Riza hastily made her way out of the office building, stepping into the indoor street of the large Storage Facility gave her a sense of claustrophobia for the first time as she noticed the swarms of Atlas soldiers scouring the area, searching everyone they encountered. They're looking for me, her heart raced. Her knees jittered with each step she took, and her inability to swallow her emotions added a layer of frustration to the mix.

  This is your life now, get used to it, she chided herself as her eyes scanned for a way out of this mess before anyone noticed her. She needed to take the tram back to the entrance, but half a dozen guards were checking each passenger as they made their way in. She could try her luck, but that didn't sit right with her.

  Upgrading her combat skills didn't quite give her the confidence to put them to the test. I just have to go for it, her mind concluded, unable to think of a way around the situation. As she approached the tram, she kept the hood over her head and the scarf covering her nose and mouth, trying her best to act natural despite the stutter of each breath she took. Once she reached the queue, she stood behind a few warehouse workers, dressed in their thick overalls and gumboots.

  “Place your hand here,” A soldier said to the workers ahead of her. “This is just standard security protocol.”

  Everyone ahead of her complied and placed their hands on the thin tablet that the soldier carried, blinking green for each of them before he moved on to the next person. Eventually, Riza was next in line, and as she approached the guard, he turned to look into the tram and held his hand up to Riza, signaling her to wait.

  “Trams full,” He called out, looking at a soldier beside him, “Everyone inside is cleared.”

  “Copy,” The other soldier responded.

  The soldier looked back at Riza, holding the tablet up, “Place your hand on the scanner, Ma’am.”

  Riza glanced at the tablet, then up at the nonchalant soldier before looking over his shoulder to see the full tram preparing to leave. She lifted her hand, preparing to place it on the scanner, but kept her eyes focused on the tram doors. The moment they began closing, she shoved the guard out of the way and hastily sprinted towards the tram.

  Without looking back, she could hear the guards screaming and threatening behind her, but she reached the tram just in time to slip between the closing doors. The other passengers gasped, murmuring amongst themselves as the tram started moving. Five soldiers stared into the vehicle with rather infuriated glares as they passed by the window and went down the street.

  “Pilo!” She yelled into her comms.

  “Bo—, I— he– s–,” He stuttered, the connection was still shoddy.

  She glanced around the tram, noticing all of the eyes that were observing her, “What are you looking at?” She called out, prompting them all to look away in a panic.

  She’d never been an aggressive person, and a part of what made her a good leader was her choice to handle conflict diplomatically. But lately, she'd seen the value of stepping up her rage. The average person wasn't very well adapted to dealing with conflict, especially if it could turn an altercation into a physical one. She didn't like doing it, but did like how it bought her some space or, in the case of Dr Kanni, enough intimidation to get what she wanted.

  The documents were filtered by someone in Kythera, higher up than Dr Kanni, and Riza grit her teeth at the lengths they were willing to go to throw her team to the wayside. She still managed to get a lot of files that could be of good use– names of all the employees present on Prion-A, data on the minerals that were mined and the quantities they were accrued in.

  The most valuable information would have been the information on the mineshaft E-seven and the breach she’d sealed, but it was missing. And all references to it in other files were erased too, at least from this batch of files. How else was she going to clear her name if all the data was missing?

  _INCOMING TRANSMISSION_

  “Boss!” Pilo's voice appeared over comms.

  “Pilo!”

  “I'm back at the ship. Where are you?”

  “I'm still in the main warehouse, but I'm on a tram to the main gates.”

  “The main gates are swarming with soldiers right now,”

  She glanced out the window, where she could see the entrance with more soldiers lurking about, searching everyone who entered and exited the building.

  “What do I do?” Riza panicked.

  “I'll create a distraction?”

  “What? How?”

  “Don't worry, just wait for— an–,”

  “Pilo?”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  _TRANSMISSION DISABLED_

  The connection dropped, and Riza wasn't sure exactly what Pilo had said, but knew she needed to wait for him to draw out at least a couple of the soldiers from the gate. As the tram arrived at the stop, there were two soldiers already positioned by the door, awaiting her exit.

  As the doors opened, she tripped nearest person to her. The warehouse worker slipped and crashed into one of the soldiers, pulling the others' attention toward the incident. She kept her head down and walked as naturally as she could to avoid drawing any attention to herself. When she looked back, she saw a few of the passengers speaking to the soldiers as they got back up to their feet. One of the passengers pointed at Riza, and a soldier looked in her direction, noticing her slip away. Shit, she worried as the soldiers started running towards her.

  She also started running, but realised she was making her way to the gates, which would only put her in front of more soldiers. With the soldiers watching her and likely tracking her, she opted to slip into the crowd of people making their way towards the gates, but when she turned around, she saw they were still hot on her trail.

  “Stop!” a soldier called out.

  Keeping among the crowd was her best bet, as they'd always refrained from firing their blasters at her when she was amongst civilians. Understandably so, the Atlas may have been an oppressive governance, but it needed the general public to comply and respect its authority.

  “I said Sto-” The Soldier called out before a loud crash erupted from outside the gates.

  The ground briefly shook, throwing everyone in the area off balance, and she looked out the glass doors to see a large plume of smoke spread throughout the exterior of the building. Her heart sank, and she knew this was her moment. Whatever the hell Pilo did worked. The workers who were making their way to the gates were reluctant to do so, whilst the soldiers made their way outside to find the source of the issue.

  She immediately darted towards the gates, scanning her ID and making her way out with haste before the soldiers following her caught up. She sprinted right past multiple soldiers who paid her little to no attention, and when she turned to check behind her, it seemed as though she'd lost the soldiers from earlier. Once she exited the facility, she was aware of the extent of Pilo’s distraction, and the smoke reduced visibility almost entirely for what must have been a hundred metres in all directions, possibly more.

  The sound of distant yelling signalled the frantic reaction of the Atlas soldiers, and she used this opportunity to make her way to the ship. But, as she made her way through the smoke, she collided with a soldier, and both of them fell to the floor– the soldier's blaster rifle clapped against the cement as Riza's hood fell to her shoulders, exposing her identity to the guard whose eyes widened upon recognising her.

  “You!” He yelled out, looking for his blaster.

  Riza's held her breath, her panic getting the best of her when she noticed the blaster and even distance away from her as it was the soldier. She scurried to her knees, shuffling as quickly as she could to grab the weapon, and as she reached her hand out to grab it, the soldier grabbed her. With a loud grunt, he pulled Riza's arm and threw a punch at her face that she barely managed to evade, rolling out of the way.

  It was his turn to reach for the blaster, but Riza denied his attempt with a swift kick to his ribcage, throwing him off his crouch and flat onto the ground. She grabbed the blaster, flipping the switch to enable the charge of energy that hummed to life in her hands, and when she pointed it at the soldier, he froze, looking at her with a regretful but determined expression on his face.

  “Don't move!” Riza ordered.

  But the soldier didn't care for her warning and dashed in her direction. A loud zap rang through the area as a bolt of bright light cut through the smoke and went straight through the soldier and out of sight. He dropped to the floor without a sound, and Riza was frozen in place, blaster in hand, with her eye glaring down the sights.

  “Oh my god,” She dropped the blaster on the floor. “Oh my god!”

  She got up in a hurry. Eyes still fixed on the soldier as the sound of footsteps approached.

  “Shots fired!” A voice called out.

  “It came from here!” Another added.

  More soldiers were coming, she hesitantly looked over her shoulder and then back at the soldier's body. Hoping he would moan, or shuffle in pain– anything to suggest he wasn't… There’s no time, she reminded herself. She got up and ran in the direction of the launch pad until she broke out of the cloud of smoke that revealed a large crater not far away from her.

  “I see you,” Pilo called out as the sound of thrusters boomed overhead and the cargo ship slowly descended towards her.

  Without landing, the cargo door lowered, and Riza leapt on, crawling her way up to the switch where she then closed the bay door. Below, she saw the soldiers still in a frenzy of uncertainty as the smoke began to clear up, and when she looked at her hands, she felt them trembling. The strange thing was that she didn't quite feel how her mind was expecting to. The adrenaline still hadn't worn off, and her body jittered as a result.

  “You okay, Boss?” Pilo asked over comms as the ship continued its ascent.

  “Uh… I think so,” She responded, uncertain.

  “How'd you like that distraction?” He chuckled.

  “It was… Good, I guess…”

  “Bit of a pipe bomb for ya. Might’ve been a little dramatic, but who cares, yknow?”

  “Thanks,” She said with uncertainty, making her way up the staircase to the main hallway.

  “You get the data?”

  “Uhh, nah… not really, they, uhm… They–” Her voice grew shaky.

  “You okay?”

  She didn't respond. Her stomach churned with discomfort, and she felt the need to throw up but knew she wouldn't be able to. There was a ache that sat deep within in. One she wasn't sure how to manage, and she took a seat on the floor in the hallway, trying her best to breathe steadily.

  “Riza?”

  “I, uhh… I killed someone, Pilo. A soldier. I tried to tell him not to move, but he–”

  A heaviness befell the atmosphere around Riza, she felt it on her shoulders, and the sound of white noise began ringing in her ears– maybe it was the act that bothered her. Maybe it was everything that drove her to it. Maybe it was both? She felt remorse. But also felt sorrow and guilt with a creeping sense of fury that it ever had to come to this in the first place. She'd become a killer as a result of the lies and agendas of faceless monsters that were pulling the strings of her innocence.

  “Hey,” Pilo said sternly, cutting through the noise of her mind. “You did what you had to. Yeah?”

  She tried taking a few deep breaths, but they came up short as she nodded her head, trying to convince herself of that very truth. I did what I had to.