SORA YUME STORY (1) - Flipbook - Side 2
Sora looked at Eli. He looked back at her with an affirming nod and pressed
his back into the cold metal doorframe, as his focus shifted towards the doors.
Tobias’ fingers darted across the console, then halted. With a look over his
shoulder, he confirmed their readiness. She took a deep breath and tensed
her legs, like a sprinter anticipating the crack of a gunshot, her body set low.
The entirety of her consciousness converged, collecting into a deep, nervous
calm as her senses peaked. Tobias turned around and when his hands
returned to the console, Sora listened intently. In a short sweeping motion,
Tobias engaged the console. It emitted a high pitched beep as it granted them
access to the room beyond. That was the signal; Sora released and exploded
forward, aiming for the space between the heavy doors as they slid apart. As
soon as she reached the opening, she lunged forward and spun left. Her feet
hit the floor and she slid backwards, shifting her weight even lower. In one
fluid motion, her weapon was shouldered and focused on the guard. The
guard’s face went from puzzled to fearful in the blink of an eye, and in that
transition, Sora fired a short salvo dead center into his chest. He had barely
slumped backwards when the second guard focused his attention unto Sora,
but it was too late; Eli had already pivoted around the doorframe, grabbed the
young man’s weapon and now pointed his handgun at the guard’s temple. In a
sudden burst of adrenaline, the guard instinctively contested Eli’s control of his
weapon, but it never amounted to more than a slight strain. Eli was a veteran,
and his reaction patterns bore witness to his experience; relaxation meant
submission, while resistance equated immediate danger. The guard went stiff
and fell hard.
Faced with a static screen, a puzzled guard in the control room focused
intently trying to infer what he was supposed to relay to his commanding
officer. He was responsible for keeping track of movements within the
compound, but it had always been mostly a formality, as only a select few
people even knew of its existence. Technical issues were a rare occurrence,
but they did arise once in a while; except more than one screen had gone
blank, and from what he could tell, they were on independent parts of the
circuit. Everywhere around him were monitors providing him with a steady
stream of information; eyes on everything and everyone in the compound.
Now some of his eyes were blinded. His hands supporting his weight on the
desk in front of him, a lump formed in his gut as he picked up on an anomaly
in his peripheral vision. It made him turn his head quickly, and perplexed him
as he took in the imagery presented to him by the monitor. It was the
surveillance feed from the perimeter in front of the holding cell, central to the
purpose of the complex itself. The beautiful face of a young woman with warm