TOKAI BUILDING - 70TH FLOOR - 11 P.M
I felt increasingly dizzy; the blood on my hand wouldn't stop, and the red stain continued to spread slowly across the floor. I stared at the ceiling, too weak to move, letting my mind wander. "What were Nate and his partner doing?" "What time is it?" "If I die now, what will happen next?" My body began to feel heavy, as if it no longer truly belonged to me. My vision blurred, and a chill ran through my fingertips. So I closed my eyes, determined to sleep for a while... even if that was all. With what little voice I had left, I murmured, "Hurry..."
While all this was happening, Laia returned to the seventy-first floor. She tore a piece of canvas from the painting we had destroyed and quickly entered a dark room that served as a cleaning supply storage. With a swift movement of her right hand, she switched on the light and began searching for a first-aid kit or anything that could help stop the bleeding. "There must be something I can use," she said. She checked hurriedly. She moved brooms, pushed aside shelves, shoved buckets. Nothing. She only found old rags, disinfectants, worn-out brooms, and dirty buckets. She clicked her tongue and went back out into the main hallway. At that moment, a sharp sound cut through the silence, the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked. Laia reacted instantly. She leaped to the side of the hallway, drawing her katana in the same motion. She dropped to her knees, the blade in front of her in a defensive stance, one leg raised, ready to spring forward in any direction.
"You were right... I found someone on the seventy-first floor." As he spoke, the figure finished walking and emerged from the shadows of the corridor: a young man with unbroken black hair and a cross-shaped scar on the left side of his face. He wore a black robe and had a Gatling gun strapped to his right arm. The barrel rotated slowly, emitting a low, steady whine.
HERO Death Gatling
CLASS: A
RANK: 8
Laia realized who it was and let out a relieved sigh. She stood up, relaxing her body, and with a casual movement, began to twirl the katana in her hand. "So it was you..." she said. "I was getting scared..."
Gatling quickly aimed his weapon at Laia. "Don't move. I know who you are... and I know what you're capable of. If I can take you down, you can rise in rank... or even class." Hearing this, Laia stopped the swing of her katana and looked at him. "Then attack me." She raised her arms, giving him a perfect angle. Gatling was surprised. He would finally succeed; taking down a criminal classified as a demon-level threat would take him to the top. Even... to Class S. Seeing his hesitation, Laia lowered her arms. "Hey, are you going to kill me?" Gatling looked at her and became angry. "Shut up! I have to think about which part of you to leave intact to take to the association." Laia tilted her head, with an expression of genuine disbelief. Gatling already had the answer and activated his final attack to finish her off once and for all. "Fine, DEATH...!"
Laia was walking behind, still holding the katana in her hand. Suddenly, the air rushed past her as if she had just finished a katana movement. Gatling was still standing there, not understanding when the woman who had been in front of him was now behind him, walking towards the stairs. But he snapped back to reality when his Gatling gun split in half, and not only that, blood began to gush from one side of his stomach, trickling down his waist and into his pants. He still couldn't believe it. He had been warned that she was fast... but this was something else. Although he came to his senses, he couldn't process what had happened, but he did understand one thing, both physically and mentally.
As she walked down the hallway, Laia frowned. There was no first-aid kit, no bandages... and only then did she realize something else: the canvas she had torn from the painting was gone. Her expression frowned for a second... and then she sighed, defeated. She resumed walking, dragging her feet slightly, until an idea crossed her mind. It was absurd. It was awkward. But it might work.
"I'll never be an S-Class hero."
"Hey."
"Why do I always end up on the ground?"
"I'm talking to you."
"You must..."
A sharp slap snapped Death Gatling out of his thoughts. He blinked a few times, his vision still blurry, and the first thing he saw was Laia above him, raising her hand again. "Okay, okay, I'm awake." Laia stopped. She lowered her arm listlessly. "Hey," she said, looking at him with apparent calm. "You're one of the security guards in this building, right?" Then she gave him a fake smile. "Do you know where I can find a first-aid kit?" Gatling tried to get up, clutching the cut on his waist; at that moment, Laia reached down to draw her katana, and Gatling noticed. "Relax," he said quickly. "I already lost. I don't want another fight." She watched him for a few more seconds... and finally dropped the katana. She crouched down in front of him, ready to listen.
"Listen… I don't know this building very well," Gatling said, sounding uneasy.
Laia frowned instantly. "What do you mean, you don't? You work here."
Gatling glared at her, gritting his teeth. "Listen, we were forced to work here, weren't we?"
"Forced?" she interrupted. "If that's true, then you're useless to me."
With a swift movement, Laia started walking toward the stairs, annoyed at having woken up a useless person, muttering things like, "Idiot... useless... worthless." It was almost like throwing a tantrum. As she walked toward the stairs, Gatling quickly got up and, despite the pain from the cut, stood and asked her to listen to her. Laia just turned and looked directly at him. "What's wrong?" Gatling pulled out a small cell phone and activated it. A detailed map of the building appeared on the screen, with marked areas and their current location indicated. "I don't know this place well, but I suppose this will help." Laia took the device. Her eyes moved with interest across the screen... and suddenly her expression changed. She made a strangely silly face, completely out of character; this disconcerted Gatling. "Hey... what's wrong with you?" Without answering, Laia turned her head toward some nearby rubble, remnants of the previous fight. He walked over there, moved a piece of stone aside, and underneath, perfectly intact, was a first aid kit.
She attached the first-aid kit to her belt so it wouldn't get lost and then turned to Gatling. She gave him a confident smile and a thumbs-up, as if to say, "mission accomplished." Gatling blinked a couple of times, unsure how to react, and finally gave a thumbs-up too... awkwardly and nervously. After that, Laia spent a good while looking at the minimap, curiously scrolling through the screen. That's when she noticed something strange: on several floors, completely black areas appeared, marked with light-colored letters.
RESTRICTED
She frowned and looked at Gatling, who was tending to the cut on his waist. "Hey," she said, "do you know anything about these restricted areas?"
Gatling turned to look at her directly. "Honestly… no," he admitted. "When they gave us the phones, they told us never to ask about those areas." He stood up to test if his wound was still hurting and looked at her again. "If you look closely, every floor has one of those black zones. Even the dangerous area I was guarding… had two." Laia zoomed in on the map to her floor. It only took her a few seconds to locate it; the restricted area was right in front of them. She looked up; it was an ordinary door. Dark wood, metal doorknob. Gatling approached and stood next to Laia, looking at the door with a curious expression. "That's strange, it's a door just like the others." —As she said that, Laia approached and drew her katana and, with a single movement, sliced through the wooden door, revealing a lead-colored steel door behind it, divided into two leaves and reinforced with perfectly aligned screws forming a rectangle. Above it, a simple and straightforward sign.
RESTRICTED.
As soon as the door was revealed, a small red light above the sign flickered on. Laia and Gatling looked up simultaneously; it wasn't a blaring alarm or a clear sign of danger. The sound it emitted was low, almost imperceptible, barely noticeable to those near the door. For a brief moment, nothing happened. Then, without warning, the metal door began to open; behind it, there was no light. Only absolute darkness, so dense it seemed to swallow the brightness of the corridor. Laia and Gatling couldn't see anything, so, with nothing to lose, Laia went in first, and then the hero followed.
When Gatling entered, he saw that Laia had stopped dead in her tracks. He walked to her side and turned his head to look at her. Her expression froze him to the spot. Laia was motionless, her eyes wide, surprised... and terrified; she didn't understand why. As soon as she tried to turn her gaze forward, a thought crossed her mind. "How could someone with enough power to rival Class A heroes...?" Her mind went blank, the thought dissolved before it could be completed, as if something had ripped the idea out of her grasp. In her eyes there was no longer any doubt, only pure fear. The place was surrounded by metal walls. The smell was unbearable, thick, artificial. The air exerted a strange pressure on the body, as if the environment itself were rejecting her presence. What stood before the Class A hero and Laia weren't human, weren't other heroes, were robots. Dozens... no, hundreds of them, lined up in endless rows. Inactive, standing still, each the size of an average person. The lines disappeared into the darkness, with no end in sight, and at that moment, Laia understood only one thing: "They had to get out of that building. Now."
Laia took a breath and blew to calm herself. Then she looked at Gatling. "Did you know anything about this?" Gatling shook his head quickly, as if trying to dispel his fear.
"No… we were never told anything like this. I have to admit, it's scary." Laia walked over to one of the inactive robots. They were simple: smooth metal bodies with, where the face should have been, just two empty circles. Gatling approached another. The more he looked at it, the bigger it seemed, until he was startled to hear a slash; Gatling jumped back. Laia was holding the head of a recently decapitated robot. Panic gripped his chest. He moved closer and spoke in a whisper. "What do you think you're doing…?"
Laia, still holding the robot's head in her hand, examined it, taking in every detail inside and out. "It's a well-crafted piece of work." She looked at it. "You said this building was affiliated with the Hero Association." She looked at the metal head again. "Tell me which geniuses are in Class S."
Gatling gave a thumbs-up, thinking for a second before answering; it wasn't that complicated. Class S only had sixteen members, a ridiculously small number compared to Class A or B. "I'm guessing Metal Knight and Drive Knight," he said. "But I've never seen them in person. They just... appear." Laia sat bolt upright and tossed the robot's head at Gatling without a second thought, as if it were an old toy. "Good. Let's get out of here." She walked toward the door without looking back. "Take this opportunity to contact your colleagues," she added. "This place will descend into chaos if those things activate."