Chapter 15: Powerful Reinforcements

Just then, the alarm on their floor went off. It seemed they had been discovered, and Gu Wen and Accountant were about to find themselves trapped with nowhere to run.

Accountant knelt on one knee, his right palm flat against the floor. He told Gu Wen, “Give me another three minutes.”

“No hurry,” Gu Wen said. “I've got this Apostle unit under my control. Every surveillance camera and electronic device on this floor answers to me, including, of course, this room's electronic door. Only ability users or heavy weapons could get through alloy steel plate like that.”

Before he had finished speaking, two bangs rang out, and two fist-shaped dents the size of cooking pots bulged inward from the door behind him.

Gu Wen glanced back, took two deep breaths, then bent over Destiny's keyboard and got back to work, saying very quickly, “You've got two minutes!”

Outside the door, along with twelve knights assigned to combat duties, stood Knight Captain He Yi, who, like Feng Bu'er, was Strong rank. He had thrown those two punches and regretted them two seconds later, because they had hurt like hell. With so many subordinates watching, though, he could only tough it out and look unruffled. After that, he stopped using his fists and began ramming the door with his shoulder.

These impregnable defenses were now doing an excellent job of keeping Steel Commandment's own members out. The men beside He Yi could only watch helplessly and wait for their captain to break the door down. After all, Apostle was still inside the computer room. Blasting the door open with heavy weapons might destroy the whole thing.

Accountant's head was already drenched in sweat. To him, it sounded as though a truck were charging back and forth outside, ready at any moment to burst through the door and run him over.

Gu Wen, meanwhile, had finished what he needed to do. Just as he was about to close Destiny, something unexpected appeared on the large wall screen. A woman appeared with her red hair tied in a ponytail. She wore the uniform of a high-ranking Steel Commandment member, pure white with a red cross over the left breast, its lines extending vertically and horizontally (all right, England's 2005–07 kit had a red cross below the right shoulder. I maintain that it has nothing whatsoever to do with this uniform), and bright silver epaulettes on the shoulders. She wore no hat, and a lollipop stuck sideways out of her mouth. She looked about Gu Wen's age.

She and Gu Wen noticed each other at the same time, their expressions much the same. Clearly, neither had expected to find this stranger in front of them.

In unison, they said, “Who are you...?”

The woman went on, “Never mind. Whoever you are, I've already isolated your terminal. Sorry you didn't get to break into the central computer like you wanted.”

Gu Wen heard the smugness in her voice and smiled. “How do you know I failed? Maybe the entire Apostle system is already infected, and you just haven't noticed.”

“Hmph... You're bluffing.” Then she spotted Destiny on the console, and her expression shifted slightly. “What's that?”

Gu Wen closed Destiny. “Lovely talking to you. Goodbye.” He pulled Destiny straight off the console, tearing apart the black connecting material, which resembled the gelatinous substance Darkwater's body turned into. At the same time, the large screen went black.

Gu Wen separated Destiny into three blocks again and put them in Accountant's suitcase. By the time he closed it, Accountant's efforts had shaken a section of floor in the middle of the computer room until it was riddled with cracks.

The door looked ready to give way. Watching the alloy steel plate that might come flying at them at any moment, Gu Wen said, “Judging by that, we definitely can't beat whoever's outside. Good thing we still have a hostage.”

“Are you sure?”

The moment Gu Wen heard those three words, he knew things were about to go wrong. Accountant hadn't said them. Feng Bu'er himself had. Worst of all, the voice had come from right beside Gu Wen's ear.

“Underestimated him... I was too focused on matching wits with that woman. Let my guard down for a moment, and he took his chance.” Even as the thought flashed through Gu Wen's mind, a fist struck the right side of his back.

Feng Bu'er had closed in within the blink of an eye. Accountant reacted almost at the same instant as Gu Wen. When he looked up, all he saw was Gu Wen coughing up a mouthful of blood as he was blasted face-first toward the floor.

At that very moment, coincidence intervened.

The alloy steel plate beneath them was already on the verge of shattering. Driven downward by that tremendous force, Gu Wen's body smashed through it like a hurled brick, collapsing the floor. Accountant and his enormous suitcase fell through with him...

Feng Bu'er, however, was on his feet, every nerve taut for combat. He reacted instinctively, taking a short leap backward just in time to reach the console. The floor there was intact and gave him barely enough room to stand.

Unfortunately, the door broke open at that very moment. With an angry shout, He Yi sent the thick slab of alloy steel flying straight at Feng Bu'er. Still off balance and with nowhere to dodge, Feng Bu'er took the full impact, squashed between the Apostle machinery and the door like a lettuce leaf in a sandwich.

The men outside streamed in. Those at the front found themselves in a cloud of dust and, before they could see what was happening, were shoved into the hole in the floor by the men behind them.

He Yi was the last to enter. After breaking down the door, he had stood panting like an ox, pointing inside and delivering a line bandit chiefs often used on their underlings. “Go! Go!” Though a Strong-rank ability user, brute strength wasn't his specialty. Getting the door open had been an enormous relief. He had seriously feared he would run out of strength before managing it. That would have been awkward.

Once inside, He Yi saw only five or six knights scattered around him. The other half had vanished. Iron dust filled the room, and Bimawen stood in front of Apostle's large screen. He had already tossed the door aside, but his ugly mug was swollen from having it plastered across his face.

“You traitor!” He Yi panted.

Feng Bu'er replied, “They took me hostage. No time to explain. I've already wounded one of them. Get down there and catch them.”

He Yi pointed at Feng Bu'er. “Stay right there! I'll deal with you when I get back.” He told two knights beside him, “Watch him.” Then he too jumped into the hole in the floor.

The thirteenth floor housed a shell company owned by Steel Commandment. There were few people there to begin with, and when the ceiling collapsed, nobody knew what was going on.

In any case, less than five seconds after the collapse, a figure clambered out of the dust, carrying a large suitcase in his left hand and a man over his right shoulder, and sprinted toward the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The thirteenth floor had an ordinary office layout, and its exterior windows were just regular thick glass. Accountant hurled the suitcase ahead of him, smashing a hole in one, then jumped out with Gu Wen over his shoulder.

The pedestrians on the street were stunned. A large suitcase had suddenly flown out of the thirteenth floor of an office building, followed by two people. What the hell was going on?

With his newly freed hand, Accountant clung to the building's glass exterior, slowing their descent slightly. His hand seemed to possess some strange power that let it maintain a grip even on a surface this smooth. Even so, they were still falling fast.

Accountant calculated that, if he were alone, his Paper-rank physique and the cushioning effect of his ability would leave him with a broken leg at worst. But with Gu Wen over his shoulder, he would very likely be badly injured, and their pursuers would be on them soon after they hit the ground...

If he couldn't work out this little calculation, he had no business calling himself Accountant. The conclusion was simple. Throw Gu Wen away, and he might still escape. Keep dragging this dead weight along, and they would both die.

Accountant had little time to hesitate. He had to choose at once whether to cast Gu Wen aside or hang on to the bitter end.

Just then, a dark figure entered Accountant's field of vision. The man was actually coming down from the sky. His arrival solved every problem. At that moment, Accountant no longer had to worry about falling to his death or about their pursuers.

A few seconds earlier, the instant Accountant broke through the window, Gambling Snake had spread his arms and leaped from the rooftop. Like an arrow, he had overtaken them despite his later start, catching up with the two men in midair as they neared the ground.

He descended close to the building's exterior. Passing the ninth floor, he casually sliced an entire floor-to-ceiling pane to pieces with his hidden blade and, without looking back, flung a grappling hook behind him. The cable attached to it snapped taut the instant the hook caught the edge of the building, because at its other end, Gambling Snake had already seized Accountant's left arm.

Their downward momentum had not yet been fully checked. Gambling Snake's feet skimmed and braced against the building's exterior as he used the cable's swing to absorb the remaining force. Pulling the other two along, he swung from the second floor up to the third, then gave a short, sharp jerk of his wrist to haul them a little higher. He slipped his arm around Accountant's waist and gave a slight twitch of his other hand. The grappling hook's cable retracted on its own, drawing all three upward. Using that upward momentum, Gambling Snake threw Accountant and Gu Wen into the ninth floor. He accomplished all this within ten seconds, displaying an effortless mastery of scaling walls and traversing rooftops.

Only then did a few Steel Commandment knights stick their heads out from the thirteenth floor. They soon spotted what was happening below and shouted back into the room. He Yi hurried to the broken window and was about to jump without hesitation, but as he lowered his head, a cold gleam flashed before his eyes. Though he jerked his head back with all his strength, a strip of skin was sliced away from his forehead to the top of his head. In an instant, the man in his thirties acquired the hairline of a fifty-year-old.

A dark figure swept up from below, catching He Yi completely off guard. Batman himself could hardly have done better.

He Yi and the knights retreated several dozen feet as Gambling Snake flipped nimbly into the building and came to a stop before them. A cold expression, an indifferent gaze, a hidden blade that had tasted blood. It seemed this man wasn't going to let them pass easily.

“I almost didn't make it. Fortunately, I'm not too late.” Gambling Snake loosened his collar. “I wonder if you gentlemen might oblige me by letting my companions leave.”