OUTWORLD: Chronicles

Stairwell to Heaven

LAPD officer Oona Merrett sat in a tiny room, slumped against a crumbling plaster wall and staring at the dusty toes of her boots, wondering how tonight had gone so wrong.

She looked up, realizing that she hadn't moved her neck in nearly an hour, and glanced at the window behind her to her left. Weak early morning sunlight struggled through the gaps between the planks nailed to the frame and cast slitted shadows on the bare floor. Glinting in the light was an oily puddle of water fed by a leaking pipe in the ceiling. Merrett peered into it, checking her reflection as it rippled with every drip. She ran a paw over a particularly livid scar on her muzzle; it still stung. She decided not to touch the raw edges of the ragged gap in her right ear.

Merrett had never really placed much emphasis on her looks as a rule, but she knew she was reasonably attractive, even for a Collie. Her looks had been tarnished, no matter how slightly, but the reason she suddenly wanted to look away had nothing to do with that – seeing her injuries brought the memories of what had made them screaming back.

This was supposed to have been a routine operation – the building in which she sat was located in the residential sector of a mostly abandoned industrial sprawl. Evidence from several vice cases had pointed to this locale, and this building in particular, as the current nexus of one big unified network. They moved around, so Merrett's team had been dispatched to strike while the iron was hot.

Getting in had been too easy – there should have been defenses, security... then they'd seen the bodies, or what was left of them.

And then...

The... things had descended.

Half of the team were almost immediately torn apart, including the ranking officers, and the other half had been forced toward the stairwell, the exits all walled off by a morass of scything claws, grinding teeth and... were there wings, as well...?

Merrett blinked, seeing it all every time she closed her eyes. The frantic climb had seen the team reduced to four officers, Merrett included, and the things had chased them to this room, retreating only when the weak light from the window touched them. The screeches they had uttered still rang in Merrett's ears. In this day and age, Los Angeles was the world of the weird, but this was on a different level entirely.

A voice intruded on her reverie, snapping her back to the present moment. "I say we lure 'em up here, to the landing, and blow 'em up." She looked over to the speaker, a Dog, and saw that he was hefting a block of solid Mocon-D4.

"With that?" another officer, a female Fox, snorted. "What's that gonna do, Keppel? Richmond and Chen had the detonators!"

"We don't need 'em, Voltaire!" Keppel growled. "We put a bullet in this, and it'll go. Take 'em with us!"

Voltaire snarled, wiping her paws on her tac vest. "Great idea! You just left out the part where we, y'know, survive!"

"Survive?" Keppel shot back. "You seen what's in here with us?"

"Surviving's out of the question, Voltaire," another officer, this one a male Leopard, mumbled. An almost visible air of hopelessness surrounded him. "We go out on our own terms. I'm in."

"On our own terms," Merrett repeated softly.

Keppel glanced moodily in her direction. "You say something, Merrett?"

"On our own terms," Merrett said more loudly. She felt a surge of strength that got her to her feet, and she turned to look out over the grey buildings outside; they were turning silver as dawn began to break. She turned to face the others, pointing at the Leopard. "Brownway. What floor are we on? There's forty floors in this place. You'd remember that, surely?"