The killer detective

25 - Scary silence

Before I slowly opened the door, I made sure she wasn’t going to panic in case something went wrong. She did seem still a bit shaken from what had happened earlier, but she wasn’t doing too badly. I took a deep breath, my hand on the door handle. I pulled the handle down and pushed against the door to open it. Omita was covering me exactly as from a handbook. It wasn’t wrong, but it was obvious she completely lacked experience. I made sure the dark hallway was empty before I let her enter. I stopped mid-step and stopped Omita, who was nearly going to bump into me again. We made sure we closed the entrance door right away after we cleared the room. It was supposed to be safe as the door lock didn’t look like it had been tampered with and it was locked. Not to mention the booby trap laid right before me. I started looking around, but I couldn’t see a single light blinking. Then I saw a bit of it in the ceiling in one of the old sprinklers. A tiny red blinking light, nearly invisible to the eye of a regular person. But I was trained to spot enemies even in great distances, seeing this small light in a tiny crack was nothing compared to that.

“Omita, do you see anything?” I asked her, letting us stand there for a few seconds. The time was ticking, but I couldn’t risk us getting hurt by the traps they had laid out here to protect the gear.

“Not really, why did you stop, lieutenant?” She asked, all eager to start walking forward, deeper into the apartment.

“Halt!” I nearly yelled out, trying to contain her at the spot.

“Did they not teach you anything about booby traps?!” I was getting annoyed. She was only a bit from getting both of us hurt from such a stupid mistake!

Omita froze in her movements. She was thinking about things, yet she still couldn’t see the tiny wire, which was in front of us. I nearly stepped on it a while ago but I managed to see it just before I had laid down my foot. I pointed to my eyes with my forefinger and middle finger and then pointed on the wire a few times until she realized it. She had to learn to communicate with hand signs as well. I couldn’t afford to use words all the time. It was slowing us down and alerting the enemy of our position. Finally, she had a big revelation moment.

I took a big step above the wire, making sure I didn’t touch it. We didn’t have an explosives expert with us, who would be able to disable the whole mechanism easily without making too many mistakes.

“Isaac, nobody told us there would be traps,” I said quietly into the radio.

“You need to stay alert, you can’t expect everything to be laid out before you for the mission… Be creative, Alth.” I scoffed. I was sent for a mission with a complete newbie. One would expect it to be quite easy and not a thing, where I could die at any point protecting HER.

“If it helps you out, she’s supposed to be a niece of one of the higher-ups…” Basil was definitely chewing on something while he was talking. He probably didn’t manage to stay put without food. Or he got bored. In any way, he was really lucky to be eating anything. We were here with only light equipment. We both had only one energy stick packed as well as just a tiny bit of gel liquid to keep us hydrated.

“So if we die here, I’m going to be killed once more? And to think that something like family was supposed to mean nothing in this system…” I sighed.

“What?” Omita asked, hearing our conversation.

“Nothing, keep watching out for any other traps,” I replied to her. I was lucky she wasn’t connected to the conversation we were having just now. Her frequency was different from ours, as she didn’t have full access to all the information we were allowed to share between the three of us.

Finally, after going through most of the room, I found a smaller crate in the bathroom under the sink. It was really the last place I would search for equipment. I tried lifting the crate.

“Damn, looks quite heavy,” I mumbled. The scenario, for which I had hoped would not happen, appeared just like that. We had to carry heavy equipment out of this place. Now I could only pray we could return the shortest route back, which was basically the same route we came here. It would seriously be so much easier if we can come back the same way. But considering we already encountered some of the Ruinees on our way back… I didn’t even hide their bodies… I sighed. This didn’t look too great.

“Captain, do we have the permission to open it?” Omita asked Isaac on the common frequency.

“Yes, of course. How else do you want to carry the things?” His answer wasn’t too bossy, it was closer to his natural neutral way of speaking as he was trying to stay calm to not freak her out. I nodded. We needed to open the crate and carry the items with us. There was no other way. I took out an inflatable foldable bag while she was dealing with the locks.

“Well, no wonder this was such an urgent mission,” I said for everyone to hear, even Isaac and Basil.

“What did you find?” Basil was curious.

“A lot of ammunition and spot explosives. Are they trying to kill us while we carry these? We’ll be basically like a ticking bomb.” I complained to the radio. Omita smiled, thinking it was a joke.

“Not a joke, newbie.” I scolded her.

“We’ll be covering you. Basil is already inside on the lookout as well. Make sure you move it, we have movement close by.” I was moving things into the bag quickly. Omita was carefully putting them in her bag.

“How close?” I was taking the magazines in three or four at a time, while Omita was softly dealing with the spot explosives, putting them in pockets of her bag. Luckily, there weren’t too many of them, as we could fit them in both of our bags.

“I’d say five minutes on ground.” I tightened my bag, ready to throw it on my right shoulder. I had to take the light rifle first. Only then I could adjust its straps and put it over the heavy bag.

“Omita, we need to go.” I stuffed the remaining magazines in her bag and helped her to put the bag on her back.

“How’s the back route? Clear?” I asked Isaac as we were looking out from the door, making sure there was nobody on the stairs and outside the corridor.

“Negative.”

“s**t. Alternative?” I asked him, hoping he would say they could clear the route back.

“You need to get deeper into the territory and standby in forest.” I sighed. This was getting harder than I had imagined it to be before we even took a step inside Area 29.

“How many?” I needed to know how many people were after us now. Knowing three of them were down, it couldn’t be a small rogue group.

“Movement of fifteen and counting.” I stopped and took the time to swallow my saliva and thoughts.

“Omita, you are strictly going to do what I tell you to. You don’t fire unless it’s self-defense. Leave the firing to me. You are to NEVER leave my sight. From now on we only use hand gestures. Isaac is going to give us more information, don’t reply to him. Take a sip of water, we might not be able to take a break for a while.” I took out the small plastic gel bag and took a sip. She did the same, silently taking my orders.

“Entrance clear?” I asked Isaac as we were ready after a few seconds.

“Clear.” Isaac’s voice sounded more focused than before. He wasn’t taking it as training anymore. It had become a mission for him as well.

We burst out of the main door of the building and turned right. We weren’t walking, we were running as fast as we could. Occasionally taking cover.

“They are after you. Still five minutes. No cover for you, just keep running. Forest in two kilometers.” I was listening to Isaac’s instructions while taking a breather at one of the corners. Omita was having a hard time breathing as well. We still needed to go two more kilometers to see the first trees and hide in the shadows of the forest. I gestured to Omita, we were running again. We couldn’t afford to be caught from behind, not even from the front.

“Twenty to twenty-five people after you.” Bloody hell! If this wasn’t an awful mission, then I had no idea what else this would be. I could hear them shouting at each other. It felt like they were getting closer and we were getting slower in our movements. Trees were still quite far but I could finally see the forest a bit. My heart was all over my throat, while each breath was burning my lungs. My legs were still doing fine, but ten more minutes of such a fast run and they would start shaking and slowly giving up as well. I couldn’t afford to look back to see how Omita was doing. Her task was to pace herself to me, no matter how tired her body was getting if she wanted to survive.

“Three minutes behind.” Isaac’s voice was the last thing I wanted to hear at this moment. I knew they were getting closer. They had probably figured out where we were headed, so it was easier for them to track us down. I could hear Omita’s heavy breathing behind me.

“Two minutes!” I hissed at her, slowing down and offering her my hand. I had to pull her, otherwise, we’d get caught by the Ruinees behind us. She grabbed my hand, I squeezed hers tightly and gave it my all. I was running faster than before while dragging her with me.

“They dropped something here!” I heard one of the Ruinees shouting to the others. They were getting even closer. But we had already entered the forest and started climbing the steep hill.

“Don’t give up now! Come on!” I offered her my hand again to pull her up. We needed to get higher to have a positional advantage.

“I... can’t!” Her breath was heavy, she couldn’t even speak properly. I kept dragging her up, while my feet were slipping on the leaves and needles from the trees around us. I was having a harder time catching my breath as well. But I knew that if I gave up here, they would get us. And that could be the end of us.

“Isaac?” I tried reaching out to him, but I got no response. I pulled Omita up again. I could hear the branches snapping at the beginning of the forest. We had finally climbed the steep hill and could run a bit further inside. It was a huge mountain filled with trees. Even if they were searching for us for two days, it would be hard to find us here.

“Isaac?” I tried calling out to him again after a while. Silence.

“Basil?” I tried calling him, changing frequencies, and taking turns saying their names. Silence. We were in the middle of the mountain, over twenty Ruinees on our backs and no signal for our support backup. The dark forest wasn’t scary at all. The silence of our radio communication was.