On the other side of that door

You actually know what's happening in the room down the hall. But do you know that you know...

Part XII – The Blonde’s First Mistake

            She looks down through the vent into the hallway.  The bodies of two security guards are lifeless on the floor.   She can hear the sounds of fighting down the hall, in the direction the man who killed the guards went.  ‘That gut with the old slugthrowers is good,’ she thinks. ‘I’ll have to avoid him; don’t want to be mistaken for security.’

            She pushes open the vent and drops onto the floor.  She looks down the hallway, toward the direction of the gunshots.  The doors to the big room at the end are open, with four dead guards lying in the doorway.  She bends down to pick up a bolter rifle.  A sudden explosion from the big room sends her diving to the floor.  A cloud of smoke and debris billows out through the doors.

            ‘Rifle launched grenade.’  She picks herself up off the floor.  ‘I’m not gonna stick around to see who comes outta there.  Either way it could be bad for me.’

            She heads the other way, turning left down a different hallway.  She passes numerous scorch marks from bolters on the walls, and a few dead security guards, before  reaching her destination.  The metal door to the lab is locked, but it’s no problem for her.  She jacks in, finding the code in seconds, and opens the door.  She walks into the lab, and goes right to the terminal.  The information is very easy to find.  She doesn’t even need to enter the virtual Matrix to find it.  ‘Piece of cake. Guess they never expected anyone to get in here.  Guess they never heard of me.  Good for me.’

            She downloads the data onto a chip, then puts it in the port on the back of her neck.  She hears footsteps out in the hall, and ducks behind the metal desk.  She sees the man in the trenchcoat walk past the door.  ‘That’s my cue to get out of here.  The cops’ll be swarmin’ this place in minutes, looking for someone to blame.  Don’t wanna be that person.  I got what I came for, plus a new rifle I could sell.’

            She gets up into the ventilation shafts, which she follows to the roof and her awaiting jetpack.  She straps it on and flies off into the artificial daylight of City Level One.

Until next time...