From the far side of the floor, they heard the clomp of feet as an unknown number of people descended the stairs in a rush.
Trace quickly took photo after photo of the line of crates along with the exposed inhalers and sent them off to Stick-Point in a black message. They were about to be in a gunfight, and he didn’t have time to put anything more together.
Monroe lightly tossed a grenade in his hand a couple of times. “I know we weren’t meant to fully attack this place, but I don’t think that is really an option at this point.”
“Keep it clear of the crates,” Trace told him. “We’ll use them on the way out though, to get rid of all this stock. Something tells me that this isn’t all they have.”
“Same,” Monroe pulled the pin, and using his cyberware arm, threw it all the way across the room to the stairs.
They ducked behind the room’s wall and mentally counted down. A few seconds later, there was an explosion, and a cloud of dust and dirt blew back into the main section of the room where all the crates were.
“Ugh, I need to get a mask,” Trace coughed out, his tongue immediately getting coated with a layer of everything floating in the air. “Well, if they didn’t know we were here before, they certainly do now. Let’s move. I’d rather not be around all these drugs when the bullets start flying.”
The compressed gasses inside the inhalers would be released in a second if they took any damage. It wouldn’t take much for this entire floor to become a skeeters paradise and his and Monroe’s worst nightmare.
They rushed out of the room and ran toward the stairs. Since this had been a place run primarily by robots in the past, there was only the one set of stairs, instead of the usual two. It kept their backs safe, for the most part, but it also meant they had to traverse the entire floor before the gangsters emerged. As long as no one thought about going out and then onto the roof to enter through the hole they had created, they would be fine.
Trace could feel his lungs pumping wildly, burning as he was forced to breathe through his increasingly clogged mouth. There was so much crap in the air, and he was sucking it all in with every heaving breath. While he was in better shape than he had been before that scav job he did for Jonas the Slick, he still wasn’t in perfect shape.
He slammed his back into the wall next to the stairs and began coughing up bits of cruds from his throat. Next to him, Monroe was doing much better, as he had possessed the good sense to pull his shirt up over his mouth and nose.
They waited next to the opening, listening for the sound of feet. However, nothing could be heard over the noise of the men in the stairwell who were still alive screaming in pain. At least that was the case until a grenade rolled into view. It bounced off the edge of the opening on the opposite side and careened into the room. The metal orb rolled against a crate and spun off into an aisle where it kept going.
Trace and Monroe shared a quick look and hurried into the stairwell. There was no way they were sticking around for that noxious cloud of gas.
Pistol at the ready, Trace was aiming up the steps while Monroe had his shotgun pointed down toward the floor below.
The suppressed CD-10 coughed quietly as he squeezed the trigger at the shadows above them. There was a single yell of pain, but the other two shots only caused sparks to fly up as he missed. He had never really practiced shooting while running, or even moving before, and his aim suffered severely as a result.
Behind him, the shotgun belched out a load of buckshot. Inside the enclosed area of the stairwell, the difference in how loud it was compared to his CD-10 was very noticeable. That said, it was by no means deafening.
Taking the stairs two at a time, he skirted the bodies, and quickly reached the landing in-between floors. Bullets pinged past his face, coming close enough that their passage caused the air left in their wake to burn thin lines across his cheek and neck.
Jerking back, he holstered the pistol and took a second to retrieve his assault rifle. It had been awkward having two rifles strapped to his bag at the same time, even if it was supposedly able to handle it. If he put that much weight on it, then he needed to use the waist strap to keep the bag secure, and he hated using that thing. Half the reason he liked the courier bag was because of how easy it was to slide around to his front whenever he needed to.
With the assault rifle in hand, he did a quick S&R scan to locate the people above him. Their positions firmly in his mind's eye, he stepped out and fired off two quick bursts. The loud, unsuppressed fire rang through the stairwell, deafening him and momentarily causing his ears to hurt.
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By that point, he had already lost count of how many people had been in the building. Mainly on account of the people who had been taken out by the grenade on the stairs. He hadn’t bothered counting how many had been lying there as he ran past them.
Trace waited for Monroe to catch up before they moved up to the next floor together.
The ruins outside had been two-story buildings, so using the roof, they had emerged onto the third floor. That meant this was the fourth floor.
All the production that he had seen going on had been limited to the upper floors. The tenth floor had been completely blocked from view, but the four floors beneath it had been hives of productive activity. There had been lots of machinery he hadn’t been able to recognize through the scope.
The fifth floor had been utterly dark, so he hadn’t been able to see anything at the time. As for this floor, it had been packed with people. Or at least he thought it had been, it was so hard to tell through the small gaps, and with everyone wearing the same outfits. It could have only been a couple of people moving back and forth constantly.
“What do you think?” Trace asked, pointing the barrel of his rifle at the door to the fourth floor. “Deal with this now? Or rush up to the top and work our way down?”
Monroe cracked his neck, a grin taking over his face. “Definitely working our way down. What happened to operating quietly though?”
Trace sighed. “Wrong mission for that, or maybe I’m doing it wrong. I don’t know. No one has taught me how to be a silent killer. I’m making it all up as I go. I want to get enough money to buy some decent teaching modules on the subject soon, but well, they’re expensive.”
“Which is why you want someone who can help you strip the place down to the paint after each job.” His partner finished for him. “I understand. Well, I thought you were doing fine originally. It’s just, not all styles fit each job.”
Trace grabbed the grenades from the men he had killed and shook his head. “I’d like to believe that, but real wraiths are supposed to be able to complete their jobs without ever being detected. No matter how hard it is, or how many people there are.”
“Sure, but you forget one thing. You’re not an actual wraith yet.” Monroe swiped the grenades from him and pushed him up the stairs. He pulled the pin on one of them and tossed in through the door of the fourth floor, pulling it shut behind him.
They would check what was on that floor later.
Together, they began running up the stairs, shooting at anything that moved. They were being wildly reckless; however, it was throwing the gangsters off, as they had no idea how to handle the situation. A few would appear on each floor, making a token effort at slowing them down. That was it.
Twenty minutes later, they were on the landing for the tenth floor. Both were completely out of breath, while Trace’s chest had also accumulated a couple of new bruises. Thankfully, his bulletproof vest had done its job. He was equally glad that they hadn’t been using any heavier ammo.
Taking a moment to regain their breath, they threw open the door and peeked inside, only to be disappointed. The floor was used for storage. It was maybe useful for Trace if he felt like carrying the old equipment down all those flights of stairs, but that was it. Old conveyer belts, shelves, charging units, robotic arms, and possibly even a robot or two. It had all been shoved away and left forgotten on that floor. There were newer items as well, from past inhabitants along with the current ones.
With an annoyed sigh, they closed the door and trudged back down a floor. Monroe’s hands were full of grenades, as they had been plucking them from bodies all the way up. His belt was laden with them.
He eased the door open enough for Trace to kneel and begin shooting, while he pulled the pins on all the ones he was holding.
“Wait, no Flash-Fry, STOP!” Trace yelled at him; a moment too late.
Six grenades soared into the depths of the floor, clinking noisily as they hit the concrete floor and began to bounce and roll about.
Without saying anything Trace slammed the door shut and ran back up the stairs that they had descended only a few moments earlier.
Monroe watched him for a second and then decided it might be a good idea to follow his example. He might not know what it was at the moment, but the other man undoubtedly had a reason for acting the way he did. He had known him long enough to say that much about him for sure.
Trace had barely stepped onto the landing between floors when they all exploded at the same time. He held his breath, waiting, wondering if what he feared was going to happen would actually happen. Inside the room, slightly below them, he heard the groan of metal, and then a splash of liquid as it began to escape its container.
That was all he needed to hear; he started running again. This time he didn’t stop at the tenth floor but headed directly to the roof and the fresh air it held.
“What did you see back there?” Monroe wondered as they went to a far corner of the roof to lay down.
Trace coughed out some more dust and dirt before replying. “Most of the floor was covered in large metal containers. I couldn’t be sure, but I was thinking that they contained the liquid form of the drug that goes into the inhalers. All the vats were being pumped down through pipes to the floor below. So, when they broke open, and assuming that it actually is the drug solution…”
Monroe cursed and then began to laugh. “I just pickled everyone in the building with a concentrated dose of their own drug.”
“Yeah, well, let’s hope it’s just some kind of happy-time drug. If it’s a berserk formula-” Trace was cutoff as the building trembled.
Berserk drugs made the user’s mind immune to pain. It also flooded their body with a cocktail of so much adrenaline and whatever else they could think to shove in it that their strength shot through the roof. Needless to say, they at least, though not always, temporarily lost their mind. It wasn’t exactly uncommon to find them snacking on people-shaped meals if they happened to get hungry.
“Oh, leave it all,” Monroe glared at Trace. “I blame you for this. If you hadn’t mentioned that second option just now, the world wouldn’t have conspired against us.” He unslung his assault rifle. “I would suggest you get out your revolver. You’re going to need it.”