PART TWO: TO HELL AND BACK

Chapter Three: The Snake

The skylight window, old and a little rusty, gave surprisingly easily and, crucially, silently. Dim fluorescent light pooled up into the night sky from the small room below. I dropped down and hit the floor hard, rolling a little on the concrete. Briefly winded. Ignore it. Not much time left.

The room was a small, bare office. Or had been an office once. There was an old wooden table, with crinkled yellow paper stuffed under one crooked leg. A nudie calendar dated November 2000 hung from a dusty concrete wall. A half-full, functional wastepaper basket sat in a corner. There were a few filing cabinets. Other than that the room was empty. It smelled of oil, paper and highlighter fluid.

I ignored it and pushed open the door on the far side. It creaked loudly and gave on to a plain concrete corridor, dotted occasionally with similar wooden doors probably leading to other offices. This part of the building had been out of use for half a decade.

But it was still occupied. From somewhere down the corridor a door swung open and two men emerged, talking loudly. Panic flared up in my head and I slipped back into the office, leaving the door open slightly to hear their conversation.

"I'm feeling pretty beat," one said. "All week working on the C-Strain, barely without a break. They're really pushing us over in Block 3. How's things with you?"

"Getting worse," another replied. "Zero reckons there's been a breach of the western wall. Marty's dead."

"Dead? Shit. How'd it happen?"

"Throat cut. The boys are scouring the whole building right now. Hopefully going to find the bastard that did it and nail his sneaky little ass to a wall."

The voices were getting a little louder now, accompanied by thudding footsteps. One pair sounded a little heavier than the other, as if the owner were wearing hefty boots.

"Aren't you going to join them?"

"Hell no. I'm on my break."

Both burst into laughter. They were almost outside the door. I slipped a magazine into my pistol, wishing the click was a little louder, hoping they didn't hear the dry echo…

Silence, seeming to stretch on forever. Then they started again, but the footsteps and the voices were fading.

"The boss is getting pretty freaked out," the second speaker said. "You know, after he found out Hades killed all those cops earlier tonight. He's panicking a little. You know they think one got away?"

"Jeez, I hope not…" the first replied. "This could get pretty bad if he decided to play hero…"

Something in me snapped. Maybe it had been the talk of the cops. Maybe I'd suddenly remembered the urgency of my quest. I kicked down the door and stepped out into the corridor.

The two men spun around – a guard and a guy in a white lab coat. The guy in the lab coat fell on his ass and cried out. The guard whipped out his gun. I opened fire, the shots sounding horribly loud in the tight corridor, every falling shell letting out a loud tinkle as it hit the concrete floor. Blood sprayed from the guards chest in a streamer and he fell on his back, smoke rising off his jittering body.

"Oh god, please don't kill me!" the guy in the lab coat screamed, covering his head. I pointed the gun at him. He stared up at me with wild, panicked eyes.

"What's going on here?" I balked.

"Nothing, it's just a research department," the scientist replied. "Just an ordinary research department, I'm just a researcher, I research…"

I grabbed him hard by the shoulder and slammed him up against the wall. He shook so hard in my hands that he almost slipped away. He was terrified. I slammed the gun against his temple.

"The snake on the door," I asked. "That's a medical symbol. What exactly are you researching here?"

"Medicine, we just do research, I'm just a researcher…"

I was getting a little tired of this line. I threw the researcher to the ground, pointing the gun at his back. He cried out like a child, scrambling desperately on the concrete floor, just inches away from the body of his late friend, which continued to smoke unabated.

"Take me to the research department," I demanded. "Show me what you research."

He managed to compose himself somehow and push himself up to his feet.

"Okay, I can do that," he said. "I can do that." I noticed with a sneer of disgust that he'd pissed his pants. He probably wouldn't even realise it for a while. But the acrid smell hung pretty strong in the air.

Steadying himself against the wall, the scientist began to walk down the corridor. His hands were shaking violently. He stumbled slightly as we reached the turning. I carefully followed, keeping the gun pointing at his back, but it was only for show. I knew he wasn't about to attempt anything crazy.

He turned the corner and began to descend a staircase, muttering to himself. He seemed in a daze. Downstairs a door slammed open.

Panicking, I grabbed the scientist by the scruff of the neck and yanked him backwards, back round the corner. He let out a small cry. I held the gun against the table and shushed him as quietly as I could.

There were footsteps, loud, coming up the steps. Mumbled voices. Two, maybe three men. I frowned. Only one course of action.

"Stay here," I muttered to the scientist. "Keep down."

He nodded and crouched in a dusty corner, his head brushing through an ancient cobweb. I took in a deep breath and stepped out into the corridor.

The guards didn't have a chance. Two of them opened their mouths to cry out. I fired and his teeth were sheered clean off, leaving an impossibly large splatter of blood on the wall. He fell backwards, he and his friend rolling down the stairs. The third man was reaching for his pistol. I shot him twice, once in the arm, once in the gut. He slumped to his knees, streaks of blood covering the dirty concrete.

I cautiously walked down the stairs, my footsteps suddenly sounding impossibly large. The guard kneeling on the stairs, clutching his wrist, blood streaming around his legs from the chest wound, stared up at me hopelessly.

"Go on," he choked. "Finish me. Show some damn mercy. Bullet in the gut's no way to die."

I rested the gun against his forehead. He winced, maybe wondering if he'd made a mistake, and then closed his eyes. His hand was shaking. I pulled the trigger and his brains were blasted out of the back of his head. He fell backwards, sliding a little down the stairs in the streams of blood, and then came to rest on his back, eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling as the blood pooled around his shattered head.

Downstairs the remaining man was pushing himself off the corpse of his late comrade and was stumbling up the stairs. A young guy, rookie, seemed a little taken aback by everything. For one absurd moment I almost considered holding back the fire. Then I saw him stumbling desperately for his firearm, and I raised the gun. It didn't give me any pleasure.

I pulled the trigger twice. Twice was all it took. The final guard span around, crying out, and landed face first on the stairs just below his colleague.

I'd been successful, but my cover was blown. They knew where I was now. I couldn't waste any more time.

"Come on," I called over to the scientist. He ran out of his cover, took one look at the corpses of the security guards, and threw up. Then, pale and shaky, he began to descend the stairs, a look of utter disgust painted on his face.

At the bottom of the stairs the door, a high tech steel door with a thick window implanted in the middle, was locked by a keypad. The scientist nonchalantly keyed in a seemingly endless numeric code and the door slid open. We stepped into the bowels of the warehouse.

To be continued…