The werewolf brought up a hand to remove the obstruction, handle of Randal’s knife still hanging out of the creature’s mouth. But before he could, Clara swung her blade and decapitated the were beast.

“Come on,” she said. Ran retrieved his knife and followed.

“Can you make it up the elevator shaft?” she asked.

“I think so.”

“You can or you can’t,” she said. “But we have to know.”

“I can.”

“Ok, let’s go.”

Figuring one elevator was as good as any other, the two made it to the same elevator Clara had come down, dead guards littering the hall.

Clara righted herself, leaping to face the werewolf again, but it was already flying at her.

“Clara!” Ran yelled behind her and the ninja knew his tone, working with him enough. She dropped to the ground as the werewolf came at her again. If she was wrong, there was little defense from this position.

But she was not wrong. Sailing over Clara’s prone body, a knife struck the werewolf in his open, gaping jaw. The creature immediately stopped, shaking its head violently as if trying to free something stuck in its throat. He shook his head again as if confused.

The two ran some time before hearing a noise behind them. “Down!” Clara yelled turning and drawing a blade. Randal obeyed immediately, dropping to the stone floor, covering his head as an enormous werewolf leapt over the Special. Clara tried to gut the beast as he flew toward her, but the creature was too fast, pushing her arm away with his clawed hand. The creature snarled viciously, driving its tooth ridden maw toward her throat. It was all she could do to drop to her back and kick the creature over the top of her, vaulting the thing flying overhead.

Ran left the cell behind, a place of such darkness and pain. He was glad to have Clara leading him again. Though he would not admit it, perhaps not even to himself, he felt safer when she was around. Perhaps it stemmed from her abilities as a warrior and a Red Ninja; perhaps it was simply that their relationship had begun as teacher and pupil; or perhaps it was that he truly did love her.

Whatever it was, he was happy to follow her plan and happy to have her as his rescuer. He truly held complete confidence in her.

“I’ll make it,” Ran said, pulling the sheath over his back and putting the knife at his waist. “Where’s everyone else?”

“There isn’t anyone else,” Clara said. “Just me.”

“But how are we going to get Giresun?”

“That’s not the mission. I get in and get you out. That’s it. Giresun can wait for now.”

The Special considered this, then nodded. “What’s our escape?”

She told him the plan and the two quickly entered the hall, body stockings changing from black in the dark cell to dark gray in the wet stone hallways. Ran was more than happy to go.

“Are you ready?” Clara asked, handing Randal his own thermal body stocking and flexible climbing shoes, pulling her hood back up and checking the hall.

Randal sat up, his body still aches and pains but doing better. He wanted to go before the nanaline wore off. “I’m ready,” he said, pulling on the clothes and smearing black makeup over his eyes. She didn’t have contacts for him, but otherwise they were dressed identically.

“Are you sure you’ll be fine?” she asked him, concern in her voice and handing him one of her short swords in a sheath and a knife.

“Here, I brought you this,” Clara said, holding up a syringe. “Nanaline. Sprite said it was the best thing for you. She gave me three to take with. She didn’t know how much to give you, but she said you would know how much your body could handle.”

“I can handle two right now,” he said, drawing in a deep breath. “Thanks,” he said, taking the first and injecting it into his neck. He closed his eyes, a warming sensation flooding his body. Clara handed him a second. This he injected half into each thigh.

“Are you ready to go?”

The rest Ran desired didn’t exactly come, each tug of bamboo sending a surge of pain through him. But the removal felt good too, a foreign object removed and his body, no matter how damaged, returned to a more natural state.

He kept his eyes closed, enjoying the pain, knowing he was more himself.

“Ran,” Clara said softly, hand gently touching his chest, as if waking him a late morning after a night of passion, rather than waking him from this living nightmare. “Ran, we need to go.”

He opened his eyes and gave her a small smile. “I know.”

“Ran, are you ok?” Clara asked, pulling back her hood to reveal her face, an oval of black makeup surrounding her black eyes.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” he said, his voice a rough whisper. “Just get these things out of me.”

She looked at the rest of his body and began to expertly remove the stalks of bamboo. “What did they do to you?” she said.

“I’m ok, now that you’re here.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, wanting just a moment of rest before he would have to rise to his feat to begin their escape.

The angel of death held Temmins to the wall.

“Kill him,” the prisoner rasped.

The angel drove the sword home with both hands, swiftly plunging the weapon, puncturing the fat man’s neck.

Temmins felt pain, like pinching, and the feeling like a lump in his throat. He couldn’t draw in a breath. Then with a swift jerk to her left, the sword freed itself. Temmins felt a flash of cold air on his neck and saw a spray of red on the wall to his right, before his head flipped over to the left and his vision blurred to blackness.

The door kicked open and the angel of death herself stood before Temmins, head to toe in black, sword in each hand, dripping with the blood of the guilty.

His time had come. His time of reckoning was upon him. His time to pay was here. No more delays. No more avoidance. His debt was due.

The angel of death advanced quickly on Temmins, putting one bloodied sword away, the other at his throat, driving the fat man to the far stone wall, dampness soaking the back of his shirt and pants.

“Ran!” the angel said, glancing at the prisoner.

“Battle sounds don’t end so abruptly. Battle noises are not short bursts followed by long silences. Battle noises keep going, longer than you ever want them to go. To the point that you’re begging for the noises to stop. But slaughter, that’s worse. Slaughter is quick. Slaughter is fast. Slaughter is terrible. Those are the noises I hear now.”

Temmins shook his head, refusing to listen. Then there was the terrible screeching, wrenching sound of metal on metal. Temmins turned his fat body toward the door and saw a sword protruding from it, a neat cut going around the locks.

“Tell me,” Temmins said, trying for understanding and caring. “Tell me what you know of battle.”

“Not battle really,” the man said. “I shouldn’t have said that. This sound is more like slaughter.”

“Slaughter?” Temmins tried brushing off the word, tried holding to ignorance, tried forgetting its meaning, and yet something gnawed at him, deep down. Perhaps truth.

“Yes, slaughter. These noises. They are more slaughter than battle.”

“What do you mean?” Temmins said, stepping closer, needing to know the answer to his questions more than any other questions he had ever asked any other victim, subject, patient of his.

Icy water still dripped and poured on the prisoner’s face, ice still hung from his hair, and his body still had dozens of bamboo stalks protruding from open sores and wounds. And yet the man chuckled.

“Scary, isn’t it?” he said, his voice weak and raspy from lack of use.

“What do you mean?” Temmins asked, stepping forward, trying to engage him in dialogue. Perhaps just getting him to talk would eventually lead him to share the information Giresun wanted.

“The noises. Of battle. When you can’t see what’s going on. When you don’t know what will happen. Or why.”

Another short burst of gunfire broke Temmins’s thoughts, and the fat man spun back toward the cell door. As fast as it started, the firefight was over. What could this mean? Did they kill whoever was here? Was the danger over? Curse them for not utilizing the loud speaker. Someone tell me what’s going on!

The man on the table chuckled, and Temmins turned on him, scared of even this small sound, so foreign in this place.

Icy water still dripped and poured on the unknown man’s face, ice still hung from his hair, his body, a field of pain.

Gunfire! And so close! That sounded like the very floor they were on! Temmins stepped back from the prisoner and listened at the door. The gunfire stopped. Could that really mean they had an intruder? Someone foolish enough to attempt a jailbreak?

Or perhaps an escapee? Temmins looked back at the man on the metal table. His naked body was damaged but still strong, and Temmins remembered this man’s own attempt at escape only a couple short weeks ago.

For the first time, Temmins wondered who this man really was. What was his mystery?

Then another short burst of gunfire.

The place was laid out like a maze, obviously meant to disorient and confuse. But Clara had memorized the schematics of the place and knew exactly where she was going. She rounded one corner and threw her kitana without hesitation. The blade embedded itself into a ceiling mounted cannon just where Sprite had told her to hit it, sparks flying from the disabled weapon. Clara retrieved her sword and continued her way through the damp, stone covered hallways, her body stocking, makeup, and contacts again a dark gray, mirroring the walls, ceiling, and floor.

She must find Randal and quickly.

She was a living nightmare. None had ever seen a vampire so easily vanquished nor a foe more confident.

Someone yelled open fire, but by the time the words were spoken, Clara had already worked her blades through a dozen men, swords flashing in the dim light, more blood spraying, coating the floors and walls, men screaming, the last sounds they made on this mortal plane.

Before any had gained the fortitude to pull a trigger, the nightmare had nearly killed them all. Cutting the last of them in half, Clara began to search for Randal’s prison cell in earnest.

Clara decapitated the vampire and landed on the narrow ledge of the elevator. She kicked his body forward out of her way as his head fell several more subbasements behind her. His severed neck sprayed decreasing spurts of blood; his head landed with a soft thud. Pulling her other sword free from the elevator door, Clara stepped forward, sword in each hand, the vampire’s body now quickly rotting away at her feet. She was the angel of death clad in black, about to send these men to Hades. The guards before her trembled. One wet himself. Another started to cry.

There was the sound of screeching metal, and the doors lurched open a bit. Clara saw two hands reach in on both sides of the elevator doors. The guard grunted with the effort and pried the doors open a shoulder’s width.

The ninja steadied herself, ready for action. A vampire ducked his head in, peering down the elevator shaft. The last thing he saw was the sight of a slim woman in a black body stocking, rocketing upward from the door’s ledge in a flash, sword in hand.

Clara decapitated the vampire with a swift gesture using her other sword.

As the ninja flew through the air, several guards positioned behind the elevator door opened fire, fist sized holes appearing in the as they made fast action of things, quickly turning the access into Swiss cheese.

The gunfire continued for at least a minute, then orders to stop were yelled. A few more random shots and then there was silence.

Orders were given to check the door. After some obvious hesitation, orders were given again. Then someone volunteered loudly and with some disgust. The commanding officer thanked the volunteer, and clearly there’s was not a relationship of commander and subordinate.

If she could push off the heavy elevator cable, then Clara would just have to worry about what she would grab onto once she jumped to the SubBase4 door. Clara removed one of her swords, throwing it like a javelin through the elevator door. There, now she had something to grab hold of when she jumped across.

But after impaling the door with her sword, there was a muffled scream from the other side and muffled orders and shouts.

Clara cursed her stupid luck and desperately jumped for the ledge at the bottom of the door, having little other choice.

After climbing down the elevator shaft past the basement levels and then past three of the subbasement levels, Clara stopped nearly one hundred feet below where she began, still hanging onto the thick, twisted metal elevator cable. Clara looked at the doors, labeled on the inside as SubBase4. They looked a lot further away from this side of the elevator shaft, no longer able to push off anything too sturdy to make her way across. She tried swinging, but this elevator cable wasn’t going anywhere.

Wouldn’t swing? Maybe she did have something solid enough to push off of after all.

The Red Ninja spat blood on the ground, Jac’s face a disfigured interpretation made from raw hamburger. This was his first failed employment, and it certainly wouldn’t help his career. He wondered what Gireson would say.

Jac would have to talk with the glyph and see if the situation could still be salvaged. Anja certainly wouldn’t be pleased, if she were even still alive. Of course, if he had survived, she probably had too. And if he was angry, she had to be livid.

There’s was a code, a way of life.

It wasn’t often that a glyph was bested.

Sprite passed young hips looking for the perfect, overpriced clothing and exited through the front. Just a hundred feet to her right, at the end of the block, Sprite took broad, cement stairs to the underground public rail. She boarded using a false ID pass, taking a seat near two exits, a couple cars from the back.

She tried to relax, exhaling, though she continued to scour the passengers for anything unusual. Finally the transpo began to move. After a couple transfers and a couple of hours, Sprite would be home.

There she hoped to find everyone else, including Turtle.

Sprite walked down the narrow alley, identical to the last, passing three metal doors on her left before sliding her key into the lock of one.

Behind her, she heard a muffled popping. The guards had tried to move or activate her equipment, and the backup failsafe went off, destroying the equipment and possibly even some of the intruders. Sprite smiled, then unlocked the bolt.

She concealed her snubbie rapid fires in her duffle and made her way past two dressing rooms, short pale curtains acting as doors. She entered a small boutique filled with retro lace and leather clothing.

The ace mech squeezed her small frame behind some shelves and into a narrow passageway. She had to hunch over now, the ceiling even lower. But she followed the hall which lead her beneath the street out front, where at least one van of armed professionals were seeking Sprite, and into the basement storage of a neighborhood grocery.

She pushed several crates of dried goods forward just enough for her to slide out. Then she slid the crates back and made her way upstairs to the back room. From there, she exited to the alley and pulled out a key.

Hard to say how many other guards were out there, and Sprite didn’t want to draw attention to herself with the speedy Double R 50. She quickly but quietly made her way into the low, stone cellar. The expanse was pitch black, but this was one of the main reasons the darts had chosen this location for Sprite’s setup. Too bad they wouldn’t be able to use it again.

Sprite waited a moment for her eyes to adjust, then she made her way to the back of the room. Behind some shelves, Sprite had just enough room for her escape.

Sprite quickly climbed out the rear window onto the old, rusty fire escape. The back alley was narrow, brick buildings on each side and trash cans next to nondescript metal doors, the drive too thin for even dumpsters.

Buried in cardboard, 300 feet at the end of the alleyway, Sprite had her yellow Rocket Rider 50 waiting for her. She considered taking it; the two wheeler was narrow enough to maneuver these alleys in the old neighborhood, but her darts didn’t need yet another high profile roadway getaway. Instead, she pulled open the horizontal cellar doors, entering the building’s basement.

Sprite had had enough physical confrontation over the last couple weeks. She was getting out of here if she still had the time. She locked down her machines then grabbed her joystick rack. It had been a precision job that she didn’t want to have to repeat if unnecessary. She threw this in a duffle bag and withdrew two snubbie rapid fires, throwing the duffle over her shoulder.

She glanced outside and saw a white paneled van pull up and six armed guards quickly piling out. The front entrance was not the way to go, but Sprite had another option.