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Chapter XVII - Eyewall

Kiyosato dove through a doorway on the second floor of the hospital, coming up into a roll to fire his pilfered MP-5 as a pair of black-clad mercenaries stormed through the stairwell door behind him. One, a tall dog, jerked and fell backwards into the stairwell, multiple hits on his Kevlar failing to penetrate but knocking the wind out of him. The other returned fire, spraying hot rounds into empty space, the kobun having already pulled himself back behind the doorway.

Behind the silver wolf, Maasa was trying to talk, over the noise of gunfire and blaring emergency sirens, to a terrified and angry-looking young ferret girl and her very-ill bed-ridden father. Having no time to think about it, Kiyosato tuned it out, sticking his SMG around the corner to unload a few more rounds one-pawed while he yanked a pistol out of his coat.

Raven yelled at the strange Japanese wolf, clinging to her father's arm.

"What the hell is going on?! Who are you people?"

Her father clenched his paw around hers, albeit weakly, eyes calmly evaluating what was going on as the young wolf stammered, trying to come up with some way to calm her.

"Young wolf, will you do something for me?"

Maasa blinked to a stop, and stared at him.

"Ah...I will try?"

"Get her out of here alive."

Maasa bowed, instinctively, to an older fur.

"Of course."

He grabbed Raven's paw, prying it from her father's fingers as she screamed and kicked at him, eliciting a yelp as she connected with his shin, though he didn't let go.

"What do you MEAN he killed half your fucking team?!" Collin screamed into the radio pinned to his jacket, before lifting his P-90 and blasting at the front doors of the hospital, where police officers were now starting to arrive in response to the violent attack.

Through the radio, the leader of White Team responded.

"We got six men up into the ICU before a silver wolf in a suit attacked our second section from behind. Killed three, the three others have him pinned down on the second floor. What's your situation?"

Collin snarled, and responded in a biting tone as he was pulling the magazine off his weapon and reloading, ducking down behind the reception desk for cover as bullets whizzed by from his men and some from the vastly outgunned cops.

"Green team, what's the rooftop situation?"

A crackle came over the radio, and Simon Gecko's voice rolled through, sounding amused, dry, dangerous...

"Better hurry, little lion. Sao Paolo's finest are already moving your way. With their precious cute little SWAT teams, I'd say about...Oh...Fifty or so operators. Also, the emergency chopper pilot on the roof is now" a rifle shot rang out through the radio "unlikely to pilot ever again."

Collin nodded, and called to the otter, who he hadn't seen since the blowing of the generator control.

"You at the security center yet, Gav?"

The otter dropped down into the emptied security room, gave a quick look around, and padded over to one of a dozen or so computers.

"I'm here. What's the plan?"

Collin thought for a second, swore, fired the P-90 blind over the top of the counter again, and said something he was sure he'd regret.

"Is there enough power left to close the security doors?"

The otter calmly tapped at the computer, seeing the secondary emergency system was still online, and input the command to close the front security doors. Then frowned, as the whole system lit up, all of the security doors dropping at once.

"Yes...But someone here changed the coding. I think they all just closed."

"Well fuck, open them up!"

"Sorry, Black One, it's a security lockout. Paranoia-class shit. We'll have to find a workaround to get at Goza."

The burly lizard carrying Sato had ducked into the hall, as his partner unloaded a pair of Uzi's without anything resembling accuracy, just to keep the mercenaries at the top of the stairwell from getting their heads up or trying to charge again.

Followed by a hyperventilating doctor and a growling calico female that kept stumbling into walls, he took the stairs four at a time, panting in his suit, thanking the gods for the thick tail that helped him keep his balance, and hoping to hell there weren't any more opponents ahead of them.

Just as he reached the last landing, puffing and blowing with exertion, a red light blared to life over the door...And a steel door slid into place so quickly he bounced off it and nearly tumbled down the stairs behind him from the impact.

"Kuso!"

Rene was no fool. As soon as the attack had started and the warning from Maasa reached them, he'd gone for the roof. As a pilot, it was always his first instinct to plan an escape route for his team. Having thus decided, he went up, looking for an emergency chopper they could use to exfiltrate with their wounded wolf.

Finding the chopper had been simple. Getting the pilot to open the door hadn't. The raccoon had been listening to the radio, and was arguing loudly with Rene via a speaker in the side of the air ambulance, when his chest abruptly exploded outward all over the inside of the chopper's canopy.

The hare flinched back, still holding his aching chest from all the yelling and going up stairs. Ever quick on the reactions, he ducked behind the chopper's fuselage, hoping to hell the sniper hadn't spotted him.

Bullet came in the opposite side...Going to have to pick the lock to the copilot door and hope the pilot's corpse blocks for me...Fuck.

Warm wind blew past, ruffling the open-backed hospital gown he was still in, reminding the hare of just how little equipment he had. With a frown, he reached down and yanked the IV needle out of his paw with a wince, then dug a fork out of his pocket, kneeling down to fatigue it against the roof and take a prong off so he could go to work on the simple key-based cockpit lock.

He was lucky, or maybe good, even he wasn't sure which. The lock snicked open, leaving him thanking his scofflaw upbringing for small favors, as he crawled into the cockpit, the pain his chest reminding him of just how similar this was to the lost cockpit he'd gotten into. Looking at the pilot made him flinch, remembering his poor passed friend.

Shaking that bad mental image off, he nabbed the radio set, staying low as he tuned it to the unit frequency, thanking God or whoever was listening that the chopper had already spun up by the time he arrived.

"Sniper on the rooftops, took out the medevac pilot. I've got the chopper now, but I'm only gonna get one chance to get her off the ground with that guy popping our canopy!"

Pulling on the spare headset, he heard an angry, frustrated reply from Tamra.

"Security bulkheads came down! Get outta there! Get Arlen and Buck!"

Rene snarled and slammed his fist into the seat, as he pulled himself the rest of the way in, leaning against the bloody dead pilot to stay covered.

"I roger that! We'll be back for you, stay alive goddamnit!"

Black Dragon looked around, quickly darting his head out into the hall to see what he had suspected. Security doors had slammed down, blocking their attackers into the stairwell. Even so, they were already starting to cut through the door, if the hissing sound from the other side was any indicator.

"Maasa, please escort the young woman down the hall. We must move, or they will kill us when they come through the door again."

The other wolf nodded his head, and tugged on the ferret's handpaw, causing her to stare up at him with anger in her face.

"I'm not leaving him!"

Her father gave a pained look, opening his mouth to argue.

Kiyosato turned and jabbed the girl below the breastbone with two fingertips, hard enough to blow the wind out of her and make the girl sag, stunned suddenly. Hardly missing a beat, Maasa hefted her over his shoulder, putting a paw on her hip to steady her.

"My apologies, there is no time."

The older, sick fur nodded his head and waved them off, as the two yakuza rushed into the hall, taking off down the oncology ward's hallways at a mad dash.

The security doors had fallen, blocking each ward from the others. More a quarantine setup than a fire security system, Kiyosato noted. This would take some ingenuity.

"Maasa. Help me find a supply locker in the storage areas. It should have signs for oxygen on it."

"Uh, hai..."

Maasa lashed out a foot and kicked open a door as Goza did the same to another one, and set the winded, crying girl down on the floor as he started to look.

"Girl, stop your crying and help! If we don't get out of here, they will kill your father AND all of us!"

Still sobbing, she scurried to her feet and started looking.

Rene ducked his head down, hunkering into the seat and making himself as small as possible. When the chopper started climbing, he knew, the sniper would open fire on the cockpit...Probably try to shoot straight through the dead pilot.

The wily pilot knew his only chance was to break line of sight and keep it broken, as long as he possibly could until he could get out of range. Coming back with help was going to be a lot more challenging, given that landing was always more dangerous and difficult than taking off.

A quick look at the pilot roiled his stomach, but told him what he needed to know.

Hit from behind while he was turned talking to me...So the sniper has a line from the west side of the building. Gotta be nearly level, or else he'd've seen me already. Let's see how this motherfucker likes furs who play back...

Rene blew out his breath and jerked back on the control stick. The chopper surged into the air, a sudden, jerky movement that made him gasp and arch in the seat from the pressure it slammed into his wounded lungs. Coughing, hoping the warmth on his lips was just spit, he yanked the stick to the side and dove, as glass shattered and a bullet blew chunks of the dead pilot all over him, narrowly missing taking him out too.

Then, as he was trying to blink the blood and gore out of his eyes, he passed into the shadows of surrounding high rises, dropped what he guessed was halfway to the ground, leveled out, and flicked the radio on to their arranged tactical band.

"Buck, come in, this is Rene! Hospital is under attack, I'm on my way to....ghrkk!"

He doubled over, grabbing his chest, as something felt like it'd given way. A heavy pressure in his gut told him he was probably already bleeding internally.

The hare grit his teeth and continued in a wet, gravelly tone.

"Five minutes, I'll be in your area. How about the top of the..." he coughed up blood, spit, then finished. "Brasilia Tech corporate office?"

Buck's voice came back through.

"We'll be there in five. Took the air ambulance?"

"Yeah, pilot's...Fragged. Chopper's still operational. I might not be soon. Fuck."