Chapter 5: Black and White
Copen's feet hammered the stairs as he ascended out of the subway tunnel.
"Nori? Nori, do you read me?" he said.
The response was covered in static. He had to get to the surface. The light outside was falling in beams from between dark clouds. As he burst out into the light and slid to a halt at the street, Copen's ears were greeted with the whirling wail of sirens and piercing screams both far and near. Abandoned cars clogged the streets, pillars of smoke rose over the buildings, and distant gunfire chattered like firecrackers.
"Master Copen, do you copy?" Nori's voice called from his watch.
"Nori," Copen said, "is Mytyl still with you?"
"Negative," Nori answered over the roar of an engine. "She left about an hour ago. I'm en route to the concert hall now."
"Dammit," Copen said. "The roads are blocked here. Can you make it there quickly?"
"Faster than you could," Nori said. "Emergency response forces are deploying armored convoys to carry people to shelter and evac zones. Once I've found Mytyl, we'll link up with one of them."
"You're certain you can make it?" Copen said.
"I'll keep her safe, Copen," Nori said. "You have my word."
Copen sighed.
"Alright," he said. "I'll do what I can for the people on my side. Call me if things look bad."
"I'll report soon," Nori said. "And, Master Copen, you chose the right time to come back."
Copen cut the line with a scoff and synced his coordinates with his base.
"Lola," he said, "prepare for combat deployment."
"Countdown's already started, boss," Lola responded. "I'll be in there in a flash!"
"In precise terms?" Copen said.
"About twenty seconds," she said.
Much of the crowd that had followed Copen off the subway still gathered close to him. He turned to address them.
"Listen up. We're going to link up with an evacuation convoy. I'll do what I can to clear the way. On my signal, run. Got it?"
A white drop pod crashed into the sidewalk behind Copen, punctuating his instructions. The door slid open, and Copen climbed into it. A quick scanner pulse ran over his body, and a set of restraints locked his limbs in place before the door shut. A moment later, several panels blew off the pod. The floating bits of Lola's combat pod ejected and swirled around the drop pod before Copen, fully armored in white and red, emerged with Lola. The crowd looked on in amazement as Copen adjusted his earpiece and gauntlet.
"Stay out of sight," he said. "I'll signal you when the coast is clear."
With that final order, Copen activated his thrusters to rise and bounce off an overhead road sign and launch himself through the window of an adjacent office building. He dashed past the cubicles and skidded to a halt in front of the opposite window. His cyber eye highlighted the convoy's projected path in the distance and tagged a threat marker over a group of zombies in between. He drew his revolver with a twirl and slammed back the hammer.
"Let's go, Lola!" he said.
Copen put two shots in the window and burst through it. As the shattered glass, shining in the intermittent light, hung in the air around Copen, he boosted straight toward a zombie and fired his opening shot. The shot hit the zombie's shoulder and staggered it back before Copen crashed down on it and shoved his bayonet into its neck. As he snatched the blade out, Copen leapt toward the next zombie and, grabbing it by the head, sprung with a flip higher into the air; his touch applied a lock-on marker to the zombie's forehead. Deploying his hover jets, Copen stabilized his flight and obliterated the zombie with a salvo of homing photons.
With the horde well alerted, Copen manually aimed to blast another's skull and dashed back down to spring with a kick off a reaching zombie's head. As he took it down in the same manner as the last target he had touched, the zombies began to pounce through the air at him. He boosted to the side to avoid one's assault and launched straight into the next to shove it back to the ground. As he shot the grounded zombie, another leapt from behind.
"Boss, watch out!" Lola said.
Copen's prevasion system kicked in, leaving the zombie to grasp nothing but an afterimage as Copen retaliated with a shot. The rapid movement, however, left Copen's dash bullits depleted. Another zombie managed to catch hold of Copen's foot and dangled, snarling, from it. Rather than let the zombie drag him down, Copen reversed the direction of his hover jets to rocket him downward and stomped the zombie's purpled brains into the pavement. Bullit shells ejected from Copen's jet pack as he impacted the ground.
The remaining zombies rushed him from all sides. One pounced at him, but Copen threw it to the ground. Before he could finish it, another zombie reached for his throat. Copen grabbed its wrist and, using its own movement against it, twisted its arm to flip it onto the other zombie, a move Nori had used to throw him onto his back many times during training. He punched a hole through both zombies' heads with one pull of the trigger. Still surrounded, Copen held his revolver in both hands to double headshot a zombie before stepping back to move to a better position. As he stepped with his right foot and swiveled his head, Copen saw a lunging zombie nearly on him. Reacting on instinct, Copen slammed his left fist into its jaw and knocked it on its belly. Stepping with his left foot, Copen continued to swivel to an extreme angle and, aiming nearly backwards, pulled the trigger to blast another zombie's forehead. He continued to turn and, with the revolver still in one hand, shot another charging zombie before he completed his turn to slash the throat of the zombie he had punched. The last zombie in Copen's immediate vicinity grabbed his left arm, but Copen quickly shot out its knee before shooting it between the eyes point blank.
"Lola," Copen said between heavy breaths, "turn off prevasion. I'd rather take a hit than lose mobility again."
"Prevasion disabled," Lola said. "Just be careful, ok?"
A larger group of zombies, drawn to the commotion, came shrieking and crawling over the cars in the street. Copen steadied himself. No matter how deeply the horde outnumbered him, he had no fear. Behind him were decades of experience turning predators into prey. Experience and Lola.
"Special weapons primed," she said.
"Let's send them back to hell," Copen said. "Ready the Prism Break."
As Copen raised his gun and started shooting, the floating bits orbiting him assembled to his front. Lines of energy extended from the bits and connected each dot to the next. They formed together like the stars of a constellation until a crystalline silhouette became visible. With the zombies closing in, the crystal outline began to oscillate, gradually expanding as it picked up speed. Copen could see the white of the zombies' fangs, like those of a shrieking vampire bat, but he held his ground.
"Now!" he said.
At Copen's command, septimal energy surged through the spiraling bits, changing the hollow shape into a sharp, multi-faceted, amethyst crystal and launching it forward like a spinning bullet from a rifled barrel. The prismatic projectile drilled through the middle of the necrolized crowd until it pierced the engine block of an abandoned car. As the flames of an explosion went up from the back of the group, Copen rushed toward the opening.
"Vantage Raid!" he said.
The bits aligned into a ring above Copen's head and fired a wave of orange, disc-shaped projectiles in front of him. Upon impacting the zombies, the discs, being formed with a doughy consistency, wrapped like bolas around them. As one of the zombies fell on its face, Copen leapt over it and kicked off another immobilized enemy.
"Ferrous Fangs!" Lola said without any prompting.
From a sanguine mixture, the bits formed a phalanx of iron spikes and slung them in a barrage. They impaled several zombies to the ground like the victims of a Romanian prince. Often, Copen had no need to issue commands to Lola. As a learning AI, she had come to think just like him in combat, though they were polar opposites in most other ways. "Totally in sync," as she had, scientifically, put it.
Reaching the threshold for overdrive activation, Lola radiated light. She transformed from a simple, floating sphere into her green-haired, bright-eyed idol mode. She spread her neon wings, the bases of which were loudspeakers, and lifted her voice.
[Vast Circle (Lola version)- Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 ost]
"Hailstorm blade!" Copen said.
Dual blades of ice manifested and crossed in front of Copen as he dove back to the ground. They scissored a zombie in half and froze even the corrupted blood spatter before it stained the pavement. The cold shockwave from the attack frosted the street with thin ice. As Copen's feet hit the ground, he slid along the ice trail and twisted to rotate the blades like a saw around him, bisecting several more of the undead. A zombie reached to take hold of Copen as he skidded to a halt in front of it, but Lola turned the blades to cut upward, removing both of the zombie's arms before Copen put a shot through its head.
"Hot dang, Boss!" Lola said. "You're in top form today!"
The last attack had thinned the horde's ranks by more than half, but the remaining undead pressed their attack with greater ferocity. Copen turned and, narrowly avoiding a leaping zombie, built up speed to slide over the hood of a car. On the other side of the car, three zombies waited with open claws and jaws.
"Twintail Bunker!" Copen said.
Lola prepared twin strand drills to Copen's right and left. As he slid, the drills extended forward and penetrated the zombies' heads while Copen blasted the one in the center. Coming out of his slide, Copen rolled under the claws of the last zombie on his side of the car. As he put a shot in its back, Lola readied another special weapon.
"Hydro Zapper!" Copen said.
Copen pointed his finger, and the weapon bits unleashed several streams of high-pressure water, each several times the strength of a fire hose's gush. They slammed the zombie against the car with such force that the car flipped and rolled, crushing more zombies in its path. The tumbling car also clipped a fire hydrant which spouted more water into the road.
"Thinking what I'm thinking?" Lola said.
"You know me well," Copen said.
Copen waited for the zombies' splashing steps to get closer to him before he leapt back and gave his winning command.
"Stellar Spark!" he and Lola said in unison.
The special weapon blasted bolts of blue lightning onto the flooded street. The electricity surged through the puddles, chained from zombie to zombie, and ignited the flipped car to explode all in one sublime flash. Copen, satisfied with the spectacular fashion of his attack, landed with a smirk. His attackers had been reduced to a pool of ash.
"Ashes to ashes, indeed," he said and holstered his revolver.
"Boss," Lola said, "those ashes are radiating septima."
"Another adept atrocity," he said with a shake of his head, "as expected. Still, as far as zombie outbreaks go, that could be good news or bad."
"Really?" Lola said. "How so?"
Copen knelt down and scooped a sample of the ash into a small container.
"Only science will give us that answer," he said, "but we've got more pressing concerns than research right now. Let's get those people to safety, so we can hurry up and check on Mytyl."
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Mytyl's lungs were burning. Her heart was racing faster than her feet as her heeled shoes clacked against the tiles of the narrow hallway. She didn't know either of the two people running next to her. The ones chasing her, she may have known, but she wouldn't be able to tell anymore. She could still hear them. It wasn't a running sound like normal human feet; it was a scuttling, chittering sound that followed her, and she ran for her life.
There was a scream, and more monsters came barrelling from the other end of the hall. Mytyl nearly ground to a halt but remembered the threat at her back. She saw a door to a side room a little further up; it was the only place left to go. As she ran toward the open jaws before her, teeth sank into the woman behind. Mytyl didn't look back at her sharp cry; she couldn't. Mytyl and the man next to her nearly toppled each other as they scrambled for the door. As close as they were, Mytyl felt him being snatched away by a pouncing creature from their front. She plowed through the door, slammed it behind her, and twisted the lock.
No sooner had Mytyl felt the lock click into place than she felt something slam against the door from the outside. She nearly fell as she shrank back from the impact. There was another slam. And another. Mytyl knew that if the monsters were strong enough to break the lock, she would stand no chance of holding the door herself. Frantically, she looked around. The room she was in was for storing instruments. Several metal lockers lined the walls. Quickly, she flung open one large enough for her to fit in. Inside the locker was a guitar, one she knew to be of very high quality and extremely expensive. By force of habit, she tried to set it gently to the side, but another bang against the door prompted her to sling it onto the floor and jump into her desperate hiding place.
The hits against the door intensified as Mytyl curled into the corner of the locker. She forced her body to be still, but her thoughts grew louder than her elevated heartbeat.
"They're dead," she thought. "Those people are all dead. I'm the only one left. Why me?"
The next hit against the door carried a rattling, cracking sound. The answer to Mytyl's question sprang quickly into her mind.
"He died for me," she thought. "My brother died for me; this can't be it."
The jolt of the door breaking loosed stinging tears from her eyes. She heard the horrible sounds of frenzied breathing and claws clicking on the floor.
"Oh, God," she pleaded, "don't let me die! Don't let it be for nothing! I can't meet him like this, not when I'm still nothing; I have to be someone!"
Had Mytyl been able to see through the door, she wouldn't have been able to look away from the monstrous creatures growing ever closer to her. Instead, she listened, listened to painfully sharp breaths, the wet, chewing noises, and the banging and screeching of jagged claws on metal doors. As the discord pressed harder against her ears, Mytyl ran her hands through her hair and, in doing so, touched the bell still hanging on her ribbon. She ran her fingers over it, feeling the silver smoothness and the little cuts through which sound would escape. The sensation elicited the strangest reaction from her. Her lips began to move involuntarily, and though her vocal cords only quivered in the slightest, the words to a song she did not recognize brushed her ears.
"Angels in flight…."
No sooner had the words escaped her lips than a sudden crack broke through the noise. At first, it was muffled but distinct. Then it came again and again, drawing closer and clearer. They were shots. There was nothing else they could have been.
Nori held the revolver steady as she placed her shots with malicious precision. She had tracked Mytyl's phone to the stairwell leading to this hallway and, having found it, screen shattered, on the steps, pressed forward with greater urgency. With so many undead in the hall, Mytyl couldn't have kept running far. As Nori pressed forward, engulfed in the noise of death, a softer sound, like a whisper, caught her attention. Seeing the open side door, Nori rushed to it. Past the dented door, she saw two zombies tearing apart the room.
"Mytyl?" she called.
"Nori?" echoed Mytyl's voice.
In response to the latter sound, the two zombies lunged toward the locker where Mytyl was and tore at the doors. Mytyl screamed. Nori holstered the gun and snatched her knife from its sheath. Charging forward, she grabbed one zombie by the back of head, pinned it against the door, and slashed its throat. As the first zombie fell, the other managed to tear open the locker door. Mytyl kicked frantically and pushed the zombie back just enough to escape its claws. As it lunged at her again, Nori dove on it and, in the ensuing scramble, pinned its palm to the floor with her knife. Quickly reading the situation, Nori pulled back from the flailing zombie and stepped over the guitar on the floor. She grabbed it by the neck and, stepping around to the zombie's disabled arm, lifted it up and brought it crashing onto the zombie's skull. The two zombies turned to ash, and Nori took her knife back.
"Nori?" Mytyl whimpered. "Nori, what's happening?"
"It's ok, Mytyl," Nori, kneeling by her, said. "I'm here."
"They all–" Mytyl sobbed. "So many of them–"
"Look at me, Mytyl," Nori said. "Hey."
Nori put her hand on Mytyl's cheek to lift her gaze. It was wet.
"I'm with you," Nori said, "and I won't leave you for anything. Come on."
Nori took Mytyl's hand and helped her up.
"I'm taking you somewhere safe," Nori said.
"But, what about the–"
"I need you to trust me," Nori said.
Nori turned the white revolver around and presented it to Mytyl.
"Take it," Nori said.
"But, Nori," Mytyl said, "I haven't shot a gun since you first showed me, and I've never–"
"It's from your brother," Nori said. "For emergencies."
Mytyl looked with shock into Nori's eyes and, seeing that she was completely serious, quietly put her hand on the grip. She made sure to keep her finger away from the trigger, a lesson Nori had been sure she wouldn't forget. It paid off, because just as she closed her fingers around the gun, a sharp shriek prompted Mytyl to flinch.
"Look," Nori said and pointed to parts of the gun. "Safety, hammer, trigger. Ammo won't be a problem. Stay next to me, shoot for the chest, and do not ever point it at me. Are we clear?"
Nori released the weapon into Mytyl's hands, and Mytyl nodded.
"Yes, Nori," she said.
Things were always so simple to Nori: yes and no, action and reaction, black and white. Mytyl watched Nori raise the submachine gun hanging from her side and check that there was a round chambered.
"Follow me," she said.
[Danger-6:24 Furi ost]
They stepped onto ash in the hall where Nori had already been about her work. She led them to the right, the same route Mytyl had been trying to take.
"Are we cutting through backstage?" Mytyl asked.
"To VIP parking," Nori said. "That's our best chance."
There was something disturbing to Mytyl about hearing the word "chance" from Nori, but she followed closely in Nori's footsteps as she strode like a woman on a mission. When they reached the corner bend, Nori held out her arm to stop Mytyl and peered around the corner. There were several more zombies aimlessly roaming the hall.
"Your safety's off?" Nori said.
Mytyl checked and nodded. At just that moment, they heard a shriek as Mytyl's late companions, joined by a third from the stairwell, began to rise as undead. Mytyl gasped in horror.
"Eyes forward, Mytyl," Nori said and pulled her around the corner. "Fire."
Nori took aim quickly and let loose a rattling burst of bullets. Her target dropped immediately, and she had already finished her second burst before the zombies gained any ground. At Nori's instruction, Mytyl also raised her brother's gun and pulled the trigger. She winced at the first shot, but finding the recoil lower than expected, she shot true by the third attempt. Nori eliminated four targets to Mytyl's one, but the zombies from behind were closing in.
"Nori?" Mytyl said.
"Keep shooting," Nori answered.
Nori raised her gun's muzzle upwards and, shifting behind Mytyl, laid one hand on Mytyl's shoulder and pointed her weapon back down the hall. Aiming at an angle, she swept a burst across the trio's legs and dropped them flat on their stomachs. They kept crawling, however, dragging trails of purple blood across the stark tiles. A zombie Mytyl had shot from the front fell mere feet away from her.
"Move!" Nori said and pushed her forward.
Nori kept her hand on Mytyl as they pressed down the hall. More zombies emerged from the stairwell at the end of the hall. Without slowing their stride, Nori took aim and downed one of them. A door to their right burst open like a vampire's coffin just as they passed it. Nori shoved Mytyl away from the clawing corpse and drew her knife. She stabbed the nerve cluster under its arm, sending a shock through its half-conscious nervous system and, grabbing its shoulder, kicked its shin and threw its face to the floor. She gripped the door with both hands and, twisting her whole body, slammed it into the zombie's head to seal it into its sepulcher.
During this exchange, Mytyl dropped another zombie, but its twin made it closer. Her knife in her left hand, Nori snatched up her submachine gun and propped it over her left arm. She tapped the trigger to put two rounds in its shoulder, and as it staggered forward, she punched the knife into the side of its head and threw the body aside. Nori raised her weapon to fire at the zombie just behind it, but it swung its claws and swiped the gun out of Nori's hand. As the firearm dangled from the strap, Nori struck back with her knife, but the zombie caught her arm. To escape the grapple, Nori dropped the knife and caught it with her other hand. She swiped the zombie's wrist to escape its grip and, flipping the knife around, plunged the blade into its throat. Mytyl brought down half of another approaching duo, but the final zombie of the group pounced at them. Nori deflected its momentum to her right and threw it on its back. As she prepared to dive on it with her knife, Mytyl instead punched a finishing shot into its head. A drop of the purple blood splattered onto Nori's cheek, causing her to flinch slightly. She wiped the spot away and looked at Mytyl who was breathing heavily. They locked eyes. Nori simply nodded and turned back toward the stairwell.
They came to the mouth of the stairwell, but their advance was halted by a zombie dangling upside-down like a spider from a bungee cord of viscous, purple fluid attached to the ceiling. Mytyl raised her gun to defend herself, but Nori put her hand on Mytyl's arm.
"Wait," she said.
The slime was leaking in heavy drops from the corpse's open abdomen and mouth. It stuck to whatever it touched like liquid spider silk.
"That one will make a mess," Nori said. "Against the wall."
The injured, crawling zombies were still closing in from behind, but Mytyl obeyed. Nori lifted a fire extinguisher from off the wall and threw it into the stairwell. As the dangling zombie reached impotently from its thread, the fire extinguisher stopped rolling right under it. Nori half covered herself behind the doorway and shot the canister. The pressure release killed the zombie as the extinguisher burst into suffocating foam and smothered the hazardous goop.
"Let's go," Nori said.
The two rushed through the foam, up the stairs, and left the crawling zombies to bleed out. Though they moved quickly, Nori kept her gaze and her gun up. However, they met no opposition, save gravity. As Mytyl began to grow winded, she realized that Nori was in astoundingly good shape for her age. Nori had always discouraged questions about her age, but Mytyl, upon observing the gradual slackening of the skin around Nori's ever stony eyes and the fading color in her always neat hair, knew that her bones must have been feeling the same strain. Nori only opened her mouth to breathe on the top flight and stopped Mytyl at the doorway. Nori suppressed the inflation of her lungs as she slipped through the cracked door and let the carpet muffle her footsteps while she approached a lone zombie in the hall. She sliced its throat from behind, spilling its purple blood on the red carpet, before she motioned to Mytyl.
They came to a room full of control panels which controlled the speakers, lights, and pyrotechnics on stage. A set of monitors in the room showed several angles of the stage and seats. Zombies crawled like ants between the rows.
"Oh, God," Mytyl said. "Are we the only ones left?"
When Nori made no response, Mytyl looked to her for an answer. Nori had her eyes trained on the monitors. In the blue-green glow of the screens and panel lights, Mytyl noticed something reptilian about the dark circles under Nori's cold eyes. Perhaps she was tapping into that ancient, dark part of the human brain concerned with hunting, possessing, and devouring to survive.
"Can you work these panels?" Nori said.
"I've done it before," Mytyl said, "but why?"
"They're drawn to loud noise," Nori said. "Keeping them in there will keep them off of us."
"Oh, so just play the music like everyone's not dead?" Mytyl remarked.
Nori gave Mytyl one of her looks.
"Yeah, I can do that," Mytyl sighed.
Mytyl flipped some switches, turned some knobs, and made a few clicks on the computer. Lights beamed onto the stage, and strobe lights flashed to a pounding, electronic beat. Several zombies climbed onto the stage.
"And the flames?" Nori said.
"Those, I'm not familiar with," Mytyl said.
"Which panel?"
Mytyl pointed to the pyrotechnic panel. Nori looked at it for a moment, flipped a series of switches at random, and kicked the panel. Just after, flames burst from the jets on the stage and ignited a few zombies. Mytyl looked at Nori in disbelief.
"Come on," Nori said.
They proceeded through a couple more carpeted hallways within which Nori made quiet work of a few more straggling zombies with her knife. At the end of the halls, they came to the reception room connected to the sheltered parking area. Just as they passed through the door and closed it behind them, a zombie sprang from behind the reception counter and knocked Mytyl down. Nori immediately pinned her knee onto its back and grabbed its head and jaw, but as Mytyl struggled to escape its grip on her leg, she pulled herself straight into a metal detector. The snap of the zombie's neck was immediately overtaken by a screeching siren. Nori looked up in alarm and whispered a curse Mytyl didn't hear. She snatched Mytyl up by the arm.
"Behind the counter, now!" Nori said.
As Nori pulled Mytyl behind the counter, the glow of scores of violet eyes rushed from the shadows behind the wall-length windows. Frenzied zombies slammed themselves against the glass and pressed until it cracked. Nori propped her submachine gun over the counter and nodded at Mytyl to do the same.
The windows shattered as if hit by floodwaters as the wave of undead surged through. Bullet casings flew as Nori held the trigger in long bursts, and Mytyl fired much more frantically than she had. The rounds and photons tore through the zombies' flesh, killing them in quantities too great to count. The frontlines staggered and fell, tripping the already wounded wave behind them. Still, the screeching monsters kept crawling and clambering over each other, cascading like a swarm of ants unconcerned with the death of the outer layer. The strobing muzzle flashes and fluorescent photons illuminated their bloody faces in horrifying snapshots as the demon tide drew closer and closer.
The undead ranks were thinned greatly by the time they began to scrape their claws against the counter. Nori and Mytyl kept firing as they backed away. The flood had been reduced to a crowd, but the duo was about to be crowded out. Nori heard Mytyl scream as a zombie leapt onto her. Nori swiveled her gun to Mytyl's aid and pulled the trigger. A single round was followed by a metallic click. Immediately, a zombie was chomping at Nori's throat. She held it back with her forearm to its throat. Mytyl was doing her best at the same move.
Nori crouched down and drew the handgun attached to her boot. She shoved the barrel under the zombie's chin and shot through its head. The body slumped aside and, with instinctual precision, Nori instantly turned and put two shots in the zombie on top of Mytyl. As the zombies crawled over the counter behind Nori, she stepped toward Mytyl and fired again. A zombie bypassed Mytyl to rush Nori from the front. She deflected its momentum behind her, causing a charging zombie from the other side to chomp into its neck by mistake. Nori spent her last shot on another zombie to the front and, dropping the spent pistol, covered Mytyl with her body to shield her from a zombie that was falling over the counter. Its claw dug through Nori's clothes and scraped multiple bloody gashes down her back.
"Nori!" Mytyl cried as Nori clenched her teeth.
Mytyl pointed the revolver around Nori and blasted the zombie in retaliation. Without missing a beat, Nori lifted Mytyl up and rushed her past the last zombies on the other side. They made a heel turn against the right wall and, with all the zombies back on one side, Nori shoved a new magazine into her submachine gun, snatched the bolt, and clenched her hand over the trigger. The rattling rounds ripped through the undead crowd, and the photons from Mytyl's gun pierced them just as effectively. The shells flew in a constant stream until the entire magazine was spent, and a few more photons brought the last zombie down at Nori's feet.
Mytyl's and Nori's chests both heaved out and in as they breathed heavily, their guns still raised. Nori looked to Mytyl and saw that there was a scratch under her eye and claw marks on her shoulder and leggings.
"Are you hurt?" Nori said.
"You're bleeding," Mytyl answered, her frail voice barely passing through the sirens.
"We'll deal with it later," Nori said through her teeth. "We have to get out of here."
Nori reloaded again as she walked toward the door. The slightest change in her gait just did betray the sharp pains surging with her heartbeat. Mytyl kept her eyes on the red, shredded flesh as she followed in Nori's shadow. The realization sunk in for, perhaps the first time, that Nori wasn't invincible.