(Earlier)
Corey's jaw dropped behind her mask. Tony had crushed the sentinel's skull against the front of the building, like a soda can, and he didnt even blink. Corey followed in the furious titans wake, marveling at his complete inhibition, as he tore the other men apart. This wasnt the same Tony she saw before at the crack house. That Tony, was a pent up time bomb, waiting to explode, to release the built up pressure he had been storing for god knows how long. Now, Tony was reveling. He was feeding on all the pain and blood he splattered across the room. Perhaps Tony had finally found himself, his true self, the man under the mask that he was always meant to be. If that was the case, what a horrifying creature Tony had always been, as beautiful as he was brutal.
Corey slung the heavy bag of tools at her side as she followed Tony, worried the greedy berserker would simply destroy the entire building in his current state, leaving Corey's own personal journey to remain theoretical. As she followed Tony from the entrance to the main lobby, she instinctively hung back. She saw Tony's body stiffen, frozen at what he saw, before the explosion of gunfire tore through the air, and bullets riddled all around him. Corey's eyes widened as she hid by the archway separating the entrance from the lobby. Furious Tony, who wasnt afraid of anything, was now fleeing for his life as a dozen or so heavily armed gunmen chased him, guns blazing, into a room at the side of the building.
Corey felt fear grip at her heart, at the small army filing up near the doorway that Tony crashed through. They were preparing to enter the breach, to kill the trapped tiger in his den. She had to do something. If she did nothing, not only would Tony soon be dead, but any illusions she had of becoming something more, the idea of "Corey the Zebra" would all fade away like the smoke wafting from the barrels of those rifles. Her heart beat rapidly in her chest, as she closed her eyes and focused. Doing nothing was not an option, she would do something. What that something would be… Corey had no idea.
Corey's brown eyes flashed open behind her mask as a plan blossomed in her mind. She scrambled to the other archway on the far side of the wall, opposite to where Tony and the gunmen were holed up. She felt her heart beat even faster as she emerged from the archway, into plain view of anyone who cared to turn in her direction. Thankfully the gunman on the other side of the lobby were focused on their siege of Tony's room.
She crept as quickly and as quietly as she could. Every hair on her body felt like it was standing on end, as she crossed the thirty feet or so in the open, only allowing herself to breathe again when she could duck down behind the large crescent shaped couches around the old fountain in the middle of the lobby. She checked her surroundings, it was all clear on her side… at least until another gunman came around the corner.
She set the bag down and unzipped it, rifling through it until her hands found what she was looking for, a simple carpenter hammer. She gripped the wood shaft and rose from behind the couch, feeling more confident with a tool she had trained herself to use as a weapon. She quickly planned her exit strategy. The hallway towards the elevator and stairwell would be a good place to fall back too. She took aim, picking out one of the Russians holding a rifle. She gripped her hammer. It was over forty feet away, a difficult throw, but she would make it, she had too. She cocked her arm back, feeling the surge of excitement and energy swirl through her body, overtaking the fear and reservation for the first time, and launched the hammer at her target.
Corey fully expected to see the hammer strike the mobster in the skull, to see him spatter apart, like they did when Tony struck them with his fists. Only that didnt happen. The hammer fell wide left of her target, and instead struck a different gunman in the shoulder. The Russian winced and cursed before looking around the lobby in angry. Her body stiffened when the gunman's hate filled eyes found her crouching by the fountain.
Corey burst from her hiding spot and sprinted across the lobby, as the Russian gunmen began to fire on her. She moved like a zebra striped blur, faster then she had ever ran before. Ducking through another archway, she stopped in front of the metal elevator doors in front of her. Her heart felt like it was going to explode, as her eyes darted around her surroundings. Four elevators in front of her and two stairwells on either side of them.
Her mind raced to compile a plan as she heard the gunman approach, yelling in Russian amongst themselves, their footsteps heavy and quick. She pressed the up arrow button of the elevator, before sprinting towards one of the stairwells. She forced herself to slow her racing feet, taking quick but silent steps, as she pushed open the door to the stairwell, and crept inside. She let the door swing shut softly, keeping her body firmly pressed against it, spying at the hallway through the small door window.
The gunmen stormed from the archway. A pissed off looking, injured man with the revolver lead the charge. Corey surmised the door to the elevator she had opened was beginning to close, from the way they frantically rushed towards it. The sound of curse words in Russian was clear and audible from her hiding spot, and they began to span out, the man with the revolver heading towards the stairwell where she hid.
Corey's stopped breathing as she quickly moved away from the door. Before she finished wrestling with the decision to go up or down the steps, she heard the gunmen begin to argue. She crept back to the door window and took a cautious peek at the men. The other five or six Russians, seemed to be arguing with the one Corey tagged with the hammer. The injured Russian gestured violently down at the ground with the barrel of his massive handgun, but the other Russians just shook their heads, gesturing for him to follow. After the rest of them began to file back towards the lobby, probably to rejoin the siege of the room Tony was holed up in, the man with the revolver cursed through gritted teeth, reluctantly following.
Corey waited for a moment before opening the door. She looked around cautiously, before she crept from the stairwell and out into the open. She moved down the hallway in the gunmen's footsteps. She fearfully poked her head back into the lobby, spotting the line of gunmen walking away from her. She sighed in relief that they were no longer hunting for her. She turned from the archway and lifted off her mask. She panted through her unrestricted mouth, feeling near paralyzed by the surge of worry and fear coursing through her body.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection on the elevator doors. It was a blurry image, not enough to pick out any details, but seeing it made her mind imagine what she looked like right now. Panicked, afraid, hiding from the gunmen and their superior numbers. She grit her teeth and narrowed her eyes. Determination welled up from within her, causing her eyes to water and her jaw to tighten. She had been afraid of dying, but it was living she should be afraid of. Living with the weight that when it was time for her and Tony to answer the call, she cowered against the wall and did nothing.
She pulled her zebra mask back on and stood up straight. She could feel a sudden calmness overtake her, an aura of cool competency glowing all around her. She remembered this feeling, it was her alter ego, or rather her true self. For the first time in a long time she was not afraid.
Corey poked through the archway to the lobby. "Psst!" The gunman with the revolver stopped in his tracks and turned to to her, as she stood boldly in the archway. Corey raised her middle finger at him. The gunman blinked, his face more confused then angry, but only for a moment. The gunman's face twisted in hate as he raised his revolver, running towards her with wild abandon.
Corey darted back through the hallway in front of the elevators and turned around, creeping back towards the archway silently. She waited and listened, hearing the furious gunman's heavy footsteps getting closer and closer. In a moment, he would emerge from the lobby, like a bat out of hell, but Corey knew that. She was counting on it.
When the footsteps were practically on top of Corey, she ran foreword before throwing one leg out, sliding on one knee like a baseball player. She couldnt have timed it any better. Her leg slid in front of the gunman and he tripped hard against it, his face swinging down towards the tile floor as his feet were stopped dead in their tracks. The mobster made no movements to stop his fall before his face slammed against the tile floor, breaking his nose.
Corey's eyes darted to the gun that fell from the Russian's grasp, still within reach of the mobster when he came to his senses. She lifted herself to a crouching position before lunging towards the gun with one hand, landing on her side, as her fingers gripped themselves around the barrel and cylinder of the large chrome revolver.
The mobster recovered quicker then she had predicted. He quickly reached for the handle of the gun that she held awkwardly in her hand. She swung her foot foreword, striking the mobster under the chin with a wild kick, before springing back to her feet in a low crouch. She switched hands with the gun, holding it by the handle with her right before swinging the barrel down towards the dazed Russian's face.
The Russian had just enough time to look up into Corey's eyes with a strange detached expression, before she pulled the trigger. The gunshot was loud thunderous. Her hand felt the kick of the weapon jerk her arm back… and just like that, the man was dead. His head didnt explode, there was no fountain of blood, just a little jerk and tiny red hole where the magnum round entered his cheek, before a large pool of blood quickly expanded from the back of his head.
Corey stared at the man's frozen face. His eyes were partly open, a calm stoic look was permanently frozen on his face. Before she could fully process the thoughts and emotions from her first kill, bullets ripped into the archway, tearing through the legs and groin of the dead man in front of her. She flopped back on her rump, as the rest of the hunting party who had heard the gunshot turned and opened fire.
Corey dove backwards from the archway, landing on her back against the hard tile before rolling across her shoulders. She leapt to her feet. Her tumbling practice was paying off already, she noted to herself. She glanced once more at the body, now a mess of bloody torn cloth on the floor, before pushing through the stairwell door. She stopped in the stairwell. "Up, or down?" A line of yellow "Under construction" tape to the basement, helped make up Corey's mind for her. She ducked under the tape and jumped down the stairs, using the railing to skip every other step, as she flew down them like a zebra striped rocket.
She exited the stairwell, slamming past the swinging door, stopping only to observe her new surroundings. Particle board, temporary walls, cheap metal chairs and tables, half finished drywall rooms, pieces of pipe and wooden 2X4's scattered about on the hard concrete floor. It was a maze of wood, drywall and junk. She felt a sparkle of excitement behind her eyes. It was perfect.
Corey slunk through the particle board walls and ladders, scoping out the room with what little time she had, before the hunters returned. This place was riddled with blind corners and hiding spots. After taking a few moments to familiarize herself with the layout of her new hunting grounds, she waited eagerly for the gunmen to return. They would soon find out who was hunting whom. In the corner of the basement, at the far end of the stairwell, she found her hiding spot. Crouched low behind a pile of drywall slabs and veiled in shadows from the unlit corner of the basement, she could clearly see the doorway to the stairwell on the other side of the building. It was the only way in to her little maze, as well as the only way out.
A Russian armed with an AK assault rifle was the first to push through the doorway. While Corey's eyes glittered at the site of such a lovely playground, the burly Russian instead winced, scanning the infinite hiding spots with a look of foreboding. Three other gunmen followed behind the man leading the charged, armed with submachine guns and one pump action 12 gauge.
Corey left her hiding spot, staying low to the ground as she stalked the hunting party. The gunmen followed one another in an organized column before, either by choice or accident, they began to drift apart from one another. Corey waited, keeping her eyes on the man with the AK-47, as she used her ears to keep a mental note of where her other assailants were located. She crept up behind him, leaving the shadows and leveled the massive revolver at the back of his head, steadying the hand cannon with both hands. Before she pulled the trigger, a loud voice rang out "Boris!" one of the hunters yelled. Corey turned her masked head towards the source of the scream. One of the gunmen was staring directly at her, over the top of the small wall of particle wood.
Corey turned and bolted for cover as gunfire erupted all around her, sending pieces of wood splinters and powdery drywall particles flying through the air. She weaved through the wooden walls and piles of drywall, but still the gunmen kept shooting. She realized the gunmen were firing blindly, no one had a bead on her as she sprinted head long into what appeared to be a future office. She pumped her arms and legs as hard as she could, her body racing towards the doorway with no door.
As she reached the doorframe she heard someone yell behind her "Tam!" before the sounds automatic fire bellowed through the air, this time directed at her location. She dove into the doorway at full speeds, giving herself only milliseconds to react before she would smash head long into the cheap metal table in front of her. She slid on one knee once again, before rolling onto her stomach, bringing the revolver out in front of her in a prone stance. She stared through the doorway, nestled under the metal desk, waiting for her attackers come and get her.
Corey didnt have to wait long. The gunman with the AK-47 leapt into view, firing a wild burst of automatic fire into her room. She fired at the first thing that came into view, the mobster's leg. The magnum round roared out the barrel of her gun and tore through the gunman's knee, twisting his face with agony. The strength of of his leg gave out and he dropped onto his shattered kneepad with a horrible cry.
Corey's second round punched through his chest, knocking him onto his back. A second gunman leaned his body into the room, taking a quick peek before leveling his shotgun down at her. She fired first, the .44 round tearing through wall and into the man's chest. The gunman grunted, and staggered further into view, but still he tried to level the shotgun towards her, firing a shot high and wide. The buckshot skittering over the top of the metal table.
She leveled the cross hairs over the reeling man's mouth pulled the trigger, but only a loud click filled her ears. Her blood froze. She had only fired four times, she was sure of this, she had been counting, but she had failed to check how many bullets were in the gun to begin with. She grit her teeth and rolled out from under the metal table, only to pause when she heard a loud thud from the doorway. Corey poked her head around the door-less frame, and saw the gunman had succumbed to his wound and collapsed on his back, practically on top of the first gunman she had killed. She crept from the doorway slowly, checking left and right, before reaching down for the AK-47.
As her fingers wrapped around the handle of the Russian assault rifle, a burst of automatic fire pierced the air in front of her, sending bullets whizzing passed her head. Corey fell straight back, keeping her body close to the ground as bullets sliced through the air around her. She turned her shoulder as she aimed the rifle to the left in a modified stance, taking little time to line up the sites over her target, before pulling the trigger. She fired a quick burst, but only one of her four shots hit the submachine gun wielding mobster, but the placement of that shot was lethal.
The bullet borrowed through the mobsters throat, tearing through his carotid artery. The mobster coughed once, spraying tiny droplets of red into the air and down his bottom lip and chin, before crumpling to a kneeling position. Corey watched the man's face as he went into shock. He looked almost awed as he stared back at her, his eyes becoming glazed with confusion, as if he couldnt comprehend what had happened.
The sounds of rapid footsteps pulled Corey's head back into the hear and now. She swung the rifle foreword as she brought herself into a sitting position, aiming the barrel of the rifle between her open knees. She saw through the sites of her rifle, the last member of the hunting party, raise up his Tec-9 submachine gun. Corey fired another burst, two of the bullets striking the mobster in the chest. The mobster stumbled and fell flat on his face, attempting to lift himself back to his feet only once, before relaxing, and becoming staying very still.
Corey looked around herself. Two bodies were in arms reach, one far to the left, another fifteen feet in front of her, and she alone was unscathed. She felt a surge of jubilation as she rose to her feet. She was triumphant, victorious and most importantly, she was authenticated. As her mind buzzed with her pleasant self reflection, she walked over the bodies and guns, taking care not to step in the blood to create footprints.
She remembered the time she ran out of bullets for the revolver and popped the magazine from the rifle. It was empty. She frowned in confusion and slid back the action of the rifle, sending a single round flying up into the air. She didnt bother to try and catch it, throwing the magazine and rifle away. She bent down and picked up the shotgun at her feet. She cocked the pump action and peeking down the ejection port. She saw a sliver of red from a cartridge, so she slid the action back into place.
She made her way back to the stairwell, still glowing from her moment of triumph. She felt like she could take on the world in this state and still come out on top. As she pushed open the stairwell door, she cocked her head to the side, and strained her hearing. Footsteps, coming from the stairs above. She backed away from the stairwell and quickly moved back to her spot behind the stack of drywall slabs, overlooking the doorway.
She got herself comfortable in a low position, resting her arms on the drywall slabs in front of her. She cleared her throat, and loosened her neck for a moment, before readying herself. As soon as the door swung open she fired through it, striking the emerging gunman in the stomach. The buckshot scattering eight or so tiny red wounds, through his light blue shirt and into his guts.
Before the gunman began screaming in pain, Corey had already began to move to a different spot. She crept along the wall a few steps, and waited behind a small generator, now overlooking her dark corner she had fired from earlier. As she predicted a gunman, armed with an AK style rifle slowly approached her previous position. She kept the barrel of the shotgun leveled at the gunman, waiting for him to turn around to face her before she fired. The angry cloud of metal pellets tore through his upper body. The mobster fell straight back, as rigid as a store mannequin if you were to push it over. If it wasnt for the slight quiver in the man's brown loafers, and the twitching of his hands, he would have laid perfectly still. She continued to watch him until the trembling stopped, before she slunk to a new spot.
Corey dropped the empty shotgun at her feet as she slunk around the back wall, towards the submachine gun, dropped by the victim that had flanked her outside of the office room. While she made her way towards the Russian with the Tec-9, the sounds of footsteps from the stairwell rang out in her ears. More gunmen had entered her playground. The gunfire seemingly attracting more and more of them. Corey was fine with that, she was getting good at this. The last two kills were almost too easy.
She stopped at the side of the fallen man, who laid crumpled on his side in a pool of blood. She kept her body low to the ground, as she delicately walked around the blood and grabbed the Tec-9 submachine gun. She checked magazine, it too was empty. Corey blinked and looked down the hallway. Well, she didnt have to worry about it being to easy any longer. The only guns that may have ammo in it, was the other Tec-9 towards the middle of the room, or from the hallway near the stairwell. She had absorbed enough of her basic training, to remember its unwise to retrace your steps when there are armed gunmen hunting for you, so she slowly crept towards the gun near the center of the maze.
Her heart began to race once again when she realized she had lost track of where her attackers were at this point. Every corner and turn was a blind spot, an ambush waiting to happen. She made her way towards the center of the maze, and slowly poked her masked head to the side, keeping her floppy rubber zebra nose squished against her face with her hand. She saw her victim, lying face down, his Tec-9 held loosely in his dead hand.
As Corey began to creep from her spot, a Russian mobster stepped in front of the body from the left, looking down at the body of his comrade. She slunk back to her spot, watching him for a brief moment before realizing that this was her chance. While the gunman was turned away from her, staring at her handy work, Corey exploded from her hiding spot, driving her body foreword with every bit of speed and strength she could muster. She took long powerful steps, her arms swinging back and forth as she ran, squeezing every bit of inertia she could from her body, as the gunman turned, bringing his AK-47 to bear on her.
Corey jumped through the air, lifting her legs and swinging them foreword. She landed with her feet against the gunman's stomach before extending her legs at the moment of impact, driving the force of her momentum against the man in a devastating drop kick. The gunman was flung from his feet and his rifle flew from his grasp up into the air. Corey landed on her back, against the cold concrete floor. Before she could scramble to pull herself to her feet, she felt something heavy land on her shins. Corey winced in pain and quickly glanced down. It was the man's AK-47 that had landed on her.
She quickly looked over at the gunman still flat on his back, before jerking her legs up into the air, tossing the AK style rifle towards her upper body as she sat up. She caught the rifle from the air and quickly shifted it in her hands, holding the stock against her shoulder and aiming down the sites. The gunmen had time to weakly raise his head up at Corey, before she pulled the trigger, blowing a bloody hole through his forehead, and slamming his head back to the ground.
Corey saw a blur of movement to her right and instinctively sprung to her feet, avoiding a blast of buckshot as she sprinted through the wood and drywall corridors. Shot ripped through the particle board walls, throwing wooden splinters against Corey's starter jacket, as the gunman continued to chase her, firing on every noise she created as she tried desperately to escape him. Corey slumped her back against one of the particle board walls and tried as hard as she could to muffle her excited breathing.
She held her breath as the gunmen began to walk within inches of her hiding spot, the only thing separating the two of them, was the flimsy wall of particle board she leaned against. Corey thought on that for a moment, before whirling around. She fired an automatic burst in an arc across the wooden wall in front of her, creating a curved line of bullet holes. She listened to the sound of the gunman groan, before dropping his gun and collapsing to the ground.
Corey moved from her position, hoping the noise of gunfire would draw the last remaining gunman (that she was aware of at least) into her clutches. She watched and waited from her dark corner, behind a large spool of cables. The last of the once bold hunters slowly crept into view. His breath was shallow and inconsistent, his eyes darted around wildly. He was bold no more. Corey realized how easy this last kill would be, a shot from her rifle, at a target less then five feet away. It was the most anticlimactic ending she could imagine. She relaxed her finger from the trigger, and waited for him to walk past her, keeping her gun leveled at him the entire time. She stalked him silently, watching him check every corner nervously, his ever footstep reluctant, telling her his feet wanted nothing more then to carry him out of the building entirely.
As Corey continued to stalk him, she looked down at her feet as she nearly stubbed them on a piece of metal. Corey smiled under her mask at what she saw. It was a threaded metal pipe, roughly the same length as a baseball bat. Corey set her rifle down, and lifted up the pipe, feeling the heft in her arms. This improvised weapon was more then a perfect bludgeoning stick to Corey, it had much greater significance. It was a weapon commonly used by Russian mobsters, and sequentially, Jacket, after lifting it from their dead bodies. Countless Russians fell to Jacket when he held a length of pipe, like the one Corey now held.
She kept the pipe low and cocked back, as she stealthily made her way to her last victim. As she approached him from behind, she saw his body stiffen, saw him tighten his grip around the pump action shotgun her carried, before whirling around. Corey swung the pipe with all of her might, striking the turning Russian in the elbow, as he turned. The Russian's face twisted in pain, as Corey slammed the pipe twice more against his broken limb. He dropped his weapon, staggering backwards, as Corey stood in front of him, arms holding the pipe down across her legs calmly.
He looked back at her, glaring with hatred as he moved his white blazer to the side, revealing a large hunting knife in a scabbard on his belt. Corey watched him awkwardly pull the knife free with his uninjured arm. He moved towards Corey slowly, making several feint jabs with his knife, trying to make her flinch. Corey only chambered her pipe back and waited.
The mobster took a sudden step foreword, launching the knife foreword at Corey, but she was ready. She took a step backwards, keeping out of reach of the knife, that swung by her masked face harmlessly, whizzing through the air. Corey drove the end of the pipe against the mobster's chin, knocking him of all of his senses, as he fell face first to the ground.
Corey leapt over him, each of her feet straddled on either side of his hips, as she raised the pipe high above her head. She brought the heavy metal length down against the stunned man's skull, the first strike cracking it, the second strike spilling blood over the concrete floor, the third strike spattering the contents of the man's head through the air, sending droplets of red over her jacket and mask.
Corey closed her eyes and looked away, it was a repulsive sight, even for her. She forced herself to look back, to take in what it was she had done. It was what she wanted after all, to see this color red once more. As she stared down at the back of the man's shattered skull, she swallowed down the bit of vomit raising in her throat. She steeled herself with a deep breath, before pressing on.
Corey walked through the basement that she had littered with corpses. She had lost count of how many she had killed at this point, but she didnt have time to stick around. Tony was still up there, and more mobsters that needed killing.
She made her way to the stairwell, pipe in hand, taking note that the stairwell door was open. She cautiously approached to the side of the doorway, listening to the sounds of pained grunts before spotting a pair of black dress shoe clad feet obstructing the door from closing. She quickly realized this was the man she had shot the stomach from her hiding spot behind the pile of drywall slabs. She slowly stepped into view, checking to see if the Russian held any weapons.
The Russian gripped a Beretta pistol in his hand weakly, as his lips bunched and trembled, like he was having a bad dream. Corey shifted the pipe to hold it in one hand, before crouching down, taking the gun from the mobster, who let it slip through his grasp without a fight. She aimed and fired a mercy shot into the dying man's skull, the bullet striking him at the side of his temple. She took no pleasure in shooting the man, it was a kindness to end his life quickly, and it was the least she could do for him. What he and his comrades had given her in exchange was worth far more then a simple bullet to the head.