Troy could feel the storage unit began to cool itself down, the air inside being circled out at a higher intensity. Whatever had been happening seemed to be over. Had Adam succeeded perhaps? Or had another approach begun? With all the time that had passed, it was clear that some trouble must have come along, but… he just hoped it would be over.
The door finally opened itself up fully. Dr Fidelis had seemed weirdly focused on that requirement being met before going on the steel walkway himself. Troy stared from the back, the storage unit still connected to the wall. Dr Hale was in the middle, acting as a wall of sorts. Charlie was just behind her. Both put up a brave front, but even the youngest could see that one of their hands was shaking.
‘I have completed my task,’ could be heard coming from inside his head. Adam was back! Troy couldn't help but sigh. Though… if the AI had completed his task, why had the door not opened up? Was it timed? ‘How much time has passed?’
Looking over at the doctor again, it was not hard to make an answer for the question. Too long. Much too long a time had gone by. While they might have put on a braver front, Troy was beginning to doubt their chances. Plugging the cord out of the storage unit, the young man stood back a few meters from Charlie. He hoped that the gesture was appreciated, though he wasn't sure if it was noticed. The two others didn't take their eyes off the doctor for a moment.
“You all seem a little worked up,” Dr Fidelis said, putting his head to the side the slightest bit. His eye-line was at an angle, all to make his expression seem so innocent. Oh, he had to be enjoying this. There was no other excuse for what was happening. “Is anything wrong?”
The doctor took a step forward. Troy nearly took one back on instinct but held himself back from doing so. The two others stood their ground, and he would do the same. Though… Dr Hale did something questionable just about then.
“Nothing is wrong sir,” Dr Hale answered, bringing out her own storage unit from under her shirt. It was identical to the one Troy had himself, just like it had been when he first laid his eyes upon it. “You can leave at your own discretion now.”
Dr Fidelis laughed wholeheartedly at that. That laugh… it was like the ones heard so many times before. Troy had heard it from the man himself during testing, when they just talked, or when he was in the medical wing. Never before had it scared him as much as now.
“That's the point! I can leave whenever I want!” Dr Fidelis said, putting a hand to his chin in an attempt to stop his chuckles. It took a few seconds, during which the three others just stared at the man. “That's not the same with you three. No, you aren't allowed to do anything close to leaving this fine establishment. And… I think you should have realised that by now. Any words in your defence, my dear?”
Dr Hale did not reply verbally, instead of taking off her necklace, the storage unit attached to it. She held it in her hand loosely, the strap ready to fall out of her grasp at the slightest wind. Then… she stretched her hand over the railing, staring at the doctor while doing so.
“... Is that supposed to scare me?” Dr Fidelis asked. The man did not seem impressed, his voice sounding genuine when it came to his question. Troy couldn't find it in himself to doubt it. The distance down might have been large, but the man was more dangerous than anything it could create. Potential energy was only potential. It was the kinetic one needed to fear, and that man had more than enough of it to give around. “If we even consider acting like that right there is the real unit, you do realise that this fall will do nothing to it? Those bricks were made to last, dear, and a few bruises from falling a couple of hundred meters is not going to do anything serious.”
How much did Dr Fidelis know? It was likely that he had seen the straps around Troy and Charlie’s necks, which would elute the man into thinking of there being several of them. However… the knowledge of which of them had Adam should have been unknown.
Dr Hale briefly flickered in her gaze, looking between the one she had and Dr Fidelis’ face. After a minute, though, she just… dropped the storage unit, as if she was working on some bluff the doctor had set up. However, there was no real reaction from the doctor there, leading Troy to believe that there had been no real consequence of it. If that had been the real unit, he would have won. If it wasn't? Then they were still playing.
“Charlie,” Dr Hale said, looking over at the larger man. A small glance was given back. “Crush it.”
Something happened when that was said. With no further hesitation, a clicking sound came from Charlie’s back. Troy recognized it as what could only have been a triggering mechanism. It had been disguised before, but he now knew exactly what it was.
The man’s hand went upwards towards his chest to grab at the storage unit. However… it never reached the target. In a matter of eye-blinks, Dr Fidelis had closed the five-meter distance, restraining the man physically. It might have looked as nothing more than a flat palm casually lying on Charlie’s arms, yet it was clear that the pressure put on it was more than enough to stop the man from moving his hand upwards in any way.
“How immature of you to say such things,” Dr Fidelis ridiculed, his voice beginning to sound a little excited. From what the man knew, they had been intending to destroy his life’s work, and he had the audacity to sound excited about it? What was wrong with him? “Didn't your parents teach you not to destroy others’ toys?”
Dr Hale chose that as her moment to strike. Before Troy knew it, the woman had a… taser in her hand. It was already crackling by the time it went towards Dr Fidelis’ throat. It was a perfect opportunity. Since she was a meter ahead of Charlie, the woman was in the doctor’s blindspot, a perfectly viable position to strike from.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
If only the doctor had seen it the same way. The second the sound reached his ears, Charlie had been pushed away, coming close to falling into one of the metal posts.
Troy had enough bodyweight to slightly diverge the larger man’s path, however, letting him fall down to the steel walkway instead. So, rather than being impaled, the man got himself a mild concussion, likely amplified by the blood coming out of his mouth. The temporary enhancement had stopped itself early, it seemed. Perhaps it was due to the short period since it was last active? Whatever the reason, the effects were still there, if not greater this time around. Troy had to force Charlie up on his side, lest the man would have choked in his own blood.
‘Charlie will survive, Troy. Look at the fight,’ Adam chimed in from his personal seating. Even if the wording could have been better, there was definite truth to the meaning behind it. Troy, so distracted by the well-being of the man, had forgotten to see how Dr Hale was going up.
The answer? Not great at all. In the seconds spent overlooking the condition of Charlie, Dr Fidelis had disarmed the woman of her weapon, raising her above the ground with nothing but his hand on her throat, and had smiled all through the process of doing it.
“Can't say that this is what I expected out of today, Dr Hale,” Dr Fidelis stated, watching the woman gasp for air with a smile, uncaring of the damage her nails did to his arm. “We finished the work with the current run, you showed ingenuity in new ways, and we even had a cake baked for the occasion. Yet… you just had to ruin it with this.”
The doctor’s grip tightened. Troy could see it from his position, Dr Hale’s skin beginning to discolour, as the blood and air began to be seriously depleted. He needed to do something. Could he use- No, the bag was on the other side where he had left it. There wasn't a chance the doctor would allow that to happen.
‘The taser,’ Adam supplied, the AI likely knowing exactly what he was thinking. The taser! Where was it?
“No… not like this,” Dr Fidelis began, his grip lessening to a point where Dr Hale could at least regain her consciousness. Her eyes had been fluttering, the act seemingly upsetting the doctor. “You don't deserve something as kind like that.”
There! Just a few meters away from the doctor, in the direction of Troy, lied the taser. It had been scratched, but it seemed to be in working condition. Troy could do this. The doctor began to move, and Troy took that as his chance to move silently forward.
“How about this? What do you think about falling to your death? Maybe only your legs would be crushed, though. It would be extremely painful if you survived,” Dr Fidelis asked the squirming Dr Hale, the woman was making as much sound as she could. It was nothing more than a rasp, yet the words were seemingly enough to make the doctor feel some fort of happiness. “No, you're right. I guess I could get the knife I gave you. You used it so gracefully on your dear slave not that long ago. I am not the best with such a tool nowadays, but I am pretty sure I could practice for a while if you wanted me to. Do you have anything against it?”
With a taser in his hand, Troy moved forward slowly. Both Dr Fidelis and Dr Hale took no notice of him. The woman made attempts to kick the man, but the railings made it impossible. The distance was too far. It only amused the man.
“So full of energy yet so little time to use it,” Dr Fidelis said. “I really am going to miss you, Mara Hale. You were a good assistant, even if you were a betrayer in the end.”
Dr Fidelis let go of the woman that hung over the darkness. She would have fallen if not for the hands she had around his arm. That caused a look of annoyance, as the man was forced to get another arm out there to help get her off.
‘Go.’ The AI’s words were ignored, the man already intending to do so long before Adam had said it.
Due to the height difference, Troy had to reach high when he went for the doctor’s neck. Yet it was not far enough to be out of reach, and definitely not out of where the hand-held taser could hit.
Not making the mistake of turning it on before it came close to the skin, Troy hit the man with a fully loaded taser. He had turned up the power as far as it went, and he hoped it would do more damage than he could hope.
The moment that the weapon came within a few centimetres of the skin was the moment that the young man put on the power. The loudness split the air, and the light was blinding for the first few seconds. The taser had clearly been made to be deadlier than ever before. Had the woman tampered with it beforehand?
Dr Fidelis screamed, the muscles on the man convulsing. Dr Hale screamed as well, holding on for dear life. It was a good idea to have held on hard. Troy did not let go of the power.
The doctor could do nothing to stop him. Even with the convulsions, attempts were made to stop him, to stop the taser from hitting skin. They all failed, for they were as feeble as they could have been. The electricity was making black spots appear on the doctor’s neck.
He did not let go. The spots grew wider. From his peripheral view, Troy could see Charlie get up from the ground. The man did not look good, blood still dripping a bit out of his mouth. Dr Fidelis had stopped screaming. So had Dr Hale.
The fingers were still moving, however. The man was still alive. So was the woman, lest she would have fallen. With Charlie close, he and Troy made a silent nod to each other.
In a moment, Troy threw away the taser, Charlie helping Dr Hale over the railing, before helping Troy get the larger doctor off the railing. Dr Fidelis was too dazed to realise anything was going on until the moment he fell. There was a moment of horror when the lower part of the railing was grabbed, yet the twitching fingers stopped anything worthwhile from happening.
The doctor fell. A thud was heard after seven full seconds. Troy was not optimistic enough to think that the man had died from it.
Charlie was already at Dr Hale’s feet, checking up on the woman. She breathed, alright, but nothing more could really be said.
“Mara? Can you hear me? Mara-”
“Shut up,” Dr Hale commented, cutting into it all. “My head grows more painful with each word you say.”
If that was a way to say ‘thank you,’ Troy would gladly take it. What he wouldn't take however was the fact that the woman had to turn her head to spit blood.
“Charlie, are you in stable enough condition to carry me?” Dr Hale asked. “I seem to not be capable of currently moving my legs in any worthwhile manner.”
She could hardly wriggle her feet. Troy could see the woman straining in the effort. Charlie gave her nothing but a small laugh, as he carried her like a princess. Nobody commented on the fact that he did it with a limp.
“The door didn't open,” Troy informed the other two. The gate had not opened during the fifth either. The young man was beginning to doubt that it was on a timer. “Adam said he did everything asked of him, but I can't-”
“You talk too much,” Dr Hale cut in. “Press the red button in the box. That is the only needed action to open it now. What are you looking at me for? Open it.”
With a small smile on his face, Troy pressed the small, red button, making the gate open up for them. It slid into the wall, revealing a staircase upwards. It was a good distance up, yet not enough to cause any emotions to swell up.
A green forest could be seen. A day ago, the young man would have been so angry about such a sight. Now… he could do little against beginning to shed a few tears.
They had gotten out. Now they just needed to get away. With the storage device around his neck, and with Dr Hale and Charlie behind him, they all began their walk to freedom. Troy couldn't have been happier.