The two burst out the elevator, sticking low and barely avoiding gaining a few more quills in their chests as a burst of crossbow bolts slammed into the back wall behind them. They charged at the two receptionists, taking on one each, and slammed into a clash with full force.
Both were immediately stopped, albeit briefly. Both receptionists swapped to bo staffs, which were good weapons but found themselves at a disadvantage against Dominique, who was so good at getting in range. For his part, Ashton was starting to miss his guns. He was being forced to flip over counters and gain distance, but he had a plan. He put it into action as the receptionist brought their staff down on him, back stepping and pinning it in place with his hammer before ramming his spear through their throat. Seeing this, the other receptionist spun and knocked Dominique away, but he was able to stop way sooner than anticipated thanks to his bladed heels. He tripped up the assailant, before raising up his other foot and ramming the heel into their spine.
He turned to see Ashton at the elevator door, desperately trying to get it back open.
“What’s wrong?” He asked, walking up to Ashton, who turned back with a frenzied look in his eyes.
“Amazon.” He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, before slamming his fist against the wall and hyperventilating. He looked up at Dominique with a mixture of desperation and fury “FUCKING AMAZON.”
“Well, could be worse” Dominique shrugged “I mean it’s not Apple is it.”
“Oh yes, I know. ‘If it’s Apple you’re always fucked’, but have you stopped for a second to think about the fact that Hisaki Kiryu sliced a FUCKING WARSHIP IN HALF?” Ashton stopped for a second to catch his breath as Dominique shrugged, thinking that Ashton was done.
“AND SHE IS THEIR CFO!” Ashton suddenly exploded again, causing Dominique to give him a second look, which was rare.
“So, CFOs are well respected. Most of them are incredibly imposing.” Dominique started nonchalantly walking back towards the three-way junction that led deeper into the facility.
“Yes, but what I’m saying is that we’re out of our fucking league here.” Ashton finally stood up straight again.
“Now give me that finger back Dominique.” Dominique mock patted his coat before raising his arms in false surrender.
“It would appear I lost it. Anyways, this place isn’t on lock-down yet so-“
“Wait, you don’t hear that?” Ashton asked incredulously.
“Here what?” Dominique looked around, confused. He squinted his eyes as he tried to concentrate on sound instead, picking up the faintest of buzzing at the edge of his hearing.
“That’s an ultra-high frequency alarm. They’re common in offices with elite security forces because they allow you to alert your forces without disturbing the cubicle workers. How do you not know about them?”
“I do know about them, but I just sign the cheques to have them installed. Do I look like someone who would take the time to do listening training to you?” Dominique turned, intimidating and gorgeous, to Ashton, who just grabbed his head. He felt a scream welling up in him, and he wanted to let it out so bad, but something etched on his psyche wouldn’t let him. Finally, he straightened up, even faced.
“OK, let’s go. Door’s probably on lock down anyways.”
“Oh, you’re beginning to have a little faith?”
“In the devil, maybe. But either I die here, or I die having fucked someone’s day up, and I think I’d rather be the person who chooses the latter.” The two started walking. Reaching a three-way junction on the other side of reception, they saw on a sign that one direction led to a staff area, while the other led to a laboratory complex, made up of Robotics, Genetics and Manufacturing departments. Both silently agreed that they should go to the complex.
As they ran, Ashton thought about Dominique. What he’d felt that morning had been raw, and tangible. It was kind of like wanting to say “I love you” to a partner after a first kiss, in a way. It was also much the same in that he couldn’t reach that sensation anymore, and it annoyed him. He had tried to say he was done with weakness, but for some reason every step he took forward seemed to take the effort of ten. He suspected it was because of where he was running towards.
He nearly ran straight past Dominique, who had to grab him to stop him from running out into the next hall.
“Something reeks of death.” He said, quietly. Ashton scrunched his nose, trying to pick it up. Dominique pulled out a spare button and placed it between his finger and his thumb, before flicking it into the wall in front of him and ricocheting it into the hall. A shrieking sound assaulted their ears as they were basked in a red glow, and Ashton flipped out into the hall on instinct only to come face to face with a laser that was charging. He threw his spear with full force, which caused the turret to redirect it’s focus to the projectile and shoot it down before it was impaled. In the interim, Ashton sprinted along the side of the hall at full speed, stopping below the ceiling mounted turret as it popped out a melted chunk of metal and slamming it to pieces just as it flicked down to fire upon him. He stood for a few seconds, panting, before running in the direction the turret was guarding.
“It fired twice…” He ruminated out loud as Dominique caught up. “Which means they’ve somehow managed to solve the issue of recharging the dump capacitors.”
“Stop.” Dominique said, bringing the two to a halt at a corner as Ashton kept muttering, going on about continuous beams and energy issues. Dominique pulled out a second button and a knife, firing the button off a wall before diving under the laser and flinging the knife into it between bursts.
“I’ll admit I’m impressed.” Dominique said as the two continued their run, the number of options of the signs depleting. “A weapon that can let a machine kill a true warrior. That’s a big development.” He looked through the glass doors they ran past, keeping an eye out for anything that caught his interest. According to Dominique’s mental map, they’d missed their shot at the robotics wing and manufacturing, which meant they were headed for genetics. Not that you’d know it, given the empty labs.
Dominique had to stop Ashton again as he cleared two lasers out a particularly long hallway. He ducked back, slightly singed on one side, and looked at him perturbed.
“A little concentration would be nice.” He snapped his fingers, but Ashton said nothing, simply clinging onto his hammer. Dominique sighed theatrically, before stepping out and walking down the hall on his own. There were no more doors her, no more side laboratories. Just a completely featureless steel hallway. Dominique smiled to himself.
“It would seem we’re at the heart of the looking glass maze.” He reached a large airlock, which he produced his finger from earlier for and put it to the pad. He was immediately met with an incorrect buzz, so instead he just rammed the incredibly durable blades of his stilettos into the gap between the door and the wall. Using his full body strength, he strained against the durable mechanism of the door until -with a satisfying snap- they went limp, letting him into claim his prize: another door. Dominique suddenly realized that this was a proper airlock, cursing in Spanish as he prepared to open the next door.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
0.3 seconds later he was trying not to lose consciousness from a major brain injury.
Dominique wobbled on his feet as his head felt like it was about to pop due to a massive crushing it against a wall. With no time to think, he lashed out to his left where the force was coming from. He felt it relieve and realized that it had been from a hand, but before he could turn to identify his assailant, he felt a sharp pain go up his side. He heard a banging to his right, noticing for the first time that on either side of the airlock was a tube of some kind, and in one was something shaped like a human. At least, he thought so, but those weren’t human sounds. He dropped and rolled back out the airlock, hoping to buy some space. His side was killing him, but at least it seemed to just be blunt force injuries. He did a spin on his back out of the way as his assailant screamed and slammed down against the floor where he was. Flipping back onto his feet, he watched the assailant lunge at him again. Realizing he had a good opening, he flicked his heel out, slashing their throat. There was a splattering noise as blood shot from where blade cut flesh, but the cut wasn’t clean. A dazed Dominique realized this a second too late as the assailant used the blade caught in their throat as leverage to throw them both to the floor, getting him in a hold. Dominique gritted his teeth in pain as they tried to rip his leg off, flipping his knife to his hand and slicing at his opponent. This time the blade struck true, slicing a hand off and giving him a moment to roll away to his knees as the assailant rolled on the floor in pain.
He couldn't enjoy it long, as he felt his hair being grabbed and his face being moved. He tried to regain control, bring his hands up, but he was too slow. The first time his face and the knee made contact, he was slight concussed. The second time, his nose was broken. The third, he lost two teeth. After that, he stopped noticing the damage.
Ashton sprinted up to the feral assailant. They were wearing full body covering tactical gear, so he also wasn’t sure whether they were human, but it didn’t matter. For all their speed and power, their special awareness was terrible. He took full advantage of that as he arced his hammer into the head with enough force to crush it against the wall with an echoing “WHAM!” that reverberated down the whole metal hallway. Dominique fell to his knees, but Ashton had no time to help him as the other matching assailant grabbed him with their remaining hand and threw him into the inner airlock door with enough force to slam him right through it. He slid mid-way into the next room on the crumpled door, wheezing as he realized he was intimately aware of every one of his barely intact ribs. He had no time to get up, being immediately set upon by the assailant once more. It jumped onto him, giving him no options but to block his face with his hammer. The assailant kept on slamming both arms into it, shredding the severed stump on its one arm as a mixture of foam and blood dripped through the fabric of the mask. Ashton winced as a blow slipped by, slicing the side of his face, looking desperately for a single opening in face of an onslaught of overwhelming speed and power.
Suddenly, the assailant became rigid, reaching to its back to feel a thrown knife as it was yanked to its feet. Dominique methodically followed up his opening play by perforating both lungs, the heart, the stomach and finally severing the spine as the assailant dropped in front of him, shuddering in its last breaths.
He stood there, breath uneven, for quite some time as Ashton shakily got to his feet. He’d dropped his shades already, and as Ashton steadied himself on his hammer, Dominique wiped around them with a monogrammed silk handkerchief. It came away red with blood.
Finally, the two looked around them darkened room. Every surface was covered with lab equipment, every wall with computer equipment. Wires and pipes snaked through it all, all coming together into a large tube sealed with reinforced metal.
“This is the treasure, I guess.” Dominique said, standing in front of the tube and moving his jaw to test the extent of the damage.
“It looks like it. Now help me figure out how to destroy it.” Ashton hobbled to a computer and began clicking away at the keyboard.
“Well don’t you want to know what it is first?” Dominique noticed a large panel next to the tube and walked over to it, pressing the biggest button. Ashton looked over as the mechanism came to life, slowly sliding the metal cowling up to reveal a tank filled with a neon green liquid inside. And, he realized as the cover got about a third of the way up, a person.
“What a fucking cliché” Dominique rolled his eyes as the contents of the tank were revealed. It was a woman, quite tall and in about her 20s, hooked up to dozens upon dozens of wires and tubes.
“Maybe, but what are they doing here?” Ashton said as he walked up next to Dominique, trying to figure out the purpose of what they were looking at. He thought about the technologies he knew of, and eventually came to the conclusion that this was probably some kind of medical treatment.
“Well, I don’t know. But we’re in a genetics lab, so it’s probably some kind of bizarre attempt at subverting God’s will.” He looked around, before rubbing his chin in thought “Do you think she’s in there consensually?”
“Probably not, look.” Ashton pointed at numerous small tubes on the woman’s arms. The green liquid made it hard to see, but the sight of blood was unmistakable to them. “That’s way more than you’d need for medical harvesting purposes, they’re harvesting her.” Ashton shuddered, unable to even imagine being locked up like that. He wondered if she was conscious in there, or if they’d at least given her the mercy of sedating her before wiring her up to everything. Suddenly, her heard beeping next to them.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Ashton asked Dominique through gritted teeth, trying to pull him off the touch screen that he was mauling.
“Well, God put me in front of this woman for a reason. I don’t claim to know what that is, but I know I can’t achieve that goal while she’s in there.” He pushed Ashton off, and Ashton stood there looking kind of dazed as he considered whether it was worth trying to stop Dominique. He ultimately decided that this was probably the better option, since he suspected that if he made a serious attempt then Dominique would just shatter the tank and make things ten times worse. Then he realized that Dominique would probably make things worse either way since he didn’t seem the type to be able to operate a complex medical device like this. Not to mention that this could potentially be an ally.
“Let me do it.” Ashton said reluctantly, and Dominique stepped off the device theatrically to make space for him to work. He sighed heavily as he pulled the screen to him, taking in all the functions. He could tell that the device was harvesting blood, litres per month by the looks, but it was also replacing the blood it drained as well. Curious. He also realized -as he navigated to the start of the shutdown sequence- that the restraints weren’t just to keep the subject in place. They were there to try stop her if she ever woke up.
Surprisingly, Ashton wasn’t worried by this. In fact, he was starting to get a little excited. This person, judging by all available information -her height, her muscles, her restraints and the fact she was being tested- was a formidable fighter, and Ashton was starting to think he might just enjoy clashing with formidable fighters. He caught Dominique’s reflection behind him and could tell he was thinking the same. In fact, he was practically salivating.
The liquid finished draining loudly as it sloshed into the drain. Then, wires and tubes started popping off one by one. The duo thought for a second that they saw movement inside the tank. Just a bit of eye movement beneath the lids. Ashton turned around and looked at Dominique.
“Hey, do you think she’s-”
CRACK!!
The glass shattered next to Ashton as the woman burst out. She fell through the air as if in slow motion, before landing on her feet with perfect poise. She turned to the two of them, confident if not confused, and spoke at them in a language that they could not understand (or at least, which Ashton could not place). Then, she turned to look around the room. Her expression was a mixture of disgust and puzzlement as she picked up items of lab tables before throwing them aside, until finally her eyes landed upon the body of the second freak that the duo had fought five minutes ago. Her breath audibly caught, and she slowly padded across the steel floor on bare feet until she stood over it.
Suddenly, she fell to her knees as if her powerful legs could no longer hold her. Her hands, which had seemed impossibly stable a second ago, shook as they lifted towards the mask covering the corpses face. She hesitantly gripped the fabric, unable to leave her questions unanswered, and slowly -so slowly- she pulled it away. The tears started the moment she saw the jaw, but she had to keep going. She wept as she recognized the mouth, the nose, the eyes. The little mole on the forehead.
In a final burst of effort, she through the mask aside, revealing the full face. The head had been shorn clean of hair, and the woman delicately touched the scalp as she sobbed. She sobbed loudly, on her knees, as she cradled the body. Snot streamed from her nose; tears streamed from her eyes. Her whole body trembled as she rocked back and forth, crying as she’d never once cried in her life.
As suddenly as she’d broken, she stopped with an absolute finality. She turned to Ashton and Dominique, her face the very image of rage as her breathing started to get ragged with fury. The two readied themselves ever so slightly as they looked back, still trying to figure out why they were looking at two of exact same face.