Escalation

“If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared”.

Niccolo Machiavelli

In front of me, inside the dark room I could make the shape of Captain Liu kneeling with a hand stretched as if he was touching something on the floor. He turned and saw me on the ground, my eyes were wide open and my mouth slightly open due to the shock of seeing that monstrosity. My expression changed as soon as I noticed the grim expression on the captain’s face, his eyes looked lifeless. Although he tried to hide his emotions when he saw me, it was clear something in there had bothered him. 

He stood up and walked up to me, then offered his hand to help me stand up again. I snapped out of the shock of what I just saw and grabbed his hand. Once I was on my two feet inside the security room he said “Why are you on the ground? Did something happen to you?”. I avert his gaze as if to hide how much that thing is still creeping me out. I reply with a little embarrassment “yeah, I think I saw something but I’m not sure what it was… Maybe it is the stress or something with the scan that affected the AR chip”. He replied “Something unusual definitely is happening. Let's find out what is going on here”.

I step into the darkness of the room and try to get used to it. Before I have time to do anything else he says “Miss Numa there is something you should know” he pointed his finger towards the place I saw him kneeling and, while trying his best to not show his sadness, said “Over there are the bodies of the two guards I assigned here. There is also the body of a third unidentified guard all the way to the left side of the room”. I felt a chill down my spine hearing that, like my soul left my body, when I turned to the left and realized the blood trail came from there. The captain continued with his explanation “The two men in front of the consoles show no injuries, their hearts just aren’t working anymore”. He stopped for a moment, took a deep breath and proceeded with his explanation “The one on the side of the room suffered a way worse fate. I can tell they are one of the guards thanks to the clothing, but all of their torso and head have been beaten beyond recognition. Honestly, the only good news is that the murderer isn't here anymore”. I can’t stop looking into the darkness where the blood stains lead, that is until the captain puts his hand on my shoulder and tells me with a dead serious face “We don’t know what this murderer can do or even how many of them are here. For that reason I’ll give you a weapon”.

With the little yet unexpectedly powerful flashlight on his chest, he looked inside the weapons locker to the right side of the room. For a while he was going back and forth between the different weapons until he raised his arm towards the section with small guns. He pulled a small gun with two triggers, one on top of the other and a weird barrel that looked like a long cube. As he gave it to me he said “this is a special and very powerful stun gun, be very careful when using it. The upper trigger shoots the electric charges while the lower trigger shoots bullets that cause small explosions on impact. I have configured it to hit with its maximum strength. This means that if you hit someone in the chest, not only will they get a shock that will paralyze them, most of their ribs will break”. As he finished saying that, from beyond the black entrance door, we heard one loud bang and after a moment another two consecutive ones.

The captain tried communicating with the guard outside using the intercom but he didn’t receive any answer there. Then he grabbed a sturdy looking tablet, thick and with a solid looking cover, turned it on and searched for the feed outside the security room. All the camera feeds in the tablet showed only static.  With an increased look of worry in his face he tried looking at other feeds but with no luck. With a grim yet determined look on his face he handed me the tablet, unsheathed his rifle and told me “I’ll  go outside and check what happened. Wait for me to tell you to come out and if you don’t hear from me in a minute, use that key to trigger the lockdown”. He looked conflicted, looking intensely at the key, then continued “While in lockdown all the doors to rooms and hallways in all buildings will be closed and impossible to open until someone with my same level of authority comes from outside and disables it, keeping the murderer from wandering around. I would prefer to not do this since everyone else won’t be able to escape from them but we have no choice”. With that he turned towards the door and passed through it.

With anxiety I waited for a word from Captain Liu, looking at the black glass door as if hoping to see through it. I held my breath, feeling each second lasting forever until I heard his muffled voice saying“You can come out Miss Numa!”.

As I exited that room I saw that Björnson, the guard that stayed outside, was looking in the direction of the hallways where the trail of blood went in. A few meters in front of him was one of the drones, laying in the ground with two large chunks of its head missing. Its legs were covered in blood and what remains of its head also had splatter of blood on it. The Captain, looking towards the direction where the rest of my team was in, said “we have to go to the main room now. If more drones start behaving like that one, all of your coworkers will be in danger”.