Chapter 13
The oil can rolled over the marble floor with a soft clank that was not noticed by many and paid no attention to by most of the others. Only three people had had the good idea, most likely inspired by former military training, to lie down or duck behind something, but even they were lured out again by curiosity a second later, when nothing happened instantly. By the time someone looked in the direction of the elevator, where the can had come from, the bullet had already left the barrel.
The sound of the gunshot finally drew the attention of all the people in the room, but the projectile was already on its way and wouldn't be stopped any more. Cutting through the air, it unwaveringly followed the course it had been sent on until it hit metal. Piercing the soft shell of the spray-can, it released the pressure inside to the outside, subjecting the sterile interior to the mix of oxygen and nitrogen that made up most of the air in the room.
Catalyzed by the heat of the bullet, the propellant reacted with the outside air, bursting the rest of the can and hurling the aerosol particles in every direction, before they settled as a fine fog.
Skye and Benji pressed themselves against the opposite walls of the elevator, holding their breath while silently counting down the seconds until the glue would have dried, before they stepped into the hall. The few lucky individuals who had escaped most of the sticky fog had taken just as long to recover from their surprise and were coming at them from the opposite corners, but the agents disposed of them rapidly.
Looking around in the room, Benji saw an astonishing amount of blond people that made his head spin and his skin crawl, so he quickly focused on finding the panel he was looking for and getting to work. Skye didn't feel any better, but forced herself to search the room for any possible dangers. All in all, she counted eight versions of herself and five copies of Benji, plus several ordinary security guards. One very unlucky fellow in the center of the room seemed to have inhaled lots of the glue-gas-mixture.
Although he seemed to be glued well in place, he looked at her in a wide-eyed, panicked way, emitting half coughing, half retching noises with an underlying note of suffocation. Mercifully Skye decided to relieve him of his struggle. She was glad he was not wearing a mask.
"And the upload is back on full strength," Luther's voice was beaming with relief and a bit of pride. "If it stays like this, the upload should be finished in twenty minutes, thirty at most."
"Good job," Ethan said, acknowledging. "But you two now better come down here."
"On our way," Benji replied as he followed Skye into the elevator. His voice was muffled by the finger he had in his mouth, which he kept there to keep it from hurting where he had cut himself on the raw copper wire. The salty taste of blood and sweat also helped to get the stale note of rubber insulation off his tongue.
Only moments later, the elevator doors opened with a soft hiss, and the two agents suddenly found themselves face to face with three of their adversaries. They seemed to be just as surprised as they came out of the other elevator, but also recovered as quickly. For Benji it was as if he was looking into a cracked mirror, seeing his own face look back, but twice. More on Skye's height was Lydia Ferret.
Now back in her own face, the CEO of Clarkson Enterprises was sporting a somewhat more flat nose, with lots of dried blood around it, showing where it had met the door. Skye intended to rub it in a little deeper, but although she was a split second quicker, Lydia managed to dodge her blow and grabbed the agent by the arm, using the force of the swing to pull her down. Surprised by her opponents agility, Skye was almost overtaken, but in her desperate attempt to keep her balance, she managed to get hold of Ferret's hair, pulling the other woman down with her in a screaming bundle.
In their fall, however, Skye did not see the small knife Lydia suddenly had, and although it only scratched the skin on her arm, it was enough to make her let go, if only out of self-preservation. Still, the agent recovered more quickly, and in standing up she rammed her foot into the other woman's right shoulder, giving he no chance to use her weapon again, and effectively breaking several bones. Giving no quarter, she added an angry blow to the head that hit straight home, and a kick in the ribs for good measure.
Panting, she took her bearings, but there was no time to recover. Benji had done a good job, too. One of his doppelgängers was lying dead or unconscious in the door of the second elevator, however he had not managed to hold off the other one completely. Too late, Skye saw the fist coming in her direction, but just as it would have hit her face it was pulled away and before she could figure out what was going on, both men were on the floor, trying to wrestle the other one down.
In the rolling mess of arms and legs, fake blood mingling with real blood, it was impossible for Holt to tell where one man ended and the other one begun, and even less who was who. She had her gun drawn, and knew she still had two bullets left, one more than she would need to kill the man. But afraid to hit Benji instead, she could only watch helplessly, unable to tell what was going on, when suddenly everything went dark.
In the middle of the darkness, there was a sound of breaking bones and ripping tissue, accompanied by an agonizing shriek, but with the lights out there was even less Skye could do. "Benji?" she called, her voice filled with concern and a slight note of panic.
But soon enough a reply came back from somewhere on the floor, slightly muffled: "I'm OK."
She wanted to help him up, but not wanting to accidentally step on him in the dark, she stayed where she was. Skye almost started at the torchlight and footsteps rapidly approaching from the other end of the corridor, but relaxed when it was accompanied by Brandt's call: "Are you alright?"
"I think that was the last of them," Benji replied, blinking into the bright beam of the torch as he worked himself back into a standing position. "But who switched off the lights?"
"They cut the main power. They must have noticed what we were doing," Ethan replied and was almost interrupted by Luther. "The good news is that the upload was finished before the power went down."
"Please don't tell me there's any bad news," Brandt pleaded quietly, but what little hope he had had was crushed that instant.
"The bad news is," Luther continued, "with the power out the elevator is stuck, and it's cutting us off from our exit."
"Maybe we can find the fuse box and turn it back on?" Benji put in, already mentally searching through the schematics he had looked at earlier, thinking where it might most likely be located, when another voice entered the discussion.
"That isn't gonna work. The break they put in is on a different circuit."
There was a moment of stunned silence as they listened to the thick Scottish accent that was not part of their team, but somehow on their radio transmitters, when Luther was the first to recover. "Listen, kid, whoever you are, get off this..."
"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!" Benji interrupted him. "I know this guy." Then, turning back to the one on the radio, he added: "Neil, how the hell did you get on this frequency?"
"I had a feeling ye'd be coming back, and I was pretty sure ya wasn't alone, besides there's only so many ways to get through that radio shielding..." The young Scot made a pause that was the audible equivalent of a shrug. "Anyway I've always had me stuff on a separate circuit and connected over an up-link with me computer at home, so when the connection broke down, I knew something must be going on."
"And because your computer is on a different circuit, it can't be just a blown fuse or someone messing with the main switchboard," Benji completed the explanation.
"They must have a panic button disconnecting the whole building from the main power line," Luther added unhappily. "It would take hours to find that separation, and most likely even longer to fix it."
"We're never going to get out of here," Brandt sighed, but Benji wasn't giving up just yet.
"Neil, can you access the schematics of the tower?"
"Sure," Sullivan replied readily. "What'd ya need?"
"A way out from the basement, aside from the normal doors," Benji replied, and there was the faint sound of fingers typing on a keyboard in the background, while the young Scot asked: "What's wrong with the doors?"
"Long story," Benji answered.
Obviously Neil shrugged it off, because a second later he replied: "Alright, there's a room, two doors left from the server room, seems to be an old washroom of some kind. Anyway, it should have a grid in the middle, big enough for a person to get through, leading right into the underground pipelines."
"Oh great, a sewer," Luther muttered.
"You're welcome to stay here for the rest of the night" Brandt shot back. "But sewer or not, I'm out of this hell-hole."
"Don't worry, I'm coming," Luther replied, following the others to the room in question and did indeed have a drain in the floor that was just big enough to let them through one by one.
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Despite some minor misunderstandings, Neil led them back to the surface somewhere south of Waterloo, near the Themes. On the other side of the river Big Ben was chiming quarter past, as Benji helped Skye up onto the concrete. Night had fallen long since, and the street-lamps of Victoria Embankment were reflected back from the calm, black surface of the water.
A chilly winter wind had come up, and since Skye hand never had the chance to take a jacket, Benji gave her his, laying his arm around her shoulders for good measure. The rain of the morning had turned into snow in the cold of the night, and while the thick flakes immediately melted on the streets, there already was a fine white powder on roofs and trees. Somewhere in the distance a radio was playing "Santa Clause Is Coming" and as Benji breathed in the crisp winter air, feeling the soft, warm weight of Skye leaning against him, and looking through the silky haze over the river at Westminster, he thought the city hadn't looked as beautiful in a long time.
"You got red on you," Skye chided him, tracing a by now unidentifiable stain on his shirt back to his neck until her hand rested on his shoulder. Carefully, Benji bent down and met her forehead with his.
"Now you got red on you, too," he replied. Breathing in her warm scent, he wrapped his arms around her hips, shoving his hands under the too long back of his jacket, and gently pulled her closer. Before they would have kissed, though, they were interrupted.
"So, should we go to the flat now?" Brandt asked. They had finally all managed to scramble out of the gully and now all he wanted was a cup of coffee, a bed and a hot shower, although not necessarily in that order.
"I'm not sure that's such a good idea," Benji replied, half easing himself out of Skye's embrace. "After all there's still two dead bodies lying around there."
His girlfriend shot him a questioning glance, but Benji shrugged it off. And looking around, he could see that none of the others were eager to go back to the apartment either.
"Hotel then," Luther decided and set off towards the bridge. Without a comment, everyone followed.
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Epilogue
Benji heard the footsteps come up behind him even before he saw his visitor in the small mirror he had attached to one of the screens. With the IMF back to being the IMF and him mostly in the field, it didn't happen too often that he did actual technician work back in HQ, but if his desk was used by someone else while he wasn't around, the people working in his department made sure it always looked the same when he came back.
This time, however, he did not have to look up to know who was approaching him. He didn't know whether it was his agent training that had sharpened his hearing, but by now he could discern several regular visitors by their footsteps.
"Benji, do you know someone called Neil Sullivan?" Brandt, asked positioning himself in front of his desk to catch the other man's attention. Finally Benji looked away from his work and up at the analyst. "Yeah, he's the Scottish kid we met in London. Pretty smart, and lots of talent."
"He was employed by Clarkson Enterprises, and as such included in the investigation of the CIA," Brandt started explaining. "However it appears that all records they ever had of him, suddenly disappeared completely from the entire network, with no possibility of recovery. You don't happen to have anything to do with that?"
"Did they say so?" Benji carefully asked back, with the most innocent face he could muster.
"No," Brandt replied in a dry, toneless voice.
"Then I guess I don't," Benji answered, a grin twitching around the corners of his mouth. "I told you, he was talented."
So, this is it. I hope you had fun with it.
Post Fallout edit: Despaire not, there is a new story already in the making and coming soon.
Thanks for reading! See you around.