For A Star To Fall

Chapter 7: To Exploit Weakness

“Hey,” a gruff voice sounded, “Dr. Valin says you can’t go out.”

Emyle looked up to find a bearded face staring down at her, its curiosity at her barely concealed.  There was a flicker of intelligence in his surprisingly warm, friendly eyes. She made to slip past him, but he blocked her again, this time with his large body. The shadow that the bulk of his body cast was thrown over her and she tried not to step back. Hr was trying to intimidate her into submission—something that all men thought they could do to people of the opposite gender. It was not going to work on her. She was going to get past him, whether he let her or not.

Blinking innocently, she put on her most naive expression and reached up tentatively to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, knowing that the action made her look even younger and weaker. “Please, mister. I really need to go see Ana. It’s really urgent, you know.”

The guard looked down at her questioningly and she beckoned him closer, looking like she really wanted to whisper something in his ear. He bent down a little and Emyle almost scoffed at his gullibility. Then Father’s voice was in her head, saying, If your opponent is taller and bigger, you must be faster and cleverer. Bring him down to your level, even the odds. Emyle reached upwards and linked her fingers behind the guard’s neck before he could even blink. “What?” he muttered and another piece of Father’s precious advice lit up her mind like a light bulb. If he is a male, then he has a weakness. Exploit it to your advantage, my precious star. Pulling him down and into her room, Emyle leaned into him and pushed one leg upwards, kneeing him in that area between his legs.

The guard gave a surprised “oomph” sound and made as if to double over in pain. Emyle let him go, allowing him to bend at the waist as he clutched at the injured area, so that he was almost her height. Raising her hand, Emyle turned it to the side and brought it down in a diagonal, slicing motion, slamming it into the area where the guard’s shoulder met his neck.

After taking a step backwards, Emyle watched in satisfaction as the security guard crumpled to the floor, knocked out cold, lying motionless and still as he half-leaned on the door. She knew that he was merely unconscious, not dead. She had not used that much force, though she was certain that she could have killed him if she had wanted to. What was another death to her almost non-existent conscience? Bending down, she patted around his shoulders and abdomen, searching for anything that he had on his person. There was a lump by his waist and she grabbed at it, pulling it out.

It was a gun, devoid of a silencer, with a silver insignia on it, saying Lumiere Biopharm. How inconvenient, she thought. Guns, even when equipped with silencers, always made too much of a racket for her purposes, and they were long-distance weapons, technically. This one, in particular, was a semi-automatic pistol—a Glock 17, to be exact. She was familiar with this type of gun, since it was still commonly used nowadays. But they definitely were not her choice weapon. She preferred more silent ones, more deadly ones, the ones that glinted in the moonlight when it slit a victim’s throat. Sliding the gun back into its holster carefully, she continued her search, her hands moving faster now, since she had not much time left. After a while, she stood up, knowing that there was no point searching if there was nothing there to find.

She exited the room again, leaving the security guard in her room, before setting off down the corridor, in the direction that Dr. Valin had walked towards. Relaxing into a relatively fast jog, she moved silently, knowing that security cameras were watching the route from the walls. Careful and alert, she paused whenever the cameras moved to train their lens on her. This was when she would duck or move to their blind spots—which was easy enough as Father had taught her how when she was younger.

Soon, she caught sight of Dr. Valin, striding down the corridor, two guards flanking his sides. She smiled at this, but it was a sinister curving of the lips, devoid of the warmth that was supposed to be there. Emyle knew that these two security guards could be incapacitated easily enough, judging from the previous one outside her room. But it was troublesome, really. Emyle decided that she would wait until Dr. Valin was alone, so that she could “talk” to him in private. Her footsteps were light and soundless as she trailed after them.

After a while of ducking and dodging out of sight of the security cameras, Emyle followed Dr. Valin and his companions till they stopped just after they passed a junction. Dr. Valin turned suddenly and Emyle, heartbeat rising, darted close to a wall, right below one of the security cameras, freezing as she stood there. Fortunately, Dr. Valin did not seem to notice and continued to bid the guards goodbye. There was a chorus of two voices saying, “Yes, sir. Goodbye, sir.”

Emyle raised an eyebrow, though she knew no one, not even the cameras could see her do so. The guards conversed with Dr. Valin as if he was a military commander and they were his sub-ordinates. That could be an advantage she could use, since it meant that the guards respected Dr. Valin and would follow his direct orders. Footsteps sounded nearby, telling Emyle that the guards were heading away from Dr. Valin.

Looking down at her bare hands, Emyle considered them, turning them over to see the palms. Could she threaten them? Knock them out? Kill them? No, the security cameras were still watching the corridor, and she could not do anything without alerting them to her presence. She would have to wait for them to pass before following Dr. Valin. Voices floated down the corridor. The guards were chatting to each other, now that Dr. Valin was no longer present. “Did you hear? Rumour has it that Dr. Han resigned from his job.”

A deeper voice then answered, “Yes, I did. Sad, that is. First, Dr. Francis was involved in that lab accident after-hours last week, and now another scientist is gone. Dr. Valin will have to hire more soon, to keep up the research.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” the first voice replied as the footsteps came even closer. Emyle drew in a breath and flattened herself against the wall, melting into the shadows as best as she could. The guards’ conversation had deteriorated into one about football and the latest wins or loses—things that were completely irrelevant to Emyle’s situation, unlike the first part of their dialogue together. Both Dr. Francis, whose room she was staying in, and Dr. Han, whom Jordan had pointed out to her in the video feeds, were somehow gone in one way or the other. This struck Emyle as rather suspicious, but she filed the information away for later.

The footsteps and voices of the two security guards suddenly started fading, and Emyle realised that they had taken another turn at the junction, instead of coming back the way they had come, like she had expected. She exhaled and relaxed her tensed posture. There was no need to be nervous now. She was going to confront Dr. Valin and do what he had done to him—threaten him. Except that this time, she knew he would not be as prepared as she had been.

Emyle was certain that Dr. Valin was somehow sure that she would not dare to disobey him and leave her room to “wander around” the facility again. He was being quite careless, in her opinion. Perhaps this was because he thought that because she knew Father was being held captive by him, she would not really be bold enough to put his life in even more danger. But he was wrong, of course. Father would be fine, no matter what he did to him. As the writer and poet Oscar Wilde had said, “To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.” Considering his apparent confidence now, Dr. Valin clearly did not possess the trait that Wilde had been referring to.

Realising that she was too absorbed in her thoughts, Emyle forced her mind back to the situation at hand. She glanced forward, just as Dr. Valin disappeared from sight, walking through a set of familiar double swinging doors. With a sharp intake of breath, Emyle froze and searched her memory again, double-checking just to be sure. When her memory proved her correct, it was all she could do not to curse loudly at her own stupidity.