I dug in my heels and stood behind the door leading into the storage area, waiting for Aileen to get into position and shut off the lights.

I braced the shield close against me and breathed in and out. Pumping myself up to storm through the second Aileen gave the signal.

“I’m in position.” She said through the earpiece. “Shutting off the lights in 3… 2… 1…”

The rim of light from behind the door frame disappeared, and practically at the same time, I just ran full force into the door. The added mass of the shield just made it fly open in front of me. What I saw in front of me was pure chaos and confusion. There were plenty of armed guards around, I didn’t even bother counting them. But what I did see from the few in my immediate cone of vision, was that the sudden loss of light left them in disarray. On the opposite side of the room, the part that I could see without boxes that blocked my line of sight, a guy was searching the wall blindly, trying to find the light switch. A couple of pops followed from above, after which he slid down to the floor, dead. Blood splattered against the wall. Aileen was denying them their vision, which I should take full advantage of.

I sprinted off to the other side while more and more popping noises came from above, swiftly followed people starting to yell and returning fire, although none of them really seemed to know where the fire was coming from. When I was running, I saw at least two people getting shot by friendly fire.

There were a couple of criminals that had flashlights attached to their weapons which they were trying to switch on in the chaos, but if they already managed to, Aileen was just picking them off. Leaving the flashlights pointing at the floor and not up to her position.

When I reached the halfway point of the hall I finally had a clear line of sight to Helen, she was strapped onto a seat in front of the open end of the trailer of the parked truck I saw earlier.

In between me and her there were three dead bodies, Aileen had done her job well. Helen herself looked to be in distress, trying to free herself from her bindings, but with no success so far.

It only took me three seconds to make my way over to her, but as the firefight was getting more intense by the moment, I decided to just pick her up by the waist with my free arm, chair and all, and ran over to the corner of the room, just in time it seems as bullets ricocheted on the floor right where the chair had been standing.

“Let me go!” Helen yelled, apparently the piece of cloth that was preventing her to speak had become undone by me moving her.

“Give me a sec.” I replied as I jammed the shield down behind me, practically covering most angles of fire from the ground floor.

“Wait… That voice… Aurora?”

“Yep, it’s me.” I quickly replied, getting to work on Helen’s bindings. They were made of some pretty sturdy stuff, but with my vampiric strength it might as well have been tissue paper. Now that I got a closer look at Helen, she looked really badly roughed up. She had a black eye and her lips was bleeding. She had clearly taken quite the beating. “Are you okay?” As I asked, a spray of bullets hit the shield behind me, making Helen flinch.

“What are you doing here?”

“Let’s keep the explanation for when we get you out.” I looked back at the storage room. There were still some men in the area in front of the catwalk, taking cover behind boxes as Aileen peppered them. But quite a few had made their way into Aileen’s blind spot directly below. A couple of them had their flashlights on, but right now they weren’t paying attention to Helen and Me. They presumably hadn’t noticed my dash through the center.

It would only be a matter of time however before one of them would ultimately turn in our direction and see that we were hiding. Getting Helen past them would also be rather hard.

While I was thinking about what to do next, Helen spoke to me. “Could you go and get me a gun and some ammo?”

“Uh.” There were definitely some guns laying in the surrounding area, but I was not sure if that was the best course of action.

“I don’t like being a sitting duck without having something to defend myself with. We will probably not be able to leave with any of these guys still kicking about. So you should go and help your friend. I can shoot anyone who comes too close.”

That honestly was reason enough for me, so I quickly left cover, ran over to the closest dead guy with a gun and started to collect his magazines and his gun before quickly huddling back to Helen. I piled the magazines in front of her feet and pushed the gun into her arms.

While for her, it must’ve been rather hard to see what gun she was holding, she quickly managed to orient herself and tucked it against her body like a pro. “Thank you. Now go and cause some chaos.”

“I’ll try.” I gave the shield one last look over, it was solidly stuck in the floor. It wouldn’t be going anywhere soon. When I left cover, I tried to situate Aileen again, but a quick scan of the catwalk delivered no results. I did see her gun hanging there by its sling, but no trace of Aileen to be found.

That was, at least until a guy flew through one of the wooden boxes, just barely missing me. Aileen was standing on the other side with her foot still slightly raised, having presumably kicked the guy through. In her hands, she was wielding her two-handed sword. She saw me, but didn’t bother calling out as she ran over to her next target and swung that big sword without much effort.

The sound of the guy crashing through the wooden box had drawn the fire from the entire fire line of people who had found their hiding place below the catwalk. Still, with no one looking in the direction of Helen and myself.

I wasn’t going to get a better opportunity than this to preemptively take them out. I took the knife out that Aileen had given to me and rushed over to the last person in line, ramming him into the wall with my speed. With a dent in the wall, he collapsed to the ground.

Before the next guy got to react, I kicked him in the rear of the knee, his knee breaking with a crunch beneath my boot. I jabbed the next one in line on the side of the head, his helmet doing little to nothing to protect him.

The last two guys did manage to react and turned around just in time to unleash their entire magazines into my chest. With no effect. I took both of their guns, squeezed their barrels tight, and then kicked the first one into the other. The steel pole behind them buckled at bit as they hit.

The guy whose knee I’d broken was still alive and tried to crawl to his gun that had been knocked away a couple of meters. But I was not about to let the mistake I’d made with Ria be repeated. So I raised my knife, which I hadn’t actually used yet and prepared to end his life.

Before I could do that, however, Aileen rushed over, crushed the weapon the man was crawling towards with her right foot and grabbed my arm. “Wait, Aurora, we can use him.”

It was only then that it hit me how quiet the storage room had become. I could only hear the dripping of blood from Aileen’s sword and the groaning of the mercenary in front of me.

I took a step back and almost tripped over the legs of the guy I’d rammed into the wall earlier. Every step I took moved brass, there were bullet casings everywhere. I just decided to stay still. The scent of gunpowder mixed with blood stung in my nose. My senses went crazy. I know I’ve done this before… but still… Fuck… Just a bit ago, I was having the time of my life at a christmas party with my girlfriends… Now…. I closed my eyes and crouched down. Just trying to lock out the world around me.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry I had to involve you. But I had no choice.” Aileen said calmly.

“Just… just give me a bit…” I replied. Still forcing my eyes shut.

Aileen gave me some room and gave me some time to myself, but while I was calming myself down, I heard a sound coming from the door behind me. I’d assumed that one was locked. I turned around, opened my eyes, but just when I did, the door flew open and 4 guys stormed through.

“Fan out and get the~.” The orders from the first guy in line were interrupted by a stream of lead that just peppered the entire area. The four of them were dead before the last guy well and truly had entered the room.

“And that’s what you get for kidnapping me, you shitheads.” Helen commented out from behind the shield. The barrel of the gun I gave her was smoking.

“Let me go check if that was the last of them.” Aileen ran over to the door and looked around, while I was left with the crippled guy.

-Whatever Aileen had planned, it was not going to be pleasant for him either way…-