Cyborg led Lt. White through the darkened hallways at the interior of the hospital's first floor. They had entered through an employee entrance that was a bit removed from both the ER and the main entrance atrium. The first belonged to the dead, and the second was a shattered and treacherous mess from Raven's initial assault. The near-lightless interior of the hospital was illuminated at great intervals by dully flickering fluorescent lighting and an occasional pool of amber shed from half-functional emergency lighting. Cyborg, his mechanical eye granting him wider access to the EM spectrum than normal human optics, walked assuredly with the Lieutenant following in his footsteps trustingly. Dan suddenly placed a hand on Cyborg's shoulder, stopping his forward motion.
"We should be coming up to the second stairwell soon," he whispered to the larger teen. "Assuming that you didn't take too many creative liberties with the naming of your primary attack, I'd advise against the use of your 'Sonic Cannon' in the interest of operation silence."
Cyborg nodded in response. "It's literally condensed sound waves. It would probably draw these zombies like flies to pie," he whispered back. He looked around for a moment and stepped into a room off the hallway that seemed to serve some administrative purpose. By the door and mounted on the wall was a simplified schematic of the hospital's first floor, showing evacuation routes and, as he had hoped, fire department access points. "If we go past the stairwell for about fifty feet there should be a fire-department hook-up. Hopefully there will be something useful there," he stated as they moved back to the hallway and pushed forward. Dan nodded.
As they passed the stairwell door they heard distant moaning and banging, reverberating disturbingly in the concrete tunnel. Their pace hastened slightly, adrenaline surging into their bodies with a familiar sensation. Cyborg found what he had hoped to find and grinned maliciously. He quickly picked the lock on the glass face of the access point and pulled out an ax.
Dan raised an eyebrow. "Is that really necessary?"
Cyborg glanced at him askance. "Have you ever heard what titanium alloy sounds like when it crushes a human skull? Suffice to say that 'operational silence' would go out the window. Plus," he added, motioning to his biceps, "there's still enough meat on this body to take some teeth. I'd prefer to have a bit of reach with my attacks."
"...Fair enough."
They tracked back to the stairwell and cautiously listened. There was a steady cacophony coming from the passage, but it didn't seem close. Dan moved forward and eased open the door, glancing through the sliver of an opening before pushing it fully forward and stepping through, Cyborg close behind. There were no zombies in sight, but the evidence of their presence further up the stairs was conclusive. Moans and growls echoed about, making communication nearly impossible. "Sounds like once we engage there's going to be bogies all over us," Cyborg stated as he pulled up a display screen on his forearm. A few seconds later he nodded. "Looks like the bulk of them are five or six floors up, clustered together. The acoustics in here are playing havoc with my scans, though."
"Well, standing here isn't going to solve anything. Remember, primary objective is to maintain the quarantine." Lt. White swing his asp about experimentally. Cyborg nodded, paused, then turned his back to his partner.
"Look," he stated as he pointed behind his back. "There's a hidden catch in my groin that will unlock a panel in my back. Push in and down directly between my shoulders. That will reveal a latch which unhooks another panel just below my neck. Inside that panel is a button. Pushing it will pop the cover off of my skull. There's a switch there that will turn off my mechanical parts. From then, you have ten seconds to remove the panel on my right forearm. There's another button in there that will deliver a neurotoxin into my bloodstream, as well as discharge the entirety of my power reserves into my biologic components. It's a kill-switch." He pointed each step out as he narrated. "If I get bitten, I'll put myself into standby mode. I don't know how long the transformation would take, so act quickly if you need to."
Dan looked at Cyborg with a bit of surprise. "You're a hard man to kill, Cyborg." He then grinned with gallows humor. "If I get bit, just bitch-slap my head from my shoulders. It's a kill-switch." They both chuckled darkly then started up the stairs.
Three floors up they encountered their first zombie. The forest green scrubs did a decent job of hiding the bloodstains from the initial transformative neck-bite, and were in surprisingly good shape. A swift swing from Cyborg's ax had the zombie felled. Dan stooped to examine the corpse.
"Looks like he escaped from the assault fairly quickly. He probably came through the door here and transformed afterward. There's probably a slew of them on the other side of this door. We should avoid the third floor if at all possible. In good news," he stated as he stood and dusted off his hands. "It seems like the 419s can't open doors."
"Hey, I'll take what I can get," Cyborg replied flippantly. "You want the next one?"
"Don't mind if I do," Dan replied as he took point.
The sounds of zombie moans were decidedly closer, and the pair was beginning to catch glimpses of them through the small space between flights for the railing. Caution became dominant once more, and they were fairly crawling up the stairs. Finally, they were only a single flight from the bulk of the zombies. Cyborg inched a finger around the next landing, tip hinging back to reveal a small camera.
"Looks like five or six of them. They're clustered around the sixth-floor door." He paused and examined the situation a bit more. "They're depressing the door latch but it's clearly not opening."
"Probably barricaded from the other side," Dan mused. Cyborg made a noise of agreement. "Rather than fight through them," Dan continued, "how about we go down to floor five and try to find another way up?"
Cyborg thought for a moment. "We don't know the situation on floor five, but it does seem likely that floor six is where the survivors ended up. If we can find an elevator, I could force open the outer doors and we could make our way up the shaft. They usually have maintenance ladders built into the walls."
"Sounds like a plan."
They wormed their way back down the stairs and opened the fifth-floor door...
...right into a group of three zombies.
The sound of the door knocking into the zombies echoed unnaturally into the higher levels of the stairwell. For a moment, everything went quiet, and then the sounds of zombies roaring were coming from both in front of them and above them.
They acted.
Cyborg pushed forward, slamming the door open hard and knocking one of the zombies off their feet. He spun around the open door with his ax in a wide, awkward back swing, the pointed poll end of the fire ax embedding deeply into one of the remaining, standing zombies. The falling corpse ripped the ax from his grip. Dan meanwhile had performed a power slide along the polished floor and taken his asp to the temple of the zombie on the floor. In a smooth motion he drew his sidearm and pointed it towards the open doorway, trusting Cyborg to cover his back and take care of the remaining zombie.
He did not disappoint. A single step forward and a mighty right cross crushed the zombie up against the wall, his skull depressing with a loud crack and his features going slack. Cyborg shook his hand with a look of disgust on his face, blood flinging to spatter upon the walls and ceiling in a fashion Pollock would have been pleased with. "Cyborg!"
Dan had been covering the door and the swarm of zombies from the floor above began rushing towards the open door. With a steady cra-Boom, cra-Boom, the officer began throwing rounds down range. Two of the zombies rushing forward fell to the ground, to never move again. Cyborg leaped forward, pitting his weight and strength against the four preternaturally powerful zombies. They heaved against the door, forcing it open an inch before Cyborg bellowed and forced the door shut again. A scream of primal hunger blue-shifted as it approached rapidly from down the hall.
Lt. White pivoted on his heel, still crouched, and drew a bead on the rapidly approaching orderly from down the hall. He waited, biding his time and picking his shot as the zombie barreled closer. When it was about three feet away (and Cyborg was sweating from combined tension and the strength required to keep the door shut) Dan allowed his .45 to bark once more.
The zombie fell and slid, still twitching, into the officer's extended foot. He kicked it away and listened as best he could through the ringing in his ears, a protest against the storm of noise that had echoed and reverberated harshly through against the linoleum and drywall.
Everything seemed to be quiet on this side of the door. Cyborg continued to strain against the door, his feet slipping against the smooth, bloody surface of the floor and fouling his attempts to gain a firm stance. Dan moved down the hallway slightly and attempted to gain his bearings. "Operational silence is blown to hell," he shouted back to Cyborg. "Use your cannon!"
He didn't need to be told twice. He placed his back to the door as his arms shifted and morphed to form two barrels, openings glowing an intense, ominous blue. In a blur of motion, he allowed the door to open a few inches, then kicked against it to both force it momentarily shut and launch himself to the other side of the hall. A surprisingly graceful half-pirouette left his back against the opposite wall, both barrels facing the door he had been holding shut. Two solid beams of compressed sound, screaming at a soprano pitch, launched forward and through the now open door. Dan felt his ears protest and his bones ache, even removed from the focus of the sonic cannons. The zombies quivered and then fell, still moaning and screaming, to lay motionless upon the floor. Cyborg moved forward and wrested the ax from the previously felled zombie. He then methodically pierced each of the screaming zombies in the head, which lay limp and formless upon the floor with the rest of their bodies. Dan approached and looked between the zombies and Cyborg in something approaching awe. "What the hell was that?"
Cyborg winced as he rubbed his biceps. "That," he said, "was what happens when human bone is subjected to its resonant frequency." At Dan's blank gaze, Cyborg explained, "Their bones shook themselves into dust." A low whistle escaped the officer as he gazed between the pile of limp flesh and the titanium Titan with new respect. "Glad you're on our side."
"Yeah," Cyborg replied darkly, "the Titans have been hearing that a lot today."
"You ok?"
Cyborg nodded and took a firmer grip on his ax. "My bones are laced with an aluminized titanium-cobalt alloy. It takes a different frequency to destroy them. Still hurts like a bitch, though." He gestured towards the stairs. "I think the path is clear now, but I doubt we could effectively get through whatever it is they barricaded the door with. Continue to the elevators?" Dan nodded.
The remainder of their trip was blessedly uneventful. They arrived at the elevators and Cyborg forced the doors of the freight elevator open with ease. A shoulder-mounted flashlight deployed and he looked up and down the shaft. "It looks like the elevator car is on the first floor. We can climb up to the sixth floor pretty easily, there's a maintenance ladder like we'd hoped. It's only a three foot jump." He pulled back and made a gesture towards the shaft. "After you!"
Lt. White rolled his eyes and approached the yawning shaft. "Can I get a little light?" Cyborg obliged. Holstering his gun, Dan took a step back and visibly steeled himself. With a single running step, he leaped out into the darkness and hung, suspended in the inky air, for a moment before his hands clasped around the steel rungs of the ladder. He quickly shimmied up to the sixth floor. He focused and was able to make out sounds of conversation, screaming, and crying coming from beyond the door, all lacking the mindless qualities of the undead's utterances. He extended his asp and tapped against the elevator door. The sounds from the other side immediately quieted. "This is Lt. Dan White of the Jump City PD. We're here to mount a rescue operation. Can you understand me?"
A muffled reply came through the door. "This is Dr. Raymond Black. We hear you. What do you need from us?"
Dan grinned down at Cyborg, who flashed him a grin and a thumbs up. "Well, getting these doors open and a dose of aspirin would be a good start."
Immediately the sounds of people straining against the doors came to their ears, and a bright crack of light began to grow as the elevator doors were forced open. Once they were, arms reached through to assist Lt. White. With a hop and some assistance from the doctors and patients standing on the other side, Dan was able to find his footing on the sixth floor of the battle-torn hospital. "C'mon up Cyborg," he called down the shaft. Cyborg took a large step with only a small jump to reach the ladder's rungs...
...which promptly tore from the wall under his punishing weight.
The screech of rending metal grated and echoed harshly out of the shaft and swallowed up Cyborg's muttered, "I fucking hate zombies." He bounced off the wall and reached for the steel cable running down the center of the elevator shaft. Sparks flew violently from his hands and burned his vision as the friction slowed his descent. Finally he came to a stop and began to laboriously climb up to the sixth floor. With a swung and a lunge, he had his upper body secure on the hospital floor. A quick heave had him standing next to Lt. White. "Can't you Titans do anything without adding dramatic tension?" he asked teasingly.
"Pfsh, that was nothing," Cyborg replied. "You should see our volleyball games at the Tower." Several raised eyebrows faced him. "Robin doesn't believe in the concept of 'out of bounds,' up to and including off the side of the roof." Incredulous and understanding gazes were turned towards him now. "Anyway," Cyborg started, only to be interrupted by the quiet crackle of Dan's radio. "Lt. White, this is Commissioner Karl Murphy. Do you copy?"
Dan's face pulled into a frown. "Lt. White here, Commissioner, I copy."
"Do you still have Cyborg with you?"
The officer's face shifted to confused. "I thought the Commissioner was at the school?" he thought out loud. Cyborg felt what was left of his guts clench in ominous foreboding. "Affirmative Commissioner." He passed the radio over to his temporary partner. "Cyborg here, Commissioner."
A stress-filled yet relieved sigh transmitted. Dan looked outright worried now. "Cyborg, it's Starfire. She's injured and in shock. She's losing a lot of blood and the medics down here don't know what to do for her. She's confused, and keeps asking for you and Raven in her more lucid moments."
Cyborg's complexion faded to a dusky grey before he visibly steeled himself. "She needs her own blood, she can't process ours. Give her IV saline to keep her BP up. She should survive until I can get some of her blood to you. The Titans keep some stored here in case of emergencies. Treat her wounds as you would a normal human, but cauterize and don't stitch." He swallowed heavily in the surrounding silence as the citizens around them realized, perhaps for the first time, the mortality of the young adults that they relied on so often to keep them safe. With effort, he ground out, "Was she bitten?"
"Negative. Get here ASAP, Cyborg. I don't know how long she has."
"Roger."
Cyborg looked helplessly at Lt. White, and the officer suddenly came to understand that the Titans weren't just allies or friends, but family. "Go," he said forcefully. Cyborg nodded gratefully. "Dr. Black," he continued, "where's your blood bank?"
"The third floor," replied the doctor.
Cyborg turned and jumped bodily down the elevator shaft, sparks flying from his hands once more as he rode the cable down like a fireman's pole.
"Fuck," uttered Dan.