I kicked in the door to yet another interrogation room, the seventh I had visited in the past few minutes. Like the others, it was occupied by two soldiers, an interrogator, and a Kord Tech employee (all who showed various levels of alarm/gun raising at my sudden entry). And like the others, I recognized the employee. This wasn't the one either, and now I had cleared out the fourth floor. Without bothering to say anything, I bolted back into the hallway and towards the stairwell leading down to the third floor, worries tumbling through the back of my mind.
When had this extra person joined the convoy? When I was fighting the other two? If so, who knows what they could have done by now. Even as I reached the next floor and headed to the closest room, my mind was already racing with the kind of traps that could have been set up, or hostage situations that could be happening right at that moment.
I threw open the door to the room… only to find it empty. Oh, I guess they probably weren't using every room. Damn it.
"Jacob!" Ted's voice suddenly came on my comm, "Office Sung just told me that he's not getting a response from anyone on the second floor! Head there now!"
I didn't answer, but looking back to the stairs I saw that a bunch of soldiers rushing towards the stairwell. There would be too many people in my way if I tried the stairs again, and if this operative was as dangerous as the last two I had run into they would get torn apart before I could reach the front. Time for the express route.
I ducked back into the room and headed to the back wall, my arm turning into an oversized plasma cutter. I knelt and swiftly cut a hole around myself in the floor. If the layout of the building was consistent, there would be another room similar to the one I was in just below. Just had to hope that there was no one right below at the moment.
I completed the circle, and there was a groan before the floor fell through. I came crashing down through the ceiling and landed on the floor in a heavy crash. Looking up from my crouch, I was only half surprised to find Serling looking at me in surprise. I straightened and said "We have got to stop meeting like this." A quick glance around the room showed she was the only one here, no soldier or interrogators in sight.
"She's trying to get in!" Serling yelled, ignoring my comment and pointing at the door she wedged shut with a propped up chair. "I don't know who, but she took out all the soldiers on the floor, and the ones guarding me went out and didn't come back!"
My eyebrows rose, and I walked to the door. "You're sure she's after you?"
"Of course I am, she was calling my name!" The scientist gripped her laptop in front of herself like a shield, and I saw a mix of desperation and fury in her eyes. "I won't be taken again, I won't!"
I held in a sigh as I focused on the door. Of course they were after Serling. That's why those two attacked the caravan back in the forest. But how did they know that Serling was there? Or even why she was valuable in the first place? The details of the Fog incident were kept under heavy wraps. Whatever the case I'd have to deal with it later, for now I needed to-
At that moment, the door buckled and was blasted apart from small explosion, likely a breaching charge of some sort. I stepped forward as Serling jumped back, and I think I caught most of the debris that flew into the room with my body. "Serling… are you ready to play again?" a voice called out in English. My attention was focused on the figure behind the settling dust…. And I was caught off guard by just who it was.
It was a slender woman with a mane of long black hair. She was dressed much like many of the other Kord Tech employees in an over shirt and cargo pants, with a vest thrown on over the top. The main difference though was the mask she wore over her face, white with red marking and reminiscent of a kabuki mask twisted into the visage of a grinning feline.
Unlike the two War Dogs I had run into, I knew who this was the moment I saw her. The mask made it clear who this was and what they were after, as I had come across her when browsing the League's criminal database. This was Cheshire, an assassin for the League of Shadows.
I stepped over the rubble of the door, looking at the woman as I straightened. "I'm your Huckleberry."
Upon seeing me, Cheshire became tense and stepped back. She didn't expect me to be here. "Sorry, you're a little too big to be my dance partner." I lunged for her, but she swiftly jumped to the side before turning and sprinting down the hallway in the other direction.
My arm shifted and lashed out before firing off a bolt of lightning, but she had already rounded the corner and was out of sight by the time it launched. I held back a curse and sprinted after her, moving as fast as I could without slamming into the walls (and trying not to step on the several bodies littering the floor). As I moved around the corner though, there was the slight tink of something hitting the ground before the flashbang she had tossed behind her went off.
Fortunately for me, flashbangs were weapons against retinas and eardrums, of which I had neither. I was only distracted for a half second before I spotted my target again, ducking into the second doorway on the right. I barely slowed down as I continued to chase after her, but I was a little more caution now. This was an assassin from the League of Shadows, who I knew had fought with metahumans before. She may be a baseline human, but I couldn't underestimate her.
I heard the shattering of glass the moment before I ran into the room after her, and sure enough the room was empty save for a broken window. Rushing to said window I saw my target bouncing of the roof of a truck below before hitting the ground. I hurled myself out after her, throwing myself out farther than she did and twisting in the air to face her as I flew past the truck. I fired off another bolt at her, but even as I started moving Cheshire took out a small bag and tossed it at me. The electricity arced towards it and stuck, causing the bag to explode and scatter its contents of dark colored sand. The electricity fizzled out in the expanding cloud.
Iron sand? I wondered to myself as I hit the ground. She was already moving by the time I pulled my arm up again, specifically towards a pair of alarmed looking soldiers. I held my fire for a second as she reached them and ducked between them, capitalizing on their confusion to lash out with a couple of well placed strikes to their necks which caused them to drop. She then slipped around a pile of supply crates as she tried to put more distance between us. I ran after her, taking a brief moment to make sure that those soldiers were still alive before I followed.
The next minute or so or chasing the assassin was a mess. The woman constantly changed direction, hugged corners, dove into buildings, and generally tried to break line of sight as much as possible. The base was on alert at this point, but most of the soldiers that tried to join the chase either couldn't keep up, or just got in the way when I tried to use a ranged option. As all this was going on, there was something bothering me about Cheshire's actions.
Why was she going deeper into the base? I would have expected her to try to head for a gate or wall to get away, but every turn she had made was her trying to stay in. After a moment's thought, I realized that everything around where we were was open plains; there was no place for her to hide, and she certainly couldn't outrun me. She needed to lose me in the crowd, then find another way to slip away. Which, to be honest, she might actually succeed at. It was possible that I might tire her out by chasing her, but I gave it even odds that she would get lucky and slip away, given how she was handling me thus far. She probably did her homework on me, too.
So, it was time to pull a new trick out of my hat.
I stopped when I saw Cheshire duck into yet another building, my outer surface rippled as it was replaced by a mesh of interlocking and spiraling rectangles, vaguely resembling bismuth crystals. A moment later I activated the Optical Camo field emitter I formed at my waist and ran it through the mesh. Looking at my arm I could mostly see through it, though there was some smearing of colors as I moved. Going to have to work on that later, I thought to myself as I reconfigured my internals for burst flight mode. I then jumped into the air and over the building, coming to an abrupt stop about 30 feet up trying to stay as still as possible.
I only had to wait a few seconds before Cheshire jumped out the window of the building, rolling to her feet and snapping her head around to see if I was pursuing. Her gaze swept over my position in the air, but she didn't give any indication that she saw me as she then sprinted to the next nearest cluster of buildings. From my position in the air I could see several of the soldiers that had been chasing after her as well start to close in. Rather than moving into the nearest structure however, Cheshire hurled the crowbar she was holding (where'd she get that?) at the closest window before juking off to the side.
As she ran out of sight, the soldiers who caught up saw the broken window and rushed into the building, leaving no one to notice as she took off in the direction of the motorpool. Clever. I carefully followed behind her in the air, stopping anytime her head turned anywhere close in my direction. The assassin finally slowed down after she vaulted a low concrete wall and landed next to a large supply truck.
She held still in that narrow space between the truck and the wall for a long moment before she reached underneath the vehicle and pulled out a canvas bag. It was hard to tell, but it looked like the bag had been affixed to the truck's underside. Now that's interesting, I thought as I silently drifted down behind her. The woman was taking a change of clothes out of the bag (a military uniform by the look of it) as I touched the ground. I slowly reached out to her back-
Cheshire suddenly spun, a sai in hand as she lashed out at my head. Bloody super assassin instincts, I thought. Still, it seemed she hadn't realized it was me sneaking up on her, so she opted to attack rather than run. And that gave me my opening.
I didn't try to dodge the attack coming at the side of my head. Instead, I softened that side of my head, and reached up to trap her hand as the blade sunk up to the hilt in my 'skull'. I winced at the pain, but I had moved anything important out of the area, and my hand closed around her wrist.
Gotcha. She wasn't able to pull away from me as my other hand grabbed her by the neck. I lifted her up and pinned her to the wall, my hand expanding to form a sort of restraint around her chest. She kicked at me as hard as she could, but she didn't have the strength or leverage to really do anything. I ripped the sai out of her hand (and my head), and then the one out of her other hand that she pulled shortly after. I formed several mechadendrite limbs to grab and pin her hands and legs to the wall. She finally settled down after that. "Well," she said in a husky voice, looking me up and down as the optical camo faded from my body. "It's been a long time since anyone has had me pinned like this."
"I know, getting away from work is hard." I said, my free hand formed into a scanner and sweeping it up and down her body in search of weapons. "Personally, I recommend finding someone with shared interests and work, makes it much easier for you to spend time together." I then started reaching into various parts of her outfit to pull out any hidden weapons or gear I could find. Of which there was a fair number of knives, small grenades, and a few devices which appeared to be remote controls or radio transmitters of some sort (which I promptly disabled). After doing this for a few seconds a thought occurred to me, and I reached up and removed the woman's mask. "Oh, and for the record, this is a completely professional search."
A very attractive, vaguely Asian face looked at me with an amused expression. "And here I thought you were propositioning me," She continued seemingly unconcerned at my rifling through her pockets. I gave her look, and she shrugged as best she could. "It wouldn't have been the first time. Most of the men I interact with have a very… aggressive approach. "
"Ah, so it's a dating pool problem then. Well, you may have to look to the hero side of the fence to get around that particular problem." I said as I finished my search. The clamp pinning her to the wall expanded into a full brace around her torso. I pulled her off the wall (keeping her hands in sight with my other limbs) and continued. "Anyway, I don't suppose you mind telling me just why you're trying to abscond with Dr. Roquette again? I would have thought you'd be out of Rhelasia after that whole assassination attempt a few weeks ago." I had only gotten some of the details about the event from Kaldur, but I knew she had been there when the League of Shadows had attacked the peace conference.
"We were just so impressed with her the last time, we had to invite her back." She said airily.
"And you just happened to be here while the North Rhelasian coup is going on? With a stashed bag containing a South Rhelasian military uniform?" I reached out with my foot and picked up the canvas bag off the ground, peering inside. "...And a North Rhelasian military uniform to boot."
"Just a coincidence. So embarrassing that we're dressing the same."
I grunted as I started hauling her back towards the administration building. I wasn't about to take her word on that, but my training thus far hadn't included interrogation techniques. And even if they had, odds were I still wouldn't be able to get anything out of the highly trained assassin. But that didn't abate my urgency for information. Just what the hell was going on? If the Shadows were trying to kidnap Serling again, what did the War Dogs have to do with this? Was it really a coincidence like she said, or was there something more to it?
It didn't take long before I was back at the administration building, and I found a small crowd of soldiers waiting for me. Officer Sung pushed his way to the front of the group and stopped in front of me, giving both me and my captive a critical eye. "Machina, good to see you've apprehended the target. Though, I don't recognize-"
"This is Cheshire." I cut him off. "She's a member of the League of Shadows, not the War Dogs. Or, at least she was last time I checked."
"I'm really more of a cat person," Cheshire said coyly, somehow managing to move her hips a little while restrained. "Though I hope I wasn't being too subtle with the mask."
I ignored her, and Officer Sung looked between me and her with worry. "The ones behind the attack on the peace conference? What is one of them doing here? Have they allied themselves with the coup forces?"
"Not sure, she's being tight lipped. However, she did admit that she personally is here to kidnap onr of our scientists. Lucky for us, I was here too. Cheshire's a tricky one, but I managed to get her before she did any real damaged."
It was then that Cheshire's voice lost its husky tone, and became something far more familiar and sardonic as she said "Oh yeah, because capturing a nearly unarmed baseline human is so hard for a nigh unstoppable technomorphic war machine."
I threw my hands up. "Why you gotta undercut me like that, Cheshire?!" I yelled, before I froze in confusion. Where the hell had that come from?
The woman seemed pleased by the reaction she managed to elicit. "Oh, so that's the kind of man you are, huh?"
"The hell is that supposed to mean?"
"In any case," the officer interrupted. "I thank you again for your assistance, but we are still in the middle of an ongoing military incident. You can hand us the prisoner and be on your-"
"No." I said firmly. "With a member of the League of Shadows here, that necessitates that the Justice League investigates. And I remember that she was broken out of custody the last time she was held prisoner in this country, mere hours after her arrest. Which is to say nothing of how she had a bag full of disguises hidden underneath one of your trucks." I held up the bag in question. "Odds are, she has help, and they're already here."
The officer's face settled into a scowl. "You are close to overstepping your bounds. I highly suggest that you leave."
"I'm only going to stay until the League gets here to pick her up." I said. I doubted the League wanted me in this mess any more than the Rhelasians did. "Until then, I'm staying to guard the prisoner and my coworkers. Most likely, someone's going to-"
Naturally, this is when I heard an explosion from the Northern side of the border.
=====A=====
A/N: Artemis had to learn it from somewhere.
Cutting this one a bit short, as the chapter was running long and I'm dealing with some holiday stuff at the moment. Happy Holidays everyone!