Swarm

He waited. They had been returning every fifteen minutes. After half an hour, no one came. An hour, the same. Then he went to door. He pressed his head against it. Couldn’t hear anything. That was about the best he could do.

The scanner was a dark plate on the inner frame of the door. He held up the sleeve he’d soaked in blood. Couldn’t be sure how much was his, and how much was Hashimoto’s. Hopefully it would be enough. Cops left there enough times with other people’s blood on their hands.

He held his sleeve up to the scanner and waited again. He could see his reflection in the black glass. Someone’s bloated blackened swollen-eyed reflection anyway. He’d looked better. The door bleeped green and clicked. He pressed the button and it hissed open.

The interrogation chamber corridor was strangely quiet. He made his way along it cautiously, listening out for footsteps and scanning the ceiling for cameras for all the good it would do. There were no guards. In the distance he could hear the faint screams of a siren.

What the hell…

At the first corner, he stopped. No sound. He glanced around the corner. The guard post was empty. Just a table with a note pad and pen laying on it. The overhead lights were off and the corridor opposite was flashing red intermittently. The siren was a little louder now.

He limped through the next couple of corridors, occasionally leaning on the wall when his vision became too blurred. He still hadn’t seen a single guard. Not that he was especially hoping too but…

What’s going on… ?

It was the same story in the other interrogation chamber corridor. They were in pairs, kept apart to minimise any chance of detainees being able to communicate. The alarm lights were flashing. None of the ceiling cams were working.

No use thinking about it now. There it was, the other cell.

He flashed his sleeve over the panel. The door slid open quickly this time.

He frowned. No one inside. The room was brightly lit, with just the table and a chair in the center. He stepped inside.

A deafening scream came from beside his left ear.

He opened an eye, his arms shielding his face.

Rinako was standing behind the door, a chair raised over her head. Her eyes were wide open.

‘Was that for me?’ Kurama was looking at the chair.

‘Holy shit. What happened to you?’

‘Oh…’ he touched his face. ‘It’s fine... it just hurts when I smile.’

***

‘Ok. First stop, weapons locker.’ Said Kurama.

They had passed through the transporter gate outside the holding blocks unscathed. That had been the first miracle. He hadn’t been sure if their signatures had been added to the block list. If they had, they’d have ended up straight back in the cells. Or somewhere far worse.

A cavalcade of footsteps passed across the corridor into which theirs led and both of them leant back against the wall. It was a phalanx of enforcers. They’d started seeing them running about the place as they moved toward the central building. The noise of sirens was now a constant, every corridor flashing red. Kurama waited till the last of the enforcers had passed then looked around the corner.

He turned back, jerked a thumb, and said, ‘I think this way is clear,’ before walking around the corner, straight into a young enforcer who was still adjusting the strap of his rifle.

The two of them froze.

‘Officer! What are you doing back here?! They’re flooding the East entrance and we have an escaped prisoner!‘ Kurama stood as tall as he could. It would have been more convincing if his face didn’t look like a cabbage dropped from a third storey window.

The young officer stared back. Then suddenly he snapped his heels and stood to attention. ‘Yes, sir! Sorry, sir!’ His rifle clanked as he ran down the corridor.

After that, they saw very few officers.

‘What the hell is happening?’ Said Rinako.

‘The station’s under attack.’

She looked at him.

‘Most of the officers we’ve seen have been heading for the front of the building. They wouldn’t leave the station undefended.’

She had to ignore the ideas brimming in her head about what that might mean. Just let it brim.

***

Kurama scoured the locker room, pulling at every door. They’d managed to avoid another couple of patrols on the way there.

‘Yes!’ He cried. One of the doors swung open.

A metal object flew out and circled around him, beeping enthusiastically.

‘Skit! Hey pal! How have you been?!’ He grabbed the little skimmer by its sides, a gigantic smile on his face. ‘How did you—‘ but he broke off as Skit pushed up against his face. ‘Ok, ok… quieten down…’

He crouched and rifled through the locker. ‘He’s on an older OS. Not tied into the central system so I guess they didn’t know how to shut him down.’

A few moments later he emerged holding a holopad and two breakers in his hands. ‘Any preference?’

***

Kurama held his arm out and Rinako stopped just behind him. He was standing with his back to the wall, his head peering around the corner.

‘Vanguard. In the building.’ He turned back. ‘They must be coming in through the vehicle bay.’

They had checked around with the idea of trying to escape via the back of the building. Between the enforcers and vanguard, things were getting a little claustrophobic. Kurama backed into the corridor, checking the holopad.

Rinako looked around the corner cautiously. The corridor led up to the central lift, beyond which were the emergency stairs. The blue-eyed metallic guards were marching in file through the building, half of them turning and ascending the stairs while the other half took a doorway opposite them. One of them rolled a little pellet along the ground and smoke began to rise slowly from it.

And then she saw it.

As smoke filled the corridor, a dark angular shape that was completely different from the vanguard strode out of the room on the left. He shoved an enforcer into the corridor in front of him and barked something. One of the sets of blue eyes grew suddenly luminous and a few seconds later the officer cried out, grasped his head then fell to the floor, motionless.

Rinako froze. She knew the vanguard were not to be trusted but somehow seeing it, being touched by the solid edges of that conviction… it felt unreal.

‘Come on.’ Said Kurama. ‘There’s another way round.’ He ducked back out of the corridor.

Rinako took a last look back down the corridor. The smoke parted for a moment and she saw the angular shape was the bat-like Alter they had encountered with Salamon in the alleys. It said something to one of the vanguard, who turned and marched passed the enforcer’s body and up the stairs. The Alter began to move after it, then stopped. It sniffed the air several times, then turned, its black eyes looking down the corridor, to the spot in which Rinako had been standing a few moments before.

***

‘Where are we going? We’re just getting deeper and deeper…’ Rinako turned another corner after Kurama. It felt like all they’d done is turn corners, then get pegged back again. In her head, there was a picture of a maze, and in it two rats slowly getting herded toward the centre.

‘Just worry about next ten seconds.’

Rrright… as long as you’ve got a plan.

Kurama span back again, as he had done several times, and gestured to go back the way they had come. ‘No good.’ He said. Smoke was rising in an angled plume into the corridor behind him.

They reached the end of the corridor and jumped back immediately.

‘Drak!’

It had been filled with smoke, boots clanging across the metal flooring at the far end. They looked back in the direction they had come from. The corridor was now full of smoke, swirling up around the walls and ceiling as it moved like a sandstorm toward them. Smoke from the around the corner started to enter their nostrils and they backed off into the corridor and hunkered down with their backs against the wall.

The footsteps were getting louder, the corridor almost entirely filled with greyish-brown smoke now. Blue lights began to appear in the haze either side of them. They grew in number, like pairs of fireflies darting around, sweeping from side to side. Footsteps rang out all around them.

‘What are we going to do now?’

For once, Kurama said nothing. He held up his breaker, sinking into a crouch beside her. Either side of them the swarms of blue lights closed in.

As he opened his mouth to speak, there was a banging noise. Rinako span round. One of the panels had come loose at its corners and was hanging from the wall. A pair of screws lay on the ground beside it.

A hand emerged from the darkness behind the panel.