I needed a way through that wall, and fast, because things were about to heat up in here. The smell of smoke was already wafting through the room, but I had a suspicion that Stepane had stifled his fires after burning through those cubicle pieces, probably in an effort to keep the fire suppression systems in here from drowning him. Or not, since he could control water.
Making a beeline for the back wall, I started trying to think of things I could use to bust through concrete. My fist seemed the ever-present option, but that’d do some damage to me in the process, and would make my later face-punching endeavors more difficult. I marked that as a last resort. The rolling chairs in this place seemed too flimsy, and I passed a rolling metal cart that held a printer, plugged into its very own power supply. Sadly, this was the best of my options so far.
I didn’t really have an abundance of time to seek out better, because I could feel the heat from Stepane looming overhead and getting warmer. So I grabbed the cart, printer and all, and hurled it into the wall about fifteen feet away. Then, without waiting to see where it landed, I made a full-on, bent-over sprint across the nearest aisle and dove into a cubicle as far from impact as I could.
The printer cart shattered against the block wall, sending a spray of chips through and leaving about a six-inch hole where one of the corners of the cart had hit. In terms of damage, it wasn’t enough to do much more than bury a hand through, and I was a little disappointed because I’d hoped for more.
A glowing figure shot overhead, stopping at the wall. “Where are you?” Stepane asked, and I corked in a laugh because I didn’t want to answer his stupid question with an even stupider response that would instantly give away my position. He sounded pretty pissed, not that I cared. He was going to kill me if he caught me anyway, so why worry about offending him further?
I debated throwing a whole cubicle at the wall, but with him hovering between me and the weakness I’d created in it—and thus the best target—I had a little time to search out an alternative. And also to hope he moved.
Creeping out of the cubicle and away from him, I kept nice and low. With my head turned so I could look back over my shoulder, I moved parallel to the wall I wanted to go through, keeping in cover behind cubicles as I headed toward the aisle that moved from the door where I’d entered (across the room) toward the wall where I wanted to smash through, and behind which—through just one more wall after that—lay my destination.
The server room.
I glanced at the corner ahead, then looked behind me as I tiptoed, still bent double, out into the intersection of the aisles. Watching the glow of Stepane as he hovered, waiting for me to show myself, I chuckled a little inside. He should have been sweeping the aisle, watching for me everywhere—
Something tickled in my brain, and I stiffened. A little warning stabbed into my subconscious, and I turned because I felt movement ahead, like something jerking out of the corner of my eye—
And I got a momentary glance—enough to see the Terminator, leering at me, bent double just behind the corner of the intersection—before his punch caught me squarely in the chest and hurled me backward.
The blow hurt, force spreading itself through my chest and launching me off the ground. I had enough presence of mind to tuck my knees against my chest and make like a cannonball as I flew through the air—
I crashed through the wall, most of my momentum dispelled by the impact, and hit the one opposite—also concrete block—coming to a hard landing on my elbows and knees and sending a shock through my whole nervous system.
“Yay,” I croaked, lying on my freaking face in the darkness as I heard movement in the room I’d left behind, “Made it through one wall.”
And then I collapsed on the floor.
40.
I dipped into unconsciousness for a few seconds, and when I came to, I heard an argument out in the cubicle farm, echoing through the Sienna-sized hole the Terminator had made by shooting me through six inches of concrete block.
“She’s mine,” the Terminator said in that low rasp of his. Ominous. Foreboding. Totally a voice-over actor gone wrong.
“I must kill her,” Stepane, the Predator, said, sounding pretty firm in his conviction.
“Okay,” I said a little woozily, “you boys fight it out while I take a nap. I’ll battle the winner for the lifetime supply of dog food … or whatever crappy prize goes to the champion in this contest of fools.” I didn’t even have a dog anymore.
“You are not my mission,” the Terminator said, and I heard him crack his knuckles, kinda I like I did sometimes to intimidate people. “But you were involved in the Enterprise incident … some of my brothers in arms died there … which means I will have no compunction about getting knee deep in your ass. Stay out of my way, or I’ll make you my mission.”
“Yeah … you tell him, Terminator,” I muttered, still woozy, but still awake enough to trash talk. “You … stomp him a new ass. Superspeed style.”
“You seem strong,” Stepane said. “Perhaps I will simply fight you both tonight.”
“Oh, good,” I said, and fell down on my face once again, promptly passing out.
When I woke, the concrete wall in front of me was coming down, pieces of block shaking loose. I pushed myself to all fours, my body aching in places I didn’t even remember it could ache. I pushed to my feet and blinked as a fist shattered the wall in front of me. I gasped, jumping back in time to avoid a two-inch square piece of concrete that smashed into something behind me with resounding ring.
I moved laterally in the narrow room, which was probably only ten feet wide but ran a good forty or so feet long, with a door that led out into that hallway where I’d entered, and which was sandwiched between the cubicle farm and the server room. The Predator and the Terminator were having their 80’s movie dream face-off among the cubicles, and judging by the fact that I’d seen the Terminator’s hand come smashing through the wall a moment ago, it looked like there was no clear winner yet.
If somehow the Terminator came up aces in this little conflict, I was going to need to suss out a way to beat his ass to unconsciousness ASAP, which was well within my capabilities and kinda played to my strengths, given that my specialty was face-punching.
On the other, if Stepane the Predator came out ahead … well, I still had the marginally more difficult Plan B, which my heart was set on, and all I needed to do was access the server room behind me with as little damage to the wall as possible and then … do one other thing.