Tehran, Iran
More than two hours passed before his phone rang. He checked the display and found it was Sara calling.
"Hello?"
"I got hungry," she said, and in her voice he could hear an embarrassed smile. "So I'm out to get some food. The chicken kebabs here are amazing. The lamb equally so. The beef isn't bad. The roasted corn is divine. This master chef has a garlic butter which is likely horribly fattening and a sin as well. But I would order three if you are hungry. Do you want anything? Are you still at the library?"
The earlier pang of hunger he had noticed before was now complaining audibly. "Maybe I should. I only had breakfast. If you don't mind, two orders of the lamb kebabs, and two ears of roasted corn. A shawarma too if you see any worth having. And yes, I'm still here at the library working on NATili's update."
"I will be there in fifteen minutes then," she said, her voice happy as if she had won a bet.
Twenty minutes later the man experienced the same air pressure event, which he could feel in his ears this time. Along with the window glass rattle, there was a slight sucking feeling inside his ears. He decided that it must be the front door that caused this, and was idly wondering why the same effect didn't happen during the day — when it happened again.
The hairs on his arms, and on the back of his neck, bristled with a shiver. Someone or a group of someones followed Sara into the building. The second suction even came too long after the first for them to be accompanying Sara. She might not be aware of the danger behind her.
"NATili? How many people are in the building?" he asked.
"Seven. You, Captain Jamshidi, who is currently near the top of the stairs, and five others near the front door."
"Are those five others carrying any weapons?"
"Tactical weaponry, and gear yes." NATili replied.
Shit, he thought to himself. Then he heard a commanding female voice shout outside the doors followed by three bursts of gun fire. What Sara shouted, he didn't know, but he understood with ludicrous clarity what she meant.
The double doors burst open. Sara tumbled through the space, coming up on one knee with a Glock 19 9mm in her hands. She fired twice and then tumbled to her left to lay prone.
The doors swung closed on their own while the intruders returned fire. Short bursts of auto fire chased after Sara, blowing holes in the thick solid core doors. The gun fire from the intruders had the distinct sound made by 5.56×45mm NATO rounds, and it didn't take much imagination to picture IWI Tavors bullpub combat weapons in the hands of the five invaders.
What he didn't hear, which was deafening in its absence, were shouts to surrender or to throw down their weapons. Which meant they weren't interested in surrender or identifying themselves. Which meant they were here for him, and meant to end him.
Grabbing his old, out of date, thick, heavy laptop, he ripped the 9mm from the back again, breaking the plastic casing with his urgency, while saying, "NATili, no drill. Furious Angel. Not a drill." From the laptop case he also pulled out two black cylinders, about the size and shape of a roll of large coins.
The man checked his weapon and his mind raced to formulate some kind of plan of attack. There were two exits. Through the double doors or down the back stairway to the emergency exit. He turned to leave the office, and the lights went out as if the building lost power.
No generator started. No battery powered flood lights clicked on. No glowing green EXIT signs.
He ran for the open office door. Ethereal light from the streets outside came in through the wall windows, and spread thin, defused by the bright red linen curtains, which were deep gray and perhaps blue in the dark. The shadows and blues turned the rooms into Otherworld. All of the colors were gone. Dark and shadows robbed him of mature vision, taking him back to infancy, back to when it was all black and white.
He breached the door. His heart pounded in his ears. Nothing came to mind for positioning or a sane method of attack. Shifting his weight to maneuver, time condensed, like suddenly more was packed into seconds than could fit into normal minutes. He turned, he turned toward the double doors that were now closed again.
Sara remained prone on the floor between him and the portal. She had her gun in a two handed grip, pointed at the double entry doors. He stomped the floor when he came near to her, signaling his proximity as he ran past. That's when a chilling whistle came from a pair of disembodied lips through the sound system.
It wasn't just the sound system, NATili had found her way into the PA system as well. The PA system turned up, blared with barbed sound through the library and possibly the surrounding neighborhood, with blistering audio levels.
It was at full volume, making the melodic whistling bitter and biting. The whistle, which the song began with as an intro, rolled like lightning across his back teeth... Then Engel, by Rammstein began to play. It was a favorite of his. But the sound system, its volume reached such a pitch that the composition was just pain. The decibel level rose far above a jet engine.
The emergency flood-lights, fired briefly, less than a blink. But he felt the flash of heat. Then again. Then three times on the fourth beat of the music. Then he felt subsonic tones mixed into the torturous music.
A bass beat, pummeling at 22Hz can't be heard by humans. It is an Infrasound. But it does cause the nervous system to glitch. One glitch is to inject adrenaline into the blood stream. Fear, hot and yellow as horse piss, runs down your leg. NATili worked her second prong of attack with this by pushing the flood light system to strobe in patterns between 1Hz-20 Hz in order to cause flicker vertigo.
Disorientated and jacked up, he stumbled, landing on the floor. The sensory storm blinded his eyes and made his ears useless. Even the inner ears were swooning, making it difficult to balance when he struggled to get up.
He made it to the doors.
"Retreat to the office!" he order Sara.
Sara didn't hesitate, and she was up and running by the time he had one of the double doors opened enough to pitch the two black cylinders at the stairs down the hallway.
Gun fire hit the doors, blowing chips and splinters at him as he flung the door closed and turned to sprint after Sara. A hit-team this soon? his mind asked in a disturbingly detached diction. How could they commit with so little information available?
He jerked his head, yanking himself back into this reality: We need a position we can defend, he listed.
The back stairs are a trap. We can not go there. He warned.
We can't defend here. It's just wood paneling and glass partitions. But we can't go down the stairs. Think!
He ran. He covered his ears and opened his mouth wide while yelling... to keep his ear drums from bursting. Two steps. Three steps. Four... The concussion grenades detonated outside. A glass partition near the door burst into a display of shards caught and tossed by the strobelight. The near-lethal thunder claps hit hard enough to knock books from shelves.
With the doors acting as baffles they were protected from most of the concussion. Maybe he tossed the grenades close enough to the enemy to give him thirty seconds to think.
Searing light flashes and sirens raged throughout the building, the bedlam of a wild hunt swirling and riding across the senses — tossing thoughts out of the frontal lobes with arbitrary selection.
Closing his eyes against the blinding strobes, honestly didn't help. The flashes went through his lids. The stark heat, palpable. There was no place he could imagine in the building that offered shelter from NATili's storm of sound and nova.
I got to get NATili to stop.
Back in the office, he found the blasts of lights had destroyed his vision, burning his retinas. Dancing pale blue smudges obscured everything he tried to focus on. He was effectively blind.
Stumbling to the desk, he spun the laptop around, and typed instructions then hit [Enter]. The light show stopped, but not the music or the Infrasound blasts that were turning his bowels to water.
Damn that was lucky, he marveled, spooky lucky. On his way to the laptop, he could not remember what he left on the monitor. He could have been typing into his journal, or any number of other files.
Sirens cut through the wild hunt barrage, adding to the din. New spotlight beams hit the windows from outside. Bright white, and moving in search patterns across the outside windows.
"Your people are here!" he shouted to Sara, battling against the auditory rage produced by NATili's furious angel function.
Then he typed in the command to kill the sound in this area. Instantly the bedlam ceased, though it was still blaring throughout the rest of the building. Most of the sense or vertigo and the effects of the bright strobes wore off as soon as searing white heat stopped blasting into the eyes.
"Call someone," he advised Sara, while blinking his eyes to regain his sight faster The fear held on, it held on with its monkey paw grip. "Tell them we are in here so they don't shoot us."
Sara looked at him, but didn't focus. Confusion and terror held her eyes wide with shock. Then she found her mental footing. Her expression cleared and she nodded her agreement.
"There are five of them, with assault weapons," he reported, to her, then he moved back to the door and knelt down with his weapon trained on the door and the back doors kept in view as well. He slipped into Flow state and waited. Waited for fate to come after him.