Michael’s team ran alongside the green escape trails amidst the sea of red flashing lights and sirens.

Whenever they ran out of a room, the heavy fire-proof curtains just dropped behind them, completely blockading the doorways as a mechanism to lock the fire within that room.

Michael could feel the building reshaping itself this time. As soon as they ran out into the main corridor, he watched the floor he stood on fell. More precisely, it was the rooms behind them elevating. As soon as the artificial intelligence system detected that all people had cleared out of the room, the program commanded the locked down rooms to elevate to the top of the building. This way, the heat from the flames will not scorch through any other parts of the buildings, and the important steel structures in the body of the building will not be burnt through by the flame.

Fortunately, or unfortunately for Michael, the fire that they created was too small to cause a total evacuation from the building. However, Michael could see that a few dozen other ArtTech personnels were running alongside them. They seemed too hurried to recognize who Michael was.

The evacuation paths eventually led to the central social space of the building. It was a large room with some couches, tables, and holograms. There was a set of switches and controllers embedded within one wall. As people rushed into the social space, the building’s central system immediately sent commands to the controllers on the wall, and the controllers created a turbulence on the nanotech floor in this room to sweep all furnitures and devices to the sides of the room.

The whole time that Michael was running through this building, he unconsciously felt the awe of ArtTech’s technology. In his life, he had never seen anything so grand and so splendid before. From where Michael was from, perhaps the most advanced technology was just some holograms and augmented realities and the Hypertubes he took to work everyday. But this ArtTech smart building, it was something from a different universe.

A huge PA broadcast voice boomed in the room. “You are all secure here. Backup ventilation has been activated. The fire has been controlled in the first moment and never escaped the room. You all can return to your posts now.”

“Goddamnit,” Jay muttered under his breath.

“To your right,” Nicholas patted Jay’s shoulder and eyed a guard a few meters away. The guard looked very weary. His steps drag with heavy bodyweight.

“Keep him distracted,” Jay motioned to the other three members of the team.

Alexandra immediately understood Jay’s plan. She walked over to the guard while making eye contact with him. Michael and Nicholas followed forth.

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“Hey Clark, how’s it going?” Alexandra smiled at him. She gradually took her paces backwards, leading the guard near the center of the room. Alexandra purposefully chose a position so they were blocking the other employee’s ways.

“Hello… Do I know you? How do you know my name?” The guard’s eyes became a little more alert, but soon he was distracted, trying to search his memory for Alexandra’s face.

Then at that moment, Jay blended in a group of employees. Jay’s shoulder briefly collided against the guard’s torso, but the guard didn’t take notice among all the people.

“It’s me, Samantha!” Alexandra continued.

The guard still looked confused, but Jay was already signaling to them. Job done. Jay got what he wanted.

“Ah I got to go now, see you Clark,” Alexandra hurried away with Michael and Nicholas.

“How did you know the guard’s name?” Michale couldn’t help with his curiosity.

“Badge,” Nicholas simply remarked.

What Jay stole from the guard was a plasma pistol. All their other weapons, including Jay’s playing hards, had been confiscated by ArtTech. The pistol was their only arm left.

“Are you sure the ArtTech building’s windows could be broken so easily with a plasma pistol,” Alexandra questioned, and then she shifted back to her bitter tone. “Oh but of course, maybe you might be one of their security guards undercover among us. You would know.”

Jay ignored her comment. He walked over silently to the wall, and before any guard could comprehend what he was doing, he raised the pistol and fried the controlling system with the plasma. The lights and ventilation immediately died. The room was pitch dark. Michael could see some traces of moonlight seeping through the window panes.

The big central system spoke again, “Backup generator powering in thirty seconds.”

Jay then fired a few shots at the corner of the window. Now that the power of the room had temporarily died, the different layers of shielding and vibration-absorber on the window was disabled. The windows shattered immediately under the powerful plasma.

Jay was just about to climb out the window when Michael stopped him.

“Wait Jay, this way,” Michael whispered and pointed to the entrance of the air vents on the wall across the window. Jay understood. Jay trusted Michael’s understanding of the structure of the building. Michael would choose the vent for two reasons. Firstly, it was a lot safer than recklessly jumping out of a window. Secondly, amidst all the chaos, everybody would think they escaped through the windows, and if they left through he vents, they could exit in a completely opposite direction.

The team of four crawled through the air vents. Thanks to Michael’s memory of the blueprints, they could find their way to the first floor, and thanks to the vandalism caused by Jay, the building had stopped altering its structure temporarily.

Michael popped his head through the vents. The world outside seemed darker than usual. What happened to the bright streetlamp and commercial holograms? What happened to the roaring vehicles on the street? The world was deadly silent.

Michael and the team walked out of the ArtTech building’s perimeters. Jay made sure they were not followed. They could see some lights now, but it wasn’t the usual blue and white. This lights came from a source of flicking orange. It was a fire.

Then suddenly, a group of seven or eight stepped out of the buildings and alleys around Michael. Beams of flashlight shined right at Michael’s face, and Michael could clearly see the shotguns and rifles in their hands.

“What do you want?” Michael said in a shaky voice. Jay hushed him.

“You are within the boundaries of the Central Circle. You better drop your arms and walk back to where you come from.”

“Yes, certainly, as long as you don’t pull the trigger,” Jay bent down his body slowly and lowered his pistol, “But do you see where we came from? We were from the ArtTech facility. ArtTech never likes their employees being pointed with guns.”

The mobs exchanged a few looks. Their leader breathed more and more heavily. Then he shouted, “They are the bastards. They are the bastards from ArtTech who killed our brothers and sisters in that massacre.”

Michael immediately knew what they were referring to. The massacre at the ArtTech press conference. Marcus Johnson intentionally locked everybody in the auditorium so nobody could know about this. How did the information get to the outside world.

“No no no. Please, let us explain. We are the victims of the massacre as well!” Michael knelt down and begged.

“Do you think we give a damn? Boy, this is a war. It is kill or being killed.” The leader spoke as he pointed the shotgun towards Michael’s temple.