The Investigation Deepens
768 Words
The residual blue light from the emergency lights cast a spiderweb of cracks in the floor, the ozone condensing with the burnt stench of molten plastic into twisting ripples visible to the naked eye. The shrill whine of metal being forcibly twisted persisted from the depths of the ventilation ducts, as if the steel skeleton of an entire skyscraper was wailing on her nerve endings.
"Biometric lockout disabled!" The committee representative's voice was torn to shreds by static, the tablet flickering in his trembling hands, "All units retreat to a safe distance!"
Mark wiped fluorescent saliva from the corners of his mouth, his laughter unusually clear over the burst of electricity, "Safe distance? Dude, this building is now an outgrowth of her nervous system! Every step you guys take to withdraw is churning within her sensory range."
Rogers stepped in front of the laser rays, the scorch marks on his suit spreading to his lapel, "Energy readings breaching critical mass! The carrier is assimilating the entire building's electrical system - abort protocol immediately!" Green smoke rose from his shoulders, forming eerie spirals in a tangle of electrostatic lint.
Diana's knuckles whitened from pressing hard on her temples. Carbonized laptop shards rustled from her fingers, each one carrying the indigo residue of a searing retinal pain." Can't stop..." Her hoarse whisper was wrapped in static crackling, "It's like the tide... It's breaking down the levees..."
"Does the committee hear me?" The representative hissed into his headset while the device burst into sparks, "All communications are down! Backup power is being drawn in reverse!"
Mark suddenly coughed violently, fluorescent saliva etching tiny dents in the floor, "You know what's ironic? The terminal data you're tracing-" he pointed to his own glowing teeth, "has long since been aerosolized in the ventilation system via saliva samples!"
A new chipping sound came from deep within the ducts. This time it was the crunch of a data fiber optic cable being uprooted, and tens of thousands of dots of light erupted at the break like digitized blood spattering against the walls. All the laser sights went out of focus at the same time, the red dots of light twisting into meaningless geometric shapes in a swirl of static.
"She's reconfiguring the neural network of the entire building." Rogers suddenly dropped to one knee, palms pressing against the resonantly trembling marble floor, "All the fiber optics under the floor are glowing... Jesus, she's using load-bearing columns as synapses!"
The delegate suddenly drops the bursting-flame tablet and pulls the old-fashioned paper notebook from the inside pocket of his suit. The pages flipped frantically in the static wind, finally coming to rest on a certain page of yellowed flowcharts, "Agreement 7... Final Clause... Physical disconnect!"
The man in black simultaneously pulled back to change his ammo, the new suppressed magazines glowing matte black. However, the first bullet hovered in mid-air before it could be discharged, and the slug began to tremble at a high frequency ten centimeters from the muzzle, the surface of the copper casing quickly covered with frosty crystals.
"It's useless." Diana finally raised her head, the cold light of a server cluster flickering in the depths of her pupils, "The chemical composition of each of your bullets... It's all showing up in my pain nerve endings right now."
Mark suddenly laughed and pointed to the ceiling. All the ventilation grills crumbled away at once, and thousands of scraps of paper poured down like snowflakes - fragments of carbonized and reconstituted corporate ledgers, each branded with fluorescent numbers.
"Look!" He caught a piece of confetti that burned but didn't incinerate, "She's giving all of you funerals with fake Wall Street ledgers!"
Rogers suddenly yanked away the smoking tie, revealing the circuit-like lines spreading across his neck, "On behalf of... We may have made a fatal mistake. It's not a loss of energy control-" his voice suddenly laced with mechanical audio, "It's a system upgrade."
The light from the entire floor suddenly collapsed into a myriad of light particles, forming a flowing cocoon of light on everyone's body surface. The paper protocols in the representative's hands began to spontaneously combust, but the flames were cold and piercing.
"Tell the committee." Diana's voice suddenly became multiply superimposed, as if a thousand female voices of different ages were speaking at the same time, " The root of the word menopause is menos (month) and pausis (stop)..."
All the hovering bullets suddenly turned in synchronization and aimed at the original gunman.
"... But no one ever told you how much tidal force the moon generates when it stops functioning."
- Writer
