“It's because we’re really cute!” they replied in unison. “And we bring in a lot of money.”
“Name’s Caiden, by the way.”
“I’m Nami,” said the blond.
“And I’m Hitomi,” replied her silver haired twin.
“Cool, now that that’s outta the way, we need to get you outta here,” Caiden said abruptly. “As soon as I stepped into this building, I started working on an overhaul code to shut down all of the security systems so that we can pass through them easily.”
Nami and Hitomi stood back in amazement as they witnessed Caiden fly through countless lines of code in mere seconds. He was getting everything ready for their escape.
“Get your things. We need to leave,” he said.
“Are you for real? You would really do all this for us?” Nami asked. Her voice started shaking. Caiden looked up and gave her a reassuring smile.
“You really are pretty,” Hitomi gushed while gazing at Caiden. She then turned to her sister. “Nami we gotta get our asses moving. We’re finally leaving this place for good!”
They scrambled to get the few possessions that they had while Caiden used his holo-watch display to reconfigure the keycard.
“Okay, good. This should get us through all the doors and gates now. You guys almost ready? Once I hit the button on my device, we need to be ready to run for it,” Caiden said looking at the twins.
“Which way are we gonna go? The guards are the other side the door,” Nami asked.
“That emergency exit on the other side of the suite should unlock with this keycard. We’ll take the emergency stairway from there.” Caiden pointed to the door.
“Well, don’t they have guns and stuff? How are we gonna deal with that?” Hitomi asked with a concerned expression on her face.
“When I walked into the building, I saw a sign on the first floor saying that no security personnel shall carry firearms within the building. And from the looks of it, I only saw them armed with shock batons,” Caiden replied.
Relieved, they both nodded and headed to the emergency exit. As soon as they were ready, Caiden pushed the button and the alarm sounded off. He put the keycard in the slot, and pushed the door open. The girls ran to the stairs and proceeded to head down to the first floor. Caiden had them go first, making sure there was no one else in immediate pursuit, then he locked the emergency door and took off with them. They ran down ten floors of the twenty-floor building completely undeterred. Things were going smoothly until they hit the ninth floor. Caiden felt the rumble of the steps and as he briefly looked over the railing he saw two of the Hybrid guards heading up toward them.
“Follow me!” Caiden barked to the girls as he used the keycard to get onto the main corridor. The hallway’s emergency doors were all activated, making their escape a bit more difficult. Luckily, Caiden’s rigged keycard was allowing them to pass through each one. “We’re sitting ducks running through these hallways. We gotta take a different route!”
One of the doors opened ahead of them to reveal another group of guards. This time there was three of them, shock batons in hand, and they were closing in fast. Caiden focused on how he could stall them so that the girls could get away.
“Look! This way!” Nami shouted. It was a door to the women’s bathroom.
Confused and looking back at them, Caiden said, “We don’t have time, that’s a dead end.”
Without warning he felt the violent wind of a massive cybernetic fist whiz by his jaw. Seconds before the punch could connect, Caiden slipped under the guard’s powerful punch. Using his momentum, he swung back with a powerful punch to the kidney that sent the guard reeling over. The second guard bum-rushed Caiden in an attempt to tackle and pin him. With a bone crushing grip, he began to suffocate Caiden using all his weight.
As Caiden engaged his enemy, he noticed the other guard heading toward the women’s bathroom after the twins. Despite the imminent danger, the adrenaline helped Caiden to possess the presence of mind to grab the shock baton from his assailant’s holster and activate it. He pushed the baton as far as he could into the second guard’s neck. The guard’s grip loosened as he droppeed to the ground.
Caiden went after the third guard. He caught him from behind ramming twelve thousand volts of electricity into his spine. The guard howled in pain and dropped his hands as he felt the powerful surge of electricity. He began to foam at the mouth and his eyes rolled to the back of his head while he violently convulsed. As Caiden removed the baton, the guard stood nearly lifeless, his back smoldering from the attack, and fell hard to the ground. The twins were cowering at the other end of the bathroom, in awe of Caiden’s abilities.
“You two okay?” Caiden asked, rushing into the bathroom. “We gotta go. We can’t stay here. The two from the stairwell should be here any second now!”
“There’s an air duct, large enough for us to crawl through. We can take it all the way to the private elevators,” Nami murmured, disturbed from the violent encounter.
“Okay, I’m gonna get you guys outta here. I promise!” Caiden replied as he pulled down the air duct cover.
“Nami, we’ll be fine okay? We have each other, and this guy is batshit insane. We will be free!” Hitomi said, encouraging her sister.
Caiden chuckled then cupped his hands together while motioning to the girls to climb up and in to the air duct. After they were both in, he leaped in. Crawling the constricting air duct was not for the faint of heart; the walls were too close, and the air was incredibly thick. But they had no other choice; they had to push forward. During their crawl Caiden stopped.
“Caiden! We gotta go!
