Recently in Chapter 13 Category

"There has to be brakes, how else would it stop?" Jon said nervously.

"No, I'm serious! There's no stop, no brakes, nothing!" Michael said furiously.

Jonathan and Michael went into a panic, which in turn put the rest of us in a panic. They combed through the control panel as fast and carefully as they could, looking for any reason why the brakes wouldn't be working.

"If we can't stop we'll have to jump off," Tobias said.

"Are you crazy?" I replied. "Look at the speed we're going at!"

"It's better than reaching the end of the rail and crashing into a wall!"

At this point we all broke out into an argument over the best way to deal with this increasingly dangerous situation. I wasn't sure myself how long we had until we reached the end of the rail, but I did know we were rapidly approaching our destination. For a moment I thought I heard Anna say something, but I ignored it, continuing to argue with Jon about how idiotic he must be to forget something so important. But then she yelled louder and there was no mistake.

"HEY!" she screamed.

We all fell silent for a second and looked at her.

"Can't we just put the tram in reverse?"

Jon and Michael looked at each other for a moment before it dawned on them. They both turned around and poked a few things on the control panel before the tram lurched again and began to slow down.

"You mean to tell me neither of you thought of something so simple?!" Sienna exclaimed, her hands at her hips. The two just hung their heads in shame.

I unzipped my hoodie and threw it off. It wasn't any warmer out, but I was sweating terribly. Up ahead I could see the next platform, which I assumed was our destination. There didn't appear to be an open stairwell to this one, however. Instead was just a small staircase which leads up to a large outcropping on the surface ceiling. My legs were already sighing in relief. I was not looking forward to climbing all those stairs back to the surface.

"Alright everyone, up ahead is our stop. We'll be heading up those stairs about two floors and once inside that building, we'll be very close to the CARMEL. From here on out there is a strong chance we'll be encountering security systems so be careful and keep your eyes on me in case I stumble upon something." Tobias laid out for us.

The arrival was hardly as smooth and quiet as Tobias had originally hoped for, with the tram jumping and rocking viciously the last couple hundred feet. When it did finally come to a rest, we all stepped off, and I took the time to stretch out again after being tossed around like a ragdoll.

"That was scary!" Anna said.

"Without a doubt, Anna." I agreed, glaring at Jonathan.

Once we were all composed, we headed up the stairs, Tobias once again taking the leader position. He continued to refer to his notebook. Once we reached the surface building, he looked at some signs on the wall and held the notebook up next to them.

Tobias then ushered us to follow. We climbed another couple flights of stairs until he put his hand up to stop us.

He then approached a grate on the wall. He indicated for Jon to come forward.

"Can you get this grate out of here, without triggering the pressure alarm behind it?" he asked.

"I can try," Jonathan offered.

He stepped forward and once again placed his hands on the grate. Slowly but carefully he melted the grate to a pile of molten steel. He was careful to leave the frame of the grate intact, so as not to trigger the alarm. He then reached inside, and also melted two large metal bars that were obstructing the path.

"That should do it."

Tobias thanked Jon and told him to take the front position, in case there were any other obstructions inside that would need to be taken care of.

Following Jon, Tobias said "Once we're inside we need to be silent. While they don't use audio sensors this deep inside the compound, there is staff inside at all hours. We can't risk them discovering us."

This was the most nerve-wracking part of the journey thus far. We no longer had plausible deniability to protect us from any curious police officers. If we were discovered now, we'd be forced to fight, and it was a long way back home.

For some reason I was stuck with taking up the rear this time. At this point I was glad I had worn my climbing gloves. The vent was ice cold, and although the gloves were open fingered, it was nice to be able to use the palms of my hands without freezing solid.

We climbed through the vent for at least ten straight minutes, taking various zigzagging paths that had me lost almost immediately. Tobias was continuing to follow his notebook, and nudged Jon to take a right turn here, and a left turn there. I was growing evermore curious to where that notebook came from and how he managed to scrounge up all this information, but now was hardly the time to be asking such questions.

Just when I was really wondering if this vent ever did end, we all stopped. I tried to look ahead to see what was going on, but Sienna's ridiculously flowery skirt was blocking my path. Don't ask me why her skirt jumped out at me so, it was just so … loud that I couldn't possibly ignore it.

Anyway, we started moving again, and finally I noticed that we had reached the end, as everyone began to climb out. The vent terminated under the floor of the CARMEL's datacenter, so Jonathan had disassembled the grate slowly rather than making an obvious melted gap. After we all had climbed out of the ventilation system, Tobias had us gather in a close huddle.

"Okay, this is it. Michael is going to break into the CARMEL's systems. Our job will be to give him as much time as he needs to get the data. You all know what you have to do. Just keep quiet and be on the watch for anything suspicious." Tobias said.

We nodded, and Michael rushed off to the main computer terminal in the room. He immediately went to work, his hands becoming a blur on the keyboard as they coaxed the computer into giving him what he wanted.

Anna took a seat and concentrated on locating the presence of others inside the datacenter.

"There are fourteen people around us. None of them seem to know we're here." She said, confirming our successful infiltration of the datacenter.

"Good work, Anna, now let us know if any of them get close to this room," I said. Sienna and I then took a seat at the far entrance to the room. Jonathan and Tobias sat at the other door.

Michael kept us informed on how he was doing, but it was obvious that this was going to take some time. I knew the longer we stayed here the better the possibility of us being discovered, so I was desperately trying not to chew my nails.

Sienna glanced at me, and held my hand.

"It's alright, Yukari, they're not going to catch us. We'll make it out of here just fine." she said trying to calm my nerves.

"No, it's okay, I'm not worried," I lied.

After a few close calls, and nearly an hour of waiting, Michael finally gave us a soft cry of victory.

"I've got it!" he said excitedly, holding up a disk case.

He then tossed it to me for safekeeping. I put it in the messenger bag I was carrying. It was understood that I had the best chance of escaping the city if something happened, and the data was too valuable to lose.

We all had gathered around the vent where we had entered at this point, and I was more than happy to get the hell out of there. But then, without warning, Anna suddenly cried out, "They're coming!"

"What? How many?" Tobias asked.

"…at least twenty!"

"How close?"

"Really close!" she cried.

"We need to get out of here, no-" I started to say when there was a loud bang at one of the doors.

Not seconds later they surrounded us, weapons raised. It was the military, special forces. I looked at Tobias, waiting for the signal. Luckily we had planned for this situation. I was to take off with the data, while the others fought their way out. This way their forces would be split between trying to recover the data and to capture us.

"You are all under arrest for breaking and entering into a government facility, and for stealing top secret government data." The commander informed us.

A couple men then moved forward to handcuff us, when Tobias coughed, giving me the signal.

I gripped the messenger bag tightly, and took off as fast as I could over the rack of servers next to me. Tobias was correct, they wouldn't dare shoot in this room for fear of damaging CARMEL.

"What the hell? You two, with me, we're following her. The rest of you, cuff these guys and take them back to HQ." I heard the commander yell from behind me.

I burst through the door they came from, and started the brutal climb up the stairs. Finally I reached the surface level, and ran outside. Bad idea. Outside were three squads waiting for me. I dashed back inside, dodging gunfire that destroyed the glass windows and the door. I headed for the stairs again, planning to head for the roof, when I heard the elevator doors chime. Inside were the three from below.

Since I wasn't able to make it to the stairs themselves, I ran full out toward the wall, and ran up the wall. I only had a short distance to build up speed, so I just barely was able to jump off and reach the second level railing. I pulled myself up and over, and the men below began firing again, while running up the stairs.

They didn't have a chance now. I sprinted across the lobby's second floor to the other side where the stairs resumed, and climbed as fast as I could. Skipping four or five stairs at a time, and bouncing off the walls at each turn, I made it up the thirty six floors to the top, bursting through the door there to reach the roof.

I took a moment to look around, and found a good path to get out of there. Once again I ran full tilt, this time toward a neighboring building. Jumping off at the edge, I grabbed the fire escape on the side of the neighboring building. I heard the sound of a helicopter nearby, so I decided to go down a flight on the fire escape and break into the building through a window.

It was an empty office full of cubicles. I didn't bother to take in the scenery, and took off toward the other side of the building. With our cover blown, I had no reason to avoid using weapons, so I pulled out my pistol and fired at the window ahead. As the glass shattered, I threw myself out of it toward the building across the street.

Not having any time to regret my decision, I feverishly pulled the trigger at the oncoming glass wall approaching me. The glass shattered, and I landed in a roll inside the building. Doing my best to ignore the glass shards embedded in my backside, I kept running. At this point I had no clue as to where I was running to, but I had to do my best to keep my momentum up and lose that helicopter.

I took a right turn in this building, and shot out more glass. Leaping through, I then realized the building on the other side was not one of the newer buildings, instead featuring the older concrete design. With no way to simply blast my way through, I braced myself for impact with the wall.

I slammed into the wall, and couldn't avoid bouncing off of it. As I fell, I twisted myself around as quickly as possible, and managed to grab a ledge on the building with my fingertips. I wasn't able to hold on, but it gave me enough leverage to swing my legs back in and break through the window below.

After narrowly avoiding a fall, I shook the glass off of me and took a second to catch my breath and look for the helicopter. I could still hear it but I couldn't find it in the sky. I decided to the next building over, which looked to be at least a hundred stories tall. A new construction, it featured the new mirror glass design, rather than the old concrete.

I kicked out the window facing the building, and took a few steps back. And then a few more. And a few more. I did not want to miss this jump. When I felt satisfied I could get the necessary speed, I took off. Jumping through the window, I noticed that over the course of the past few jumps, I had lost a lot of altitude. I was only about five stories above the ground now.

This wasn't the best time to be making such observations, however, as I was flying through the air toward the oncoming building. I pulled out my pistol, fired off the last couple shots in the clip, and watched the glass slowly fall away. It was at this point as I fell toward the imploding window that I may have misjudged. Inside, it was suddenly apparent that I was about to fall into an open lobby, not an office floor. This was not going to be a good landing.

In an effort to not become a splat upon the marble floor inside the lobby, I grabbed the bottom edge of the broken glass window, dropping the empty pistol. A large piece of broken glass cut its way through my left hand, causing me to scream in pain and let go, while my right hand held on and left me hanging on the inside of this lobby, three stories above the ground.

Below was a security officer already on the radio, and I could see the lights from police and military coming down the street. I let go of the edge of the window, and slid partway down the glass wall, before kicking off and doing a roll. The security officer let go of his radio and pointed his gun at me.

"Put your hands in the air!" he ordered.

"Yeah right," I thought to myself. "Like I'm hanging around here to get captured."

I jumped into action, drawing the only sword I was able to carry without being too bulky, my wakizashi. He fired a couple shots at me, but I was already moving too fast for him to make contact. I cut his outstretched arm, causing him to drop the gun, and kneed him in the gut. He crumpled to the floor in pain. Satisfied, I took off for the elevators. No way in hell I was about to run up the hundred or so floors this building stood at.

Even though the elevator was one of those turbo lifts that rapidly brought people to the top of the building, the ride still felt like an eternity. Once I reached the top floor the elevator serviced, I ran out and climbed the stairs. Only two more floors up and I made it to the roof. I kicked the door open, only to be greeted by the sight of a helicopter and the commander from before stepping out.

"Drop the weapon, Yukari! We know who you are now!" He yelled over the sound of the helicopter engine. "You have nowhere to run, we have the entire building surrounded!"

I took a moment to consider my options. I doubt I could make it back down the building the way I came, the place was probably swimming with soldiers and policemen. Taking on the commander and a squad of soldiers onboard the helicopter was beyond even my superhuman ability.

I decided to drop my sword.

"Good, now show us the disk," the commander demanded.

I pulled out the disk case from my messenger bag and showed it to him. He slowly approached me and took it from my hand. Once he put it in his suit pocket and was about to bring out the handcuffs, I kicked him square in the chest, and grabbed my sword. I took off to the left as fast as I could toward the downward slanting part of the roof. He ran after me, the squad right behind him. I jumped over the edge and began to slide down the inclined glass roofing.

The commander reached the edge of the flat roof, and yelled down at me laughing, "You forgot your disk, Yukari!" He waved the disk case above his head as if to mock me.

As I slid down the roof with increasing speed, I pulled the disk out of my messenger bag that I had cleverly taken out of its case. I waved it above my head, and looked back at the commander with a grin.

His face went immediately from a victorious one to an angry one, and he ordered the squad to fire at me. The glass started shattering all around me, as I swerved left and right as best I could. The end of the incline was rapidly approaching, so I slipped the disk back in the messenger bag, and braced myself for a big jump.

As soon as I hit the ledge I pushed off the building towards the one across the street. It hit me as I was flying through the air that I had to be insane. I was diving from a rooftop, running blind, and nearly a thousand feet in the air. One false move and I was done for. It also occurred to me that I did a lot of thinking in midair for some reason and that if I didn't want to die I should probably keep my mind on where the hell I was headed.

But in hindsight it probably wouldn't have mattered in this case. As I was falling down across the street, I noticed the building across from me was the new glass type. Without my pistol to blast out the window I couldn't jump in. My only other option was to use my wakizashi and hope that it punctures the glass.

I put the sword in front of me, with both hands on the hilt, and braced for impact. I collided with the building, and thankfully the force was great enough for the sword to puncture the glass, but it did not shatter like I thought it would have. Instead the sword lodged itself in the glass, and I nearly lost my grip on the sword.

Once the shock of the collision faded, I looked around for any possible ledges to grab onto, but the wall was flat, all glass. I tried to move the sword in and out, attempting to make the glass open up so I could break my way in. Also no luck. Then I heard a dreaded sound of a helicopter. I looked down the road, and sure enough, it was barreling towards me.

"I have to get out of here before that helicopter reaches me, or I am a goner," I said to myself.