Ninja Girl

The guard looked up from his booth to see a car hurtling down the street in his direction. His eyes narrowed in concern and confusion as he stepped from the booth. Raising his hand, he called out a, “Stop!” but the driver of the vehicle did not seem to be paying attention. The car did not slow down in the slightest. If anything, it may have even picked up speed.

“Stop!” The guard called again, but still the car paid him no heed.

Now the guard was hesitating, his legs, shaking as adrenaline coursed through his veins. The car was barreling down on him really fast, and it was coming down to a choice between doing his job and continuing his life.

He chose the latter.

At almost the last minute he turned and ran, diving for the relative safety on the other side of the small security room and the low concrete curb running around it.

The car burst through the boom gate, shattering the arm blocking access to the parking lot and sending splinters flying in every which way. The guard rolled as he hit the pavement and quickly pushed himself back up to his feet. He turned to watch the car continue its fateful journey across the parking lot until it rammed headlong into the building beyond. With one hand the guard loosened the gun at his hip, and with his other hand reached for the radio on his shoulder.

Nick popped out from behind the guard booth and charged across the parking lot. While he had meant it when he had said that he was not very good at stealth, one didn’t need to be when a car barrels through a traffic gate and crashes into a building. While the guard was distracted by the out of control vehicle, Nick had snuck up to the gate house.

The car was his. He had run back across town to retrieve it. He had jammed some metal poles between the head rest and the steering wheel to keep the car straight, and then placed a brick on the accelerator. It was hardly anything sophisticated, but it allowed him to essentially drive the car without being inside of it. Sophisticated or not, it had worked, and that was truly what mattered.

Nick rammed the guard full on with his shoulder, hard enough to knock the man straight off his feet and send him collapsing to the ground. The gun clattered to the pavement and skidded off a short distance.

He fumbled for the guard’s radio and ripped it off his belt. Flipping it in his hand he weighed it to find the best place to hold it for use as a weapon. The guard was starting to rise already, and Nick swung the radio against the back of the man’s head. Then he turned and lobbed the device over his shoulder off into the distance.

Nick ran forward and grabbed up the dropped gun. He checked to see if the safety was on, decided he had no idea what he was looking for, and settled on just having to try to not fire it.

The guard was again attempting to push himself back on to his feet. Nick sighed in annoyance and pointed the gun at the man. “I suggest you run now,” he said.

The guard looked up at Nick, and raised his hands in surrender. “Look, son, I don’t know what’s going on, but you don’t want to do this.”

“Don’t call me son!” Nick growled. He waved the gun a couple times. “I know exactly what I’m doing, and you need to run!”

The man got to his feet, but made no attempt to turn away.

“RUN!” Nick was screaming now. Behind him, still inside the building, Nick knew there had to be a crowd gathering, first to see what the hell the crash they had heard was, and second to watch the display of the man holding the gun outside.

Some people came running out from the building, but halted when they saw Nick holding the gun. A couple security guards also came out, running around the group of people.

Nick turned the gun on these new guards. “Don’t even think about it!” he snapped. They were reaching for their guns, but froze in place at Nick’s words.

The nearer guard held up his free hand in front of him, indicating for Nick to stop. He did not move his other hand any further away from the gun on his belt. With careful, tiny steps he continued inching forward towards Nick. “Okay young man, just put down the gun? Okay?”

“Where are they?” Nick demanded, spitting a little. He scrunched up his face and blinked a lot, trying to bring tears into his eyes. “Where are they?”

“Who?” The guard, still inching forward, asked him.

“The bastards responsible for her death! Where are they?”

“Whose death?”

“You know whose death! Her death! She died trying to save me. She shouldn’t even have been here. She shouldn’t have even been in the country! But they kidnapped her and they took her and now she… she…”

Nick watched the crowd from the corner of his eye. The guard was getting too close, and he couldn’t let this end here. There needed to be more of a distraction. He lowered his arms. The guards took this as a chance and sprinted towards Nick. He, in turn, broke into a run toward the gathered crowd.

There were some screams, and the crowd broke before him. Nick ran past them, across the parking lot, and up to the front doors of the building. He threw open the doors, ran into the now unguarded lobby, and hurtled down the hallway beyond.

On the wall Nick spotted a fire alarm. Hardly pausing in his momentum, he reached out and yanked on the lever. The wail of the electronic bell filled up the building. Nick continued running.

Down the hall he found some doors labeled as stairs. He burst through the door and began pounding up the steps. The further up he went the more people he found filing into the stairway in a frantic rush to exit the building. After only a few minutes he began to feel like a salmon swimming upstream, but without the energy for the effort.

The next landing he reached Nick pushed through the oncoming crowd to get out of the stairwell and into the hallway beyond. He collapsed on the ground, breathing heavily, and waited.

The hallway was mostly clear. There could hardly have been that many people in the building to begin with. Nick stood up and began to wander around the empty offices. From the look of everything, it was all absurdly normal. This could have been any office in any building anywhere on the planet. There were no evil robot sentries, no Big Brother style “We are watching,” posters, not even any crooked scientists twirling long mustaches and cackling manically. Quite to the contrary, Nick even passed a break room with a small buffet of sweets including cake. It apparently had been somebody’s birthday.

The fire alarm suddenly cut off, and Nick found himself standing in the dim quiet of the empty office. He suddenly felt very, very alone.

A faint “ding” from an elevator sounded. Nick turned to face it and watched the doors open. Out of the elevator stepped a large, muscular man in a tactical suit and dark, cropped hair.

Valentin.

“So,” he said, his thick Russian accent rumbling out of him like thunder, “you are the rebyonok that has been causing all the trouble.”

“The… what? Did you just call me a shoe?”

Valentin paused, taken aback. “What?”

“Reb… whatever. The thing you said. Isn’t that a shoe brand?”

The big man’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “No. It means child. Like you. You are a child.”

Nick shook his head and wiggled his fingers on the grip of the gun. “I’m not a child! Why does everyone keep saying that?”

“You come here, to our building, weeping over some girl and you expect to convince us that you are not a child?”

“Some girl?” Nick echoed. “Some girl!?” He raised the gun and pointed it at Valentin. “Some girl who you people kidnapped! Who you people tortured! Who you people killed!”

The pounding of footsteps resounded down the hallways, and before long multiple armed men in the now familiar fatigues and balaclavas of all of Ryerson’s mercenaries poured into the room and aimed their guns at Nick. He paid them no attention, focusing entirely on Valentin.

“You didn’t need to kill her! You didn’t need to kill her! You bastards!”

Valentin frowned, pacing up and down in front of Nick. He obviously wasn’t buying Nick’s story. “I recommend you put your gun down now.”

“Why?” Nick stomped his foot. “Why bother? What do I have to live for? She’s gone, everything’s gone. You burned down my home, you destroyed me life, I’ve totaled my car, and now she… she’s…”

Nick dropped to his knees and let the gun slip from his fingertips. “She’s gone,” he said again.

Valentin motioned to some of his men, and a moment later they were on Nick. They pushed him to the floor and pulled his hands behind him, tying them together with a zip tie. They hauled him up to his feet and stood him up facing Valentin.

“You were a fool to come here,” the big man told Nick. “And you are wrong about us. Come, I will show you.” He motioned to the soldier on Nick’s right side. “Bring him.”

Turning, Valentin headed back to the elevators. The soldiers holding Nick half-pushed, half-carried him along behind. Once inside the elevator they shoved him up against the back wall. Valentin stood by the buttons. Raising his hand, he pressed it up against a section of the wall. There was a flash of light followed by a beeping sound, and a panel slid away. Behind the panel was a number pad. Valentin keyed in a sequence, the doors slid shut, and the elevator rumbled into action.

Nick frowned. A secret panel meant secret floors, most likely in the basement. He had not thought of that possibility. He wondered just how far down they were headed.

“I thought you wanted to convince me you were the good guys. You seem to have a lot to hide for people doing the right thing.”

Valentin scoffed. “Our enemies are many, and there are those who would jump to conclusions or get the wrong idea. We are doing work for survival into the future, but that does not mean everyone will see the best in it. It is necessary that we remain in the shadows, like your ninja friends. Do you see them as evil because they, too, hide from the world?”

Nick looked away, not wanting to admit the words had gotten to him. What Valentin said was true. The ninjas did hide in the shadows, hidden away from the entire world, and by Anya’s own admission appointed themselves judge, jury, and executioner where they saw fit. He really had nothing more than his own experience with Anya to judge what kind of person she was, and even all of that did not necessarily show her in the best light.

But when compared to what little he had seen of Ryerson, he would still sooner put her on the side of the angels than them.

The elevator lurched to a halt, and a moment later the doors slid open. Nick felt a shove from the men on either side of him, and he stumbled forward. As he began walking, he glanced around for some sign of where he was. The hallway the elevator let out onto was made entirely of concrete. It looked like some sort of military bunker. Painted along one wall was the designation “S3.” Nick wondered what that could mean. Sub-basement three? Just how far down were they?

Valentin stopped at the end of the hall, which came to an end with a doorway. “This,” Valentin said, “is what I wanted you to see.”

He turned the knob and pushed Nick into the room. Nick stumbled in, looking around.

His eyes went wide, and his mouth nearly fell to the floor.