Poisoned

What if we're not us?

'You shouldn't be here.' He said quietly, looking up from his position at the console.

'I, uh, I got lost.' He muttered back, hand still tight around the handle.

Mother always said it was curiosity that killed the cat, but he just had to see.

The man smiled and slowly pushed his glasses back up his nose. 'You expect me to believe that? You got lost down four miles of tunnels? Who are you?'

'I'm sorry, I just-' He began, wondering whether he could slam the door and sprint the distance to the exit before they caught up with him. He didn't think so.

'So?' The man continued. Despite being interrupted, he didn't seem especially perturbed. Errol was frozen. Planted in place, locked under the gaze of the bespectacled man. 'Who is it?'

'Who is what?' Errol stammered, watching yet another suit clad man with a coiled bud in his ear step from behind a terminal. That made seven. Seven sets of hands to escape. Seven sets of legs to out run. Seven sets of bullets to avoid. They didn't look like

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the type of guys to not be carrying.

Errol swallowed and looked back at the guy with the glasses, whose eyes were now raised towards his close cropped brown hair, and well above the frames of his thin glasses.

'Hmm?' He continued. 'Dynamix Inc? Ostergart Technologies? Rufus Atkins Partnership? Fraxon Tompkins Intrup Conglomorate?'

Errol shook his head, utterly bewildered. 'I don't know what you're talking about?'

The man laughed. 'Ah, so blind employment. Humph, smart I suppose. It's how I'd do it. My bet is on Ostergart. They've been trying to shoehorn in on business for years. Well, you can tell your employer that there's no more room at this feeding trough.' He smirked and hit a button. Behind him, two cannisters filled with blue liquid began to decompress into a valve, injecting whatever chemicals were inside them into the water mains.

Errol had no idea what was going on, who these guys were, or what they were doing, but he was sure that it was something they weren't supposed to.

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He always knew that urban exploring was frowned upon in the sense that it was trespassing, but he'd never expected to run into anyone at this time. It was nearly three in the morning. The whole compound was shut down, drowned in darkness. It was deserted. A quick hop over the fence and that was it - twelve square miles of catwalks, tunnels and half abandoned buildings to climb through. This access tunnel was one of about twenty than ran in a crisscrossed maze through the bowels of the compound. He'd chosen it at random, and taken turns at random. Security was lax. There was nothing to steal, nothing control. It was all for maintenance. He'd heard some voices, followed the sounds. Curiosity, that was it. Every door he'd tried was locked so far. Everything was shut down, impenetrable. Pulling handles had become a habit - every closed one a defeat, every open one a small victory - another place to explore, another thing to see. He'd been chased before, hell it was even fun. Added some drama

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to his excursions. The type of guys he'd found in these places before were overweight, covered in doughnut crumbs and coffee stains. They sat and watched pressure gauges, all night. Not the sort of guys to give a hard chase.

So when Errol pulled this handle, and found this suited, bespectacled man at a control panel, surrounded by seven armed guards, with two canisters of god knows what being pumped into the city water supply - well, it was more than he bargained for.

The man watched him intensely as the last specs of the mysterious blue liquid drained into the pipes.

'Well, I wanted you to see.'

'Wanted me to see what?' Errol choked.

'That you'd failed. Before we killed you, of course. It's just a shame that you can't deliver the news to your boss in person. Oh well, I suppose that turning up dead will convey the message well enough.'

The man laughed a little and pulled the glasses from his nose, cleaning them with a silk handkerchief. He nodded at his men. 'Kill him.'

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Genres:

Action

Adventure

Thriller

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