by Eric Wood
Not nearly enough time has gone by, Sam thought. If these guys leave us locked in here now, the whole plan is going to crumble. He sighed. Looks like quiet time has come to an end.
"Gentlemen," Sam said, letting a lazy smile curl his lips as he did so. "I can understand why you might be hesitant to believe this young woman's words, but what I certainly cannot understand is why you think so little of my presence." He raised his arm and made an exaggerated show of checking his watch. "I assume you men know just how precious the Company's time — my time — is?"
The standing guard hesitated. The other guard gestured for him to sit back down, which he did. "Of course," the guard mumbled.
You have no idea, Sam thought. He flicked his eyes downward and checked the watch for real.
Not long now.
Would it really have been too much to allow me a change of clothes?
Abigail probably didn't smell quite as gross as she felt, but then again, she felt pretty gross. Lucky for her, the sewer pipes had been large enough that she hadn't had to crawl on her hands and knees, but she had still traversed a good hundred yards of tunnel, splashing through waste filth, to get to the subbasement's pump room.
And I'm supposed to sneak around like this? Abigail scoffed. She said a silent thanks for the vanilla humans' weak senses. If Roosevelt had a Reaper, they'd smell her coming from a mile away.
The halls down here were dimly lit and appeared to be rarely used. She recalled the blueprints that Madame Ki's spies had been able to procure: yes, it was up the stairway ahead, and then two right turns to reach the power station. She checked her watch: she was right on schedule. Holding her knife in a reverse grip and her pistol positioned just above it she crept quickly and silently toward her target.
She stopped just before the final turn ahead of the power station. She had been lucky to avoid patrols up to this point, but the time for stealth had nearly come to an end. There would be two guards outside the power station, and another two inside. She checked her weapons one final time, took a deep breath and turned the corner.
Showtime.
"Apologies, sir," the guard said. "It's just...aren't you a little young to be a Company operative?"
He was having a hard time maintaining eye-to-eye — or rather eye-to-lens — contact with Sam. That was good. A nervous guard is a slow guard, and Sam only needed a few minutes more.
Sam let out a disdainful — or at least as disdainful as he could manage — laugh and shook his head. "You've seen my uniform, and you've checked my credentials. I don't know what more you expect from me, and frankly, gentlemen, you are beginning to try my patience. You've no doubt heard about what the Company — what we — do to impostors and those who would sully our good names and reputation. And yet you see fit, you dare question me on who I say I am. Why don't you explain to me exactly why I shouldn't march up to Roosevelt's office right now and demand your job?"
He was nearly yelling by the end, and he could feel Elena's irritated glare on him. Maybe that's laying it on just a bit heavy, Vincente's voice noted.
Sam took a deep, calming breath and smiled. "My apologies," he said, checking his watch one final time. "Of course I won't be demanding your jobs."
One of the guards started to talk, and Sam stopped him with a raised hand. "Just indulge me for one more moment if you please, and we can finish up here."
The guard nodded. "Great," Sam said. Hopefully Abigail was still on schedule. Things were about to go very right, or very wrong. "In that case, gentlemen: three, two, one —"
Abigail was still not used to working computers. Out in the Wilds, she had seen many hundreds of the broken, Old World things, but without reliable power, intact networks, or even people who knew how to use the damned things, they were little more than garbage. It had taken more practice by far to learn how to properly operate this strange device than it had to memorize the path through the mine-maze, sewers, and subbasements.
Still, practice she had, and it only took her three tries to shut down the base's electronic locks, seal the outer doors, and issue an alert scrambling the internal security to the exact wrong quadrant of the complex. Satisfied she had accomplished all she could with this infernal electronic machine, she stepped back over the unconscious guard, drew her pistol, and put three bullets into the center of the console.
The white overhead lights went dark, replaced a moment later by dimmer, red emergency lamps. An alarm klaxon began to blare. She turned and exited the power room. Task one accomplished, she noted. Now, onto the cells.
It was time to reintroduce herself to Roach.
"Three, two, one."
Sam lowered his raised hand into a 'let's go' finger-point. Nothing happened.
"I'm sorry," one of the guards said, confused. "I don't understand."
"Ummm...wait a second, maybe," Sam said. "I might have been just a little fast."
"You are an idiot," Elena said.
Just then the lights went out, and a moment later the alarms began.
"There we go," Sam said. As one, he and Elena grabbed the underside of the table and flipped it forward onto the stunned guards.
The table's momentum took the two interrogators out of their chairs and drove them to the floor. Elena was on her guard as quickly as Sam was able to stand. He dove into the other one, who had managed to get his hands out from under the overturned table. Sam punched him in the face and pain bloomed in his hand. The guard seemed to have somehow gotten the better of that exchange; he grabbed Sam by the neck with both hands and began to squeeze.
Sam hit him two more times, which seemed to accomplish little beyond further injuring his hand. The guard squeezed harder. Pressure was building within Sam's skull in deep, vision-blurring pulses. Sam began to strike at the guard's arms as his vision narrowed to dark-rimmed tunnels flecked by tiny glimmering stars.
A loud, metallic thunk sounded next to his ear, and warm liquid splashed Sam's face. All at once the vise-grip around his neck released. Gasping, Sam fell back onto his haunches.
"Am I going to have to do everything today?" Elena asked, lowering her pistol. She reached over and grabbed the two extra ammo clips from Sam's thigh, just below his now-empty left leg holster.
"I had him...just...where I wanted him," Sam said between heavy gasps of air.
"Sure you did." She stood up and checked the far door. "Now if you're done messing around, more guards will be here any second. Let's get moving."
"Alright then," Sam said. He drew his other silenced pistol and with more effort than he would admit, raised himself to his feet. He racked the slide on his weapon and steadied himself. Now that the anticipation was over, he found his fear had evaporated. Mostly. "Let's do it."
Abigail pulled on the jacket, taken off of one of the power station guards, and straightened it as best she could. Her improvised disguise would only buy her a few moments — at best — but that would be enough to keep the element of surprise on her side.
The dim red of the emergency lights, punctuated by the occasional spinning yellow of warning blinkers at the hallway intersections, gave the corridors a vaguely apocalyptic feel. Seems appropriate, she thought.
Abigail heard a parade of boots coming her way. She ducked into an alcove and waited as an armed patrol of a half-dozen soldiers rushed past. Once it was clear, she kept moving. Down here in the relative darkness, conditions favored her. Up on the surface, Sam would find things considerably less favorable. And he wasn't a soldier, or even a fighter like her. His element was either talking his way out of trouble or shooting things from far away — neither of which would help him much here in Roosevelt's base.
"No," she said aloud. I've got to stop distracting myself with thoughts like this. Worrying won't help Sam. Finishing my job will.
She reached the helpfully labeled outer door of the cells and slowed, waving a friendly hand in the direction of the doorway’s single guard.
"Soldier, report," she said, moving forward halfway between a jog and a fa
st walk. He narrowed his eyes, trying with little success to identify her in the low, red light.
As she got closer, he seemed to realize she wasn't really one of Roosevelt's soldiers: her silenced pistol certainly wasn't standard garrison issue.
He began to raise his rifle. Abigail was quicker. She shot him in the shoulder, closed the remainder of the distance, and clubbed him across the forehead with the butt of her pistol. She grabbed the key from his belt as he crumpled, had it in the lock by the time he hit the ground.
Unlocked, she slid the door open and stepped inside. Facing her, standing behind a thick layer of clear plastic, was Roach.
"You," Roach said, her mouth a snarl.
Abigail smiled. "Me."
"Shouldn't there be more guys than this?" Sam asked.
They had made their way from the security room past the base's inner concourse without running into a single hostile soldier. A few of them had run past on the far side of the large, plant-and-sculpture-filled court without giving them a second thought. After that, the pair of them had been able to ascend the central staircase and through two large sections of cubicles without being stopped.
"It just means your little girlfriend did her job properly," Elena answered. "Good to know one of you can follow orders."
"If I had followed your 'sit there quietly and look tough' plan we'd still be locked in that room, a whole strike team preparing to burst in and arrest us."
Elena scoffed. "We'd be in a locked room? Did you even listen to the plan? What part of 'disabling the interior locks' don't you understand?"
"You know —" Sam began. A gunshot rang out from somewhere behind them and bullet pinged off of the wall just above their heads. "Shit!" He ducked behind a potted plant and looked back for the shooter. "It looks like they're onto us." He saw a black-masked head peeking around a corner. Sam fired two shots, forcing the soldier back.
"You think?" Elena said, firing a flurry of shots in the same direction. "It's time to pick up the pace."
They exited the hallway onto a balcony — the upper level of what appeared to be a two-leveled atrium. This was the place: assuming Abigail had entered everything correctly, at the end of this room was the one elevator in the entire building left operational. It would lead to the storage center where they could pick up the item Ki wanted.
Elena gestured toward a stopped escalator leading down to the lower level. They ran toward it and jumped onto the wide silver railings on either side of it, each sliding down with their legs out in front of them.
A group of soldiers had apparently chosen that exact time to enter the atrium from the other direction. Sam cursed as they saw him; he fired the rest of his clip in their direction and rolled off the edge of the escalator. He hit the floor awkwardly and scooted over to the nearest piece of cover. He watched as Elena hit the floor a moment later.
He reloaded, waiting till Elena started laying down covering fire, and rushed over to her location. He fired as he ran, putting a round into the nearest soldier’s chest: The man's bulky body armor would no doubt absorb most of the blow, but hopefully it would at least take him out of the fight.
Elena grabbed him by the jacket and pulled him roughly around to face her. "We need to move, now," she said. "The power is going to come back on any minute. If another patrol comes from the other direction, we'll be pinned down."
"Too late," Sam said, raising his pistol and firing past Elena's face. Three more soldiers had emerged behind them: though he had temporarily forced them back, once they realized Sam and Elena were surrounded they would advance, and it would all be over.
Elena got to her feet, pulling Sam along with her. "Now or never," she said, flashing him a smile that Sam thought looked all-too-excited, considering their current situation.
They fired a fresh fusillade of bullets at the soldiers ahead of them and dashed into the open. They made it halfway to the elevator before return fire forced them into cover behind a decorative stone fountain.
"Okay," Elena said, ejecting an empty clip and loading her last full one. "Lay down some cover fire for me while I try for the elevator. Once I'm there, I'll do the same for you. Got it?"
"Got it," Sam said. Bullets knocked free chunks of stone that rained down on his head. "Wait," he added. "You will give me cover from the elevator, right? Because I kind of feel like you'll leave me here."
"Don't be such a child, Sam," she said. "Cross my heart and hope to die. Ready, now!"
Without another word, she was off. Sam cursed and popped out from cover, firing at the soldiers' position. Elena crossed the open ground quickly, rolled to safety in the open elevator, and turned to face Sam. For a brief, terrifying moment he thought she really was going to leave him there. Instead, she counted down on her fingers from three and Sam got ready to run.
Sam's heart pounded in his chest. Well, I can't stay here, he thought, and if I run, one of two things will happen: I'll either make it, or I won't. I've faced worse odds.
Elena began to fire. Sam took a deep breath and he ran.
With every step, he expected to feel bullets tearing through him. He could have sworn he saw one pass directly in front of his eyes, even if he knew that was impossible. His legs burned; his every breath seemed to roar inside his head as the rest of the world faded into a sort of adrenaline trance.
Something slammed into his shoulder, returning his focus. It was actually him who had slammed into something: the back wall of the elevator. He’d made it. He tapped Elena twice on the shoulder, laughing. "Made it! Let's go."
"We've got a problem," Elena said. "The elevator's not working."
"Oh, come on," Sam said.
"Got to improvise, back the way we came. Same drill: you cover, I run."
"Back the way we came?" That would never work. "There's got to be another —"
"No time; here I go," Elena said, pushing off of him. Before Sam realized what was happening, she was again off and running.
"Dammit," Sam said, struggling to reload his weapon. Just then, the elevator door slammed shut. The last glimpse he caught of Elena was her turning back, confusion and horror on her face.
The elevator began to ascend.
Roach stared at her through the glass wall of the cell, her expression unreadable. She had lost some weight since Abigail had last seen her, back at Deacon's basin fortress. It didn't look like her attitude had improved any, however. "I’m guessing all of this," — she gestured around at the red lights and the squawking alarms — "is your doing?"
"It is," Abigail said.
"I guess you're here to finally finish me off, huh."
Abigail shook her head. "Not today, Ravager. Today, I'm here to break you out." She found the cell key and inserted it into the lock before hesitating. "You're not going to try and fight me, are you?" she asked. "Because I'm really not in the mood to carry you out of here."
"So sure you'd win, huh?"
Her words sounded like the psychotic Ravager Abigail remembered, but the tone did not. Ki had told her Roach was no longer a typical Ravager: Abigail had laughed at the time, but now she wasn't so sure.
Still, she wasn't in the mood to take any lip, special Ravager or no. "You know what I am," she said. "So you know as well as I do that yes, I would win. Now, do you want to stay rotting in this cell, or do you want to get out of here?"
Roach seemed unsure of how to answer. To be fair, Abigail thought, I don't know if I would want to go with me if I was in her shoes. "Look," she added, "I just want to talk to you a bit, and then you can go on your way. You can get back to terrorizing villagers, or whatever it is you want to do."
Roach sighed. "Fine," she said. "Let's go."
Abigail unlocked the door. She checked her watch, saw that she was still right on schedule. "Now, follow me and —"
Roach shoved her against the wall and ran for it.
Abigail swore and dashed forward, dipping down and grabbing one of Roach's feet as she did so. She flicked her wrist upward and Roach went tumbl
ing, somersaulting awkwardly and crashing into the outer jail wall in a heap.
Abigail looked down upon her groaning form. "Got that out of your system? I’m trying to save your ungrateful ass."
"Fine," Roach said. "Let's go. For real this time."
Abigail reached down and offered Roach her hand. Roach took it and she yanked the Ravager to her feet, a bit harder than was strictly necessary. Roach yelped but otherwise didn't complain.
"Now, follow me close and stay quiet," Abigail said. "The last thing I need at this point is you doing something stupid and catching a bullet. It's not far to —"
"They brought me here with someone else," Roach said. "We have to bring him with us."
"That is definitely not going to happen."
"Look, based on how you smell I assume you came here through the sewers. That means we're going downward. The place where they're keeping him is right on the way."
"How can you possibly know that?"
"Someone told me. Does it really matter?"
Abigail moved to leave but stopped when she saw Roach wasn’t following. "We don't have time for this. Let's go."
Roach crossed her arms and set her jaw. "What’s going to take longer?" she asked. "Taking a short detour, or fighting me and dragging me out of here after we've both broken some bones? Please, I owe him."
Abigail thought of how she would feel if it was Sam locked away down there. We might have time, she thought. Maybe. She checked her watch again: Sam should be leaving the building now. That is, if everything went according to plan up above. And if it hadn’t...well, she wouldn't know until she got back to Ki's.
She growled and punched the wall in frustration. "Fine," she said. "You're just lucky I over-memorized this building's layout."
The way down to the sub-labs was completely empty of soldiers. Madame Ki's computer program had worked as promised: all of the guards had been called up to the surface. Twice on the way, Roach asked for a weapon, and twice Abigail laughed in her face. She told Roach that if one of Roosevelt's soldiers was able to take her down, all the weapons in the world wouldn't help her. What went unsaid was that Abigail wasn't eager to be stabbed in the back by her Ravager companion.