A young man's heart raced as he went sprinting from the chaos. He'd only been working here a month, and the absolute riot that ensued this morning had put him in a place of true vulnerability.
He dodged into an elevator as screams of rage and violence filled the air. The door shut, and silence replaced the hurricane of sound. Glancing at the small army of numbered buttons, he swallowed hard. He lifted the plastic case covering an unlabeled button, and pressed it. The elevator jerked, and a loud slamming sound came from the door - something massive had just pummeled into it. He was lucky to be alive.
An elevator music-rendition of Bowling For Soup's "1985" came on over the tiny distorted speaker as he felt the weight of the moving room he was in begin its descent.
Debby just hit the wall... she never had it all...
A name tag reading "Stephen" hung around his neck. He gripped his chest in fear, knowing that he was, in this very moment, directly in the eye of the storm.
her yellow SUV... was now the enemy... looks at her average life..
Stephen was barely paying attention to the tune, and its presence was only made apparent to him when it was cut short by a sharp
DING
From the elevator. The doors slid open to reveal a hallway, barren save the door at the very end. Stephen ran down the hallway, stopping short at the final gate. He clenched his eyes shut, made a fist, and pounded on the door.
"WHAT. What is it? I'm in the middle of a very important ******** phone call."
"S-sir, there's a big problem upstairs, and--"
The fire alarm began ringing loudly in the hallway now, likely delayed because this secluded area was on a different grid.
"Hold on, sir."
The door swung open, and Stephen stepped back as to not be struck by it. The loud alarm rang in Samael's ears, and he winced in pain, yelling over it while cupping a cell phone in his hands.
"WHAT THE ******** IS GOING ON?!"
"There's been a riot!"
"Did anything escape?"
"Not sure, sir."
"Well what the ******** ARE YOU DOING STANDING HERE."
Samael pushed Stephen out of his way and began heading towards the elevator. Stephen followed behind, tail between his legs.
The door sealed shut, and the music kicked back on after Samael slammed the button for the roof.
Springsteen, Madonna... waiting for Nirvana..."
The two stood in complete silence next to one another as the winch wound them upwards, humming in a monotonic discord beneath the music.
The level of awkward rose with every foot the elevator climbed.
"Are you a fan of BFS?"
Samael looked at him with a judgmentally raised eyebrow akin to a conservative mother determining the worth of a potential suitor for her daughter.
Stephen meekly pointed upwards towards the speaker as it repeated the chorus melody.
On the rooftop, the doors to the elevator swished open, and Samael walked out rubbing his knuckles. An unconscious body remained in the elevator. He walked over to the edge of the building, and glared around, eyes scanning for any potential escapees. Just as a sense of security warmed over him, he heard gunfire spray out in the garage.
*PAKAPATAKATAKAPAKATAKATAKAPAKAPAKATAKAPATAKATAKA*
"s**t."
Samael dashed over to the western side of the building just in time to hear tires screech, and two SUVs raced out of the building.
"DAMNIT!"
Samael opened his phone and held the 3 button, speed-dialing. As soon as the other end picked up, he screamed into the phone.
---
JJ and CJ stood at their control center, slamming fingers into buttons in an attempt to both safely lock down the facility and also drain the water.
"You just haaad to play another ******** round of SWAT."
[******** you, I would have had my SWAT s**t done if I didn't have to coddle you every CTF match we played."
JJ glanced angrily at CJ without stopping his mad button-pressing bonanza.
"Who finished top of every single CTF match."
[******** you, that doesn't mean--"
"SAY IT, YOU b***h!"
Their arguments were broken by the desk phone ringing, and without thinking of his own self-preservation, CJ answered it.
Before he could speak, he was aurally assaulted by Samael's screaming voice, still deathly scary over the tiny speaker.
"WHAT THE ******** HAPPENED DOWN THERE?"
"Tell him about your SWAT matches-- OW!"
JJ was silenced by a WHAP to the head from CJ's right hand, before it returned to mish-mashing buttons galore on their control center.
"Some mutant broke into the control center and set off the fire alarms, started a riot."
"Was he green with big wings?"
"No, he looked more like a cracked-out gymnast. Shaggy brown hair. Pretty sure it was that Alec guy."
[******** that trouble-making psychopathic-- OW. a*****e."
JJ was again stopped mid-sentence by a set of knuckles breaking only for a moment from a console that would give any Star Trek science officer an orgasm.
So many blinking buttons.
"Did they escape?"
"It looks like they took two of our SUVs and headed north on the main--"
"WELL SEND SOMEONE AFTER THEM!"
"On it, sir."
"On it, sir."
CJ hung up the phone and continued rapidly pressing buttons with his counterpart.
"What a d**k."
"What a d**k."
"I'm button-mashing harder than when I fought Shao Khan at the end of MK9."
"Shut the ******** up."
"Asshat."
---
A large, hairy-knuckled hand picked up a phone.
"What."
A distressed voice came from the other end, almost inaudibly.
"Well see to it that it gets fixed. Send Hein and a couple of goons after them. I want a full situation report as soon as possible. I want to know who made it out, how, and where they might be going."
The voice agreed complacently from the other end before the man continued to speak calmly.
"If you fail me on this, I promise you, you will live to regret it."
The man hung up, and a door in front of him opened. Light poured in from the door, lighting the dim room and illuminating the man up to his chest as he sat at his desk. His gruff voice inquired,
"What's the matter?"
A peculiar voice replied,
"The Calgary office reports are in. Zero-four-nine claims that all research is ahead of schedule."
"Good. At least something's going ******** right around here."
