“Let’s hope so,” Blade commented, reaching for the door handle.
Gremlin pointed at another door, one to the left marked GUARD STATION 30. “Should we check in there, yes?”
“No,” Blade said. “There’s no time. The ones who got away will be back with help.” He suddenly realized the klaxons weren’t wailing anymore.
When had they stopped?
“You want me to take the point?” Hickok queried.
“I will,” Blade said. “You bring up the rear. And yell if you see any sign of pursuit.”
“Wouldn’t you prefer a chorus of ‘Home on the Range’?” Hickok asked.
“A yell will do,” Blade told him, and opened the stairwell door. The stairs were painted red, and they only went in one direction: up. Which meant, Blade reasoned, they were on the lowerest underground level. He headed up the stairs, two at a stride.
“Slow down!” Ferret said. “I can’t keep up with you and carry Lynx at the same time.”
Blade slackened his speed. He reached a landing and stopped, waiting for the others to reach him, his eyes on the closed stairwell door.
Ferret, with Gremlin assisting, lugged Lynx onto the landing. “Did you know we’re six floors underground?” he asked Blade.
“Are you sure?” Blade responded.
“Positive,” Ferret asserted. “I counted them on the way down. Am I right, Gremlin?”
“Ferret is right, yes,” Gremlin confirmed.
“They have elevators in this building,” Ferret went on. “But near as I could tell, the elevators don’t descend below ground level. Must be a security precaution.”
Hickok reached the landing. “Leave it to you yokels to take time to gossip when we’re close to buyin’ the farm.”
“Let’s keep going,” Blade said, resuming his climb. Two more landings were attained without any sign of the enemy. He halted, not wanting to outdistance his friends.
“Lynx is regaining consciousness,” Ferret announced when they joined the chief Warrior.
Lynx was moaning, his head lolling, and his mouth was twitching.
“Let me know if he wakes up,” Blade directed, continuing his ascent. He kept climbing until he found a door labeled LOBBY.
Ferret and Gremlin, with Lynx held between them, reached the landing seconds later. “Is this the ground floor?” Ferret queried hopefully.
Blade pointed at the door. “I think so.”
Hickok dashed up to the landing. “Company is coming,” he declared.
Blade crossed to the edge of the landing and peered over the railing.
Black forms were visible at the very bottom of the stairwell, climbing upward.
“We can’t wait for Lynx to snap out of it,” Blade said to Ferret.
“Gremlin and you will have to carry him. Stay close to Hickok and me. The first exit door we see, we’re out of here.”
“The Superior said all exits would be locked, yes,” Gremlin reminded them.
“What the blazes is a Superior?” Hickok asked.
Blade moved to the stairwell door. “Later. Stick with me and don’t be bashful about using that baton.”
Hickok grinned. “Since when have I ever been bashful?”
Blade took a deep breath, then opened the lobby door, prepared for the worst. He found it.
The lobby was packed with troopers. Dozens of them, milling about, conversing, evidently awaiting instructions. Directly opposite the stairwell door were six glass doors leading to the outside. A trooper was stationed in front of each one.
Blade frowned. He glanced to the right, spying a row of elevators lining the east wall. To the left was a counter with more troopers behind it, some doing paperwork, others talking.
“Hey! Look!” one of the troopers in the center of the lobby shouted.
“The stairwell!”
All eyes swiveled toward the stairwell door.
“Damn!” Blade fumed, and burst from the stairwell, activating the whip. He plunged into the mass of troopers, swinging the whip like a madman, cracking it left and right, sparks flying as the whip crackled and sizzled.
Bedlam ensued. Crammed close together, the troopers were unable to fan out, unable to avoid the terrible whip. Some of them screeched as their bodies were jolted by a blow from the lash. Others endeavored to bring their batons into action, without success.
Blade whirled in one direction, then another, his right arm constantly in motion, knowing he couldn’t afford to slacken his pace for an instant.
The muscles in his right arm bulged as he flicked the whip every which way. To the right, and he slashed a trooper’s neck open and sent the trooper hurtling into those nearby. To the left, and he seared a trooper’s eyes as the whip danced across the trooper’s face. The trooper was flung backwards, plowing into others, upending them in a tangle of limbs.
The men in black parted, clearing a narrow path in front of the maniac with the whip.
Blade was half the distance to the glass doors when a new threat presented itself.
One of the silver giants appeared, and he was wielding a whip of his own.
Blade saw the silver figure emerge from the pack, and he dodged to the left as the silver giant’s whip hissed toward him.
The Superior missed by a fraction. Blade brought his whip up and around, charging forward as he did, and a fantastic flash of light seemed to fill the lobby as the silver giant was struck in the chest.
The Superior tottered, shaking his head in a vain attempt to unscramble his thoughts.
Blade let the silver giant have a second taste of the lash.
The Superior was hit on the nose, and his head rocked backwards as his huge bulk was thrown to the floor. He thrashed and backed, his legs quivering, smoke filtering from his dilated nostrils. His whip clattered from his grasp.
Hickok materialized from nowhere, diving across the floor, sliding up to the quaking silver giant and scooping the Superior’s whip from the floor by the handle. He leaped to his feet, stroking the whip at their foes, using the weapon as he’d seen Blade do, beaming. “Come and get it, you mangy coyotes!” he shouted.
Blade reentered the fray, adding his whip to Hickok’s.
The troopers wavered, their courage diminished by the defeat of the presumably invincible Superior. As the two Warriors tore into them with renewed fury, the troopers broke, fleeing, some taking shelter behind the counter, others making for the elevators, still others retreating into the stairwell.
Blade and Hickok abruptly found themselves within ten feet of the glass doors without a trooper to oppose them.
Hickok ran to the doors.
Blade glanced over his right shoulder, finding the three mutants about ten feet to his rear. “Come on!” he urged them, and together they rushed to the gunfighter’s side.
“They’re locked!” Hickok cried. “The damn doors are locked!”
Blade scanned the lobby. Troopers were still taking cover. The Superior was inert except for his fluttering eyelids. The Superior! Blade darted over to the prone silver giant, deactivated his whip, then gripped the Superior’s left boot and dragged the body toward the glass doors.
Hickok was wrenching on one of the doors, trying to force it open.
“Stand back!” Blade cautioned them. He stuck the whip handle under his belt, then grasped the front of the Superior’s silver garment and hauled the silver giant into the air. The veins on his temples protruded as he raised the Superior over his head, and his complexion flushed as he took three rapid strides and hurled the silver giant at the third glass door from the left with all of his prodigious might.
The glass doors were not shatterproof. The third one disintegrated in a shower of zinging shards as the Superior’s hurtling form crashed into the glass, and the silver giant’s body tumbled to the sidewalk beyond amidst the fractured fragments of the glass panel.