Ninja Girl
Chapter Seventeen

“Anya?”

Nick hissed the words between his teeth as he moved. He was hunched over to almost half his regular height. The room they had found themselves in was essentially a labyrinth of hallways created by lines of pallets holding large cardboard boxes. Nick was trying to keep low so that his head did not stick up over any of the boxes as he moved.

“Anya?” He hissed again, but still no response.

As he came up to a corner, there was a sudden flash of movement in front of him. Anya had dropped out of somewhere – Nick had absolutely no idea where – and landed straight on someone walking up the adjacent corridor that Nick had not seen coming. There was no sound of struggle, just the noise of one fleshy object hitting another, a thud, a grunt, a second thud, and then nothing.

Anya leaped out in front of Nick and glared at him. “If you’re going to be in here, at least try to not get caught,” she said in that quiet but hard voice Nick could only assume she had been taught to use in ninja school. She then vanished back into the darkness, leaving Nick to his own devices.

He continued to make his way through the corridors of boxes. Along one side, he discovered, the boxes came to an end, opening up to a large, mostly empty area comprising a large part of the warehouse. Above him, along the western side of the room, there was a large office and observation area with big square windows that looked out over most of the warehouse. This area, Nick decided, was the most likely destination, so he steadily made his way through the boxes towards the far western wall in hopes of finding some stairs or a door.

It turned out to be the latter. He rounded the corner of some boxes and ahead of him the clutter cleared away, leaving a big space in front of a tall, white door. The door had a sign on it that read “Restricted Access,” and an electronic security panel in the wall near the door handle.

Nick stood there looking at the door, pondering how he was going to get through it, when suddenly Anya was there next to him. Nick nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Jesus!” he hissed as loudly as he dared. “What are you trying to do, give me a heart attack?”

“We need to get through there,” came Anya’s hushed voice, ignoring his comment once again. She pointed at the restricted access door.

“Yes, but how?”

Anya suddenly perked up and cocked her head to the side like she was listening to something. Then, without warning, she wrapped her arms around Nick – one around his neck and shoulders, the other over his mouth – and pulled him down behind a stack of boxes.

There came the sound of a beep, followed shortly by the click of a lock, and then the door they had been watching slid open.

“…absolutely preposterous!” came a high-pitched male voice with the slightest hint of a German accent. “I have already told Ryerson. The project is at a critical juncture. To move the subject now would be absolutely disastrous. It could ruin the entire project.”

“I’ve told you,” came a much deeper, thundering voice with a thick Russian accent, “the location may have been compromised. If we don’t act now we could lose more than just the project.”

The two men walked right past Nick and Anya’s hiding spot. Their bodies matched their voices. One was a small man in a lab coat with sandy blond hair and owl rimmed glasses. The other was a giant of a man: a big, bulky bruiser with jet black hair that ran down his sideburns into an equally dark beard and mustache. He wore combat fatigues with a fully stocked combat vest and a utility belt complete with both gun and knife holsters.

“All these ‘mights’ and ‘maybes,’” whined the one in the lab coat. “You have no idea. If we move, the loss will be definitive! I cannot believe Ryerson would be willing to risk the entire project…”

“I did not come here to argue,” said the big man. “Word comes down from Ryerson, we act. They say move, we move. End of discussion.”

The scientist grumbled something, but the pair had moved too far away for them to make out the words. Anya finally let Nick go and he collapsed to the ground. She had been holding him in a way that forced him to bend back awkwardly, and it had been making it difficult for him to breathe, especially with her hand over his mouth and nose.

“Well, I guess you were right to come here so quickly,” he whispered once he had caught his breath. He looked up to where she had been, but the space was now empty. He stood up, frantically looking this way and that in an effort to locate her. Finally he spotted her. She had climbed up on some boxes and was busying herself prying at the cover of a large vent.

“What are you doing?” He asked when he had moved close enough to her to keep whispering.

Anya did not answer. She popped out the vent cover, and a moment later had vanished into the duct.

“Hey, what about me?” Nick asked, as she worked the vent back into place. Anya did not respond. Nick let out a sigh. While the vent was fairly large, he doubted it would do him any good to try and get in there. Even if he made it, he probably wouldn’t be able to move around very well. He was going to need to find another way through the door.

He stepped over to the electronic panel and studied it. There was no interface or slots for cards. It was pretty much just a blank black box with a solid red light most likely indicating that the door was currently locked.

Behind him there came the sound of an alarm and then a grinding and creaking filled the warehouse. Giant bay doors on the far side of the warehouse began to slide open on an electric pulley system, and the alarm was only a warning for people to stand clear. The noise was so great that he failed to hear the beep from the security panel indicating the door was unlocking. He had turned to see what the alarm and grinding were all about, and by the time he had turned back around the door was starting to open.

Nick dove for the nearest crate and hunkered down behind it. He balled up as much as he could manage in an effort to make himself as small as humanly possible.

Out of the doorway came two more men. Nick could just make out the hum of their conversation, but the words were completely lost in the din of noise coming from the other side of the warehouse.

When finally the noise subsided, Nick realized the two men had stopped to carry on their conversation just on the other side of the crate he was hiding behind. Even though he could now make out their words, most of their conversation made very little sense to him. It sounded rather like a mess of scientific mumbo-jumbo without any sort of context.

“Which increases the rate of response in the parietal cortex by thirty percent,” one of them was saying.

“Yes, but decreases dilation and oxygenation in all other areas,” replied the other.

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There was the sound of approaching footsteps. “Can you believe this?” Came a third voice, the high-pitched scientist from earlier. “They’re going to ruin everything.”

“Beaker thinks we should administer the new corticoid before transport.”

The German scientist leaned against the crate. He was right next to Nick. If he turned and looked to his side at all he would spot the young man as he cowered. “I hate to say it but we may have to try it. Move everything else and anything non-critical to the main project first. Maybe if we delay long enough we can get them to change their minds.”

There was a murmur of agreement. Suddenly a loud crash sounded from across the room. Nick glanced around the crate and noticed a lanyard hanging out of the German’s pocket.

“What the hell was that?” One of the scientists said.

“Those buffoons!” Growled the German. “They’re going to destroy everything!”

The three ran off in the direction of the noise. Nick let out his breath, which he had been holding for most of his time behind the crate. He raised his hand to look at his loot. As the scientist ran off, distracted by the noise, Nick had lifted the lanyard from the man’s pocket. It was attached to a plastic card holder that held the man’s ID, and, as Nick had hoped, a key card.

Nick slipped the key card from the holder and dropped the lanyard on the ground. With any luck, even if the scientist did come looking for it, he would find the remains and not bother to check for the key card.

With any luck.

Nick made his way to the door, scanned the card, and smiled with satisfaction as it beeped an affirmative and the light turned green. He opened the door and stepped on through.

He stopped immediately. The hallway beyond was a completely different place from the room outside. This area was sparkling clean. Everything was plain, white, and sterile. Nick felt as if he had just crawled out of a sewer and stepped into a hospital. It was honestly a little eerie.

Nick made his way down the corridor, checking each door for any indication of how any room might be being used. There was nothing. All the doors were blank, there were no windows of any kind, and no plaques or signs on or besides any of the doors to indicate their purpose. Nick growled in frustration after he had made it about halfway down the hallway. Where the hell was Anya?

At the end of the hall, there was a door unlike any of the others in that it was the only one to have a security panel like had been on the outer door. Nick decided to skip all the other rooms and check on that one.

Suddenly, a familiar beep and click resounded down the hallway, and someone was pushing through the first door. There was no time to hesitate now. Nick slid the card over the panel, and as soon as he heard the click he yanked the door open. He practically dove inside and nearly slammed the door behind him he was moving so quickly.

Still holding onto the door handle, Nick let out a sigh of relief. He turned to see the rest of the room.

Anya was standing right there.

Nick literally jumped in surprise at the sight of her, nearly crashing back into the door.

“Anya!” He exclaimed, excitedly. She took no heed.

Anya was stock still. She was turned away, exactly perpendicular with the door, and staring off at the far wall. Nick followed her gaze to see that most of the wall was a large, thick, glass window. On the other side of the window was what looked like some sort of hospital room, with tools, equipment, desks, drawers, the whole nine yards, even an operation table with adjustable angles and built-in restraints. The table was tilted upwards.

In it, under the restraints, stood a man.

His eyes were closed. He looked for all the world like he was simply sleeping, except for the fact this his chest did not seem to be moving up and down with the motion of breathing.

That was not the weirdest part of it, though. While the man on the table was wearing a hospital gown, much of the parts of his body that were visible had a metallic gleam.

The man was half robot.

“Hole-ly hell,” said Nick, stepping slightly closer to the glass as if he needed a better view. “Is… is that Kuroba?”

“Yes,” replied Anya calmly. Her voice was distant, as though it was being broadcasted through her body while she was actually somewhere a million miles away. “That’s Kokatsu.”

“Kokatsu?” Nick echoed, confused. Then it clicked. “Oh! You mean, the one from your village that you were telling me about earlier? The one who betrayed you all?”

“Yes.”

“Kuroba is Kokatsu?”

“That’s right. Kuroba is his surname. Kuroba Kokatsu, or, as you would say it, Kokatsu Kuroba.”

She took a deep breath and let it out.

“He is my father.”

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