Adam grimaced as he watched his friend charge through the front entrance of Midas Towers.
“Hope you can manage that…” Adam said quietly. “Though you do seem to keep surprising me every time we do this…”
He turned his attention to the skyline and picked out a taller building nearby and moved towards it. He made sure to avoid the sight of the police and others in the area as he sprinted across the wide street into the alleyway near his targeted vantage point. Using his grapple launcher, he quickly scaled the building up to the rooftop.
Scanning the area surrounding the skyscrapers, he increased the audio input to his helmet system to try to pinpoint the griffin's location. It had swooped in when the helicopter flew by, but seemed to have disappeared again.
“Any idea as to where that thing is headed?” Adam spoke over their comms channel.
“Three possibilities,” Lance said in response.
“One: the reactor room that powers the facility, Two: the main lab server room, or Three: Midas. Any of those options presumes any form of intelligence and cognitive ability for this thing being directed at a specific target, but we can’t rule anything out.”
“So big dumb brute goes smash versus big brute set on a hunt?” asked Adam.
“That would be the short answer, yes,” Lance replied, a hint of grim determination in his tone.
Adam shifted his gaze toward the building, his HUD showing an approximate location of where Lance was. He looked a few floors higher and spotted a large form moving quickly.
“Well, I can see some movement on the floors above you, so I’m going to guess that it’s some way, shape, or form of the latter,” noted Adam.
“You might want to hurry.”
A spotlight suddenly flared to life near him and he quickly ducked down behind an air conditioning unit nearby to avoid being seen. He was forced to turn his audio down as a helicopter slowly came to hover above the building directly in front of his view toward Midas Towers.
A small group of armed people hastily jumped from the flying vehicle just before it lifted up and turned eastward. Adam watched as the three people, who were clearly part of the special unit he knew Cody to be a part of, posted up toward the edge of the roof. He noted that one had a set of binoculars, two with scoped rifles, all directing their attention to the upper floors of the building.
“Hopefully they won't mistake Lance for a target…” Adam thought to himself.
Just as this thought came to mind, one of the snipers took a shot that shattered a window… revealing a dark, armored figure that was now illuminated with spotlights from the ground.
“Like that…” Adam groaned.
“Whoever you are, I suggest you stop moving,” called an all too familiar voice, amplified somewhere in the courtyard beyond Adam's post.
“Cody…” Adam whispered to himself begrudgingly.
He was about to spring into action to defend his friend when the communication line opened up again, this time with Lance addressing Adam’s brother.
“Lieutenant Chase,” Lance called over the new line.
“Tell your men to stand down.”
Adam saw the sniper react and then Cody spoke again, this time over the comm line.
“How did you gain access to this channel?” he demanded.
“That’s not important right now, lieutenant,” Lance said flatly.
“Right now you are impeding my objective by having your men fire on me. It would be better to direct your snipers towards the creatures above us.”
“What do you know about these creatures?” asked Cody.
“Are you…”
Lance cut him off.
“Look, no disrespect, but you’re wasting time asking questions,” Lance said.
“Save the talking for later when you have the press looking for the latest scoop. Have your men ready to fire on the minotaur when I give the signal.”
“I don’t answer to you,” Cody said angrily.
“Then Bartholomew Midas’ blood will be on your hands as well,” Lance said.
“I am going to keep chasing the creature. If you try to shoot me again… let’s just say the outcome might not be so pretty.”
Adam held his breath for what seemed like forever as he watched the snipers deliberate over the communication line, asking for orders. With his advanced visor mode he could see red dots tracking Lance as he moved down the hall.
“Hold your fire,” Cody finally growled.
“Prepare to focus fire on the creature in the building.”
Adam let out a sigh of relief and slipped over the edge to attempt to sneak away from the snipers. The one closest to his location turned just as he vanished from sight.
“Who is there?” she called out, turning fully to the gap between the buildings.
“Dang it!” huffed Adam as he dropped the remaining floors to street level.
He quickly fired his grapple as he fell, catching himself just before he hit the ground. Landing hard, he retracted the tether and ducked around a corner.
“Who's down there?” the officer called again.
Adam slunk away, stealing away through the shadows around the buildings.
“This is going to be trickier than I thought…” Adam mumbled.
He slipped by the demolished gates and moved around the perimeter of the facility, searching for signs of the griffin around the towers. As he scanned the area, Lance's voice came over the comms again.
“Lieutenant…” Lance called, slightly winded. “Have your men ready… twenty-fourth floor, south-facing veranda…”
“Copy that,” came the reply.
Adam checked the building's layout and looked up in the area Lance had specified. Moments later he saw glass explode out as the hulking mass of the minotaur slam into the window. Adam had to dial the volume as the comm line was flooded with multiple voices calling out commands and shouts of surprise. Adam zoomed in and saw several darts pierce its body as the snipers fired on the creature. It seemed that it was resisting the tranquilizing drugs, but before it could take another step, the minotaur slumped to the floor back into the building.
“Target neutralized,” Lance said over the line.
“Good work.”
There was a brief pause over the line before Lt. Chase spoke.
“You do know that this doesn’t make us friends or even allies,” he said.
“Either you come down here or we go up there and you are to surrender to us for questioning, possibly even arrest.”
“We aren’t finished yet, Lieutenant…” Lance said with a half-amused laugh.
“There’s still one more creature in the sky.”
“If I can even find the dumb thing…” Adam murmured.
Suddenly he noticed a flutter of movement at the top of the highest tower near what appeared to be an area under renovation.
“Why didn't I start at the top?” Adam asked himself.
He spotted a window washing platform mounted to the west side of the tower.
“That seems a bit too convenient…” Adam noted as he crept toward the mechanism.
“But convenient is something I need now…”
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