Awake

Chapter Forty - Blood-Red Corridors

There was no point in stealth, not once they were into the high command centre. They couldn't have been more obvious if they were decked out in rainbows and in the maze of corridors there was nowhere to hide. So they walked three abreast down the corridors, like a real army not just a rabble set to overturn the system.

"Hey!" a guard stepped in front of them. "Hey, what are you doing, Sandor?"

Jonathan didn't even think. He raised his gun and fired. The guard's eyes widened in shock, he seemed to flinch back from the impact, and then he was dead. Jonathan felt the world narrow, all unnecessary processes cut off. This was only about the battle now.

Beside him, he had felt Natalia draw back at the kill. But she was made of stronger stuff than she looked. She stepped over the corpse and kept pace with him, while behind them Jonathan heard people cry out at the blood on the white floor, the guard's staring, empty eyes.

He wanted to feel sympathy for them, to pity them. For all their training and conditioning, they were unblooded soldiers, just children, just innocents. They had never killed. They had never witnessed a murder like he had just performed. The youngest in the advancement with him was a twelve-year-old boy. Jonathan wanted to feel remorse for putting them through this.

  But he didn't. Wouldn't. Couldn't. All of that would wait until afterwards. All the emotion, all the pain, afterwards. For now, these people were nothing. The world was in the motion of his feet, the recoil of the gun, the weight of it in his hand. There was nothing of pity there.

  People came running to the sound of the gunshot, guards with their weapons raised and ready. The moment they appeared, Jonathan fired without hesitation. At his side, Natalia did the same. She didn't even blink when they died.

  People were shouting now, screaming. Some of the guards weren't dead and more were arriving. Beside Jonathan, a girl fell to the ground with a shriek of pain, a rose of blood blossoming at her thigh. Someone sounded the alarm and it rang out, shrill and deafening.

Suddenly, it was hell on earth in those winding white corridors far below the ground.

Ebb felt a bullet ruffle his hair and he dodged sideways, ducking and rolling, coming up standing, his fingers squeezing the trigger again and again. Three rounds emptied themselves into the torso of the man who had been aiming at him. He flew backwards, red-stained, dropping like bricks to the floor.

  Ebb's mind was curiously clear, straight-lined and simple. There was a sort of beauty in it. Every motion was natural, concentrated, predestined. He spun and fired, fired again, took off running down the corridor. The group he had been assigned to was decimated, scattered and screaming and lost in the mess, but Ebb alive and blazing.

He sprinted down the corridor, took a sharp right, following the map in his mind, heading for the heart of this place, the place where a killing blow could be struck. There were soldiers everywhere now, the dead and the wounded littering the floor. He leapt over them and kept on running, reloading as he did so, spinning round a corner to fire, and fire, and fire, into hearts, throats, stomachs, heads.

 Carmen launched herself into a huge room, surprising a contingent of soldiers yet to get a handle on what was happening. No hesitation. Two guns blazed in her hands. They weren't the old, familiar weapons she knew so well but they were good enough. They killed, after all.

There were her comrades around her, weapons going, sliding round one another, moving like a pack, a swarm of bees, everyone aware of where to go, filling the spaces, never once opening a gap to let these soldiers past.