Fuki and the shooter from the third floor had fired at each other simultaneously. The bright flash from his gun’s muzzle illuminated the staircase, showing the man flinching backward and Fuki dodge-rolling down the stairs. The edges of the steps hit her hard, but she didn’t have the time to register the pain. After tumbling down to the second floor, she fired three rounds toward the third floor as a warning to stall pursuit.
After those warning shots, Fuki dived into one of the bigger rooms on the second floor. Moonlight was pouring in through a south-facing window, making it easier to see. There were several art display boards standing in disarray around the room, two meters tall and one meter wide, with crappy pictures, presumably made by children, stuck to them. Fuki hid behind one of the boards. One of the last events before the building was abandoned must have been a kids’ art exhibition.
Fuki made an effort to calm her breathing.
“Fuki! You alive?!” Sakura came in on the comms.
“…Don’t worry about me. What’s your situation?”
“I’m on the emergency staircase just outside the third floor. No probs here.”
Fuki told Sakura that the target was waiting at the top of the internal staircase, that there was a trap before the landing between the second and third floor, that the target and Fuki had fired at each other when they came in contact, and that they both had retreated. She also added that the man was holding his firearm with one hand. She didn’t know what it was, but it was silver in color.
“Gotcha. Sounds like I should head in and attack from my side?”
It’d be easier if they could attack the target from both directions. Fuki was a little concerned about Sakura leading the attack, but as her partner, Sakura had to be competent enough—
“This is Command. A motorcycle is heading your way.”
“Wha…?” Fuki began, but she didn’t finish saying, “What about it?” The operator’s message continued.
“We checked the license plate. The vehicle was reported stolen three days ago. The rider is wearing a holster with the grip of a gun showing.”
An armed person on a stolen bike on a country road leading basically nowhere—this was no coincidence.
Fuki put the flashlight she’d still been holding into her skirt pocket and took out her smartphone to check the real-time footage from the DA’s drones. She saw the bike driving down an unlit country road. The rider was wearing full motorbike body armor.
She zoomed in on the rider, and a higher-resolution still image opened on the screen. The rider was clearly wearing a holster on their left thigh. The grip of a gun was sticking out of it.
Fuki closed the image to go back to the real-time footage. The bike picked up speed, as if the rider was in a hurry. Why, though? Fuki noticed the time displayed in the corner of her smartphone’s screen—one minute to three AM. And just as the numbers struck the hour, the motorbike drove into the parking lot. The rider took out a handgun from the holster on their thigh and started firing as they drove around. Fuki could hear the shots well from inside the building.
Zooming out, Fuki saw that the rider’s target was the Jimny. They fired several rounds at the driver’s seat as they drove past, and then the biker headed straight for the facility. They drifted, rapidly slowing down, but the rider hopped off the bike even before it fully stopped. The bike fell over and skidded on the ground, but that didn’t seem to worry the biker, who rolled as they landed, jumped to their feet, and ran inside the building, all without losing momentum.
“Hey, Fuki! What do you make of this?!” Sakura asked, confused. She must have been watching the drone footage, too.
The situation was getting ever more bizarre. The only things Fuki knew for certain were that now, in addition to the shooter on the third floor, they also had the armed rider on the first to worry about. And she was trapped between them on the second floor… While she and Sakura could attack the enemy on the third floor from both sides, she might fight herself attacked from both directions, too.
Of course, there was the possibility that the rider and the other shooter wouldn’t be on the same team, but that was no guarantee the new arrival wouldn’t attack Fuki.
“Seriously, what the heck is going on…?”
Fuki was stumped. Whatever it was they’d found themselves in the middle of, though, if she waited for the enemy to make the first move, she was putting herself at a disadvantage. She and Sakura had to act first. Of the two options, this one was smarter.
Commander Kusunoki had reached the same conclusion.
“Fuki, Sakura, don’t let them pincer you. Eliminate the target on the third floor first,” she told the girls.
Fuki had no objections to that.
She hadn’t heard footsteps on the staircase or on the broken glass in the first-floor corridor yet. She had a brief window of opportunity in which to act.
She gripped her gun more firmly and stepped out from behind the display board.
“Roger! I’m gonna enter the building—”
A loud blast made the window shake in its frame next to Fuki. The sound came from the outside, not too high above Fuki’s location. Given that Sakura got suddenly cut off, it could only mean one thing.
“Sakura?!”
“There was an explosion on the emergency staircase at the third-floor level! We can see flames…!” said the operator.
Fuki wanted to ask her what happened to Sakura, if they could see her, if they could check if she was all right, but she didn’t get to say anything because she had something more urgent to deal with—a person with a helmet covering their entire head peered inside the room. The tall man was clad head to toe in body armor. He slinked into the room and raised his gun, held in both hands, at Fuki. It was a black automatic handgun.
“Fu…”
The rider had arrived silently, with nothing to betray his presence, and he shot at Fuki without hesitation.
“Screw off,” she had meant to say.