shell casings go in the 'out' pile
Michael slapped a new mag into the P90 and stepped over the body of the guard who had until recently been shooting at him.
“There’s about five coming up the stairwell trying to get past the crowd.” EP said. He heard hard breathing and whimpering between the wails of the alarm.
“Anyone still here needs to leave!” No one moved. He glanced back at the lobby, then went to the nearest whimpering cubicle and found a woman crouched under her desk tapping her phone, tears illuminated by the light.
“Leave now! Take the stairs!” She scrambled up and out without looking at him.
“Anyone else needs to go now!” A man stood up in the center row like he had accepted his execution. Michael pointed.
“Out. Now!” The man stumbled towards the lobby. Seeing the other two leave unharmed, the last few got up and followed. Michael stood on a desk to see if he had missed anyone, then got down and set the weapon back on auto.
“Let me know, EP.”
“They just passed the workers you let out. They’re in the stairwell on your floor.”
Michael got down in a cubicle.
EP had been looping camera footage to hide the team’s movement, while the real feed was played across three of her stacked monitors. She switched to the lobby cam and saw gunmen with plate carriers over suits and oxfords move out of the stairwell in practiced movements. The one in the rear aimed at her and fired. She jumped in her chair as a window on her monitor went black.
“They took out the camera. They must know I’m in.”
Michael heard them move through the lobby and set up on the other side of the reception desk wall. He aimed out the cubicle doorway and visualized himself firing without being hit, letting the scenario live in his mind as his body moved automatically. A gun peeked out around the wall and his P90 screamed.
Using the exposed barrel as a guide, he put the first five rounds through the wall into the man’s chest. As the body fell out into the aisle, he walked his fire to the right and the reception wall coughed out puffs of fabric and particle board. Casings fell down his legs and the muzzle flash brushed the inside of the next cubicle. In about two seconds, he was empty.
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Bullets sprayed through the fabric half-walls and kicked up pieces of carpet around him as he dove down the aisle and rolled into a cubicle in the center row. He ejected his mag and pulled another one from his pouch. Someone cursed loudly from behind the wall, and another fired through the cubicles blindly as they walked down the other aisle. Michael slapped his mag in and sent the bolt home as rounds sparked out of the monitors over his head.
Someone yelled “Moving!” from behind the reception wall and stomped down the row outside the cubicle door to his left. He aimed at the fabric wall and fired as the footsteps reached the doorway. The burst ripped through the panel and caught the guard full in the gut before he ever had a chance to see who shot him.
“Fuck you!” someone yelled, and stomped onto a desk in a cubicle towards the reception wall. They opened fire and bullets ripped through the corkboard planner on the wall above his feet. He rolled under the desk to his right and aimed up at the desktop. The climbing guard stopped firing just long enough for Michael to hear his foot stomp down above him. He fired with his eyes closed and got covered in pressed wood fragments and hot brass. After half a second, a body dropped hard on the desk.
“Shit!” Another gunman, near the end of the row past Michael’s head, dumped his mag through the cubicles. Michael slammed through the paneling and rolled into the adjacent cubicle, ending up on his stomach under the other desk, half tangled in cords and aiming at the wall. To his right, blood streamed through the bullet holes in the desk.
At the end of the row, the guard cursed, his voice full of fear. An empty magazine hit the ground with a distinctive springy clack and his boots dragged on the carpet as he stepped back. Between the wail of the fire alarm, the sounds came through equally from both sides. Michael closed his eyes and visualized the aisles, the distance, the guard right in the middle, and fired off the rest of his mag.
The guard screamed in the middle of the burst, a gut-punching scream, like the word ‘no’ fragmented by terror. It was the kind of scream that made Michael want to run out and hold him. Instead, he untangled himself, sprang into a low crouch and had a new mag in the P90 in under two seconds. He moved out of the cubicle, checked down the row towards the reception desk, then turned towards the window offices.
The guard breathed heavily. Michael aimed through the doorway of the last cubicle, into the paneling on the far wall, towards the wheezing, panicked sound, and let out a fifteen-round burst. The breathing stopped. After a bit of silence that felt longer than should have fit between two wails of the alarm, he stepped around the end of the row.
The guard was slumped into a pile of blood, glass, and torn fabric, with a magless AR at his feet and a Jericho in his right hand. A few rounds had shattered the glass wall of the conference room and broken a window on the other side. Police lights flickered on a curve of highway. Thin clouds had moved in and dampened the sun. Sirens came through with the wind and he was hit by an overpowering nostalgia. It really had been a long time. He turned and moved down the row towards the reception desk and heard a strained voice from the lobby.
“–up here fucking now! He’s up here!”
He stepped through the door with his P90 raised. The guard was leaned up against the front of the counter with blood pooling below his hip. He raised his pistol off the floor limply as the burst caught him in the head. Michael moved to the elevators while casings rolled across the marble.
“I need a status update.”