Brain Storm (US Edition) (20 page)

Chapter
Sixteen

It was difficult to aim but the adrenaline flooding into her system was a big boost to her accuracy. Sara fired off her twin pistols aiming for head shots. They were more difficult than going for shots at the trunk but these people were wearing body armor that her pistols didn't have a hope of penetrating. Two of the figures who had just burst into the room were knocked back off their feet crashing to the ground in bloody heaps. Two others who were off to the sides of those central figures reacted instantly spraying covering fire around the room in short sharp bursts.

Splinters of wood peppered Sara where the bullets chewed into desks. Foam and upholstery flew up in chunks were bullets ripped through the chairs. There were metallic dings where the shots hit filing cabinets.

Everything seemed to switch to slow motion for her. She watched the debris kicked up into the air and then falling almost gracefully back down to the ground. Her attackers seemed to be forcing their way through treacle as they turned and fired. The wisps of smoke curling up from the barrels and firing mechanisms of their assault rifles seemed to take an eternity to dissipate into the haze clouding the rest of the room.

Sara brought her arms around and dived off to the side and she too seemed to be mired in some substance that was slowing her movements down. Consciously she understood that she was moving at a normal speed, as everything else in the room was, it was her perception that was off. Sara skidded over the top of a desk and fired at the attacker to the right of the door. She hit the desk and rolled off into a crouch before she could see if the she had taken the man down. As soon as she touched the floor she came back up firing twice more in the general direction of the doorway to give herself some cover.

It was the attackers' turn now to dive out of the way. It looked like there had only been four of them because no-one else moved up into the room. Sara ran forwards no longer confused by the attack. She could do this sort of thing in her sleep it had been drilled into her so hard. Sara came to a stop between the two men who only then realized where she was and the danger they were in. Sara would have liked to keep one of them alive for questioning but it was more important that she stayed alive than that they did. Both attackers were clearly professionals, already bringing their weapons back to bear on her from their crouched positions, but they were just too slow. Sara didn't face either of them as she crossed her arms over her chest and fired twin rounds into their heads.

The lifeless bodies, the contents of their heads exploded out of the backs of their skulls, tumbled backwards onto the floor. Sara heard them slap onto the ground and saw them out of the corners of her eyes. As they bounced on the floor her perception of time returned to normal. She checked through the open doorway past the first two bodies but she had been right there was no-one else there.

When that was done Sara stuffed her guns into each of her jacket pockets. She didn't know how many rounds were left in either weapon but they were small enough to carry easily and they could come in useful so she didn't want to discard them. She would take the assault rifle from one of the first attackers she had killed to be her new main weapon and the magazine from the other to be a spare, they were the ones that would have most ammunition in them. She took the rifle, slinging  it over her shoulder with the strap cutting diagonally across her back and between her breasts so that she could have her hands free but be able to fire it quickly with one hand if needs be, and frisked the bodies. It was no good taking some armor for herself it would only serve to slow her down.

All of the bodies were sterile. None of them were carrying anything that could be used to identify them or who they worked for. The only things they had that Sara bothered to take, other than the assault rifles she had already taken, were the key cards she found on two of the men, one on each, and one of the gloves each of the men had worn on their hands.
She didn't want them for her own hands, but turned inside out they could provide her with a means of finding out who these people had been from their fingerprints.

There was a crash and a moan from behind her. Sara came around her hand dropping to the grip and the trigger on the rifle. Carla was struggling forwards from behind the desk Sara had tipped over for cover. She staggered along like a drunkard. Her eyes were streaming and she looked around slightly glassily. She seemed to have some idea where Sara was because she looked in her general direction and bumbled along towards her.

"You said it was okay." Carla's voice was too loud as she tried to compensate for the ringing that would still be sounding inside her head. The ringing in Sara's ears was already down to a barely noticeable tinkle.

"It was until they came in."

"Yes, well." Carla seemed to getting steadier on her feet. "Next time can you maybe just tell me to duck instead of battering me down like that? And what was with that slapping me on the head?"

"Can you shut up for one minute!" Sara snapped. "I just saved your life and all you can do is complain about it. I could be out of here with a lot less hassle if I didn't have to drag you along with me. Maybe I should let you find your own way out."

Carla's lower lip trembled and she turned her face away. Sara couldn't believe she had yelled at her like that. She was still only young, younger than Sara was by a couple of years, and she wasn't used to dealing with this sort of stuff.

"I'm sorry. This is a tense situation, you know? I didn't mean to snap at you." She stepped up to Carla and put her left hand on the other woman's shoulder. It was shrugged off and Carla took a step further away.

"I'm not used to dealing with this shit. I'm sorry I'm useless, and I'm sorry if I'm making this more difficult for you. I can't help it, it's not every day I get attacked by crazy robots and kidnapped and have to break out of some top secret facility with people shooting at me and-"

She had to pause for a breath. She had started her tirade in anger but it ended in tears. When she paused the crying started and she couldn't go on.

"I know this all must seem insane to you and I didn't mean to lose my temper with you. Believe it or not this is my first time being kidnapped as well." Sara stepped back up to Carla and this time she didn't move away from her touch. "We
are
going to get through this."

She tried some
humor. "Besides, technically in this last attack they were just shooting at me."

She turned Carla around and used the cuff of her jacket to wipe away the worst of the tears from her cheeks. "Just keep it together for me and I'll try not to fly off the handle again. Here, put this on and the next time they start shooting, even if it
is
at you, at least you'll have some protection." She pulled the body armor off one of the men and helped Carla get into it. It was much too large for her length wise and in width except where it went over her chest, in fact when the straps were pulled tightly around her to make the thing sort of fit it crushed her breasts and still wasn't properly fitted everywhere else.

"Can you believe they still don't make this stuff mass production for women?" Sara had had a set specifically made to accommodate her but after it was damaged on an operation she had been forced to revert back to wearing the cheaper less protective more flexible stuff worn by the police force and other mainstream security forces. The sheer fact that the attackers wore this stronger body
armor indicated that whoever was behind their kidnapping was well financed.

"Now let's get moving before somebody notices that these guys are missing. You've done really well so far just keep it up a little bit longer, okay?" Sara was surprised to find that she actually meant what she said, for a civilian thrown into an unbelievable situation Carla had coped quite well. When it came down to it she could follow orders and she didn't do anything stupid to give them away or slow them down.

Carla nodded her assent and wiped the last remaining tears onto her orange sleeve. Sara considered giving Carla one of the assault rifles but quickly decided against it. There was no time to teach Carla how to use it properly so she would be more dangerous to Sara and herself that she would be to any attackers they might come across. Besides Sara didn't think this young woman had it in her to kill, even with a weapon designed to distance the killer from the act of killing. It was still a profound and personal event that took a person of a certain disposition, something that Sara sometimes thought of as an emotional wrongness to take another human life and be able to cope with it. Sara often thought that she must have some wiring wrong in her head that let her do it for a living. Surprisingly it was this concern for Carla's psychological well being that was the stronger factor in making Sara's mind up not to give the other woman a weapon rather than concern for either of their physical safety.

They left the room through the entrance the four attackers had used. Carla pulled faces looking down at the corpses they had to step over. She tiptoed around to avoid stepping in any of the growing puddles of blood. Sara also avoided stepping in any of the blood but it was as a precaution to stop her leaving a trail for others to follow rather than as any sort of squeamish desire to avoid contact with it.

As before Sara took the lead cautiously moving forwards and Carla followed behind her. Whenever they came to another room or a junction of corridors Sara got Carla to wait while she explored and made sure the coast was clear. Then she would move back to get her and they would go on. They had been travelling in this fashion for a while, with the sounds of alarms gradually growing louder, when they came to a junction and were face with three choices. At all the other junctions the choice had been a simple one, either between a corridor that carried on upwards or one which headed back down, or a corridor with surveillance cameras or one without, or a corridor with a locked door and one with an open one. This time it was a choice between two corridors heading upwards at approximately the same gradient with one turning slightly to the left and the other slightly to the right or a corridor that met a narrow set of stairs again going upwards.

Sara stood surveying each of the options. Carla hovered nervously behind her anxious to continue and escape but keeping her mouth shut and letting Sara think. Not that there was that much for her to think about. There was no way that Sara could know which of the three directions would give them the greatest chance of escape or which would land them with a drama. She would have to do a quick recce of each of the possibles and see if there was anything a little further on that would help her make up her mind. She wanted to just choose one and get on with it. They didn't have much time left and she didn't want to waste it on a series of reconnaissance's that could still leave her with no idea which option would be the best to choose. But a little time spent in preparation was never time wasted. If she rushed in she could take one option that led them further into a maze of corridors when the exit was just a short distance down one of the others.

At first she was going to leave Carla behind while she performed the recces but then she thought better of it. She had no idea if this junction had a lot of traffic but the sheer fact that four corridors met up here meant that it was a good possibility that someone would come through here sooner or later. She got Carla to follow her and started into the corridor on the left. She held the assault rifle ready in both hands prepared for trouble.

They were maybe twenty
meters into the corridor, approaching a point where the drab corridor color gave way to off-white tiles, when Carla grabbed the back of Sara's jacket and pulled.

"Wait!"

Sara didn't even have time to turn around and ask Carla what the hell she thought she was doing before the question was answered for her in a red laser flash. The flash was over before Sara could blink but the damage had been done. The front half of the assault rifle clattered down onto the tiled floor. Sara's right hand, that had been supporting the barrel, had only just missed out on joining it. As it was the laser had only taken the top layer of skin off the finger closest to the truncated end of the useless weapon. Sara didn't feel the sting of it because it was still flashing through her head how close she had just come to being sliced in half.

If Carla hadn't stopped her she would have taken that extra step letting the beam cut through her. She would have been dead before she even had time to
realize it. She took a step backwards, not daring to turn in case  she put another part of her body over the line. The assault rifle was dropped to the floor, it was no good as a weapon other than an oddly shaped club anymore. The laser flash came again, still too fast for her to see which direction it travelled in, and cut through the dropped rifle where it crossed onto the tiled area. Sara looked down at it for a moment and then retrieved the near-side portion.

These people were either very concerned about things leaving along this corridor like Carla and herself were trying to do, or they were very concerned about things coming in the opposite direction. Either way Sara couldn't see any controls for the laser trap so it looked like this was a dead end, at least it wasn't literally so.

Which reminds me.
"Thanks," Sara said belatedly realizing that she hadn't thanked Carla for saving her life.

"Don't mention it," Carla replied with a confused and frightened look on her face that told Sara she had been as shocked by the trap as she had. "Get us out of here and I'll owe you plenty."