Dia found herself in a white hallway, so clean the acrid smell of disinfectant was making her eyes water. It was a quasi-perfect replica of the room where she came from. Which meant, no windows or any indication of where she was. However, she had no time to think or explore the facility. She had no time. Period.
The noise coming from the siren was loud enough to pierce her eardrums, the lights over the sliding doors on either side of the hallway blinking red.
However, the real problem were the doors themselves. They were closing, the entire facility sealing up after her intrusion. She only had two choices: right or left. She chose left.
A good call.
Dia had just started running when someone yelled, "Freeze!" from behind her. She turned her head but didn't stop. It was a man, a guard judging by his reinforced tactical armor and the fiberglass helmet he was wearing. For sure, he wasn't imperial.
Less than a second went by since he shouted, but he was already getting ready to shoot, one knee down as he took aim. However, it was what he had in his hands which made all the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
It was a Gauss rifle.
Dia ran faster, sprinting until the oxygen in her lungs started to hurt and the walls around her became a blur. She was almost past the door when the guard opened fire, the Gauss rifle jerking back as a single flash of blue light came out from the muzzle.
The laser beam looked weak, deceptively thin, but it resounded in the hallway like a thunderclap. She ducked just in time to see it going past her, piercing through the thick door with a soft plop.
It went from side to side, creating a hole no bigger than a thumb but obliterating fifty inches of metal in a second. The door closed behind her and Dia shivered seeing the point where the beam had hit, leaving only crystallized metal in its wake.
She started to sigh with relief until she saw what lay ahead of her. Sliding doors. Three of them.
They were closing, just like the first one. Not only was she still in danger, but she risked being trapped between if she didn't pick up the pace.
Faster.
It was the only word in her mind, the only one that mattered. She couldn't be at the mercy of others. Not again.
Never again.
Static electricity surrounded her as she passed the first doors, then the second, darting like a bullet across the hallway until she heard something tearing beneath her.
They were her shoes.
However, she couldn't care about that. She could care about nothing except that noise: a deep buzz followed by a click like that of a mechanism turning. The upper section of the wall seemed to move, for lack of a better term, and Dia gasped when she saw what emerged out of it.
"You have to be kidding me!"
It was something more deadly than a laser gun, its ratio of fire higher than any machine gun of the past.
A turret.
It was already charged and ready to fire. Dia zig-zagged across the hallway to avoid the incoming fire, her speed crossing the limit any human being could hope to achieve.
However, it still wasn't fast enough. At the start the barrage was relentless but imprecise as countless rays of light kept bursting around her, missing their target every time, but now the turret's fire was coming closer and closer to hitting her.
Until it finally did. It was just a graze, no more than a flesh wound, but it hit her. The turret targeting system had been thrown off from her speed at the start, but it was adapting.
The only way to beat it was to do something so out of standard, or simply crazy, that the turret's computer couldn't predict. However, whatever she had in mind, she had to do it fast.
The clock was ticking and the door was still closing.
Dia took a deep breath before stopping entirely, the muscles of her leg straining as she sped up for the last time. But she wasn't headed toward the door, she was running toward the wall.
The tiles under her feet started to crack, the wall coming dangerously close to her when she jumped. Then she was walking over it, leaving a trail of footprints in her wake. The turret kept aiming and firing below her, its computer limiting its movements to the floor, not the walls.
It worked!
A pity the door was almost closed.
I can make it! I can still make it! She kept repeating herself. However, she didn't make it.
The door shut down when she was just some steps away from it. Dia was like a train on a collision course, but she didn't stop.
She pursed her lips, grit her teeth and pushed forward, like a ripe tomato flung against a brick wall. However, contrary to all expectation she didn't splatter over it.
She broke it.
The door went off the hinges, falling down in slow motion, the entire floor shaking when three tonnes of solid steel dropped over it. Dia's head was chiming like a bell when she got up, her left shoulder on fire like someone plunged a hot poker into it and twisted the searing tip until her flesh started to sizzle.
Not a bad analogy since it was more or less what happened. There was a big bar of metal, thick like her forearm and twice that long, coming out from her shoulder. The pain was too much to bear, even more so when she pulled it out, spreading that bluish blood all over the floor.
But she was alive.
Safe?
Not yet.
"D-don't move!" Someone stuttered.
She blinked, still groggy. There were three of them, or maybe it was the same man, and she was seeing double. She couldn't tell, everything was blurry around her.
"Hands in the air!" The man ordered. However, there was something wrong with that voice.
It was out of synch like she could hear it, and after a second or two, see three different sets of lips move like one. It was odd, but it also meant the man was just one.
Her eyes chose that moment to come back into focus, but she wasn't simply seeing but zooming, her eyes like a magnifying glass pointed directly toward him.
Dia could see the microscopic flaws of his skin, pick up all the stains on his uniform---even the ones invisible to the naked eye----like a map, but above all, she could see his face, even through the dark helmet he was wearing.
His lips were wavering, his pupils dilated, a thin layer of sweat covering his forehead. The man was scared out of his wits. Scared and young, maybe three or four years younger than her twenty-two.
If possible, his brown eyes became even bigger, like he saw something when he looked at her. Something scary. But she did nothing, right?
"D-don't move!" The man ordered, but he was panicking.
The gun in his hands was going up and down like a rollercoaster, his left foot drawing back of an inch or two as he faltered.
"Calm down" Her voice soothing as she raised her hands. Both of them.
She didn't know if it was because of what they did to her, but the pain in her shoulder had already toned down to become a dull ache, more bothersome than painful.
"I am unarmed" Dia continued, her voice low and monotonous. However, she was just buying time while she analyzed his left leg.
There was something there. She saw him dragging it. It was an old injury, maybe a fracture.
A weakness.
The man's throat made a liquid sound, his Adam's apple going up as he took a step back. He was more alert than ever. Whatever she was doing it wasn't working.
It was then that she saw them, reflected in the remains of the door beneath her. Her eyes.
They were blood red.
Dia gasped, feeling all the muscles of her throat contracting at the same time. She tried closing them, and then opening them again, but it wasn't working. They were still red.
She had to think of something to get him to drop his guard, and fast. Her time was almost up.
"S-she is here" The guard whispered into his commlink. "The target is here." He repeated.
She heard something then. Steps, several of them approaching very quickly from the same direction she came from.
Reinforcements.
They were coming for her. She had to act. Now.
She could see what lay beyond the guard, the glimmer of light coming from the door at his back. It wasn't artificial, but natural. The light of a sun.
This man was the only thing standing between her and freedom. She could kill him; she could kill them all if they stood in her way.
Like they were following her will, her eyes flashed red, flaring like two rubies. The guard gasped, stepping back for the third time, but this time she didn't stand still, she moved forward.
The guard tried to shoot, but her dash was faster than his finger on the trigger. She approached from her right, where his left leg was weak and grabbed at his side. Then she squeezed, her fingers like pincers clawing their way through flesh and muscles, turning his ribs into powder.
He was still screaming when she threw him against the ceiling like a basketball. However he didn't bounce back but crashed, his bones cracking at the impact, his blood painting the ceiling red.
Then he came down, pieces of plaster and rubble falling with him. Dia didn't look at him, she didn't look at anything. She ran.
"Stay where you are!"Someone shouted, but she didn't look back.
She ran when flashes of lights and laser beams started whizzing around her, ran when the wall began to crumble and debris darted like missiles everywhere.
She ran.
Toward that door and her freedom.