Clair de Lune

20. Red alert

I ran ahead of Marshall, sliding his keycard through the door and watching as a slightly banged up and bruised Necro tumbled out. He looked frantic, but it didn't take long for him to settle down once he realized he was free again.

"Hellfire? Is that you?!" He shouted, his hands gripping my shoulders tightly.

"It's me." I reached up, squeezing his hand gently as he had done to mine in those tunnels. The relief that washed over him was immeasurable.

"Thank God, is Marshall here?"

"Right here, zombie." He nodded. "We better get moving before security comes along."

"What's the plan?" I asked, unsure of where to go.

"We're headed to S Class, I've got someone I need behind bars down there and we're goin' to let him out. Anyone you think might be a help can come along too."

"Okay, then I've got to-!"

A scream rang out through the building suddenly, coming from further down the hall ahead of me. I would've recognized her voice anywhere and in seconds I was running through the halls at full speed. It was a miracle I didn't run into any agents on my way to the infirmary, but when I got there I found that it was empty, seemingly evacuated to somewhere else. A loud f-bomb echoed from my lips while I grabbed a scalpel, feeling better knowing I was armed with at least some type of weapon before charging head first into another mess.

I sprinted down the hall, finding that they'd attempted to lock the doors ahead of me to keep me from reaching them. They blew open with a single thought and I saw that the room I'd broken the window to was occupied once again, this time with even more familiar faces than before. My rage bubbled into an immense fire that melted the glass beneath my touch as I leapt into the room again, unabashedly lunging towards one of the agents and slamming into them while I grabbed their gun from their holster. In a matter of seconds I'd shot three agents down while two researchers cowered in the corner. A syringe had been dropped and shattered on the ground, a good majority of its contents having avoided making their way into Lily's system. The girl was strapped to a gurney, woozy, but not unconscious. Her black eyes locked with mine and I unbuckled her cuffs in moments, picking her up and cradling her against my chest.

"Who's there?" A phantom spoke from beside her, Thamyris' hands and feet pinned to a table by rune covered metal. They must have kept her from escaping.

"It's Hellfire." I told her, turning to the researchers and aiming a gun at their heads. "Unlock her cuffs, or else I paint the room with your blood."

A women ran forward, crying and shaking as she took out a key and slipped it into the holes on the sides of the metal. I snatched the key away the moment she was done and Thamyris leapt to her feet, her navy dress shifting along with her movements as she cornered the two of them. I covered Lily's ears when she ripped her bandages off, a ghostly wail echoing in the room before the two women dropped to the ground, looking like nothing more than lifeless husks when Thamyris turned around again. She revealed black holes where her eyes used to be, now slightly more solid in form than before.

"Those bastards used every trick in the book to pin me down and lock me into that nasty contraption," she growled, "I'm not staying here a second longer than I have to. Let's go."

"After you," I gestured towards the door, to which she was able to glide through effortlessly. I clutched Lily tightly as I hopped through the glass and we took off again, this time towards the elevator.

I urged the woman into the metal box before pushing the button, just waiting to hear a cacophony of gunshots and shouting when we reached the A and S Class hall, but I was left staring out at the red lights as they filled the seemingly empty spaces. We were rewarded carefully as we examined the floor, finding two figures off in a section I'd become familiar with once before. Marshall slid his keycard through the mechanism and I watched as a slight amount of fog released into the hallway. Necro backed up slightly, something darkening in his white scleras that made me a little wary. A figure stepped out from the shadows when I got there, a man with eyes that seemed to glow purple in the dark. The red lights caught on his pearly grin and I felt a sense of death radiating from him. My instincts were telling me that he wasn't normal, but that it wasn't good either.