Chromium

Chapter 2.2

Dia found herself in a white hallway, so clean the acrid smell of disinfectant was making her eyes water. It was a quasi-perfect replica of the room where she came from. Which meant, no windows or any indication of where she was. However, she had no time to think or explore the facility. She had no time. Period.

The noise coming from the siren was loud enough to pierce her eardrums, the lights over the sliding doors on either side of the hallway blinking red.

However, the real problem were the doors themselves. They were closing, the entire facility sealing up after her intrusion. She only had two choices: right or left. She chose left.

A good call.

Dia had just started running when someone yelled, "Freeze!" from behind her. She turned her head but didn't stop. It was a man, a guard judging by his reinforced tactical armor and the fiberglass helmet he was wearing. For sure, he wasn't imperial.

Less than a second went by since he shouted, but he was already getting ready to shoot, one knee down as he took aim. However, it was what he had in his hands which made all the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

It was a Gauss rifle.

Dia ran faster, sprinting until the oxygen in her lungs started to hurt and the walls around her became a blur. She was almost past the door when the guard opened fire, the Gauss rifle jerking back as a single flash of blue light came out from the muzzle. 

The laser beam looked weak, deceptively thin, but it resounded in the hallway like a thunderclap. She ducked just in time to see it going past her, piercing through the thick door with a soft plop.

It went from side to side, creating a hole no bigger than a thumb but obliterating fifty inches of metal in a second. The door closed behind her and Dia shivered seeing the point where the beam had hit, leaving only crystallized metal in its wake.

She started to sigh with relief until she saw what lay ahead of her. Sliding doors. Three of them.

They were closing, just like the first one. Not only was she still in danger, but she risked being trapped between if she didn't pick up the pace.

Faster.

It was the only word in her mind, the only one that mattered. She couldn't be at the mercy of others. Not again.

Never again.

Static electricity surrounded her as she passed the first doors, then the second, darting like a bullet across the hallway until she heard something tearing beneath her.

They were her shoes.

However, she couldn't care about that. She could care about nothing except that noise: a deep buzz followed by a click like that of a mechanism turning. The upper section of the wall seemed to move, for lack of a better term, and Dia gasped when she saw what emerged out of it.

"You have to be kidding me!"

It was something more deadly than a laser gun, its ratio of fire higher than any machine gun of the past.

A turret.

It was already charged and ready to fire. Dia zig-zagged across the hallway to avoid the incoming fire, her speed crossing the limit any human being could hope to achieve.

However, it still wasn't fast enough. At the start the barrage was relentless but imprecise as countless rays of light kept bursting around her, missing their target every time, but now the turret's fire was coming closer and closer to hitting her.