“Anything happen while I was gone?” asked Arron, when he returned to the small recovery room.
“Luckily nothing happened,” said Tooth, only looking away from the holo-tv for a second before turning back to watching a rerun of the newest movie [Adventures of Brainless man: Fire Hurts.].
He was rather relaxed as he sat next to the bed with his back leaning against the wall and sipped on a synth-energy jelly pouch.
“Shh… the best part is coming up!” said Synmi, his eyes glued to the Holotv.
BAM!
The room’s parasteel door slammed open!
Tooth fell off of his hover chair from shock and fumbled with pulling out his service weapon as he crouched behind the bed and sloppily tried to raise his weapon towards the intruder.
“Don’t use me as cover!” cried Synmi who was unable to move.
Arron was faster in reacting to the situation and pulled his service weapon out while jumping in between the bed and the open door as two people burst into the room.
A tense stand-off lasted for several seconds as both sides pointed their weapons at each other playing a deadly game of chicken while they inspected each other.
“Why is hospital security paying us a visit?” asked Arron, still holding his weapon at the ready.
The two lightly armored security guards removed their helmets and looked at Arron and Tooth with undisguised contempt plastered all over their faces. Arron could have sworn he heard one of them mutter under their breath ‘M1’ as if it was a curse word.
“There have been an alarming amount of reports all starting from late this afternoon about female clothes being stolen on this floor,” said one of the security guards.
“What does that have to do with us?” asked Synmi.
The guards continued to search the room for any signs of women’s clothing.
Arron understood what they were implying.
“Wait… are you… look at me. I can’t move!” said Synmi finally realizing what was going on after he saw the guards staring at each of them intently as they looked up and down their bodies searching for any hidden clothing.
The security guard in charge looked Arron right in the eyes and said “If there are any more problems everyone but the patient will be kicked out.”
With that said, the security guards left the room leaving the door wide open.
Arron closed the door and made sure that the holo-lock was activated. Even though it would do nothing to stop the hospital security guards from barging in again, it would at least stall other troublemakers.
“What was that all about?” asked Synmi.
“Don’t know,” said Arron.
That night both Arron and Tooth agreed on swapping the nighttime watch every 4 hours.
Early the next morning Arron received a ping alerting him to an incoming call.
“Lexa, how can I help you?” asked Arron.
“The request you sent has been stalled as the information you sent can not be verified,” said Lexa.
“What? The security recordings should prove that there are rouge service bots or at least ones being controlled by someone to attack people,” said Arron.
His conversation with Lexa woke up Tooth and Synmi who began to listen intently to the half of the conversation that they could hear.
“There was no recording of the incident at the time you specified.”
“What? It was there yesterday, ask Kix… so the matter about being transferred?”
Lexa shook her head, “Not going to happen unless you provide solid evidence. We have too much work to be wasting time on wild goose chases.”
“Alright, I understand,” said Arron before ending the call.
“Wh… what is going on?” asked a nervous Synmi.
“Ehhh, just a slight hiccup. Nothing to worry about,” said Arron as he scratched his head.
“That didn’t sound like a small problem,” said Tooth.
“Hey, you guys just need to trust the plan we talked about last night. I’m sure everything will work out…”
Synmi looked at Arron growing more and more doubtful and nervous than before.
“Why am I wasting my day off doing this,” said Tooth with a sigh.
“Stop complaining all you have been doing is watching movies with Synmi,” said Arron.
The rest of Arron and Tooth’s day off was spent inside the small recovery room trying to track down the solid evidence that was needed so that Arron and Kix could be placed on the case.
Unfortunately, the only thing they were able to gather was just hearsay.
“I’m sorry It did not work out,” said Arron as he stood up. It was near midnight.
“This is how it always happens!” said a distraught and hopeless Synmi.
“I will continue requesting that someone take up your problem but we have to return so we can get to work on time tomorrow,” said Arron as he pushed the food hovercart, which still had the leftovers of their dinner on top, out of the room.
The hover cart slowly floated down the hall to join several others that were all headed towards the kitchen where the leftovers would be recycled, reprocessed, and packaged for the lower tired rooms.
“Is it okay to leave him like that?” asked a worried Tooth.
“Don’t worry, he should be fine with hospital security here… I think…” said Arron as the two walked down the hallway heading towards the hospital’s garage to return to their apartments.
***
The holo-lock of a certain recovery room silently turned green as it was unlocked. The door was slowly pushed forward just enough for a dark-robed figure to dart into the dark recovery room.
With the dim light of the hallway lighting up the room, the dark figure pulled out a sharp object from the sleeves of his robe and tiptoed over to the bed where a patient slept silently.
The sharp object was raised high into the air above the sleeping patient, its sharp metal tip glinting in the dim hallway light as it rose as high as it could.
With one sharp movement, the sharp object shot down and stabbed deep into the patient’s body! Once, twice, three times! Blood started to seep out staining the white bed sheets.
The attacker let out a sigh of relief and muttered, “Finally, it is done.”
The room’s lights turned on right then startling the female attacker as she was lit up along with the ‘patient’ that lay in bed. It was just a cheap blowup doll that had been filled with synth energy jelly which was now leaking out all over the bed.
“A trap!” she shouted as she tried to turn and run, but two arms reached out from under the floating bed and grabbed her ankles causing her to trip and fall face first into the hard floor.
The sound of escaping footsteps could be heard from the hallway.
“Cuff her legs and arms and then come back me up!” shouted Arron as he jumped out from underneath the desk and threw an extra pair of magnetic cuffs to Tooth.
“What! Help me first!” shouted Tooth as he struggled to keep the female attacker on the ground with one hand while grabbing for the new pair of Mag-cuffs.
Arron only stomped on the female’s hand and kicked the dropped knife away before running out into the hallway.
“The targets heading in the direction of the hospital’s garage!” said Arron as he started a holo-call with Toothbrush and ran down the hallway that was suspiciously empty of any hospital security.
“Got it, I’ll join you soon!” grunted tooth as he wrestled with the female attacker.
Arron pulled out his service weapon as he ran to the floor’s sliding exit doors that would open up to the large garage. He felt naked without wearing his usual helmet and armor but he pressed on and hugged the right wall as he slid up to the right corner next to the sliding doors.
Unsurprisingly, the security guards that were supposed to be guarding the exit were nowhere to be found.
Arron slowly peeked out far enough to look through the para-glass of the sliding doors and into the brightly lit garage. The sliding doors motion detectors picked up Arron’s movement and started to open up to allow him to exit.
BANG!
A high-powered gunshot rang out and a bullet slammed into the sliding door where Arron’s head was.
Glass shards of the para-glass exploded out everywhere.
Arron immediately reacted by retreating into the corner out of the garage’s line of vision. His right cheek was throbbing with pain as it now had several shards of glass embedded in his face.
A second shot rang out shattering the other para-steel widow in the left sliding glass door.
Arron slammed his fist on the alarm button that was inside nearby the guard station. The entire hospital went into lockdown mode with red alarm lights blaring. This included the garage which had thick para-steel shutters slide down to block the exits.
“The target is hiding in the garage and is armed with an illegal high caliber gun,” said Arron, updating Tooth on what was going on.
“Got it, I’m on my way to you,” said Tooth.
A minute later a disheveled and out of breath Toothbrush slid up along the left wall to the sliding doors on the opposite side of Arron.
“Where is the target?” asked Tooth.
“They were behind that red car in the middle, but he probably moved. On the count of three, cover me so I can get in there and take them down,” shouted Arron louder than was necessary for Tooth who was only a short distance away.
“One, Two, Three!” Arron played a deadly game of peekaboo with the shooter before quickly retreating into the corner. With his insane stunt, he managed to draw out the shooter who once again fired at him and revealed their position.
Toothbrush immediately opened up fire on the target suppressing them and surprisingly even managed to hit them once with his poorly aimed shots.
Arron crouched down and dived through the remaining mangled metal parts of the sliding doors that were still blocking the exit.
While Toothbrush was still shooting at the target Arron rolled into a crouch and scurried up to a parked car near the end of the row making sure to hide behind the front where the thick engine was.
“Reloading!” shouted Toothbrush.
Arron popped up from his hiding spot and started slamming shots into the flying cars around the last area the shooter had been hiding at.
But he received return fire from another direction causing him to duck down before Toothbrush started shooting again suppressing the shooter once more.
Arron ran towards the last known position that was being suppressed by Tooth and rounded the corner with his gun blazing.
But no one was there.
VROOOM!
A short distance away from him a flying car came to life and shot off towards the shuttered para-steel exits.
“He’s making a run for it!”
Seconds before the flying car reached the shuttered exit the shooter jumped out of the flying car and rolled on the ground escaping the car as it continued flying forward.
Both Arron and Tooth opened fire on the shooter as he rolled out of sight and behind a row of parked cars.
BAM!
The speeding flying car slammed into the para-steel shutters instantly crumpling and only managed to make a slight dent in the thick armor.
KABOOM!
The damaged energy source of the car exploded sending shrapnel everywhere. The force of the explosion was enough to punch several holes into the shutter. A blazing fire continued to burn after the explosion died down, the fire was trying to melt everything around it.
Arron cautiously scooted up to the corner where a large trail of blood was pooled. The area that the shooter had rolled to was a dead end. The only way out was to jump over the cars and be shot at by Tooth or run through the path that Arron was guarding.
“There’s no way out. Surrender now!” shouted Arron.
“…” there was no response from the shooter.
Arron picked up a large piece of a metal bumper near him and held it out using it as a mirror to look down the row.
He found the shooter slumped against a hover-car with his gun on the ground several feet away from him.
Arron watched for another minute before peeking out to get a better look.
“Tooth, the target is down,” said Arron as he saw the large pool of blood leaking out of the male shooter who no longer showed any signs of life.
“Should we go grab Synmi before something happens to him?” asked Toothbrush.
“Yeah,” said Arron. He looked around and took in all of the damage that the gunfight had caused. He could tell some people were going to be pissed with the new ventilation holes in their flying cars.
The two rushed back down the hallways and headed towards the kitchen where several rows of hover food carts were lined up ready to dump their food into the reprocessor.
Arron and Tooth started to tear off the table cloth that covered the shelves underneath the carts. After tearing off the fifth tablecloth Arron found Synmi who crammed underneath.
“What took you so long? Do you know how uncomfortable it is to be crammed inside that thing with these casts? Were those gunshots and that explosion from you guys?” asked Synmi as Arron and Tooth pulled him out.
“Yeah, we were forced into a gunfight with one of the culprits. That part of the situation has been normalized… for now,” said Arron.
“The other target is cuffed back in your room,” said Tooth.
“Who were they?” asked Synmi.
“The guy we got into a gunfight with is not a native of Nippon and looks to be from one of the other member states of the WHO,” said Arron.
“… and the other culprit that was behind everything… was your girlfriend,” said Tooth.
“…” Synmi was silent for several seconds as he was carried down the hall back to his room.
“I’m definitely writing a bad review for this hospital’s recovery room service,” said Synmi after processing all that they two had told him.
“Someone dropped the ball or was helping them,” said Arron.
“Ah your face!” said Synmi as he looked at Arron’s face which was still dripping blood from the glass shards that were embedded in the right side of his face.
“It’s fine, I’ll just need to go and see M1’s doctor, and then I’ll be fine within a day or two.”
“I don’t know how I can thank you for helping me… AH, I KNOW! I will send you and the rest of your unit a package of never before produced synth energy jelly with 5x the pickled pickle flavor! If you want I can also sell you the last batch of the limited edition pickled pickle flavor(With 2x the pickle flavor!) when it ends!”
“Ah… that’s… kind of you…” said Tooth.
