Jaquan held his wrench at the ready as he went down one of the hallways, and Gaylen and Kiris followed. There was no sign of the gas having reached this far, but he kept his mask on, and stayed on guard for a sudden attack.

It was a short trip to a swerve in the hallway, then another short trip to find the employee entrance sealed with panels.

“Oleg is being thorough,” Gaylen said as he immediately turned on his heel. “Maybe he doesn’t want any witnesses whatsoever.”

“He can’t just hope to dodge a slaughter this big, in a public building!” Kiris said.

“I agree, but we’re stuck dealing with his belief that he can!”

They arrived back at the inner door. The noises were now audible through it. Gaylen didn’t think the outer door had been torn down already, but it was probably well on its way. The countdown was reaching zero.

Jaquan snapped a photo of the plaque in passing, and they hurried down the other hallway.

“This will lead us up to the second floor, still in a back area!” he said. “We might dodge the horde!”

“Maybe we can just hole up,” Kiris said. “Hide and wait for the authorities to clean this up. These marbozi don’t seem like canny hunters.”

“They’re not,” Gaylen said. “Their brains are half-destroyed already.”

“So let’s just hide! Don’t they die?”

“Marbozi means ‘brief rage’. Yes, their bodies give in from the stress, the brain damage, and the cranked-up metabolism. But it takes a few hours.”

They reached a small elevator, and a narrow flight of stairs right next to it. Waving at, touching, and speaking at the panel by the shaft did nothing. Again, they didn’t have clearance

At their backs, there was a sharp jump in volume.

They ran up the stairs, to the first landing, then to the second, and the volume continued to grow. Gaylen heard loud battering, as the marbozi got to work on the inner door. It was weaker than the outer one had been, and one of them just might remember how to open the normal way.

Kiris opened a door made of flimsy vat-fibres, and they rushed through. Gaylen had dearly hoped for something to block it with, but nothing big and heavy enough was within reach. They were indeed still in the building’s backrooms, intended for maintenance, security, and other members of the non-public.

A few steps ahead and on the right was another restricted access door, but it didn’t seem to be as sturdy as the one downstairs. According to Gaylen’s map the meeting hall was on the other side of it, and the roar of the horde actually carried through this one.

“They’re drawn to voices,” Gaylen warned at low volume.

They continued on down the latest hallway, seeking an even balance between speed and soft footsteps. There was a small observation panel next to the door, and Gaylen looked at it in passing. He got a momentary glimpse of four separate feeds.

One showed the hall itself. Most of the fallen had risen as marbozi, and a sizable crowd still remained, stumbling about in a state of confused rage. But the majority had left, and two other feeds gave a hint as to their movements. Some people had escaped the gassing, and they were fleeing upwards themselves. The marbozi horde was giving chase. And for lack of any other option, Gaylen’s trio was heading in the same general direction.

Shit, shit, and shit.

There was another elevator that also didn’t give them access, and another set of stairs that did. Through the din coming from the hall, Gaylen heard the fibre door being smashed in.

They reached the third floor, and another damn flimsy door. It did open, and they were in another narrow hallway much like the previous. But this time there was a bulky shelving unit a few steps away.

“Jaquan!”

Gaylen handed Kiris the pistol, and she covered the door. He and Jaquan stepped up to the unit and tested the weight. It proved to be quite heavy, which was exactly what they needed.

The unit was too far away to simply tip it over and in front of the door, so they each took position on one side of it, took firm hold, and tried dragging it. The thing budged, but no more than that. There was also a horrid screech of metal on floor, and Gaylen felt terribly aware of the bulk of the horde, screaming just outside the hallway.

“Lift,” Jaquan said through gritted teeth. “Lift and tip.”

“I think I hear them coming,” Kiris said.

None of the available handholds were at ideal deadlift height, and it really was heavy. But fear was good fuel, and dying at the hands of a crazed mob somehow held far more terror than the kind of death he normally faced.

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Both of them started growling with effort, but the unit came off the floor and they carried it a few clumsy steps. Then they put it down, Kiris got out of the way, and they tipped it forward. The top shelf fell against the door. It didn’t seem like perfect placing, but it would still buy them a bit of time

Kiris returned the gun without comment. They passed by another door like the one down below, complete with another observation panel. Gaylen saw hallways and stairs, packed with rampaging marbozi. He also saw the tail end of the group of fleeing survivors. The ones the horde wasn’t already tearing apart.

They also passed by a room. It proved to contain a local power router, and nothing else. Another room beckoned, with a desperate hope of an emergency escape, or an unbreakable door, or some other salvation, but now the horde reached the blocked door.

The pounding was furious. Victims of brown jendra didn’t retain much, but they could recognise the direction prey had fled into. And they wanted to get through that door. They really wanted it, and the images on that observation panel made it clear what would happen then.

But the weight of the shelving unit braced the flimsy door, and it held. For the moment.

Gaylen led the way into that second room, and found a bunch of closed cabinets, and a sturdy panel over the only window.

“Thorough,” Jaquan commented.

“Hooray,” Kiris replied.

Gaylen quickly tested a couple of the cabinets, but they wouldn’t open. Jaquan’s cutter would make short work of the locks, but it would be time wasted on an uncertain reward.

“Jaquan, put a hole in the wall.”

“I don’t think I have time to make one big enough for us,” his friend said, as the pounding continued ceaselessly. Several hands had to be thoroughly broken.

“Just make one I can stick my hand through,” Gaylen said. “Maybe I can make a call.”

Jaquan didn’t argue. He took out the cutter again and put it against a spot on the wall. Gaylen took a step out into the hallway, and kept on alert. The marbozi were still raging out on the main space of the third floor, and he was now hearing faint cracking noises from the fibre door.

He resisted the urge to rush Jaquan. The man knew how things stood. He was familiar with danger too.

So, as hard as it was, with screams of grotesque fury in his ears and an instinct to flee coursing through his body, Gaylen simply waited.

“Done!” Jaquan announced after a few seconds of cracking noises, and Gaylen hurried over. The hole was indeed big enough to stick his arm through without touching the glowing-hot sides, but just barely. He activated his comm, stuck it out, and then sent out the Universal Danger Pip.

It wasn’t quite as universal as all that, given all the backwards, isolated, or plain isolationist, places in the galaxy. But Jubba-Tar was connected to the trade lanes, if not in a major way, and so the UDP ought to get a reaction. Assuming that anyone noticed.

He sent it out a second time, then, with ever more cracks in his ears, he switched to calling Herdis. This was a damnably awkward way to make a call, but there was nothing for it.

At first he got nothing, and he almost abandoned the whole thing after a couple of seconds. Then he got the warbling noise of a barely-there connection.

“Zzza kzzz?” the noise said, with a faint hint of Herdis’s voice.

“Need help!” Gaylen shouted, enunciating as clearly as he could.

“Wazzz azzz?”

“Red Tower! Red Tower! Top of Red Tower! Guns! Come!”

“Wizzz wazzz.”

Instead of a crack, he now heard a break, and the screaming spiked in volume.

“We need to go,” Kiris announced, and Gaylen couldn’t argue.

He pocketed the comm, and they started running again. The pounding wasn’t just coming from the blocked door anymore. The marbozi were now trying to get through the door that led to the rest of the floor, drawn, perhaps, by the screaming of their… fellows.

The bottom of the hallway was like those before it, and they ran up another set of stairs.

“Roof?” Jaquan said.

“What high-rise doesn’t have escape mechanisms at the top?” Gaylen pointed out. “Failing that, we can… we can signal for help.”

They reached the fourth floor, and found no change at all. There was another flimsy door, which they closed behind them, a smaller shelving unit, which they picked up and threw in front, and another hallway with an exit door and two useless rooms

Gaylen took another look at the feeds as they ran past the door. He saw chaos, more thinly spread than on the third floor. The main bulk had overtaken them. If not for the ones on their heels, they might have just hidden away in these back areas, then gone back to cutting a way through the main doors. But that wasn’t the situation.

Gaylen was starting to feel the strain of all of this, and Jaquan was clearly feeling it more, made worse by his slightly uneven gait. A combination of his lax attitude to the shipside treadmill, and stubborn reluctance to get a better leg was draining his stamina fast.

Once they were on the Addax again, Gaylen would bitch at him about it. Right now, as the man visibly struggled to keep up, Gaylen would share no harsh words whatsoever with his best friend.

“We’re widening the gap,” he said, as they hurried up yet another set of stairs. “Just a bit higher… and maybe we can afford the time Kiris needs to get us into that elevator. Then it’s a smooth ride to the top.”

Kiris, slightly in the lead, turned to give them both a quick look. He knew perfectly well that she knew perfectly well that he was trying to keep their spirits up. And Jaquan probably knew it as well. But persuasion was best done with facts, and they were widening the distance. They just needed a bit of luck, and then they would be in the clear.

They reached the fifth floor landing, and opened yet another flimsy door. Beyond it was yet another hallway. The exit door stood open and Marbozi were crammed in a chaotic mess, ravaging survivors.