I’m not dead yet, Sousuke thought after opening his eyes and checking himself over. He was soaked from head to toe, for some reason. He could feel pain here and there, but his AS operator’s uniform had spared him all but a few bruises. His left arm still wasn’t in top shape, but that, too, seemed to be a light sprain at the worst.
For now, he remained silent in order to listen. He could hear flowing water and the faint howl of wind, but it was too dark to see anything. His night vision goggles had fallen off at some point, so he searched for the Maglite stuck in his tactical vest. He thought, Good, it’s still there, and then turned it on at the lowest setting.
The first thing Sousuke saw was an exposed rock wall. The second was all kinds of things that had been piled up: broken-down polystyrene foam; tangled-up wires; tarps; wastebaskets; wooden chairs; shredded fencing; garbage of all kinds.
The space he was in resembled a round-roofed cave. A sewer system? he speculated. Knee-high water flowed along the ground, and the trash it swept up on its journey seemed to have collected here in piles. Given the size of some of the objects, he quickly postulated that the flow must become a torrent at certain times of the day and year. He himself must have fallen into the hole and been carried here while he was unconscious. The flow seemed to be dying down even now, the water level seemingly lower than it had been when he’d first looked.
In other words, he’d been flushed out like waste.
How far have I come? What time is it? Sousuke checked his watch to discover that he’d been out for about fifteen minutes. He didn’t know how far he’d drifted, but judging by the quiet around him, he must have ended up quite far from his fall point. He’d lost his carbine, too. Probably dropped somewhere...
“Colonel...” He looked around for Tessa, but she was nowhere to be seen. “Colonel... Tessa?” He kept his voice down even as he called for her, and began rooting around in the rubbish.
He found a body, bleached to the bones, in a tattered jumpsuit with a nameplate. He couldn’t make out the gender, but whoever this person was and however they had died, it clearly wasn’t Tessa. She’d been left at the accident site, or been carried elsewhere by the current. He didn’t even know if she was still alive, but...
Dammit, he thought. His radio would be of no help. A few impacts and submerging wouldn’t have been enough to break it, but radio waves also wouldn’t penetrate this far underground.
Just head back upstream, he told himself. You have to find her.
Sousuke swiftly headed back up the cave, against the flow of the water. Soon, the exposed rock walls turned to brick. It really is a sewer, then, he realized. Given that no one had lived in these ruins for years, the flow must have come purely from rain and spring water.
He must have walked over three hundred meters before coming upon a large hole in the ceiling. There was a slope there, formed by a pile of collapsed rubble and steel girders, which he managed to crawl up to reach the lowest floor above the sewer. There he found a large vertical shaft, narrower than the one they’d first come down, but still covering about five stories.
Sousuke maxed out his light and pointed it at the area above him. There are cross-passages in the shaft, he realized, made from metal scaffolding and pipes. They all seemed rickety from age, and several passages had come loose. Straining his eyes further, he could see that there was a square hallway with a large hole in the floor at the top.
That must be where I fell from, he speculated, and found himself impressed he’d gotten off so easily in the fall. He must have hit scaffolding, girders, pipes and wires on the way down, mitigating the impact of a five-story fall... although, Tessa wouldn’t have been likely to survive it.
Dimming his Maglite again, Sousuke looked over the floor of the cave, with its rubble and pipes stacked up in conical piles. There was no sign of Tessa, but he did find his lost carbine, which he picked up and examined for damage. It seemed fine at a glance, but after a fall from that height, he wouldn’t know if the carbine worked right until he’d fired it.
Is she still up there? he wondered next. Tessa could still be unconscious in the hallway from which he’d fallen. He couldn’t see from here, but if he called out to her, would she answer?
No, too dangerous. He didn’t want to be heard. Over thirty minutes had passed since he’d first fallen, and enemy reinforcements could be swarming the area. He’d have to climb back up and check the corridor himself.
Of all the rotten luck... he thought, briefly annoyed at his current situation, but then reconsidered. Real bad luck would’ve been getting crushed by that helicopter. Real bad luck would’ve been Tessa, lacking the protection of a shock-resistant AS operator’s uniform, falling down the hole with him.
Holding the light in his mouth, Sousuke began climbing the pipes and girders along the shaft wall. He managed to make it three stories up, but no further—he’d have to leave the shaft here and find another route for the last floor.
Upon entering the closest cross-tunnel, Sousuke emerged into what had once been a corridor. I just have to find a staircase, he told himself, and then I can trace my way to where I left Tessa.
He proceeded down the empty hallway on full alert, with the Maglite in his left hand and his Glock 19 in his right. Since he wasn’t sure if the carbine was still working, Sousuke didn’t intend to use it for his first shot. The tests can wait until the shooting’s started, he thought. After the enemies already know my location.
Sousuke turned at several forks in the passageway, which was lined with doors. He’d looked inside several to discover dormitories and offices, most of which were empty.
But at the end of the corridor was a set of stairs, in front of which stood Leonard Testarossa.
Sousuke couldn’t believe it. The red coat worn over an AS operator’s uniform, the wavy silver hair... He held an ornate Colt Peacemaker in his right hand, and though Sousuke couldn’t see his face beneath his night vision goggles, he was sure it was him.
Sousuke didn’t think twice or hesitate before opening fire, and the red coat leaped into action to stop the bullets. That active bulletproof clothing again... Sousuke fired five more shots regardless, all of them equally ineffective.
“Predictable as ever,” Leonard observed before making his own move, his revolver flashing with fire.
But Sousuke had ducked into a nearby doorframe a split-second earlier, letting the shot pass him by to hit the wall and chip at the concrete. Sousuke stuck his gun out and returned fire immediately, unloading his clip. The shots echoed through the area.
Not good, he thought grimly. Every one either missed or was blocked by the coat.
“Your stubbornness is truly tiresome,” Leonard told him.
And your pretension is maddening. You gave up your chance to make the perfect surprise attack... Sousuke thought, but didn’t say it. Instead, he changed his clip, returned the Glock to its holster, and readied his carbine. How will that fabulous bulletproof coat of yours stand up against a full metal jacket? he wondered, and unleashed a semiautomatic shot.
It missed. Leonard must have known he couldn’t block rifle shots, because he turned tail immediately and disappeared down the corridor. Sousuke fired again, hoping to hit him through the wall, but to no avail; Leonard simply returned fire, which Sousuke managed to duck.
The carbine’s aim seems to be trending towards the upper right, Sousuke observed. This was probably due to the five-story fall, but it seemed to be working fine otherwise. Sturdy work, indeed... At the next opportunity, he resolved to send a thank-you email to the maker.
Sousuke fired; Leonard fired. Sousuke moved; Leonard moved. The back-and-forth continued until they entered a room the size of a gymnasium, filled with tanks full of fluid, compressors, and a forest of intertwined pipes and valves.
Having only a Maglite against Leonard’s night vision goggles had Sousuke at a tactical disadvantage. The light gave away his position, and there was no way to catch Leonard by surprise.
No... That’s not the only reason I can’t finish him off, Sousuke thought. Leonard was good at this: his reflexes; his precision; his purposeful, cool-headed movements; his seemingly indiscriminate yet thoroughly logical positioning... Pulling that off took real skill. Sousuke didn’t know if it was due to natural talent or training, but he realized he shouldn’t be fooled by the other man’s whimsical choices of weapons and words. He’d had a preconception of him as being a spoiled rich boy fully reliant on his high-tech equipment, but it seemed that there was more to Leonard than met the eye.
“Not bad at all, right?” asked Leonard, laughing in the darkness. “You can’t beat me in an AS, so you’d better take your shot here... It’s your last, best chance to kill me.”
There was something off about his provocation, Sousuke felt. They’d only spoken a few times in the past, but there had been a more languid air about Leonard then. Had it all been an act, or had something in him changed?
“You’ve lost some of your class, I see,” Sousuke decided to say. There was nothing wrong with conversing during combat, since his Maglite betrayed his location, anyway.
“Have I?” Leonard mused. “Meeting you on your level seemed the best way to get along.”
Sousuke heard a gunshot, and Leonard’s bullet grazed by. Using a waist-high pipe as a shield, he moved to a position that would put more pressure on his opponent.
“I’ll get along with you when you’re dead,” Sousuke told him.
“Ah,” Leonard said appreciatively, “nice comeback.”
The firefight had been raging for over three minutes now—a bad sign, if Leonard was trying to buy time for the soldiers under his command to arrive. Should I focus on beating him, Sousuke wondered, or withdraw? He didn’t have much time to decide.
And indeed, the reinforcements arrived before he’d made a decision. A group of four men armed with submachine guns arrived from an up-leading staircase, about fifteen meters away from the tank where Sousuke was hiding.