A Day of Faces

Infection

"Need a ride?" he said, grinning.

"Cheesy," I replied, tutting, stepping in beside him.

He flashed his ID card and the doors closed. The elevator began to rise.

"Here we go."

Marv grimaced. "You know you're on camera now, right? They've got your face."

"I don't care."

"You might."

The floor lights lit one by one as we ascended the spire. Marv stared around us, his eyes focused on something more distant than the walls around us.

"The building is emptying," he said. "Hardly anybody left."

There were still several floors left on the elevator's display but it came to a halt. "This is far as my clearance goes," Marv said, waving his card. "And I doubt it's going to take me even this far again." He had his finger on the door-close button. "There's four guys out there. Two have guns. Pointed at us."

I put my ear to the doors but couldn't hear anything. "Show me where," I said, pushing in the door button myself.

Marv kneeled on the floor and took a dirty rag from his cart. Pushing the cart out the way, he smeared oily marks onto the floor with the rag, drawing out a plan view of the hallway. "This is us," he said, pointing, "and the corridor splits immediately into a t-junction. The two armed guys are straight ahead, and the unarmed dudes are either side of the doors."

I memorised all their positions, nodding to myself as I did so.

"OK," I said, "sounds doable."

"Really?"

"I dunno, might as well try to live up to my reputation, though, right?"

I opened my mouth, letting my tongue flick out. It was the most sensitive part of my body and could detect creatures far better than, say, my hearing. I pulled my lips back, letting the fangs show.

Then I paused, withdrew the fangs, and grabbed Marv by the back of his neck with my free hand. It was a pretty good kiss. Seemed like one of those things you were supposed to do before doing something stupidly risky.

"Ready now?"

I shrugged. "Ah, whatever."

I let go of the door button.

The elevator let out a polite chime and the doors slid open. As soon as they were wide enough for me to pass through I was moving, dropping down low and darting forwards, my squamata muscles serving me well as I jittered from side to side. A bullet whizzed overhead, where I would have been standing.

I was at the far side of the junction, and sprang at the closest guy with a gun. He clearly hadn't been expecting someone like me and had totally frozen. I was on him in a second, wrenching the gun out of his hand and flinging it back along the floor towards the elevator. As the guy toppled onto me his colleague fired, straight into him. He didn't even get time to cry out. I always felt kinda bad about that, afterwards. It was a really shitty way to go out, especially if, you know, you were meant to be a security guard.

But, hey, trying to kill me, and all.

I rolled back out, ran halfway up the wall and propelled myself at the trigger-happy guard. He had pretty good armour on, head to toe and even with his neck covered. Thing is, they always made helmets so that they covered the top of your head but left your face open. Always seemed a bit weird to me - wouldn't it just encourage people to shoot you in the face?

Anyway, I didn't have a gun, so I just bit him on the nose. That's not a nice thing to experience under any circumstances, but being bitten by a squamata is definitely something to avoid. He dropped like a sack of potatoes about three seconds later.

Marv already had the other guys at gunpoint, which was pretty badass.

They cowered - actually cowered - as I approached.

"Don't kill us," one of them whimpered, "please, I have a kid. A little boy."

"Aww, cute," I said.

Marv glanced over at me. "What now?"

"Knock them out, I guess?"

He nodded. "Right." He swung the butt of the gun, smacking the guy closest across the forehead, who doubled over and swore. "Man, I'm sorry," Marv said, genuinely apologetic, "that always works in movies."

"Listen," the Guy With Kid said, "can't you just tie us up somewhere? We're not even guards, we just work up here."

"OK," I said, "but if you try anything, I will find you. And your kid." I flashed my fangs.

It took a couple of minutes to find anything we could use to tie them up. Seems that your average office doesn't have handcuffs or rope lying around. After that we moved quickly to the staircase, and continued making our way up the spire.

"So, saying you'd go after his kid?"

"Yeah, what?"

"Kinda creepy," Marv said. "Pretty cold."

"Hey, I was just trying to sound serious," I said.

"And the other guy? The one you bit?"

My stomach crawled. For a moment I thought I was going to retch. "It was just a quick bite. Probably just knocked him out."

Marv nodded. "You don't actually know, do you?"

"I've not made a habit of trying to kill people, if that's what you mean. And no, I don't know. I don't want to talk about it."

I didn't even want to think about it.

"You're going to have to at some point," Marv said.

We reached the next floor without incident. It was entirely deserted.

"I totally thought you were going to get shot, you know?" I watched Marv as he gazed through the walls and the ceiling, looking for heat signatures.

"Still might, you know?"

"Don't say that."

"Not everyday I do something this monumentally unwise, Kay."

"Fun, though, right?"

"Hells yeah it's fun," he said. "I can see Cal. He's on the next floor. And then it's the Aviary."

"Answers or death."

"You know it."