ARKEN

Strike Back, Part Two

Creed found himself on the floor when he awoke. The walls and ceiling were falling and the flames threatened to surround him. He got to his knees, coughing and searching around. He looked to his right, expecting to find Faye's office, but there was just a gaping hole in the building, wreathed in flame.

He stood, barely avoiding another collapsing piece of rubble. The whole building was going to come down, and he didn't intend to go down with it. He did a quick self-assessment and found that he was almost completely unharmed, better for getting out of there.

Creed entered the stairwell and started his descent, smoke hovered just overhead every step of the way, forcing him to stay low. Even then, he felt the black choking him from the inside. At one point, he became so weak, he fell down a flight, landing hard at the bottom. It did nothing to help the injuries he still had from the last time he fell down some stairs, or the injuries from being beaten up with wooden beams.

He pulled himself back up with the railing and proceeded along, making it out of the stairs and onto the ground floor. The situation was no better there, except for slightly reduced amounts of smoke. Bodies littered the ruins, all of them people who had been focused on work, unaware of what was about to happen and gone before they had a chance to fight for their lives.

Creed exited through a small side door, breathing in the clear air and looking for any others who made it out. The bodies of guards on the ground littered with bullet holes was enough for him to know he needed to go. He heard sounds of gunfire near the front, but he wasn't going to get involved. He used a back way out of the complex, a small single door in the wall to leave the complex behind without looking back, coughing all the way.

Tobias was restrained to the machine when the whole building shook. It was enough that a few chunks of the ceiling came crashing down, startling everyone. All scientists were concerned, speculating about what was going on up above.

"Is it an earthquake?!" One asked.

"No, I think it was an explosion!"

"Are we under attack?!"

Doctor Hammond was not pleased, "If you're all so concerned, then get out! You're distracting me and wasting space in my lab."

None of them seemed to want to be there anymore, so they obliged him. Hammond alone kept working on the machine. "Yes, these readings...these are exactly what I've been looking for! They'll be so pleased with me!"

Tobias wasn't paying much attention to anything the doctor said. Being in the machine was taking its toll on him, he felt sick and dazed, barely able to struggle anymore. The last several days had been spent attempting to solve the issues in the system. Hammond and his staff still couldn't figure out how and why the machine was damaging Tobias's kidneys when he was hooked into it.

They hadn't been able to make much progress because they could only leave him in the machine for an hour at most before having to take him out to recover. They even had to put him on dialysis twice for fear that he would die. Tobias didn't know exactly what the prognosis was, but he knew he was getting worse and his kidneys weren't going to last if this kept up.

Another violent shake and more rubble came falling. A few chunks of rock hit the machine and knocked some cables loose. "What in God's name is going on up there?" Hammond went to the phone and made a call.

"This is Doctor Hammond, what is the nature of—" Hammond suddenly looked like he was the one who was ill. He dropped the phone to the ground and walked over to Tobias, all the color drained from his face. "I was so close...One would have been proud of me, he would have congratulated me and probably even promoted me. Now...I will have none of that." He touched Tobias's forehead gently, as if he now suddenly cared for him beyond what one could care for a lab rat.