Chapter Thirty

The sweet, familiar smell filled her nose, instinct more than training or conscious decision told her it was safe, that she didn’t have to attack the person holding her.

You came. I don’t know why but you came. She leaned her head into Rei’s chest, as grateful for the warmth of his body as the soothing presence that his scent had. Her skin was still wet from her last hosing, and the over cool air of the lab felt like ice.

Her limbs still felt heavy from the drugs in her system, it was hard to move. She could hear her blood drip on the hard white tile floor as it as it escaped from the wounds in her wrists and ankles. She tried to shift them closed, but it was hard to concentrate. She kept loosing the shift, though she finally closed the wounds.

“Got…it.” she whispered her voice harsh. “Got, the chip.”

Rei, carrying Natalia bridal style, shushed her. “That’s not important now. What’s important is getting you out of here.” He left the breeding room at a half run, quickly coming to Shido and the woman leaning against him. “I think they found the guys you knocked out.” Shido commented dryly, matching pace with the other male, pulling Ritsko along gently, but firmly.

“Apparently.” Rei agreed, heading for the elevator only to pull up short as the light above the doors lit. “Damnit!” He yelled, redirecting quickly to the stairs, blowing through the door with Shido hot on his heels, the battered Captain pushing the door shut behind the group. Shido headed for the stairs leading down but Rei called out to him.

“No. This way.” He called, heading up the steps.

“There’s nothing up there but storage and fuel tanks for the VTOL’s.” Shido called out, rapidly pursuing the other man and his shivering cargo.

“No one think you’d run up the stairs.” Rei assured him. Clumsily he jerked open the door to the next level, only to stop as a pair of sonic stunners were pointed at him. With reflexes well beyond human, Rei shoved the door shut again, ducking just as chunks of shrapnel blew out as lethal bullets of coherent sound blew small holes in the plasticine surface. “Okay, they almost never expect it!” He yelled, shoving a knife into the door crack, lodging it just beneath the second hinge and wedging the portal shut. “That won’t hold long!”

“Then run faster!” Shido yelled, scooping the woman he was leading up the same way Rei was carrying Natalia as he followed his own advice, nearly diving down the stairs in his rush. He shoulder rammed the Leo officer stepping out onto the landing they’d left only moments before back through the door, allowing Rei to kick it shut on his partner’s face as he hurried past.

Two floors down they burst out of the stairwell, thankfully onto a hall without Leos. “Natalia, I know you hurt, but can you stand? And could you climb a ladder?” Rei asked. Weakly she nodded, which didn’t convince him, but he accepted it. Drawing another knife from the sheath he concealed on his wrist he pried open the elevator door, wedging it open with the blade. Looking up he found the car above them, then he groped around beside the door, finding the maintenance ladder for the lift system. “Okay, everyone follow me. We’re going down to the bottom of the shaft.”

Natalia followed quickly, her dazed state not preventing her from naked form from climbing into the shaft above the rapidly descending man. The other female followed moments later.

Shido was preparing to swing out onto the ladder when two Leo officers burst through the stair’s door. Shido squeezed a shot off with his own sonic stunner, taking the first man in the faceplate of his helmet and killing him instantly.

The Leo’s partner was nearly as fast on the draw, but nowhere near as accurate. A lethal setting bolt took Shido in the shoulder of his already abused arm, causing him to cry out in pain. A second shot from the Leo’s gun screamed by his head, missing only because of Shido’s tuned reflexes and luck. Shido fired back, taking the man center of mass with three quick blasts. Even with his armor, Shido knew they’d prove fatal to the man.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The former InSec officer felt a quick burst of guilt, having killed both men when they were just doing their duty, unaware of what the real stakes of everything were. He shrugged it off with a force of will and holstered his gun, using his remaining good hand to grab the first rung and swing out into the shaft.

“What do we do if the elevator starts moving?” Ritsko called out, trying to look neither up nor down the long shaft.

Rei, crawling along the ladder a storey and a half beneath her, replied “It won’t. As long as that door’s wedged open the safeties built into the system should lock the elevator down.”

“What if the guards come and start shooting at us from that open door?”

Rei growled. “Then we’re fucked. What are you, a pessimist?”

“Yes!”

“Shido, how you doing?” Natalia called out, having noticed he wasn’t climbing as fast as he should be.

“A Leo caught me in the shoulder. I took him down, but I’m winged pretty badly.”

“Your bad arm?” Rei called up.

Shido grimaced. “Yeah. You’re sister’s going to kill me.”

Rei couldn’t help it, in spite of everything. He laughed. “Maybe you’ll be lucky and she’ll just smother you in your sleep.”

“Oh, but to dream!”

Ritsko cursed eloquently “You’re a pervert even here, after all this?”

“Damn it Ritsy… A man can’t help what he is!”

“You’re a pig.”

A chunk of concrete shattered off the wall, near where Shido was climbing. “Well, unfortunately I’m not one of the flying kind, so we need to hustle!”

Rei, having nearly reached the bottom of the shaft, pushed off the ladder. He drew the sonic stunner out of his waist band as he fell, bringing it up and aiming at the lit hole that was the open elevator door. He squeezed off a couple of shots, all of them peppering the area below or above the door.

Natalia, having reached him just in time to witness his poor marksmanship snatched the pistol from his hand and, propping herself clumsily against the shaft wall, aimed.

“You’re drugged! You can’t…”

Both shots resulted in yells of pain, one followed by a body plummeting down the shaft, missing Shido and Ritsko by inches.

“Can’t what?”

“Um… Never mind.” Rei said, instead helping Shido off the ladder.

He’d just stepped back and opened his mouth when the last elevator door slid open, and a half dozen Kitsune, in InSec black, pointed weapons at them. One with major’s insignia smiled darkly. “Now, now… no stealing the women.”

“Sorry, but you know how hard it is to get a date.” Rei snarled, drawing a weapon. He saw out of the corner of his eye both Natalia and Shido pointing their own weapons at the InSec men. Ritsko considered the Leo corpse at her feet, but didn’t risk going for his weapon

The Major just shook his head. “You are outnumbered. You might get a shot or two off, and maybe kill a couple of us, but you’ll all be dead. The women will at least get to live if you surrender now.”

“We would, but there are three things you aren’t realizing.” Rei stated calmly, smiling ferally.

“What, pray tell is that?”

“Sir…” One of the black ops men spoke up. “Shouldn’t we…”

“Let’s entertain ourselves for just a moment lieutenant.” The Major said. “Go ahead, educate me.”

“One.” Rei said, stomping a foot as if for emphasis. “You’re assuming your men are better shots than we are.”

“At this range, hardly important.”

Rei shrugged. “Two.” Another stomp “You’re assuming the women are willing to surrender to what you were doing to them.”

The Major shrugged. “It’s really irrelevant what they want at this point. What’s the third point?”

“The third…” Rei stomped again. “Is you should stand back.”

With that he spun and wrapped Natalia in his arms, pulling her down as Shido did the same with Ritsko. A half second after his third stomp, before the Kitsune outside the door could think to fire, a series of deafening explosions ripped through the concrete in a precise circle around where the four fugitives stood. With agonizing slowness the cement block fell.

The black ops Major, shaking off the concussive force of the blasts, realized the hole was there, and began to jump into it, only to take a full auto burst of magnetically accelerated bullets to his chest. Saki, her assault rifle braced against her shoulder, stepped out of the darkness and followed that burst up with several more. “Get them going Rei. I got this!” She yelled, punctuating her words with gunfire.

The four limped down the tunnel, Saki following them and sending rounds back the way they came to keep anyone who might want to follow them from doing so. Rei absently noticed an X drawn in chalk on the tunnel wall but didn’t think much of it. When Saki reached that X she pulled a detonator out of her jacket and hit a button, causing the tunnel to collapse behind them.

“Man, those pussies didn’t even try to chase us.” She complained.