Spitting on the unnecessary theatrics—he wouldn't react to me anyway—I moved on and slipped into the room to the right of the helicopter's nose jutting elegantly out of the wall. A quick glance around revealed a trove of truly rare artifacts: paintings from the Renaissance era, statues dating back to ancient Greece, and more. So the police chief's obsession with various works of art wasn't exaggerated after all. I could appraise all of this with a trained eye inherited from Vector, who actually understood such things. It sometimes felt as if his teachers had prepared him for absolutely everything; it was hard to imagine how he'd ended up in Delta Team(Wolfpack fell under that letter) when he had a straight road to Alpha, to be Hunk's right hand.
Shaking my head—more out of habit than anything—I cut off the stream of thoughts that had clearly wandered in the wrong direction and walked toward the opposite wall. It seems that one of the peculiar keys to this puzzle-box of a building should be stored here. I'd learned firsthand that this world was full of secret passages, evacuation routes, and the like—learned it the hard way, nearly losing my own hide in the process.
I wonder… can I activate the mechanism without collecting anything? If I remember correctly, the protagonists had several possible scenarios here... Let's hope this is the first one. I approached the statues standing beside a column adjoining the wall, the column carved with a Greek warrior. The statues had recesses meant for activators. Well, let's see whether brute force can triumph over reason—and while we're at it, I'll try on the skin of a vandal. Fists at the ready, I slammed a punch into one recess with all my strength, then, stepping to the right under acceleration, repeated the procedure on the other.
There was a click—from a mechanism clearly not designed for such treatment, or, on the contrary, one built specifically for this kind of emergency opening. In any case, it let me know I could claim the "golden key" that popped out of a niche beneath the Greek warrior. I took a step toward the pedestal when another click sounded.
…What?
With a loud crack, something inside the column activated, and a split second later—just enough time for me to leap back—it was destroyed from within.
A Tyrant! Seriously, how many of you are there?! Oh right—congratulations, Cain. This is the second scenario.
I looked more closely at its face and spotted a vivid scar running across the entire left side. I couldn't help but whistle.
"Fate itself keeps bringing us together. Well, this time I won't stop at just carving up someone's mug," I said with a grin—and then, very politely, exited the room, closing the doors behind me without even grabbing the key. Not my headache anymore. Claire, Leon—you have my sympathy.
"Graaargh!"
The roar erupted behind my back, and a chunk of the column smashed through the door, proving it to be a rather flimsy barrier against an enraged Tyrant. I slipped into acceleration, and the massive slab of white marble—or maybe not marble—immediately slowed. A burst to the right, then a diving leap past the obstructing helicopter nose.
I landed at the far end of the corridor, having cleared about three meters in the jump, and turned left—there were no other branches here. Hm. Going right would lead to the area Claire had entered the building from, just one floor up; though that level looked more like a balcony. With this maneuver I could shake off the Tyrant who burst out behind me, widening the passage—but that would put Claire under attack (and it's not certain she's already armed with something powerful, which might not even be here). So, we go left.
This should be a bypass leading toward the rear of the helicopter—and, by extension, the roof. I wonder if I can, if not throw the Tyrant down, at least leave it up there.
I sprinted down the corridor to the sound of a T-103 slamming into the wall behind me—it had used its own burst of speed as well. I practically smashed the door at the end of the hall open with my left shoulder; I simply didn't have time to open it properly. Another crash echoed behind me. The Tyrant could definitely accelerate, but only in a straight line and without controlling the burst.
Straight ahead through yet another cluttered corridor, then left again—this time there was no junction. Well, technically I could've gone straight, but I really didn't feel like running loops through the area. Besides, the Tyrant crashing into the closed door behind me turned it into an open, heavily shattered one. Running straight past broken windows—on the other side of which I could see piles of crows, with one already flapping around inside the room. And I had no desire to find out how appetizing I looked to them.
I vaulted over a police officer pecked into a state where even becoming a zombie was no longer an option, turned right, and hurled some debris piled against the wall at the Tyrant. It didn't slow it down in the slightest—but one crow was killed by a fragment of a mop. Miraculously making the turn, I kept moving, snatching one of the crows mid-flight as it decided to swoop into the room. Apparently, just like with dogs, these birds considered me food. If my memory served me right, these creatures even ate zombies, so maybe I was being unfair to my own nature—perhaps, in their eyes, even a Tyrant counted as a meal.
(End of Chapter)
P@treon: /SadRaven
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