Chapter Twelve
Seven clapped her hands over her ears when the blast charges went off. At least, she tried to. Instead, she slapped the sides of her helmet and dropped her gun. If the safety hadn't been on, then it would've pumped a dozen rounds through Dekkard's foot.
The metal frame screamed as the door it held was blasted inward with a concussive push. It bounced across the floor, and then screeched across a dozen feet of metal floor before crashing against a wall. A dull, hollow echo rang from inside the building.
Fisher glared at her before charging in. "If the boss didn't order me otherwise," he growled over the radio, "I'd use you as a meat shield. Now, take the rear, and if anyone ambushes us from behind, yell out before you die."
Fisher sprinted through the smoking entryway, and his Grunts dashed after him. Dekkard gave a nod of his head towards the door, waiting for Seven to pick up her gun. Her fingers trembled as they wrapped around the trigger.
"Move it!" Dekkard shouted. "They're leaving us behind!"
Dekkard ran off, and Seven followed after, overtaking him within seconds and loping within sight of the rear. Moments later, Dekkard caught up, panting and sweaty.
"Wow, you sure can run," he said between gasping breaths. "No wonder you were able to get away from the White Knights during your initiation."
Seven's legs shook, but whether it was nerves or the sudden exertion, she couldn't tell. The hallways around her were dark and oppressive. Shadows loomed at every turn, and unseen eyes peered at her from all directions. She strangled the urge to run back to daylight and focused on each halting, shaking footstep.
After a few minutes, they arrived at a long hallway, dimly lit with unseen lights in the ceiling. Its end was a pinprick in the distance, and it branched off into many smaller hallways.
"Stay sharp," Fisher said. "They'll do it here."
Seven was just about to ask what they were going to do when they did it. Smoke billowed out of vents in the ceiling, swirling and glittering in the light. In an attempt to illuminate the path ahead, Seven's visor switched to night vision, but bright flashes, like fireworks, made her reflexively shield her eyes with her left hand, to no effect.
"Damn, they're jamming IR!" Fisher shouted. "Take cover!"
Down the hall, Seven heard a rumble, ponderous and low at first, but speeding up to a ear-splitting whine. Then, a string of quick pops, so rapid that they blended together into a lawn mower's whir, thundered down the hallway. Bullets sailed through the air and careened off of the walls.
Seven glanced to the sides, looking for somewhere to hide, but a bullet struck her in the neck, tearing a hole in her suit and drawing blood from a long, shallow nick just shy of her jugular. Her visor lost power, and the air circulation stopped. She was suddenly stifled in darkness, and she felt the unseen scalpels and drills closing in.
A hand grabbed her by the shoulder and dragged her down a hall. Though her radio was silent and the din of the machine gun rang in her ears, she could faintly make out Dekkard's voice.
"Hey, stay with me! You'll make it!"
Panic gripped her throat. Seven clawed at the helmet, clumsily undid the clasps, yanked it free of a cluster of wires, and flung it aside. The helmet bounced off of a wall and rolled back out into the hallway, where it was swept away by the stream of bullets.
"The stupid night vision won't turn off," Dekkard said. Seven's eyes wouldn't focus, but she heard him take off his own helmet, set it aside, and let out a loud gasp.
When her eyes finally focused again, she saw Dekkard, helmet off, pointing his rifle at her with a combination of panic, disgust, and disbelief on his face.
"Subject Seven," he hissed. "Now it makes sense."
Seven vanished and leapt to the right, stopping just inches from the thick cloud of smoke lingering in the hallway. Bullets sailed through the air where she was just a moment before. One hit her shoulder, ripping apart a chunk of muscle and spraying a spatter of blood onto the wall.
Seven waited, gun raised, listening for the faintest shuffle of feet or the slightest breath of air passing through his lips. For the longest time, the only sound she heard was a powerful hiss of air from a vent right over her head, pumping a warm gust of air to keep the smoke bottled up in the hall.
Seven started to sweat, and despite the hot air rushing through her fur, she felt deathly cold, as if she were yet again anesthetized and set on the operating table. Needles and scalpels closed in all around her, and she strangled her breath in her throat. Light began to flash before her eyes, the red circles of Ghetsis' eyepiece staring at her from every angle.
Then she heard the echo of a footstep against the floor. On impulse, she flipped the safety and squeezed the trigger. Bullets poured out of her rifle and into Dekkard's chest. The first five bounced off of his Kevlar, a sixth dug into the tough, stringy fabric, and the rest tore it, along with the flesh beneath, to bloody shreds.
When the bullets stopped, Seven squeezed the trigger again, and again, but the gun only gave hollow clicks in response. Only then did she dare to make herself visible and see what had happened. A huge red puddle seeped across the narrow hall. The tiny rivulets that crept towards her feet were blown forward by the hot air and quickly dried into cracked red stains.
"There it is again!" a voice, high-pitched and timorous, called from down the hallway. "Someone's down there!"
"I'm telling you, it's just the gatling," a second voice, deep and resonant like a string bass, answered.
"The gatling sounds different," the first retorted. "And it takes a while for it to warm up. Those two bursts were too quick."
"Alright, alright, but I'm telling you, there's nothing for them to shoot at. We should be waiting at the ambush point with the others."
The voices grew louder, and now she could hear footsteps. Seven turned back to the main hallway, but the smoke still hung thick in the air.
"Quiet," the first hissed, "We don't want them to know we're coming."
Seven's eyes darted around in a panic. Then she looked up, at the thick metal grate covering the vent. She sprung up, dug her nails into the metal, pushed the grate upward, crawled inside, and slid the grate back in place. The cramped metal interior was even hotter than the air it vented suggested. Everywhere her suit touched the metal grew uncomfortably warm, and the air threatened to stifle her. Sweat ran like rivers down her face, and she could feel it slosh around in her suit every time she shifted her weight. Her wounds throbbed, and trickles of clotting blood soaked the fur around her shoulder. Were it not for the thin slivers of light emanating from the grate, she would've leapt down and welcomed the bullets.
One man whistled. "Wow, the gatling did a number on this guy."
The other walked towards the hallway and glanced at the walls around it. "If the gatling did this, how did his body get here?"
The high-pitched man thought for a moment. "Someone dragged it? See? There's streaks of blood leading away from there."
"Don't be an idiot. First off, that someone would have to be here, and second, who would drag a corpse over here?"
"Maybe they thought they were still alive and – wait, someone's still here?"
"I said, don't be an idiot!" the second said, banging his hand on the wall. "There's no one else here, so could we go back to the ambush point before someone thinks a Rocket killed us and took our uniforms?"
The flashing lights came back, and her head spun. She reached for the grate, but then an idea came to her. First, she reached for the knife in her pocket. Her fingers, slick with sweat, kept sliding off of the smooth metal blade, but she finally found purchase with a claw. The blade bit into her claw as it pulled free, and with a grunt of pain, she snapped the blade open, slicing the claw off in the process.
Then, focusing, she made the sound of footsteps echo off the walls behind the two men. When they turned and raised their guns, Seven yanked the grate off, tumbled out of the vent, and scrambled to her feet. The two White Knights, clad in shining white Kevlar and holding two thick, rugged assault rifles, stood in front of her. The skinny one was wildly pointing his rifle, shouting "Who's there!" but the heavy-set, muscular man had heard her and started to turn. Seven lunged at him first, sinking the blade into the side of his neck, where the armor was thinnest. Blood gushed around the steel and soaked into the white uniform.
The first man looked at his fallen comrade, yelped, and dropped his gun. He reached for it, but Seven kicked him in the helmet, knocking him on his side. Before he could get up, she jabbed at his neck. He gave a sharp, shrill squeal before his own blood choked him to death.
She wrenched her blade free with a sticky squelching noise. Then she staggered back until she hit the wall and slid to a sitting position, and unbuckled her suit. Her hands, shaking and sweaty, and the pain each time she moved her left shoulder, made undressing a long ordeal. When she finally shrugged off her pants, a rush of sweat, tinged pink with a trickle of her own blood, washed out of the damp suit. She contemplated taking off the cotton Rockets' uniform underneath. But no, humans always wore clothes.
She leaned back, taking in long, deep breaths of the cool air. It tasted of blood, hot and metallic against her tongue, oddly satisfying. She raised her blood-soaked right hand and gave it a tentative lick. It tasted just as good as the finest beef tenderloin, served raw and bloody at Harmonia Labs. She was half tempted, then and there, to strip the armor off of one and take a bite. Breakfast seemed like hours ago, and the adrenaline coursing through her body roused her appetite. But then she imagined the other Grunts puzzling over the bite marks, wondering what thing, what monster had done it, and turned away from the fallen scrawny Knight.
After some time, Seven didn't know how long, she finally rose to her feet, legs shaking, and her right hand clasped over her shoulder. She looked back at the smoky hallway. It was too late to turn back. Gripping her knife in her hand, she turned down the shadowy corridor and walked, alone, towards the heart of the enemy lair.
Changelog: 8/19/18 a continuity fix and a few changes to sentence structure