Mike Shevdon - The Road to Bedlam

We came to another double door and Raffmir thrust through them to the stairway. We descended two floors, passing double doors at each level.

"This is the end of the administration area," said Raffmir. "Beyond here is secure. Stay alert. They will be guarding more closely from here on."

We walked down a corridor lined with more offices. The windows to these were translucent but obscured with privacy film. We came to a double door with an electronic lock and a blank proximity reader showing a red light. Raffmir pushed the door. It rattled but did not yield.

"It's too early," he said.

"For what?"

"To use power. If we trigger the alarms now, by the time we get downstairs it will all be sealed. We'll have a much harder time getting in and out. Let's try the other end."

"It's just as likely to be locked," I pointed out.

As we turned to go back the way we had come, an Asian woman stepped out of the offices ahead of us."

"Chris? Terry? What are you doing? That's the restricted area. You can't go in there." Her accent was Indian, educated and resonant with authority.

"There's been a break-in upstairs. We're checking to see if the security doors are locked." Raffmir glanced at her and then at the security ID badge dangling on a lanyard around her neck.

"A break-in?" She looked around disbelievingly. "Why haven't the alarms gone off?"

Raffmir stepped up to her and grasped her head with both hands. She gave a strangled squeak as he lifted her on tip-toe. He jerked her head sideways and there was a wet snap. Her body went limp and fell to the floor.

"For God's sake, Raffmir! Do you have to kill everyone? What's the matter with you?"

"Check to see if the office is empty." He said, gathering her limp form under the arms.

I ran forward, leaned around the door and found the office from which she had emerged empty. I swung the door wide and Raffmir dragged in the body. He tugged at the ID card around her neck and pulled the lanyard free.

"How many of them are you planning to kill?" I asked, looking down at the woman. She looked strangely peaceful, though the angle of her neck was all wrong.

"As many as I have to. Remember, these people have been systematically killing your mongrel brethren. They have no scruples and there are few things indeed that they would not do."

"So you can just kill them."

"I don't have the attachment to them that you do, Dogstar. To me they are mere curs, yapping at the moon." He took the ID card and returned to the secure door. It beeped once as he presented the card and the door clicked open. He went through and I followed, closing it behind us.

The offices on the far side were identical, leaving me wondering what the extra security was for. We walked past an office where two men argued. They sounded tired and irritable, but they did not notice us. That probably saved them, though they did not know it.

Further down the corridor was another electronically controlled door. This one had a proximity reader, but also a numeric keypad. I glanced back to the office where the men still argued. Maybe they were not so safe after all.

"Remember why we are here," said Raffmir. "Do not be distracted by trivia. When the alarm signal is triggered their reaction will be swift. In and out. That's all that concerns us."

I nodded.

Raffmir placed his hand on the keypad and the light blinked green twice. The door clicked open. He strode through, his pace quickening.

"If it was that easy," I asked him, "why didn't we do that before? We didn't need to kill that woman. We could have just locked her in her office or knocked her unconscious."

"We do not have time for that. The door will open to my command, but by which token I cannot know. The magic finds the easiest route, the path of least resistance. It's like water running through soil, it goes where it can."

"And why is that a problem, exactly?"

We passed the lifts and came to the double doors leading to the downward stairway. Raffmir placed his hand against the keypad again and the light blinked green.

"It will not last. The locks will open to a valid identity, but there is another system that monitors who has access and when they use it. It's part of the security system."

A loud siren suddenly started emitting a piercing whine. Red lights flashed down the corridor. The keypad on the door blinked red, but the door was already open.

"It has just worked out," said Raffmir, "that we shouldn't be here."

He led the way, descending three full levels before he halted. "Wait here," he said.

"What are you going to do?"

"Below us is the guard station for the secure levels. I will deal with the guards."

"Can't we…"

He literally vanished from sight in front of me, fading into the stairway as if he'd never been there. "Raffmir?" I was talking to the empty stairway.

I gritted my teeth. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

There was a series of staccato eruptions from below, followed by the dull boom of a shotgun in a confined space. Screams and shouts echoed up the stairway with the acrid smell of smoke and discharged gunpowder. There was a final percussive shot and then silence.

A breath of air below me turned back into Raffmir. "The way is clear. Come."

He led me down another level to a bend in the corridor which opened out into a space covered by guard posts on either side. One had the menacing muzzle of a machine gun poking from it while the other had thick glass, now smeared with a red stain. Dead bodies were strewn about the floor, blood pooling beneath them, their weapons lying with them where they'd fallen. The smell of blood and guts was mixed with acrid smoke, making me retch.

"How many did you kill?" I asked.

Raffmir shook his head. "Are you keeping score?"

"No, but I need to know what this has cost."

"Even if it were a hundred, would you not pay that price in battle to have your daughter back? Blood calls to blood, Dogstar. It always has."

A young soldier behind a barrier had been rammed into the concrete face first, leaving his features unidentifiable. "This wasn't a battle. You slaughtered them."

"They prepared to fight the fey – mongrels, half-breeds, the ill-bred and misfits. They have not faced the true fey for centuries. They have become arrogant and complacent. It is their weakness." I noticed then what had been bothering me. The whole area was peppered with iron. The guards had been using iron in their ammunition. Raffmir was right when he said that they had prepared.

Beyond the guard station was another set of double doors. He put his hand over the keypad, but it flashed red three times and the door didn't open.

"Now what?" I asked.

He took hold of the metal bars of the door handles. With alarming strength, he ripped the doors apart. Once he had a gap he used one to lever against the other until the frame screeched and the hinges buckled, leaving the doors hanging limply and leaving the way down open.

"Bloody hell," I said.

Raffmir grinned at me. "The strength of the true fey is something to behold. You begin to appreciate the differences between us." He stepped through the gap. "The system triggered the alarm, but they still don't know what they're dealing with. The cameras are useless to them, they will show them nothing. We still have the advantage of surprise."

I followed him through what remained of the doors. Beyond them was a reception area with comfortable leather chairs and a water cooler. A middle-aged woman in a white coat was trying to barricade herself into a glass-walled office by pushing a chair under the door handle. If she'd seen what Raffmir had just done to the security doors, she would not have bothered.

There were three sets of opaque glass doors arranged at each corner of the area, leading further into the complex. On each door was a letter – A, B and C. Raffmir ignored the woman in the room, who was now hiding under her desk, and went to the door marked B.