Carlotta refuses to let Clyde help her with the heavy machine, and she dragged it up to the fourth floor without any complaints. She's covered in sweat, her usually neat hair pulled into a tight bun now has strays frizzing out and touching her red cheeks.
"Last floor, how coincidental," she says.
"I'm sorry, but my nose says this is where the smell is the strongest. She probably wanted a good place to keep a lookout, hopefully, she didn't see us come in," I say.
I keep my footsteps quieter up here, I don't want to give her a chance to plot a setup or try jumping out of a window. The smell is strong up here; thick and oily as if it could be a dense fog if we could see smells. I wonder if an Animatrix victim will get that power. What would they do with it?
My nose touches the door and I pull back a little embarrassed. "It's this door," I whisper, "Carlotta, get the machine ready. I have a feeling she's waiting on the other side."
Carlotta sets the machine down and flips some switches. What we didn't expect was for it to start making a whirring noise loud enough for someone on the other side to hear. Clyde gently moves me to the side and kicks the door open. At first, it flies off its hinges and speeds inside, but expectedly, the door and its pieces slow to a crawl in mid-air.
Standing in front of the debris is Clockwork clutching her bloody side with only a bra and jeans covering her. Bandages have been wrapped around her stomach, it's already soaked with fresh blood. She didn't have the tools to close to the wound, I'm guessing.
She steps to the side and lets the door hit the wall at full speed. Clyde and I rush in, bumping into each other trying to squeeze through the door at the same time. We slip in, Clyde at full sprint, and me tripping and rolling on the floor.
Clyde is immediately slowed down, and it gives me a perfect chance to grab a sharp piece of the door and throw it at her. It hits her fresh cut, but it doesn't stab. She screams anyway and speeds up Clyde's running, forcing him to smack his nose on the wall at a dangerous velocity.
I stay on the floor and use my gun to shoot a light fixture mounted right above her. The shards explode, but they too fall in slow motion. She leaps to a nearby desk and grabs a pen from it, throwing it at me and speeding up the pen's drop. It goes so fast that it completely impales my bicep, coming out the other side in a bloody stream.
"Agh! You bitch!"
Clyde's eyes finally stop crossing and he focuses on Clockwork. She sees him and runs to the window. She shatters it with her elbow, but before the pieces can fall outside, she freezes them like a suspended jigsaw puzzle. One by one, she plucks them from the air and throws the shards at Clyde.
Clyde covers his eyes, the glass shards ripping through his shirt and skin, his forearms are turned to red ribbons as blood spurts from the deep gashes. When she runs out, she freezes him instead.
"I told you two to just leave it alone! I saw you through the window, I knew you were going to sniff me out. I was going to jet after I patched myself up, but I ran out of time," she says.
"Egh! Carlotta, get the machine!" I scream.
She walks in with a fully charged machine, a wide nozzle pointing at Clockwork. "Nice to meet one of the Animatrix victims. I'm quite shocked to see such abilities existing on this planet in my lifetime."
Clockwork scoffs. "What's that, a new and improved time stabilizer? I hope for your sake this one works better than the last."
I laugh too. "It's not a time stabilizer, it's a particle accelerator."
"What!?"
Carlotta shoots a beam at Clyde, and his speed is returned to normal. Even he is too surprised to make a move, he just looks at his arms and legs.
"Your curse has nothing to do with time, does it!?" I shout.
"Finally all caught up, huh? All right, my power is Playback. Speed manipulation at my will."
"I knew it! It had everything to do with speed, not time!"
She increases her own speed and tries to run out of the room. Carlotta is in the way with the machine, and she tries to smash into her like a speeding semi. She's no slouch, Carlotta takes the hit, but keeps a powerful posture and slams into the wall while holding Clockwork in a grapple.
"Ms. Adams!" Clyde shouts.
Her knee digs into Clockwork's stomach, her blood now spreads even further along her once-white bandage. She backs up and Carlotta pulls out a letter opener from her blazer, tossing it at Clockwork's face with a perfect throw.
She has no choice but to slow down the letter opener, and Carlotta takes the chance to swoop in and throw a thrusting side kick. Her foot connects with the bridge of her nose, and she resets her stance to throw some open-palm strikes for her throat and chest.
Clockwork grabs a flying strike and tries to pull her in closer. They struggle and spin in place, but once Carlotta's back is to the letter opener, Clockwork resumes its speed; stabbing Carlotta in her shoulder.
She's stunned by the pain and flinches in the grapple. Before Clockwork can start another attack, I throw my whole body at her in a shoulder tackle. We both get put through the wall into another room. This one has a couple inside watching tv. Now that Adams is here, it's her job to make sure they don't know what Ispio is or why we're fighting.
"Filthy fox!" she screams as I lay on top of her.
"Rascally rabbit!"
Her punch winds up, but it's lightning fast, and the impact connects with my eye. It's strong, and I pop up a little before falling down on the wood floor. She already stood up while I was flying, that's incredible!
I look up to see her swinging on the ceiling fan. I hear it break from its mount, and in less than a blink, it superspeeds its way into crashing into my back. I hear a crack, and moments later, I feel intense pain. The nanobots flood my blood with pain blockers, I know I'm going to be sore tomorrow. I might not even be able to walk anymore.
Clyde jumps through the hole in the wall and spots Clockwork grabbing one of the couples sitting on the couch. She throws them at him and slows down their trip. In a crazy display, she uses the slowed-down civilian as a launching pad, climbing them and jumping off to speed up an elbow drop right into Clyde's skull. Something wet and red falls in front of him, and then it starts bleeding.
"Clyde…is that your tongue?" I ask.
"Auughh!" he cries, his hands reaching for his mouth. Clockwork speeds up her punches to unleash an impossible flurry of strikes to Clyde's front body. His face, his legs, his torso, they all receive what could be one-hundred punches in less than two seconds. Then, with a jumping kick, she hurls Clyde forward and onto the floor with me.
Carlotta staggers in, her hand gripping the letter opener still stuck in her shoulder. With a tug, she rips it out, her blood streaks along the wall like a spatter painting.
"Both agents are down, are you sure you want to keep going?" Clockwork taunts.
"Last report I heard, you can't see into the world of speed, you can only enter its motions."
"I don't even know what that means."
"Troy, can you move?"
I stand slowly, the ceiling fan falling off of me and onto Clyde's unresponsive body. "Sure, boss, I can still fight."
"Get the particle accelerator."
"Carlotta, don't!"
"Stop it, Troy, don't argue with me. I know how to handle this."
The difficulty I have moving my limbs tells me I'm not suited for another round. Maybe she's right, shooting from a distance is more right for me. I grab the machine and lug it back to the room where Carlotta is already slowed down mid-punch. I shoot a ray of acceleration at her and watch her speed up.
Carlotta doesn't have the nanobots we agents do. If she gets hurt, stabbed, or gets a bone broken, there are no pain suppressors for her, and no emergency medical assistance if she's gravely injured. Clyde had his whole side ripped out and still lived thanks to the nanobots.
For a while, they fight at regular speed. Clockwork speeds up her attacks and rattles Carlotta's chest, but she's tougher than she looks, and not a fraction of her combat training has waivered in the years.
Clockwork fails to block a haymaker to the cheek, she stumbles over to the coffee table and trips over it. She rolls to get back up, but Carlotta is already kicking the table toward her. It pops up and threatens to take her head off, but she slows it down just in time. It doesn't matter, I speed it back up and watch it hit her in the face. Her body goes limp and does a full backflip; she lands on her stomach, and the gauze peels off now drenched in blood.
Clockwork looks pale and woozy, she's lost too much blood from an injury she created herself. Carlotta smirks and takes the letter opener out again. She turns her back and throws it straight up behind her shoulder. Clockwork slows its descent, but I speed it back up. It perfectly stabs her in the back of the neck.
"Agh!!! Damn all Ispio agents! May they all rot!"
Carlotta bends down and grabs Clockwork by her ears. She lifts her up, Clockwork's face wincing in extreme pain. "Did you really think you were going to come out on top of this in one piece?"
"The Afterburners…the true menace. Created just to hunt down people like me."
"We exist because you exist."
"It's always gotta be equal, does it?"
"If it wasn't, then your people would be enslaving America right now."
"You got that right. They could use the guidance."
Carlotta smiles, but then, she frowns. Her mouth moves again, but everything she's saying is reversed. She lets go of Clockwork's ears and gently places her back down. She stands up, the letter opener ejects itself from Clockwork's neck and lands back in Carlotta's hand.
What's happening? Are we being reversed!?
My body starts to do the fidgets it did a moment ago exactly the same way but reversed. Her curse has mutated! It can rewind speeds now!?
The table Carlotta kicked is now reset, only just barely lifting off from her foot. This time, Clockwork is smiling, ready to dodge it now that she knows it's coming.
"Playback!"
The table flies over her head, and she sweep kicks Carlotta's standing leg, dropping her to the floor in surprise.
"No! What the hell was that!?" I shout.
"Playback has mutated. It looks like now I can reverse speeds too."
"Bullshit! Not another mutation! Is this going to happen with all of you?"
I drop the machine's nozzle and pull out my gun. I fire the bullet, and she lets it pierce her arm. It doesn't matter, she just reverses the speed and the bullet goes flying back into my pistol. Now she can make infinite mistakes and still win.
She snatches the letter opener from Carlotta's blazer and throws it straight at me. I duck, letting it soar over my head. I should've seen it coming. She reverses the speed and it drives right through my back, coming out of my abdomen, and flying back into her hand. My breathing stops, I can't suck in air. I think she punctured a lung!
"Troy, no!" Carlotta screams.
I fall to my knees, the nanobots block the pain, but I can't breathe. My throat tries and clenches, but no air will go in. My chest spurts small streams of blood every time my heart beats. I feel like I'm being squashed to death. All I can make are gross gurgling noises.
Carlotta tries to crawl to me, but Clockwork just reverses her back into position. She stabs the letter opener into her leg, making Carlotta cry out loudly. The civilians we disturbed are already gone, there's no one here to help.
Clockwork, profusely bleeding from her unwrapped side, hovers over Carlotta and sits on top of her, straddling her hips. She wraps her arms around her throat and starts to strangle the life out of her.
"Clyde—wake up! Help…" Carlotta says through strained breathing. Clyde is still unresponsive.
Looks like we're both going to run out of air in the next minute or two. There's nothing more painful I've experienced than watching Carlotta's legs stop kicking.
She…she killed her.