The doors opened. Jaquan hefted his wrench, Kiris hefted her cane, and Gaylen raised the gun.

Before them was the simple, beige-coloured wall of a hallway. And echoing down it were sounds of confused anger, and eating.

Gaylen was the first to step out, and hated the trembling in his muscles, caused by everything that had just gone down.

They were in the clear. There were no marbozi within immediate sight, but they sure were nearby. He looked back, confirming Manvis’s descriptions with his own eyes, then signalled for the others to go down the other end. Away from the eating noises.

Jaquan and Kiris each slung one of the janitor’s arms over their shoulders, though Gaylen could see her internal grumbling about it, and helped him limp along. Gaylen walked ahead, leading with the gun in his right hand, in case they encountered the Veroki, and kept the hammer dangling in his left one.

Their stop was a restricted access door, which Manvis opened by touching a panel, and in they went. Inside was the plumbing room for the top five floors.

“It’s over there,” Manvis said, and winced as he was placed in a sitting position on some pipes.

Gaylen found the little observation panel on a wall, and cycled through camera feeds. The marbozi horde had thinned out considerably on its way to the top floor, shedding members at each floor to roam around in search of victims. But while they weren’t as tightly packed on this floor as they’d been further down, they were quite spread out. Gaylen found the emergency stairs leading to the roof, but he didn’t find a clear route to it. There were individual hallways with little to no marbozi presence, but they were roaming around, and an encounter with one would draw the rest like flies to shit.

He found the feed for the security room Manvis had mentioned. Oleg stood there, by a station, cycling through feeds from different floors. Apparently, the party wasn’t quite over. There were six others with him. Four had guns in their hands, but everyone was noticeably calm, despite the roaming monsters. Of course. They had that damn sheen to protect them.

Gaylen looked over his companions. Kiris was exhausted, just like he was. Jaquan was in better shape, but was no physical powerhouse to begin with. And the janitor couldn’t even move around on his own.

“We don’t have much more fighting in us,” Kiris said.

“No. We don’t.”

“But we’re not dying on the final stretch,” Jaquan said.

“No. We’re not.”

Gaylen wiped sweat from his face.

“So let’s be clever.”

# # #

Gaylen burst through the security room door. The Veroki went for their guns, but he was already aiming his own, and held the device in his left hand high.

“Go on, assholes!” he shouted. “Shoot me, and see what happens!”

“What happens?” Oleg said, recovering his composure in a moment. “Why are you waving a comm like it’s a weapon?”

“Because comms send signals, and this one is keyed to a nasty little surprise!”

Gaylen kept sweeping the pistol over the seven-person group, letting no one get the impression that they’d been forgotten. The man he’d shot in the lobby gave him a hateful glare. That was fine. Gaylen hated them right back.

Oleg looked at his crew, with an air of calm confidence. If he had a weapon, it was hidden under his coat. All he had for Gaylen was an infuriatingly satisfied look.

“Surprise, you say? I don’t suppose the surprise is that there is no surprise? Because I don’t think you came to that meeting with-”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“I came to it with a friend who is a tech-head.”

Gaylen continued the sweeping, and the Veroki continued to get more tense.

“He rigged up a bomb, and stuck it on the ceiling below. You are standing on it.”

A couple of them looked down at their feet.

Oleg smiled. Gaylen couldn’t be sure if it was bravado or conviction.

“What a situation,” the man said, in a voice that matched his expression. “You know, you could have just taken the job I was willing to offer you.”

“And which would I have been?” Gaylen asked. “Your fall guy, or your unknowing suicide bomber?”

“Heh.”

Oleg put his hands on his hips. Gaylen was tempted to let the gun rest on him, but had to keep the others in line as well.

“Are you angry?” the man asked.

“Think for a second,” Gaylen snarled.

“This was all inevitable,” Oleg said, and shrugged. “Push a group for long enough, and eventually they push back. The Trade League overlords brought all this on themselves, greedy, grasping-”

“And the convention staff, security guards, caterers, janitors, and all the others who just happen to be in the building?? Fuck you!”

He felt a feral sneer on his own face, and held the comm higher and tighter, broadcasting his desire to use it.

“Now, you shitbags are going to back off, and open that door for my group, so we can get to the roof.”

He gestured towards the heavy western door on the other side of the room.

“DO IT!” he said, when the Veroki hesitated for a moment.

“Sure,” Oleg said, and his people shared looks as he gestured for them to back away, further into the room and away from Gaylen. “Sure, I’ll let you out. It’s not like I actually need you dead.”

He walked slowly to the door, keeping his eyes on Gaylen. Keeping everyone covered with the pistol was becoming harder.

“I was just having a bit of fun, with the elevators.”

He gave Gaylen that smile again, then he put his hand on a panel and the door opened.

The marbozi on the other side saw Gaylen and reacted the only way they knew how. They screamed and charged. And that was when Jaquan, listening through the open comm, activated Step Two.

The fire suppression system activated, spewing out torrents of water. The pipes groaned and some split open, from the excessive pressure that had been routed to them. As Gaylen bolted out the way he’d come, everything behind him was drenched, and the sheen the Veroki had been using to shield themselves was washed off.

Gaylen shut the door behind him, to the sounds of gunfire and screams. He pocketed the comm and went back, going through an office space that the feed had shown them was empty, around a corner, and back to the plumbing room. Kiris and Jaquan had Manvis up on his feet again, and the Chanei handed him the sledgehammer.

The hallways were alive with the sounds of screams. That awful domino effect they’d witnessed so many times since the gassing was in full swing: The initial screams of discovery drew nearby marbozi, whose screams in turn drew those further away. And just like that, hallways that went well around the security station were cleared.

The janitor had laid out the best route for them, and the four of them lurched along it, slowed by fatigue and the Manvis’s injured leg. Gaylen stayed in the lead with the hammer, and tried to be ready to react. They were most of the way when a single stray marbozi came into view. It was heading to join the mad chorus, but shrieked at the sight of them and attacked.

Gaylen found the strength to land a decent hit with the hammer. The monster fell against a wall and Gaylen gave it another blow. The thing wasn’t dead, but didn’t look like it could chase them, so he just kept on going. They all kept on going. And now, as a sign marked the proximity of the roof exit, the screaming started to grow louder.

Some had heard the one stray. And they were coming.

“We are almost there,” Manvis said breathlessly. “We are… almost there.”

Gaylen flung a set of double doors open. A gunshot rang out, hitting close.

The stairs up were in front of them. And halfway up it was Oleg. Somehow, in the chaos and madness and blind violence around the security room, he had made it out. He was bloodied and ragged, but the gun in his hand still worked just fine.

Gaylen dropped the hammer, drew the pistol, and fired his one remaining shot. Oleg fell, struck in the torso, and Gaylen’s group started moving again. The screams were coming.

Oleg rose as they began climbing the stairs. An armoured shirt had saved him, and he aimed at Gaylen’s head as the distance between the two of them closed. Gaylen held his arms up over his face, and the bullet bounced off the coat’s armour-weave.

The Veroki were survivors, alright. Their system was built to withstand every imaginable kind of bacteria and virus, and more hardened to radiation and toxicity than either of those. They could endure in environments that had been left effectively sterile, and make living spaces out of putrid hellscapes that were certain death to any other life. It was no wonder that they were as widespread as they were.

But none of that changed the fact that they were scrawny twigs, and twisting Oleg’s arm back was no challenge at all. The gun fell from his hand and Gaylen put an elbow into his face. Then, as the other three hurried past, he wrenched the arm behind the man’s back, and turned him around to face the oncoming horde of ravenous beasts.

“I don’t normally execute,” Gaylen said. “But why not let your victims have their payback?”

Oleg screamed as Gaylen shoved him down the stairs.