Ding!
We'd arrived to the second floor. The hall felt just as narrow as all the others, lined with seemingly endless rows of opened doors. We looked up and around to see if Celeste had fulfilled his duty, and sure enough, all the cameras on this floor we're broken too. We didn't have to worry about being watched. Still, as cautious as ever, I unsheathed my knife.
"Danger?" Sav noticed me.
I shook my head. "Just in case."
We wandered the hall and occasionally peered into the rooms we passed-by. Nothing was out of the ordinary, and there was no uniquely labeled room like the janitor's closet on the first floor. We concluded that the second floor was off the mark, so we got back into the elevator and now made our way towards the third.
As we were raising to the next floor, I could see Kyra tapping her foot. She seemed on edge, as if impatiently waiting for something. "Kyra, you okay?" I asked her.
"Yeah, just want us to get out of here as soon as possible." She was still thinking of the state we'd left Cynthia in. "I don't want anyone to suffer under my supervision anymore."
I realized her statement referred to
Kyra checked her watch to find any reply from her S.O.S. call, to which there was.
"They responded!" She read the message:
[ Holding until situation is dire enough for backup. J is more than enough. ]
"What…?" Kyra's mouth dropped.
"What? What did they say?"
"They're not sending backup…"
"Why!?" Sav shouted. "I can't even use my Fractal to get us outta here!"
"I know, but they still rejected the call."
I couldn't believe it. Our own superiors were rejecting an S.O.S. call. "Isn't it clear to them that we're outnumbered? Why wouldn't they help us even the odds a little bit?"
"They said J is more than enough." Kyra looked dumbfounded, defeated.
"Bullshit! No way they're leaving us to rot!" I looked at Sav who, with his injured hand and disabled Fractal, looked even more uncertain than before. Cynthia, our main means of defense, was stuck and paralyzed at the bottom floor of the building. Celeste was off on his own with impaired vision, at constant risk of falling victim to a supposed Fractal that could take control of him. And J, our primary combat force, was fending off hundreds of tenants on his own on the top floor. Worst yet, we were all separated from one another. We were in a worst-case-scenario waiting to happen.
Ding!
We'd finally arrived to the third floor, and upon exiting the elevator doors, I noticed one thing immediately.
"Hey, the cameras here aren't broken…"
Sav and Kyra noticed it too. I felt the tension in the air rise as worry settled on their faces.
"Celeste should have taken care of that." I saw the unease grow in Sav. On the other hand, Kyra unsheathed her knife, unspoken, yet ready.
Suddenly, at a speed so fast it nearly blurred with the invisible air, and with precision so tight it was aimed right at Kyra's head, a tiny shard of glass came flying towards her.
Clang!
Kyra threw her knife up, deflecting the shard just in time.
"Take cover in one of the rooms!!!" She yelled.
We all quickly dashed towards the nearest open door, retreating into one of the tenant's rooms and locking the door behind us.
"Who was that?!" I said, still surprised Kyra had been able to anticipate that attack.
She was catching her breath. "I think it was Celeste."
"Ain't no way! Celeste?!" Sav didn't want to believe it.
"What I deflected was a shard of glass, and it wasn't just thrown at me. It was precisely aimed at me." Kyra tapped her temple, indicating where the shard was directed. "If I didn't have Panorama active in that moment, I wouldn't have noticed it, and it would have gotten me."
"Shit! If the cameras hadn't been taken out yet, that could only mean Celeste's under control right now." I gripped the knife tightly in my hand. "What do we do? Stepping back out into that hallway is like walking into a sniper's sight."
"We have to destroy the cameras if we want him to take back control of his body." Kyra pointed to the camera in the corner of the room we were in. "Either we throw our knives at them or we jump up and slash them. But we're going to have to cover for each other with Celeste on our tail."
My hand trembled slightly. I was spontaneously about to face one of the Upper Four head-on. I was nervous.
"Bring it back to New Zina," Kyra told me. She smiled.
"Right…" She'd put a sudden calmness over my anxiety. I smiled back and held my knife like how they'd taught it in the course years ago. "Let's do this."
"Let's save him!" Sav said.
We readied ourselves behind the door, and on the count of three, burst out into the hallway with defensive positions. There Celeste was, standing at the other end of the hall with hands full of glass shards. He looked at us with a blankened stare. I could tell he'd been taken over completely.
I pivoted and made an immediate dash towards the cameras at the back of the hall behind us. Kyra and Sav read-up on what I was doing and followed in pursuit, while still facing the front.
"Get in between me and Klyson!" Kyra told Sav. Out of the three of us, only Sav didn't have a weapon. And with my back facing Celeste, only Kyra had a knife to deflect the incoming shards. She kept Panorama active.
Cling! Clang!
I heard the shards being deflected behind me. I even heard some flying past as Kyra diverted them off our course with her knife. I was finally nearing the two cameras at the back end of the hall I ran towards. Seeing them follow my movement as I got closer, I could tell someone was in control of them, watching. As if aiming towards the eyes of a person with intent to blind them, I leapt up, and with my knife, slashed across the both of them, serrating through the circuits that kept them running.
Crackle! Bzzt!
"Two more to go!" I said, landing back on the floor. We were now face-to-face with Celeste, who stared us down from the other end of the hall. Now was the hard part: getting to the cameras that Celeste himself was guarding.
Kyra ran forwards first. I realized she chose to lead us in with her ability to deflect in our defense. There wasn't much Sav and I could do in our positions behind her, other than have faith that she blocked every shard thrown our way.
In the heat of this moment, we were bystanders to a Fractal face-off. It was eyes that could aim with perfect precision, versus eyes that could see with more-than perfect vision.
Clang!
The shards Kyra deflected were embedding into the walls, the ceiling, and the floor surrounding us. With the hall so narrow, there wasn't much we could to do avoid the incoming barrage other than defend against it as Kyra did. Without her, and with Celeste's impeccable accuracy, this fight would have been over a long time ago.
"We're nearing!" Kyra called out. We were approaching Celeste's end of the hall, where behind him were the final two cameras. As Kyra was clearly occupied in defending us with her knife, it was up to me to destroy the cameras again. But this time around, I couldn't just leap up and slash them. Not while Celeste was right there.
I realized I only had one option.
"Watch your head!" I told Kyra. As she consciously leaned it aside, I twirled the knife in my hand, grabbing it by the blade before whipping it towards one of the cameras.
Crack!
I'd nailed it right in the lens.
"Nice!" Kyra exclaimed.
There was now only one camera that remained, and therefore, only a single eye left that controlled Celeste.
"That's all you, Kyra!"
She noticed her chance. In the small window in which no shards were thrown our way, in which Celeste picked up a shard giving little time for Kyra to land a shot on the camera uncontested, she raised her knife, aimed, and threw.
Thuck!
The blade embedded into the wall, just beside the camera.
She'd missed.
All of our eyes widened. Kyra, who'd been deflecting all the shards using her knife until now, was empty-handed. We were running towards Celeste with no means of avoiding the shard he now threw our way. With Kyra at the front, there was only one conclusion we could see coming as the shard found itself an inch from her face.
"Kyra—!!!" Sav reached his left hand out. In the fastest way he'd ever done it, he used the hand formation to summon a wormhole.
Just before the glass had punctured through Kyra's forehead, it suddenly disappeared into oblivion. In the distance, the destruction of electrical circuit ensued.
Crackle! Bzzt!
The last camera had been destroyed.
In a quick succession of events, Sav, using his left hand that could only transport smaller objects, directed the glass shard through a wormhole just before it hit Kyra, and warped it in the direction of the remaining camera, destroying it.
Sav's Gateway had perfectly countered Celeste's Trajectory, using both his and Celeste's Fractal against him, eye for an eye.