.
"Break in," replied Harry. "Probably do some digging."
"What are you looking for?" Diana asked.
Harry had to think about that. They rounded a corner in silence. "I don't know," Harry said. "I suppose I'll know when I find it, won't I?"
"Some plan," Diana said. "Are you sure that this is smart?"
"It probably isn't," Harry said. "The things that matter never have anything to do with 'smart'."
"Gee, that's cynical," Diana said.
"How so?" Harry asked, sincerely.
"You're saying that intelligence isn't really worth anything," Diana said. "That's pretty cynical, considering that education is so much a part of our...my life."
"Did I say intelligence?" Harry asked, rhetorically. "No, I didn't. I said 'smart'. When you have to make a decision, a hard decision, what's smart goes out the window, and what's right takes over. Being able to decipher the two takes intelligence."
Diana considered that. "You're a complex person, you know that?" she asked.
"I don't think so," Harry replied.
They passed the rest of the time in silence. After perhaps five minutes, Diana announced that they had arrived. The building wasn't terribly large; it was only three stories tall, and about the size of your average corner grocery store. There was no visible security, and all the lights were out.
"Okay," Harry said. "That's it. You head home."
"Right, right, I'm doing it," Diana said. She turned, as though she were deeply annoyed with Harry, but stopped half way. "Good luck," she said.
"Thanks," Harry said. "Go!"
Harry waited until Diana was safely around the corner and out of sight before he began. Harry circled the building, looking for a weak spot. A cracked window, a door left partially ajar...nothing. It was a long shot, but he'd heard of stranger things.
A second brain wave came to him. In the small patch of dirt in front of the building was a tree. From the ground, it looked to Harry as though the tree were at least as tall as the building. Harry climbed it quickly.
Success! Harry could clearly see the roof of the building. It was perhaps fifteen feet away. An easy enough leap.
Harry crouched and gathered all the strength he could into his legs. He didn't want to fall short. When he felt certain that he could jump to the moon if he so chose, Harry let it all go.
It was a good thing that Harry was able to catch hold of a spare pipe on the roof, because otherwise he would have undoubtedly overshot. As it was, Harry's grip dug huge finger shaped holes into the pipe, and when he closed his hand, the pipe twisted into a copper and tin mess. Harry fell onto the roof, the force of his leap expended.
He picked himself up and brushed himself off, making a mental note about jumping for future reference. The door on the roof was locked; however, the lock was getting extremely rusted, and it took nearly no effort for Harry to break it. The lock disposed of, Harry opened the door.
Directly inside was a staircase, which lead, obviously, down. Harry took it, and found himself in a large room with bunches of cubicles. At the far end of the room was another staircase and a closed off office.
Harry had to break a somewhat better lock in order to get into the closed office. On the other side of the door was small corridor. Harry instantly smelled something strange. He looked around and, finding the source, grinned broadly.
"Heat sensors," he said. "How...lovely."
Harry strolled into the corridor. Then he did a little dance. He smiled around at the heat sensors on the wall. It was a funny thing, really.
Harry opened the next door and, finally, entered the office. At first, he was a bit surprised by its blank, sterile appearance. He got over the surprise in a hurry, though.
Harry hurried over to the desk that sat in the center of the room. He opened up the long, deep drawer on the bottom of the desk, and found a row of files. He pulled out the first one and read the label.
It said, "Project Cleanse".
At exactly 7:32 that night, a phone call was made. The man who received the phone call was at first angry, though that subsided with time. In its place came cold, mechanical calm. It was best - it was more efficient - to keep a clear head on a matter of security.
Harry opened up Project Cleanse's file and pulled out the papers. He began reading. What he found was, to say the least, horrifying. He didn't want to believe what he was reading. As the full impact of the file began to hit him, Harry realized that he may have sent Diana home to her death.
At exactly 7:38 that night, a general alert at CLEANSE Headquarters was sounded. A security breach of large possible proportions was reported from a small filing section on the outskirts of Manhattan. Strike units were assembled from their cold sleep tanks immediately, given the proper magical drugs to wake them up in a hurry. By 7:40, the strike teams were ready to be deployed.
Harry had to be sure of what he was reading. If there was any possibility that what he'd just read was a lie, or a trick, or some sort of really, really sick prank, he had to know...
But of course, he knew that it had to be true. There was no way something like this could be made up. It simply couldn't be.
Harry began to make plans. He knew that it was hopeless.
At exactly 7:45 that night, Strike Team Omega arrived at the Brooke Street filing office. The team was given strict orders not to act until their commander arrived in the field. The team settled in and waited, watching the office to make sure that nothing left it.
After about ten minutes of useless back and forth in his head, Harry heard a noise in the hall. He attuned all his senses to the sound. He got up and crept out of the office, past the clock reading 7:46, and into the heat sensor corridor.
In the room of cubicles, Harry looked around for the source of the noise. He sniffed the air, and picked up something familiar. He heard the sound again - a sound which reminded him greatly of...
"Diana?" Harry asked, seeing the girl there in front of him. "What...? How'd you get in?"
"The front door was unlocked," Diana explained.
"The front door...?" Harry said. "Oh, damn! We have to go, now!"
Diana was alarmed by the fear she saw in Harry's face. "Harry, what's wrong? What did you find out?"
"It's so much bigger than we thought," Harry said. "Diana, they're rounding up the poor and the, as they put it, 'inefficient'. They're going to slaughter all of them."
"Low rent housing," Diana said, catching on immediately. "But why?"
"They're societal perfectionists," Harry explained. "But why isn't really the question right now. Now, its more, 'how do we stop it?' Or maybe, 'how do we get out of here alive?'"
"I made sure there was no one outside," Diana said. "We should be okay."
"I doubt it," Harry said. "If a vampire didn't want you to find him, then you wouldn't."
"You sure that isn't just pride talking?" Diana asked.
"Stop joking around!" Harry said, harshly. "We have to be serious here, or we're both going to end up dead. And so will your parents."
All semblances of humor left Diana's face. It got very pale instead. "Come on," she said, quietly. "Lets go."
They were about to go when Diana's eyes fluttered. Harry caught the expression and the release of a hormone he couldn't decipher the smell of. "Diana?" he asked.
Her eyes jerked open. "Watch out!" she shrieked, and buried herself against Harry.
A second later, the world blew up around them.
Harry picked himself up out of the wreckage of the building, discovering that the blast had thrown him into the street. Diana had lain underneath him, protected from the explosion and the debris. "Are you okay?" Harry asked her.
"Yeah, I'll be fine," Diana said, though the numerous cuts covering her face and hands didn't look 'okay' to Harry. He'd have to take her word for it...for now.
Harry stood strait to face his opposition. He could smell them; they were obviously human, but something was strange about them; something didn't quite click right. It was nice they were all sweating very little, but what sweat Harry could smell was very concentrated, and it contained wisps of things Harry had never smelled before.
They advanced out of the smoke of the building to where Harry was, in the street. There were only five of them, but each carried what appeared to be a machine gun.
"You are the intruder detected at this building at exactly 7:31 pm of this night?" one of the soldiers asked.
"No, sorry, don't know what building you could be talking about," Harry said. "Me? I live in alley's."
"You will come with us for questioning," the soldier said. "Failure to comply will result in your termination."
"Since I'm not going to comply, I guess you're just going to have to be the terminator for tonight," Harry said, realizing the pun after he sai it. "Pretty clever, no?"
"You were given fair warning," the soldier said. "More than you deserve. Fire."
If Harry had been in the same place for another iota of a second, he'd have been filled with lead. Luckily, his vampiric reflexes carried him out of the way in time. However, a lone bullet ricocheted off a piece of jagged metal and struck him a glancing blow in the shoulder. It wasn't much of a hit, but it was enough to get Harry's face to morph.
"A vampire?" the soldier who always spoke said. He pressed his hand to his ear, as though he was listening to something. Instructions, Harry decided. Good. If they couldn't react for themselves, then perhaps he would have a fighting chance.
"Discard firearms," the soldier said, repeating whatever he was hearing. "Use control measures only. Bring in subject alive."
"It's a bit late for that," Harry hissed.
The soldiers rushed him. Two came at him from different angles. Harry threw a quick punch into the first soldier's face, and in the same motion, threw his weight backward and kicked the second soldier. Both went down.
The next was a bit more cautious. He came in swinging a rod, which crackled with electricity. Harry sidestepped the swing, but didn't have enough time to counterattack. The soldier was fast. He swung again. Harry ducked the swing, and swept the soldier's feet out from under him. He went down.
Harry balanced himself on the ground. Three soldiers were out. Two more were left. They'd taken the time provided by their fellows to get into position, one in front of Harry, the other behind. They charged.
Harry leapt into the air, being careful not to overshoot, and stretched himself out flat in midair. He caught the front soldier's head with both hands, simultaneously landing with both feet on the shoulders of the back soldier, creating a bridge between them. Harry had barely enough time to see into the soldier's eyes, which were cold and dead, before he twisted. The force of the twist broke the soldier's neck, and turned Harry's body. The front soldier fell away. Harry began to fall, and as he did, he pivoted his torso. Just before connecting with the ground, he twisted violently with his legs, snapping the other soldier's neck, as well.
Harry quickly made sure that all the soldiers were out of the fight, and then picked up Diana. She was able to walk, though only barely. Quickly, he headed towards the Fisher home, hoping that he wasn't too late.
The commandant in the field watched as the vampire and the girl left in a hurry. Those of the strike team who had not already been killed would die for this - slowly, at that. They would have to speed up their plans. At exactly 7:52 pm, Mr. Onde began the final stage of Project Cleanse.
So, what'd you think? I think I'm going to get right to work on the next chapter. It's going to be pretty good, I think, but I want to know what YOU think. In order to know what YOU think, YOU need to leave a REVIEW. PLEASE. It really does help.
Harry pulled out Onde's address from his pocket. Diana had gotten it for him from her father's desk. He looked it over. Of course, he had no idea where the address on the little sheet of paper was; he figured he'd solve the directional problem as he went along.
His slowing down cost him. Diana had caught up to him. She was breathing hard. "Harry!" she gasped out. "Harry, would you wait?"
Harry resumed walking, forcing Diana to catch up again. "I'm doing this, Diana," he said. "You're not going to talk me out of it."
"I don't intend to," she said. "But how are you gonna find that place?" She indicated the piece of paper in Harry's hand.
Harry looked down at it, then back at her. He stopped walking.
"Aha!" Diana said. "I've got you!"
"I could find it," Harry said, but uncertainty managed to creep into his voice.
"No, you couldn't," Diana said. "But I can."
Harry regarded her sternly. "Fine," he said, finally. "But as soon as we get there, you turn around and go home."
"Okay," Diana said. "Follow me."
She started off walking again, having caught her breath.
"What do you plan on doing when we get there?" Diana asked.
"Break in," replied Harry. "Probably do some digging."
"What are you looking for?" Diana asked.
Harry had to think about that. They rounded a corner in silence. "I don't know," Harry said. "I suppose I'll know when I find it, won't I?"
"Some plan," Diana said. "Are you sure that this is smart?"
"It probably isn't," Harry said. "The things that matter never have anything to do with 'smart'."
"Gee, that's cynical," Diana said.
"How so?" Harry asked, sincerely.
"You're saying that intelligence isn't really worth anything," Diana said. "That's pretty cynical, considering that education is so much a part of our...my life."
"Did I say intelligence?" Harry asked, rhetorically. "No, I didn't. I said 'smart'. When you have to make a decision, a hard decision, what's smart goes out the window, and what's right takes over. Being able to decipher the two takes intelligence."
Diana considered that. "You're a complex person, you know that?" she asked.
"I don't think so," Harry replied.
They passed the rest of the time in silence. After perhaps five minutes, Diana announced that they had arrived. The building wasn't terribly large; it was only three stories tall, and about the size of your average corner grocery store. There was no visible security, and all the lights were out.
"Okay," Harry said. "That's it. You head home."
"Right, right, I'm doing it," Diana said. She turned, as though she were deeply annoyed with Harry, but stopped half way. "Good luck," she said.
"Thanks," Harry said. "Go!"
Harry waited until Diana was safely around the corner and out of sight before he began. Harry circled the building, looking for a weak spot. A cracked window, a door left partially ajar...nothing. It was a long shot, but he'd heard of stranger things.
A second brain wave came to him. In the small patch of dirt in front of the building was a tree. From the ground, it looked to Harry as though the tree were at least as tall as the building. Harry climbed it quickly.
Success! Harry could clearly see the roof of the building. It was perhaps fifteen feet away. An easy enough leap.
Harry crouched and gathered all the strength he could into his legs. He didn't want to fall short. When he felt certain that he could jump to the moon if he so chose, Harry let it all go.
It was a good thing that Harry was able to catch hold of a spare pipe on the roof, because otherwise he would have undoubtedly overshot. As it was, Harry's grip dug huge finger shaped holes into the pipe, and when he closed his hand, the pipe twisted into a copper and tin mess. Harry fell onto the roof, the force of his leap expended.
He picked himself up and brushed himself off, making a mental note about jumping for future reference. The door on the roof was locked; however, the lock was getting extremely rusted, and it took nearly no effort for Harry to break it. The lock disposed of, Harry opened the door.
Directly inside was a staircase, which lead, obviously, down. Harry took it, and found himself in a large room with bunches of cubicles. At the far end of the room was another staircase and a closed off office.
Harry had to break a somewhat better lock in order to get into the closed office. On the other side of the door was small corridor. Harry instantly smelled something strange. He looked around and, finding the source, grinned broadly.
"Heat sensors," he said. "How...lovely."
Harry strolled into the corridor. Then he did a little dance. He smiled around at the heat sensors on the wall. It was a funny thing, really.
Harry opened the next door and, finally, entered the office. At first, he was a bit surprised by its blank, sterile appearance. He got over the surprise in a hurry, though.
Harry hurried over to the desk that sat in the center of the room. He opened up the long, deep drawer on the bottom of the desk, and found a row of files. He pulled out the first one and read the label.
It said, "Project Cleanse".
At exactly 7:32 that night, a phone call was made. The man who received the phone call was at first angry, though that subsided with time. In its place came cold, mechanical calm. It was best - it was more efficient - to keep a clear head on a matter of security.
Harry opened up Project Cleanse's file and pulled out the papers. He began reading. What he found was, to say the least, horrifying. He didn't want to believe what he was reading. As the full impact of the file began to hit him, Harry realized that he may have sent Diana home to her death.
At exactly 7:38 that night, a general alert at CLEANSE Headquarters was sounded. A security breach of large possible proportions was reported from a small filing section on the outskirts of Manhattan. Strike units were assembled from their cold sleep tanks immediately, given the proper magical drugs to wake them up in a hurry. By 7:40, the strike teams were ready to be deployed.
Harry had to be sure of what he was reading. If there was any possibility that what he'd just read was a lie, or a trick, or some sort of really, really sick prank, he had to know...
But of course, he knew that it had to be true. There was no way something like this could be made up. It simply couldn't be.
Harry began to make plans. He knew that it was hopeless.
At exactly 7:45 that night, Strike Team Omega arrived at the Brooke Street filing office. The team was given strict orders not to act until their commander arrived in the field. The team settled in and waited, watching the office to make sure that nothing left it.
After about ten minutes of useless back and forth in his head, Harry heard a noise in the hall. He attuned all his senses to the sound. He got up and crept out of the office, past the clock reading 7:46, and into the heat sensor corridor.
In the room of cubicles, Harry looked around for the source of the noise. He sniffed the air, and picked up something familiar. He heard the sound again - a sound which reminded him greatly of...
"Diana?" Harry asked, seeing the girl there in front of him. "What...? How'd you get in?"
"The front door was unlocked," Diana explained.
"The front door...?" Harry said. "Oh, damn! We have to go, now!"
Diana was alarmed by the fear she saw in Harry's face. "Harry, what's wrong? What did you find out?"
"It's so much bigger than we thought," Harry said. "Diana, they're rounding up the poor and the, as they put it, 'inefficient'. They're going to slaughter all of them."
"Low rent housing," Diana said, catching on immediately. "But why?"
"They're societal perfectionists," Harry explained. "But why isn't really the question right now. Now, its more, 'how do we stop it?' Or maybe, 'how do we get out of here alive?'"
"I made sure there was no one outside," Diana said. "We should be okay."
"I doubt it," Harry said. "If a vampire didn't want you to find him, then you wouldn't."
"You sure that isn't just pride talking?" Diana asked.
"Stop joking around!" Harry said, harshly. "We have to be serious here, or we're both going to end up dead. And so will your parents."
All semblances of humor left Diana's face. It got very pale instead. "Come on," she said, quietly. "Lets go."
They were about to go when Diana's eyes fluttered. Harry caught the expression and the release of a hormone he couldn't decipher the smell of. "Diana?" he asked.
Her eyes jerked open. "Watch out!" she shrieked, and buried herself against Harry.
A second later, the world blew up around them.
Harry picked himself up out of the wreckage of the building, discovering that the blast had thrown him into the street. Diana had lain underneath him, protected from the explosion and the debris. "Are you okay?" Harry asked her.
"Yeah, I'll be fine," Diana said, though the numerous cuts covering her face and hands didn't look 'okay' to Harry. He'd have to take her word for it...for now.
Harry stood strait to face his opposition. He could smell them; they were obviously human, but something was strange about them; something didn't quite click right. It was nice they were all sweating very little, but what sweat Harry could smell was very concentrated, and it contained wisps of things Harry had never smelled before.
They advanced out of the smoke of the building to where Harry was, in the street. There were only five of them, but each carried what appeared to be a machine gun.
"You are the intruder detected at this building at exactly 7:31 pm of this night?" one of the soldiers asked.
"No, sorry, don't know what building you could be talking about," Harry said. "Me? I live in alley's."
"You will come with us for questioning," the soldier said. "Failure to comply will result in your termination."
"Since I'm not going to comply, I guess you're just going to have to be the terminator for tonight," Harry said, realizing the pun after he sai it. "Pretty clever, no?"
"You were given fair warning," the soldier said. "More than you deserve. Fire."
If Harry had been in the same place for another iota of a second, he'd have been filled with lead. Luckily, his vampiric reflexes carried him out of the way in time. However, a lone bullet ricocheted off a piece of jagged metal and struck him a glancing blow in the shoulder. It wasn't much of a hit, but it was enough to get Harry's face to morph.
"A vampire?" the soldier who always spoke said. He pressed his hand to his ear, as though he was listening to something. Instructions, Harry decided. Good. If they couldn't react for themselves, then perhaps he would have a fighting chance.
"Discard firearms," the soldier said, repeating whatever he was hearing. "Use control measures only. Bring in subject alive."
"It's a bit late for that," Harry hissed.
The soldiers rushed him. Two came at him from different angles. Harry threw a quick punch into the first soldier's face, and in the same motion, threw his weight backward and kicked the second soldier. Both went down.
The next was a bit more cautious. He came in swinging a rod, which crackled with electricity. Harry sidestepped the swing, but didn't have enough time to counterattack. The soldier was fast. He swung again. Harry ducked the swing, and swept the soldier's feet out from under him. He went down.
Harry balanced himself on the ground. Three soldiers were out. Two more were left. They'd taken the time provided by their fellows to get into position, one in front of Harry, the other behind. They charged.
Harry leapt into the air, being careful not to overshoot, and stretched himself out flat in midair. He caught the front soldier's head with both hands, simultaneously landing with both feet on the shoulders of the back soldier, creating a bridge between them. Harry had barely enough time to see into the soldier's eyes, which were cold and dead, before he twisted. The force of the twist broke the soldier's neck, and turned Harry's body. The front soldier fell away. Harry began to fall, and as he did, he pivoted his torso. Just before connecting with the ground, he twisted violently with his legs, snapping the other soldier's neck, as well.
Harry quickly made sure that all the soldiers were out of the fight, and then picked up Diana. She was able to walk, though only barely. Quickly, he headed towards the Fisher home, hoping that he wasn't too late.
The commandant in the field watched as the vampire and the girl left in a hurry. Those of the strike team who had not already been killed would die for this - slowly, at that. They would have to speed up their plans. At exactly 7:52 pm, Mr. Onde began the final stage of Project Cleanse.
So, what'd you think? I think I'm going to get right to work on the next chapter. It's going to be pretty good, I think, but I want to know what YOU think. In order to know what YOU think, YOU need to leave a REVIEW. PLEASE. It really does help.