“Masks!”

Gaylen dropped to the floor, and his hand went into his belt. He snatched out the collapsible mask and put it over his face. It sealed, and he turned to look at his two companions. They were just finishing with their own, and moments later the thickening brown cloud descended to head height.

People started coughing, and letting out the desperate, choked gurgles one made when trying to scream through lungs that were under attack. Gaylen glanced towards the second stage. Elevated as he was, Oleg was already bathed in the cloud, a barely visible silhouette. Being Veroki, he was, of course, completely unaffected.

The panic hit fast, and it hit like an avalanche. Thousands of people moved at once, seeking escape like startled animals. They streamed out of the pits and leapt from the increasingly obscured platforms, and flowed towards the main entrance.

There were screams of terror and pain, and people were surely already being crushed by the flow of feet, or in the middle of crushed-together torsos. The drones swirled around, spreading their payload evenly around like farming tools. The guests up on the walkways had been the first to be hit. A couple had leapt down right away, and were now being trampled as they lay helplessly with broken legs. Now a couple more fell limply over the railing, and crashed down on the heads of the coughing, panicking crowd.

Gaylen and his group were right by the edge of one of the pits, and it was virtually empty in no time at all, as those in it crawled over one another to get out and run for the exit. A few stayed, paralysed by terror or indecision, or perhaps just the hope that the gas wouldn’t reach them down there.

Gaylen rolled to the side and down into the pit. It wasn’t the best landing ever, but there were bigger concerns. The others came down as well, and joined him in huddling by the base of the side.

“GIVE ME THAT!” shouted a woman as she grabbed at Gaylen’s mask. She was wearing one of those multi-piece outfits and a wide-eyed look of pure, desperate terror.

Gaylen batted her hands away and punched her in the stomach to get her off him. Even at the moment of impact he knew he would feel bad about it later, when he had the luxury of safety and reflection. But not now. Not when the alternative was breathing the gas in for himself.

The woman crumpled and fell backwards, and then the gradually descending cloud reached the bottom.

Gaylen no longer heard any words, and the cries of panic were quickly dying down. People were just coughing, gasping, letting out awful, strangled noises. He turned around at a noise, and saw a person come out of the gas at a wobbly run, and crash into the pit. The figure twisted spastically for a few seconds, which then turned into feeble twitching.

The few other people in the pit were succumbing as well. He didn’t see them all, but through the din of the hissing drones and the chorus of choking people he heard bodies hit the floor. He felt them hit the floor, as well as the agonised flailing that followed.

He looked away from all that, and at his two friends. He needed to see that their masks were indeed functioning, and that they weren’t succumbing to whatever the hell Oleg had inflicted on the meeting.

Jaquan was breathing normally, if rapidly, and looking this way and that. Kiris noticed Gaylen’s gaze, and gave him a quick thumbs-up.

The running had stopped. No one was trying to escape the hall anymore. Gaylen got up and peeked over the edge of the pit. He found bodies, in every direction, some alone, others in piles, some twitching, some utterly still. The cloud was thinning out a bit, now that the drones seemed to have finished their payload. With ever-less noise around, he did now hear some remaining footsteps. In the distance, near the first stage, he saw a silhouette striding through the clouds.

He couldn’t make out any details, but he could tell that the figure wasn’t wearing a mask, nor was it dressed as Oleg had been on that stage. It walked up to a person on the ground, and as a draft moved the clouds, he saw that it was a person who was wearing a mask.

The one on the ground said something, and desperately waved their hands. The figure extended an arm, and Gaylen now saw the gun at the end of it. What rang out wasn’t the hiss of plasma, but the loud bang of a solid bullet, driven by a chemical blast, and the one on the ground lay still and silent.

“We’re leaving,” Gaylen whispered. “Out. Down. Main door. Fast.”

He pulled himself up high enough to swing one leg over the edge, and then climbed all the way up. He held a hand out to Jaquan, who still refused to get a proper cyber-leg, and with Kiris pushing him up the man made an easy enough ascent. They both pulled on Kiris, and then they headed for the door. Kiris still had her cane, and Jaquan unclipped that big wrench from his belt. As he ran in a stoop, hoping to stay hidden by the swirling gas clouds, he took out his fighting gloves and slipped them on.

Bodies were all over, in all sorts of awkward positions, but they were concentrated around the entry. The three doorways were wide, intended to facilitate crowds, but still a crush had formed as everyone tried to escape at the same time. The pile sloped upwards, like a gentle hill, and there was simply no way to avoid stepping on human beings.

Gaylen kept his mind off it, and simply focused on making it out into the streets. He climbed the hill, more-or-less on all fours, and soon reached the top. The crush had been thickest within the door frame itself, but the frame was high enough that he could fit through by crouching.

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The gas was thinner on the other side, so he immediately spotted the Veroki man by the nearest staircase, as well as the pistol in his hand. The Veroki was only a moment later, and raised the weapon.

Gaylen in turn raised his arm, shielding his face as he charged down the hill of human bodies. Profits from flying the Addax hadn’t simply been stashed away. They’d gone into safety measures, such as the quality armour weave that made the bullet bounce off his sleeve.

The Veroki fired again, into Gaylen’s torso, but the vest stopped that one, and then Gaylen was on him. He caught the weapon-arm, bent the wrist backwards, and caused a discharge into the Veroki’s shoulder. Gaylen couldn’t tell at a glance if he was armoured or not, but the man did yelp and go down, and made tearing the gun from his hand child’s play. Gaylen smacked him in the head with it, drawing blood, then continued running.

The other two were still just behind him, and Gaylen heard the impact of the cane against a skull in passing. A bunch of people had made it to the stairs, only to collapse. The steps were almost as carpeted as the hall floor, and Gaylen wasn’t going to waste time on finesse. Again he found himself stomping on people, clearing several steps with each bound.

Down at the landing his foot actually hit an empty spot, in between several legs, and he kept on bounding across the lobby. He turned at the sound of more shots. Kiris and Jaquan were looking back as well, even as they were finishing their own horrid descent, but the sounds were coming from inside the hall. Cleanup was still in progress, it seemed.

“Shit!”

The doors were covered by emergency shutters. Gaylen didn’t know if it was an automatic reaction to keep the gas from spilling out into the streets, or thoroughness on Oleg’s part, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he saw no way of opening them.

Jaquan went past Gaylen and tapped the metal.

“Solid,” he declared.

“Can you cut through it?” Kiris asked.

Jaquan detached a little plasma cutter from his belt.

“I can make a small hole. Enough for one of us to slip through at a time. But it might take-”

Gaylen turned at a noise. A door behind a guard desk stood open, and out of it strode a man in a uniform, complete with a cap and a holstered weapon. He had also put on a mask.

“This wasn’t us!” Gaylen said quickly, and pointed the gun at the floor. “We’re just trying to leave.”

“I saw!” the man said, in a high, stressed voice. “I saw the footage! This is… this is…!”

He was clearly torn between taking in the carnage and wanting to avert his eyes completely. He strode towards their group with a jerky, adrenaline-filled gait. Which made sense to Gaylen. One didn’t take a desk security job to deal with all this.

“Jaquan, start,” Kiris said, and the man fired the cutter up.

“Can you open the shutters?” Gaylen asked the guard.

He looked from the man to the stairs. He wasn’t worried about Jaquan not getting them out. He was worried about him managing it in time.

“I’m… I’m locked out!” the guard replied. “Override protocols are in place! I-”

“Can you make a call? Bring in the law?”

Wow, that felt weird to say.

“I c… I ca…”

The man took out a small comm, and Gaylen took out his own. It occurred to him to call Herdis and Bers. It would take them a while to arrive, but if the situation stretched on then late was better than never.

“We’re being scrambled!” the guard said, a second before Gaylen saw it for himself.

“Just leave this to me,” Jaquan said evenly as he cut away at the steel. “I’ll have us out of here in-”

A loud moan cut him off, and drew everyone else’s attention to a spot on the lobby floor. The blanket of humanity had made it about halfway to the blocked doors before collapsing. There on the edge of it a body stirred. It was a man in a catering uniform, and he’d gone down face-first. Now he was shaking, as if he was trying to move again but couldn’t quite figure out how.

“Oh.”

The guard hurried over, although Gaylen didn’t know what he could possibly do to help. Gaylen looked at the stairs again. Visibility was improving, as the gas slowly dispersed, but with those gun-wielding Veroki around that wasn’t a good thing. He started hearing more moans.

“I’m a quarter done,” Jaquan said.

“Sir?” the guard said as he knelt down by the caterer. “Just… just try to breathe. Try to take steady breaths.”

He turned the man around, and pulled him up into a semi-sitting position. There were more moans, growing in strength as well as in numbers. Maybe Oleg hadn’t intended a massacre after all. Maybe he was smarter than that. Or maybe he was nastier.

Gaylen took a few steps toward the guard and the man he was trying to tend to. He took in the colour of the gas, the awful sounds that were emanating from so many ravaged throats, and an awful possibility occurred to him.

“Let go of him!” he shouted at the guard. “Get away!”

The guard looked his way, confused. Then the caterer attacked.

He sprang into action with manic energy. The guard had no chance as the gassing victim bore him to the floor and smashed his head into it. Gaylen raised the gun, but the caterer was moving both himself and the guard wildly, as he smashed him down a second time, then a third. Gaylen hurried closer, but the caterer wrapped his hands around the guard’s throat, then squeezed with sinew-popping force.

The guard’s windpipe collapsed with a crunch, like a crushed paper roll. Gaylen fired a shot. He’d rarely had reason to handle bullet-guns in his time, and the unfamiliar recoil fouled his shot. The caterer stood up, then swayed on his feet as if blackout-drunk.

His face was contorted in blind rage. His skin was red with burst veins, and his eyes were even redder. And he charged.

Gaylen changed his grip on the gun and fired again. The bullet hit the man in the torso, and a red cloud on the other side marked the exit. The caterer stumbled and fell forward, but continued going. The frenzied movements actually hindered progress, and Gaylen fired again. Again he hit, and again the caterer just kept coming.

The man made it to his feet, and had now nearly crossed the distance. In the corner of his eye Gaylen saw Kiris heft her fighting-cane. He aimed low, and shattered the caterer’s knee. He pitched forward as if diving into a swimming pool, and landed right by Gaylen’s feet. He looked down into a pair of maddened, blood-filled eyes, and put a bullet between them.

That finally did it.

“Wa… wha?” Kiris stammered. It was rare to see her unsettled.

Gaylen turned and looked at Jaquan’s handiwork. The man was half-finished with their escape. They were out of time.

The other victims started rising.