Chapter 54 - The Lieutenant
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I didn't drop my gun. Instead, I fired three rapid shots directly at his chest. The armor-piercing rounds sparked harmlessly off his reinforced tactical plating.
He laughed, a guttural, terrifying sound, and raised his auto-shotgun.
"Move!" I screamed at Elena, diving behind the central server console just as a hail of buckshot shredded the glass terminal where I had been standing.
Sparks showered the room as alarms instantly began to blare. The heavy steel doors of the server core slammed shut, locking us inside.
"You can't hide in here forever, little bird," the lieutenant taunted, his heavy boots echoing on the metal floor as he stalked around the mainframe. "The Architect wants you alive, but he didn't say in how many pieces."
Elena popped out from behind a server rack and threw a flashbang grenade. The blinding light and concussive boom disoriented him for a split second.
I seized the opening. I lunged from cover, launching a flying roundhouse kick directly at his cybernetic eye. My boot connected with a sickening crunch. The lieutenant roared in pain, dropping his shotgun and blindly swinging a massive, armored fist.
His punch clipped my shoulder, sending me flying backward into a wall of fiber-optic cables. The breath left my lungs in a violent rush.
He charged forward like a wounded bear, drawing a serrated combat knife. Elena jumped onto his back, wrapping her arms around his throat in a chokehold, but he simply reached over, grabbed her by the hair, and hurled her brutally across the room. Elena hit the steel wall and slumped to the floor, unconscious.
"Now it's just you and me," he snarled, raising the knife.
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I scrambled backward, my fingers desperately searching the floor. They brushed against the grip of the fallen auto-shotgun. I grabbed it, rolled onto my back, and pulled the trigger. The heavy slug tore through the unarmored joint beneath his chin, blowing the back of his head off.
The massive lieutenant collapsed to the floor. I dropped the gun, gasping for breath, when suddenly, the room's intercom cracked to life.
