Dirty Work: Volume 1

Siala: Part 2 - 4

I ducked to the left instantly in order to shield the others from any oncoming attack as they made their escape. Nobody was in the hallway yet, and there was no sound coming from the stairwell, but I could feel them virtually breathing on the door to the corridor. It would be seconds before shots started being fired.

Siala got out, Harly behind, closing the door on his way out.

'Move,' he said. He had two XF 54 Alphas pointed down the corridor towards the main entrance. Siala threw the 58 to me at the moment that the door opened. I saw the emergence of the end of a gun and shot it.

'Time to go,' I said.

'Too right,' Harly replied, as we hurriedly backed to the other end of the corridor.

Two more barrels peered around the corner at the end of the hallway and fired. We ducked, one blast missing Harly by inches. I returned fire and Harly squeezed off a few shots. In the confined space the blasts were deafening, the sound bouncing off the walls and hitting us again like ricocheting bullets. Another shot came our way as the whole team of them began to emerge from the stairwell into the hallway.

'Run!' Harly shouted, and we didn't need telling a second time.

Siala threw herself at the fire-door, which led to a small spiral staircase that wound down the side of the building.

'Up!' I shouted as I hid behind the door. Harly moved past me and followed Siala on up, Rena clinging on inside her hood. I spun around and fired off a blast, hitting a Red Rose thug in the arm, spinning back outside before I could take a hit. I closed the door and shoved a massive doorstop in front of it, hoping it would slow their exit.

I ducked into the rain and began to climb the staircase. It was a massive tube of a thing, spiralling for a good twenty stories into the air onto the top of the building. The designer was obviously a nut job, because I didn't think that a single spiral staircase, a rickety, clanking thing that it was, would be any help in a fire. And besides, it's constantly raining on Celestria. Where would you get a blaze big enough in the first place?

I'd like to say that I was calm enough to think these things as I climbed up, urging Harly and Siala to climb faster, but I wasn't. I stopped and aimed back down at the doorway just as it opened, firing as a hooded figure aimed its own weapon up at us. I hit the handle and he ducked back inside.

'Hurry up!' I yelled, abandoning my post and scampering on up after them. The rain made the metal of the gun cold in my hand, and it rang out like a drum kit on the rails of the stairs as we ran, one foot infront of the other, never seemingly fast enough. Ahead of me, Harly peered down the central well of the staircase and fired, getting a red blast in return to the ear.

'Shit!' He tossed me the 54 in his right hand and clamped a hand over his rapidly-dissolving ear as he began to ascend once again. I followed after him, firing a shot down wildly.

It had been my original intention to get to the top of the building and go across the rooftops, but apparently Siala had different ideas. On the fourteenth floor she left the staircase and ran to the door back inside. Standing there smoking a blunt was a bewildered looking young man with scars all across his face, and what looked to be some sort of infection in his left eye. He had got his foot in the door, holding it open. Siala pushed past him and held it open.

'Thanks for holding the door open for a lady,' she said as Harly ran past her, blood pouring from his hand. I got off the staircase, leaning over the floor fourteen balcony and firing down. Two floors down, one of the Red Rose girls took a hit in the face and a second to the breast. She crumpled, and in an effort to get past her, they pushed her body over the stairs where it fell towards the ground, the remaining jelly in her eyeballs streaming away behind her.

I ducked inside and tried to get the sensation of my own eyes burning away out of my mind. Telling myself I was imagining things was no consolation for the fact that, even though I was fine, I could feel my eyes beginning to bubble, my lashes begin to itch, and my nose... well I couldn't feel my nose, but that might have just been because it was freezing out there.

'Main stairs!' I yelled to Siala, tossing her the 54 Harly had thrown me. 'Come on Harly, we're getting out of here!'

Siala ran to the main stairwell and threw open the door, pointing down first, and then up to cover off anyone climbing above us and coming down from the top in case we made a rooftop attempt inside. I took Harly under my arm and helped him to stagger along to the staircase.

'Leave... me...' he said with breath more ragged than a homeless man's clothes. 'Just get... her... outta here...'

'Fuck that,' I spat back at him. 'Let's shift.'

We made it to the stair well and began to run down. I gave Harly to Siala 'I'll cover up top. Get him out of the building and somewhere safe. I'll meet you if I get out.'

She looked at me, wanting to give me the 54, but I held my 58 up. She nodded, before beginning to drag Harly down the stairs.

I took up a vantage point behind the door that opened onto the floor 14 main corridor, where I could hear boots begin to thud on the carpet.

'Siala!' I called out quickly.

'Yes?!'

'Why are they after you?'

'She defected from them,' Rena answered.

I saw a shadow outside the door and aimed.