Project: Escape

Thump Thump Thump…

[Someone’s messin’ with the system, Masumi. Not only are they breaching the MOS in this proximity, but they’re jamming nearby cameras before I get my hands on em’. Keep an eye out!”] A voice transmitted through the earpiece of a short-haired girl with snow white hair. She dragged herself through a maze of vents, with surprising ease due to her petite size.

“You think they’re onto us?”

[Ehhh, it’s not impossible, I wouldn't worry too much since it’s only one person. Knock their head out or sum’ and you should be a-okay.”]

“Sure, Bingus…” Masumi rolled her eyes. She came to a halt in the vents and thrusted a panel open with the heel of her boots to take a jump out, and as her feet made a contact to the floor, she turned her head in startlement at the sight of a worker, who appeared to be a janitor, standing next to the doors.

They mutually held awkward eye contact in contemplation.

“Uhhh… t-there’s a janitor here, Bingus. Why is there a janitor trying to enter the restricted part of the facility?” Masumi, with a lack of better action, asked.

[Calm your ass! Someone probably took an explosive shit in the toilet and he’s just here to clean it up.] Bingus immaturely laughed at his own remark.

“Why is everything about explosives to you? Wait, hold on-” Masumi took guard when she noticed the screen the janitor was tinkering with, which was downloading an interference software with a progress bar. He too kept a hold of the eye contact, which seemed more threatening than fearful—something a mere janitor would not usually give.

“I think we found our hacker.”

Masumi lunged herself toward the imposter, grabbing a hold of his collar and pinning him against a wall. Her heels radiated a purple energy to the floor, allowing her to accelerate faster and stronger. Despite their varying size, she managed to lock him in that position and drew her fist back, ready to punch. A split-second before contact, her fist unpredictably coated with steel.

“Tsk!-”

The man clenched Masumi’s other arm and shoved her to the side by turning his body rapidly, causing her to slam her whole back against the wall and her fist to follow.

THOOM!

Her fist left a two foot embedding into the metal wall, and the whole facility rumbled for a moment from the devastating impact.

They both separated from each other, checking their surroundings.

“Oh no,” Masumi responded. “I’ve jeopardized the task.”

“So, you’re not working for them?”

“Stop asking stupid shit!” She took his response as an insult. “Hold it, you’re obviously not either, so what the hell were you trying to do?!”

Daiki remained calm and collected, even with the commotion he found more or less annoying. “I think I’d much rather have you piss off, but I hear them coming. We need to hide. Now.”

With that, Daiki grabbed Masumi’s wrist and unrelentingly flung her upwards, causing her to bang against the top of the ventilation system and land back where she was minutes ago.

“Ow!-” Masumi lifted herself to a cramped position. “Hey, what was that?!”

Daiki, too, climbed above the ceiling into the vets, though he did so much more gently. “Shhhh.” He gestured for her to quiet down with his finger.

She obliged, but did so unhappily like a toddler refusing a toy. Footsteps in the distance now approached closer, and the two were awkwardly cramped in an uncomfortably close position.

“Don’t you dare touch me again,” Masumi whispered, contradicting Daiki’s try to quiet her down.

“I wouldn't dream of it.”

Realizing that her attempt at an insult backfired, she simply kept to herself, especially when she peered down and noticed a small group of Haven bio-borgs searching the area.

Other than the heavy clanks of metal to metal, they appeared to not communicate, yet they seemed synchronized in their actions. It was likely an internal communication, Daiki thought.

One of the bio-borgs turned to face the abnormally large dented wall, and the familiar red ray reflected from its pupils scanned the scene side to side. After a brief search in all corners and possible spots to hide on the floor, the androids made an exit with no conclusion to support the scene of an intruder.

“Reinforcements required in zone six to examine evidence.” One of the androids pressed its ear piece to call back-up.

Daiki and Masumi, still compacted together in the vents above, watched through the opening grills as the pair of androids left their field of vision.

“Finally.” Masumi flailed out of the vents, going out of her way to shove Daiki’s face with every limb possible. She made no attempt to be slick, either, Daiki thought, while her heel was practically half in his mouth.

“How flattering.”

Masumi landed on her feet and brushed off her torso, glaring at Daiki as if he’d made her tainted. “Did you say something?”

“Oh, nothing at all,” he lied, jumping out and landing on his feet, too. By this point, Masumi was absorbed with the screen he had been attempting to download files from, tapping on buttons and ruining the configurations he had set prior.

“Stop.” Daiki lifted her hand off the screen, and she pulled herself back from him. “Could you not terminate the application? I need that to safely steal from the network and I’m running out of time.”

Daiki scanned his surroundings to ensure that back-up had not shown up yet, pulling out Igniter and tapping his phone to the screen. Tabs of windows flashed across the screen, a loading bar steadily increasing.

“If neither of us are here to jack-off Haven, then we should use this minimal time wisely, get what we need, then part ways. It’s not worth us fighting,” Daiki recommended while pulling the Igniter from the screen, the secured files now successfully decoyed.

“Didn't know you could be reasonable. I can agree with that.” Masumi exchanged positions with Daiki, lifting her device to lightly tap the same screen.

“I don’t think I wanna hear that from someone who tried to kill me just minutes ago, but-” Daiki cut off his sentence and his eyes widened. He recognized what was on the screen as faulty, outdated software.

“WAIT!”

He could almost hear the dreadful alarms penetrate his eardrums, and the flashing red lights blind his center vision. Yet, the stimuli had not even struck, until they did a moment after he lunged with all his brute towards her.

“Agh!” Masumi’s side pounded against the hard floor and dragged multiple feet while Daiki shielded her body. A beam shot hit the screen and shattered the post, sending smoke and a strong odor into the air. Hazed from the bombardment of unforeseen events, Masumi slowly lifted herself to a crouched position. From a mixture of the polluted air and the realization that Daiki had just saved her life from a bullet, she gasped.

What appeared to be a dozen security bio-borgs painted with yellow stripes hurled their attacks toward the two in utter dismay as a barrage of beam shots rained toward Daiki’s back which still shielded her.

In place of what should have been the brutal sound of flesh being shredded within, a high-tech ring Daiki could only comprehend as small cubes of metal stacking halted the shots. A brief moment of silence arose. Daiki jerked his head to Masumi, their faces only inches apart.

A metaled bionic arm seemingly replaced Masumi’s organic arm, with a modest steel dome guarding the back of their bodies. Another barrage of beam shots closed the distance, as the metal retracted within Masumi’s arm, almost with a flow as viscous and elegant as water. Tiny bits of metal, similar to graphite shavings, sputtered within the air and formed into her first.

Masumi stood a firm stance to her feet, manifesting a steel shield as she blocked all incoming projectiles. Thin magenta lights filled in the panels of the steel, giving it a techy and crisp aesthetic.

The moment the last shot deflected off Masumi’s shield, she retracted the metal bits once more and did a swift spin, this time manifesting a razor-sharp scythe from her forearm, striking the closest droid in the neck. Its head spun to the ground, its body going limp as the wires on its neck sparked.

“What happened to the guy who saved me a second ago? Are you just gonna sit there drooling out of your mouth? C’mon, give me a hand here!” Even with her assistive technology, Masumi struggled to plow through the remaining reinforcements.

Daiki snapped out of his awe, standing to his feet and ducking from a punch a bio-borg sent toward his face. “Our primary goal should be to escape!” Daiki eloped from another attack. “If we can team together for now and get out in one piece, I’ll transfer you a copy of the decoy files, deal?!”

“You have yourself a deal!” Half of the bio-borgs surrounded Masumi, and in an act of desperation, she materialized her second arm with the viscous metal and spun her body to slice through with dual blades. To her expectations, the androids had minimal trouble to dodge.

“ARGH! They’re adapting to the nano-bits too soon, and there’s too many of them!” Masumi transferred the fluid metal from her left arm to her leg, and she thrusted her metallic foot into the torso of the closest android, releasing a thin rod like a piston from her heel.

The android soared across the hallway with surprising ease for a one-ton hunk of metal, and it crashed into all of its counterparts in the process.

While they remained immobile, Masumi took a breath to check up on Daiki, where he still evaded attacks in attempts to buy her time. Though he displayed impressive reflexes, she noticed he was slowing down. With little delay, Masumi ran to assist him.

Although Daiki had done no harm to the android thus far, he had been examining the components after each evasion—every little movement and functionality. “Under the base of its head,” he confidently signaled Masumi after an identification.

“Got it.” She understood this que, manifesting a sharp blade extending from her forearm. As Daiki continued to distract it, she transferred the metal bits from her foot to her left hand, creating a sharp claw. She lunged on the back of its shoulder, penetrating each of her sharpened fingers into its plated body. Though it jerked while engaging Daiki, Masumi took advantage of her grip and pulled her bladed arm back, thrusting the razor tip into the base of the droid's head.

Specs of electricity spazzed from its wound as Masumi retracted the blade, and she performed a tight back-flip before landing perpendicular to Daiki. By this point, the immobile droids had started their assault once more, firing beam-shots while catching up to the two.

They didn’t talk as they ran toward the exit. The viscous metal on Masumi’s arms slithered to her legs, covering every inch with the bionic limbs. A purple hue lit the floor beneath her at each step, and a rain of beam shots narrowed in on them once more. With accelerated velocity, Masumi dodged the shots by running on and off the perimeters of the walls, while Daiki dashed on his agile toes.

“Crap, Bingus is probably worried sick!” Masumi realized after she had neglected to communicate to her counterpart as they had discussed beforehand. “Let’s reach my car and get the hell out of this corporate infested nightmare before more reinforcements show up!” she shouted, as the clangor of the bio-borg’s stomping feet rumbled through their eardrums louder by the second.

“I don’t believe I have any other choice out of it…!” Daiki struggled to keep pace with Masumi while also dodging stray bullets. Their escape seemed to be in vain, however, as the droids’ pursuit grew stronger.

“Hey, they’re closing in too fast!” Daiki yelled to Masumi, who was further ahead due to her assistive technology. Realizing that inevitable death would follow if he did not take initiative fast, he turned and located a control panel to the door between him and the overwhelming amounts of androids.

Daiki made the abrupt decision to stop in his tracks, and he pulled Igniter from his pocket, attempting to bypass the facility doors. “Shit, this isn’t good!” He struggled, a cold sweat and his trembling immobilizing his movements—even his fingers locked in their joints.

The androids and their terrifying presence became nearer and nearer, and he shook away the possibilities of what they might do to him if he slipped this moment. Those thoughts lasted a short moment, however, when the next sound that echoed through the halls were the air-tight doors shutting within themselves. With an ounce of his terror lessened, Daiki barely managed to crank his head toward the shut doors, eyes widened in anticipation of the worst.

There was a moment of nauseating silence.

THROOM!

Daiki flinched, nearly collapsing to the floor, until he noticed the panels of the door displaying a silhouette of multiple bio-borgs. They had collided at such a speed that a detailed engraving of their bodies had been left.

“I should probably go.” He sprinted through the halls with more focus directed to the exits and less to dodging projectiles. With the distractions minimized, he busted through the doors quickly, where Masumi leaned her body against the wall in an indoor parking garage.

“What took you so long? I thought you died,” she questioned.

“Oh, sorry I don’t have… those liquid metal things like you rely on.”

“Nano-bits.” She sighed.

“If you thought I died, why did you bother waiting?”

“So, you’re here, and those corporate tin-heads aren't… sounds like the ideal time to get the hell out. We still have our deal.”

Masumi paced to a car parked not far from the exit, gesturing to Daiki to get in. It was a two-seater sports car, with a matte yellow finish and amenities that were far too luxurious for a criminal.

“We don’t have all day, dude!” She excessively gestured once more to the passenger seat, but Daiki narrowed his eyes and just gave her a stare in return.

“You’re driving?” he asked.

“Uhh…yeah! It’s my car I stole.”

“I just wasn't certain you could reach the pedals.”

“...On second thought, I think I might just leave you here.”

- -

Author's Note: And there goes the front page waifu you've all... been.. waiting for....? Nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed the suspense in this chapter! Don't worry, it continues onto the next as well. Didn't have time to edit much, but cheers!