by Kyle Harris
No going back from this.
Not like there was anything to go back to.
Chaz stomped out the embers of her cigarette and started for the building.
She did another quick scan of the area, saw no one. Her heart was hammering so hard it seemed to vibrate her eyeballs.
At the side entrance, the automatic double doors swung out. So did a pair of inner doors. Signs with arrows flanked her on both sides. They said: IF VISITING AFTER HOURS, VISITORS AND EMPLOYEES MUST SUBMIT TO SECURITY CHECK - PROCEED AHEAD.
So she did.
Situated at the security station was an older man with a curly gray mustache. He wore a dark uniform—WEHRLEIN SECURITY was stitched on the shirt. At a glance, his belt consisted of a little nightstick, pepper spray, and some handcuffs. Based on his gut, nothing had ever left the holsters. Gramps was probably more seasoned at stuffing his face with donuts than taking down perps.
Okay, stereotype. But definitely true.
He raised the brim of his cap and motioned her forward. “Step up to the detector, young man,” he said, and then frowned at something on his tasker. “Locate the blue bin and place the contents of your pockets inside it, if you kindly would.”
Chaz placed her tasker inside the plastic bin, screen down, along with her lighter and cigarettes. She hadn’t brought anything else along, but she patted down her coat anyway. Gramps pushed the bin onto the belt, where it scooted off behind rubber curtains to be X-rayed.
“Now through the detector,” he said.
She stepped through. A soft buzzer went off.
“Hold it right there.”
She stopped.
“Something’s bugged out.” He was looking at his tasker like it had told him to go fuck himself. “Ah, whatever’s going on, I can’t seem to pull up your info. No name or nothin’. It’s like you don’t exist.” He laughed. “What a glitch.”
Chaz ignored him and had a look around. Empty. Even the civvy that was usually behind the front desk was gone, probably off to recharge for the night. There might be other civvies, though. Wehrlein employed a whole fleet of them as overnight janitors. But if surveillance couldn’t identify her face, neither could—
Shit. There was another security guard at the far end of the lobby, making his rounds at a leisurely amble. He seemed to be heading for the signs that marked the bathrooms.
“Did you hear me, young man?”
“What?” she asked.
“You got any other metallic items on you? Keys, loose change?” Up close, Gramps smelled like he had coffee in his veins.
“Actually,” she said, “there might be something else.” She glanced across the lobby again; the other security guard was taking his sweet fucking time. “I have prosthetic legs. That’s probably why.” She pulled up a pants leg to show him.
“Ah. That’d do it.” Gramps couldn’t stop looking at her face. At her eyes. Then he shook his head. “I didn’t realize Halloween was coming up so soon. Is that really the new style?”
I was going to be sorry about your ass. Thanks for making this easier, you fucking geezer.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s gonna be really popular.” Another look across the lobby; the other security guy was finally gone. She saw no one else.
“Okay, well, I’m going to need a reason for your visit and who you’re here to see. I can’t let you go further on without that.”
“Kennedy,” she told him. “Israel Kennedy.”
“And what’s your business with Mr. Kennedy?”
“We’re gonna have a little chat.”
Gramps sighed like this was the first real work he’d done today. “Then I will notify Mr. Kennedy that you are on your way.” He pulled up his tasker.
“Wait,” she said, and took a deep breath.
He looked up at her.
“I forgot to mention these.”
Chaz pressed the button inside her coat. She straightened her arms in time to catch the batons ejecting from her sleeves, her fingers securing the handles. In one swift motion, she toggled the ON switches and poked the electrodes into the fat man’s belly. He danced like he was having an exorcism. Then, after his tasker had fallen from his hands and he stood there stunned, she whipped a baton across his face. He dropped so hard she felt the ground shake a little. Nap time.
Yeah, not sorry.
The coast was clear. She gathered up her things from the X-ray machine and sprinted across the lobby, aiming for the bathrooms. It was inevitable that someone would stumble upon the casualties—there was nothing she could about that. What she could do was delay it a little longer, give herself the time she needed.
The other security dude must have only taken a whiz, because she met him coming out the door. He was whistling like it was going to be another average night. When he laid eyes on her, his tune hit a sour note and broke off. He looked at her makeup, her weapons.
There were at least three seconds where no one made a move.
Then he said, “Hey,” and fumbled for something on his belt.
Not a chance. Chaz put him down like the first guy, injecting him with fifty thousand volts and then whacking him over the side of the head. The lights were out before his face kissed the ground.
Looking at him, she saw he was maybe half the age of his friend at the security checkpoint. A thin line of blood flowed from the corner of his mouth.
Okay, maybe I’m a little sorry.
She waited to make sure his chest was still moving. It was. But even if he didn’t have a dislocated jaw or a few shattered teeth, he was going to be in a hell of a lot of pain. He didn’t deserve that. But this was how it had to be—if she didn’t knock out the guards she encountered, they would do what they’d been trained to do against an intruder: subdue and apprehend. Which meant Kennedy would go on breathing past tonight. No fucking way she was letting that happen. This was her chance, maybe her only chance.
She glanced at her tasker. T-minus seventeen minutes.
The only way from here was up.
Chaz retreated to the main lobby area and booked it for the stairwell—she chose the northeast one because it was the closest. Through the doors and up the steps two at a time. She switched off her batons to save the batteries.
The elevator would have been quicker. And a fucking death trap. Nothing worse than waiting inside a tiny metal box and not knowing what to expect when the doors opened. If someone called for the elevator before it reached the thirty-fifth floor, she had no control over whether it stopped or not. Might be one person, or it might be five or six security guards getting off break. Not the surprise she wanted.
Besides, thirty-plus flights of stairs were no big deal for her legs. It was just a little exercise.
There was a problem.
About that stairwell, that flawless fucking pathway to reach Kennedy’s lair? It had been designed by some eco-friendly choad-licker. The bottom ten floors were enclosed with concrete walls. It was what she had expected, what any fucking shit-on-a-stick architect with his fucking head screwed on right would have contrived. Above that? Glass. Glass. Because some asswipe wanted to reduce the building’s electric bill by incorporating natural lighting, her entire fucking cover was gone.
Fucking fuck.
The transition between the concrete and glass was fashioned with little polygonal view-holes. Chaz peeked through them. She didn’t see anyone. The whole floor was pretty nondescript. Doors were spaced out like they belonged to offices, but she couldn’t see through the frosted-glass enclosures. Hopefully the effect was two-way—otherwise someone could be looking at her right now and she wouldn’t know it.
She slowly made her way up the stairs and caught her breath.
Okay. It wasn’t the end of the world. She just had to be extra careful, keep her eyes and ears peeled. The good news was that everything up here looked as vacant as down below. All the lights were dimmed, and the only activity she came across was a civvy custodian with a janitor’s pushcart. It didn’t see her. She
continued on up.
After a few floors, it became a rhythm—peek above the landing, scope out what was on the other side of the glass, rush up the steps quietly, repeat.
It wasn’t so bad. She still had the advantage of stealth. Nobody knew she was in the building.
It would work.
Up a few more flights, she saw her first sign of actual oxygen-breathing life. She immediately dropped to prone on the stairs, using the incline as a sort of makeshift cover. After a dozen or so rapid heartbeats, she craned to see over the top step.
Security guard. He was stationary in the middle of the hall about ten meters away, his back turned. His attention was on something in his hand, maybe a tasker. Just what she fucking needed, some fuckwad ignoring patrol duty and playing brain puzzles. Chaz stayed where she was for another thirty seconds, knowing she didn’t have the time to wait the bastard out. She had to get past him.
Fuck it.
She tiptoed up to the landing and then over to the next set of risers, all while keeping her eyes on the dawdler. Only when she reached the next incline between herself and him did she feel the breath evacuate her lungs
Around the same time, a two-tone alarm blared in the distance. She froze.
Ah. Shit.
That’d be her friends down in the lobby—they’d been discovered. It couldn’t have been anything else. Which meant the whole building was about to be put on alert for a possible intruder. How many guards would be looking for her? Twenty? Thirty? All they had to do was rewind surveillance to the time of the attack, then track her to where she was now. She didn’t have but a few minutes max.
She had to move. Fast.
Chaz sprinted up, pulling herself along the continuous handrail, clearing three steps with each leap. She caught a glimpse of a floor number: twenty. More than halfway. Somewhere above her, a door creaked and slammed open, and the stairwell echoed with what sounded like a fucking squadron of feet stomping down the steps. She stopped and peered up, but she couldn’t see them. The intensity of the noise made it sound like they were right above her.
With no other foreseeable option, she reversed course and jumped back down the half flight to the twentieth floor landing and squeezed through the door. The relief was so short lived she might have totally imagined it. The twentieth floor was a straight hallway like the others—Where the hell was she going to hide?
Fuck!
She raced ahead and twisted every knob and touched every terminal she came across. Nothing opened, of course. Then she saw an intersection farther down the aisle. With nowhere else to go, she ran to it and ducked around the corner, not knowing if anyone had seen her. They must have. They’d been right on top of her—they must have seen her. But she didn’t hear any footsteps, didn’t hear the door open.
Close call, then. She sighed, deeply. Thank the taint of the universe she was one-fourth robot. Otherwise—
“Suspect sighted.”
Oh.
Chaz lurched back from the nightstick. It grazed her coat. Then again, this time the blunt end arcing toward her face. Just missed. She batted away the next strike with both her batons and whapped the guard in the elbow while his arm dangled there. The guy shrieked, and she kicked out his knees. He did a near half-backflip and crashed down on his head.
She would’ve had him if she didn’t have to roll away from the second guard behind her. Floor and ceiling overturned. She came to rest in a crouch, staring at the two men—scratch; the second one had tits—who had come to spoil the party.
“The suspect is armed and extremely dangerous,” the female guard said into her tasker. She held her nightstick almost like a batter at home plate. Next to her, the male guard slowly got to his feet. Not out yet.
Two guards, two nightsticks.
And more on the way if she didn’t deal with these wannabe heroes.
Standing up, Chaz flipped the toggles and twirled her batons once, making them briefly sing. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“Place your weapons on the ground,” the woman ordered. Her voice packed more intimidation than her outrageous stance did. “You don’t have to get hurt.”
“I’m not worried about that.”
The subtle dig was the cue for the woman to charge first. Chaz gave the rookie her chance at fame and glory, but she posed no more of a threat than a fucking child. She threw her body into each swing. Chaz reversed at the pace the woman came forward, letting her play target practice with air.
If anything, it was an embarrassing show of Wehrlein’s hiring standards.
Once the woman had started to tire herself, she began doing something that was both a swing and a lunge. The technique of desperation. During one of her weak-armed stabs, Chaz knocked the flailing nightstick aside and pinned it to the glass; then she shoved the other baton’s electrodes into the woman’s armpit. She fucking danced, then dropped.
“See that?” said Chaz. “That’s what happens when you dictate your fucking attacks.”
Incoming.
Chaz freed her batons in time to deflect the nightstick coming overhead but not the fist that came like a missile toward her face. The knuckles clocked her right between the eyes. The male security guard registered his success and tried his fist again, apparently thinking he’d found her one weakness. Chaz regained her senses and dodged. A for effort. But fifty thousand volts to his chest ruined any underdog victory. She stuck him with both batons until he slumped down against the wall. The electricity left burn marks on his uniform.
“Are you fucking done?” said Chaz.
Movement. Nine o’clock. It was all reflex—she raised her leg and shoved off whoever it was, the strength in her prosthetic muscles thwarting a surprise attack. When she turned and looked, the female guard was already mid-cartwheel and crashing through the frosted glass of an office. Her body took a bounce over the desk and crumpled on the floor amid a mess of glass shards and other wreckage from her flying somersault.
Chaz checked that the male guard was unresponsive before she saw to the woman. She had cuts all over her body, but nothing important looked to be punctured. She was out like her partner, but she was still breathing.
More footsteps coming. Stealth was over—security knew exactly where she was. Time to run for it.
Chaz high-tailed it for the northwest stairwell. When she was inside—and certain enough that she was alone—she started climbing.
She glanced at her tasker. Less than eleven minutes.
It was like the universe—or something out there—was trying to relay a message to her. And she didn’t like it.
In between the landings for the thirty-first and thirty-second floors, Chaz stopped. She was staring at a plastic fold-out sign, like the ones that usually said WET FLOOR. Only this one had an electronic screen that read: DO NOT PASS - STAIRS UNDER RENOVATION - PLEASE USE OTHER STAIRWELL OR ELEVATOR.
They weren’t just under renovation; they were fucking missing. Whole sections between landings. Tarps covered the glass, and there were planks like what might constitute scaffolding. Except these were lying in a pile. There was a small scissor lift parked in the corner. She tried it, but access to the controls required her to swipe a badge.
No getting up this way.
Voices came from far off. Hard to tell where. All she could hope for was that the building’s security team would consolidate their numbers after what had happened and pull everyone back to the bottom floors. Because like the female guard had said, the intruder was armed and extremely dangerous. Typically, low-level security wouldn’t put their lives on the line in a hazardous situation. They weren’t paid enough, and they didn’t carry firearms.
Instead, they’d hang back until the cops showed up.
And that gave her a little time.
Once again, Chaz backtracked to the landing below and exited the stairwell, this time at the thirty-first floor. She would do what she had done earlier—cross to the other side and use the other set of stairs. Just four more levels to go. The
home stretch.
The layout of the thirty-first floor was a little different: instead of rows of offices on either side, there were balconies and open drops; instead of a hallway in front of her, a single door. The sign next to it said: 31-01 - UTILITIES AND STORAGE.
Chaz tried the wall terminal nearby. Locked. Employee admittance only.
“Motherfuck.”
She tried kicking the door in, but the damn thing was solid. Reinforced fiberglass. She could have punished it with her legs for an hour and maybe forced it open. With the time she had, it was a no-go. Alternatively, there were the railings on either side of her. She jogged to the left one and looked down—it was a straight plummet from where she was. Tiny specks dotted the ground floor. Maybe security members.
Looking across the architectural chasm, she saw the glass column of the northeast stairwell. There was no path around the utility room to it. But there was something: a narrow ledge just below her, on the other side of the glass banister she was leaning on. An exposed steel beam. There wasn’t enough breadth for anything except her toes, but she could grip the banister railing and sidle it. The ledge went all the way around. She would just have to take her time—and never, ever look down.
Or, no, it was fucking suicide. The edge went all the way, but the banister didn’t. No way she could support herself on just her toes. If she misplaced her foot by a millimeter…
Fuck. Fuck!
Back down, then. Another floor, find another route across. Hopefully security wasn’t—
The door to the utility room slid open. Chaz turned and readied her batons, switching them both on simultaneously. The soft vibrations of the electricity hummed inside her palms.
The man who emerged didn’t wear the uniform of a security guard. His attire was light gray—general staff. He reversed out of the room, oblivious to her, pulling along a little mop cart.
The door was wide open.
Yet Chaz remained where she was, unable to compel a muscle to move.
When he finally noticed her, he stopped and glanced around like he was momentarily disoriented. He raised his cap and scratched his scalp, then put his weight on the upright red broom handle as if to take a breather.