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Chapter 152

  Dan

  The entire office was flipped on its side, almost an exact ninety degrees. Anything that wasn’t bolted down to the floor had been pushed or had fallen down toward the side wall, or the ground in this case. Dan looked around then glanced down to see his feet on the metal dividers between office cubicles. Chairs, computers and many other appliances had either fallen and piled onto the new ground or was being held by the thin metal dividers.

  “An amusement park but for agents,” Dan muttered. “Can’t believe Judith is making me walk through this mess.”

  Dan hopped his way across the thin metal sheets. He cringed on the inside at the creaking and caving of some of his makeshift footholds. While his suit significantly dampened the sounds of his footsteps, it didn’t stop the surface beneath him from crumbling and making noise. These thin walls weren’t designed to hold a fully armored and equipped agent.

  He continued hopping and trying to keep a low profile. Even with the metal groaning beneath his feet, his ears picked up the ambient noises around him. Furniture toppling over and falling, the groaning of metal or panels and other parts of the architecture falling aprt. He hoped that those noises took attention away from him. Dan made one last hop down a pit where the exit door was. His feet landed with a muffled thud. Reaching over to the door knob, he opened it and gently set the door down onto the ground in front of his feet. His mind was still getting used to this bizarre layout of a collapsed building that had fallen on its side.

  Grabbing the Hand of Annihilation off his back, he peered down the hallway, which was a long fall from this orientation. Hallways were now pits and any small room he pased by might be hiding places for enemies to ambush him.

  As he kept this new details about the environment in mind, he dropped himself from the office room then grabbed hold off a ledge, a bend in the hallway. He glanced down the long fall down the hall while also keeping an eye on the numerous doors along the sides. Some were open since their doors were ripped off their hinges while others were completely shut. In such occasions, he really wished he set aside time to buy the x-ray vision eye upgrade that Li possessed.

  The red hexagon pointed him downward, so he had no choice but to let go and fall down the hall. He descended about twenty meters before slamming his feet against the wall. Luckily, he wasn’t quite heavy enough to completely crush the wall. Though both his boots left sizeable circular craters and cracks in the material.

  He imagined that the Kodak agents besides the Bloodknights would greatly struggle against such an environment. They couldn’t leverage their superior physical might in such a maze-like orientation nor would they have the patience to be study the new environment like Dan had just done.

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  He glanced upward and saw a hallway in front of him. He carefully took both his feet out of the craters he made in the wall, or ground in this case. Keeping his HoA rifle pointed and scanning his surroundings as best he could, he inched his way down the next hallway. He periodically looked up, staring at the doors that could potentially swing open to reveal enemies waiting for him. He passed under a door with a small window beside it. The spiderweb crack along the center and edges didn’t fill him with excitement as he was the clogged up pile of furniture on the other end.

  The glass finally shattered and Dan dashed away. Nothing fell other than glass shards and the building returned back to its desolate ambience. Dan’s nerves didn’t relax. He didn’t encounter any enemies so far, but it was eerily quiet. If a trio of Church agents made it to the top of this collapsed heap of metal and concrete, then certainly there had to be more of them.

  Dan reached a part of the hall that split into another hall, or drop in this case. Either he jumped down again or he hopped over the drop and walk and check out the other side. He shook his head. He didn’t want to stay in this building any longer than necessary. That artefact would be a snatch and grab. The waypoint hovered over the drop down another hall and Dan stepped toward the edge.

  A brief look down was the same drab hallway with more doors on the side and the same eerie quiet with occasional creaking and impacts of moving furniture through the walls. Dan hopped down and landed on another wall. A nearby door kicked open behind him, interrupting the eerie quiet.

  Dan spun around and aimed his HoA rifle at a hooded figure who also aimed the same rifle at him. His reflexes proved to be the beeter of the two when he squeezed the trigger and launched glowing green radioactive rods into the face of the Church agent. His head exploded from the impacts and Dan winced at the brief sizzle that hit his ears before the agent’s body slumped back and fell from the door.

  Keeping his barrel aimed at the opened door, he slowly stepped toward the opening and peered down. He saw the remains of the Church agent sprawled on a couch that was wide enough to be ledged between the floor and ceiling of the room. He debated coming down and looting whatever equipment the agent had but decided against it. Dan needed to get to that artefact and get the hell out of this building.`

  He gripped his HoA tightly as he hopped over the door and continued following the floating red hexagon on his HUD. This time, he took a more methodical pace as he scanned the floor and the ceiling above him, eyeing each and every door he passed in case some asshole smashed it open to shoot at him.

  Reaching near the end of the hall, his waypoint hovered over yet another drop. The sound of glass shattering behind Dan gave him a jolt followed by green radioactive rods blasting through the ceiling above him. Whoever was shooting at him decided to fire through the walls. Dan immediately jumped while popping off a few shots in mid air during his drop. His feet hit the ground and he dashed out of way of incoming green tracers.

  He rushed toward the red hexagon that stopped at one of the doors beneath his feet. Dan kicked the knob off the door itself and flung it wide open. Something smashed the back of his neck and he fell down through the opened door and his feet hit another set of solid ground. But he heard the creaking of glass. Glancing down, he saw his feet standing on a giant glass pane along with the distance street below.

  He glanced upward but saw flapping robes rush down to meet him.

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