Fennel hit the ground with a roll, tucking her right arm across her chest and letting her weight carry the rest of her body over her shoulder. Glass shards sprinkled down like rain around her, lightly peppering the surrounding area.

"Hey! Stop!"

Fuck.

Fennel looked up.

A group of uniformed men were standing a short distance away, blocking off her access to the road she'd been planning on using to escape. In fact, there were a lot of armed men, scattered all over the place. Enough to surround the entire complex, even. Men who were now heading to this point.

Their leader, an intense, middle-aged man with a pug nose and a moustache, had his rifle trained on her.

He'd figured out she was monitoring the E4 comm systems, so Grimsley had gone to the police himself. Clever, clever Grimsley.

Fennel got to her feet, raising her hands above her head. She only had a few seconds; Grimsley and Caitlin would be over the shock any moment. He'd tackled her to the ground out of the way of the knife.

And then she'd be really screwed. Unova had been a bit hesitant about the death penalty in recent decades, but for the sheer amount of serial killing she'd been doing, they'd probably bring it back in a heartbeat.

She was near one of the E4 complex side doors. The stool she'd tossed out the window lay in the grass near her feet. Fennel took a subtle step towards it, careful not to spook the officer.

"Don't move!" He looked nervous. Good choice. "I will shoot you!"

Fennel slipped her foot under the wooden band that ran between the legs.

"Alright, alright. Look, hey, I'll come q..."

In one fluid motion, Fennel kicked the stool upwards, grabbed the leg, and hurled it through the air. It caught the man across the face with a sharp *crack*, snapping his head backwards.

Fennel span, taking off at full pelt towards the door. She leapt through the entrance just the men got over their initial shock and opened fire. A bullet round slammed into the frame next to her head. She swung the reinforced metal door shut, slamming the metal bolt into place. Seconds later, the door erupted with the domelike welts of bullet impacts.

Keep moving. Pause, and she'd be dead

She was in the complex's western section; wide, carpeted avenues lined with doors that led to storerooms, residential quarters, and offices. All the rooms with windows led out onto the external building face that she'd just come from, and that trick probably wasn't going to work twice.

Fennel took off down the corridor. She needed to get away from the west section of the complex; an alert Grimsley would tear her to pieces, and even in her drugged state, psy-Caitlin would wreck her. She needed to arm herself, and qui...

A door to her left opened, and a man dressed in a blue police uniform came thundering out, pistol in hand. His head snapped to the side, and his eyes went wide. He turned towards her, pistol arm swinging around.

Fennel was faster. She flung herself across the space, slamming her body into his. One of her hands went to the front of his shirt, the other tangled itself in his brown hair, and she sank her teeth into his throat.

He screamed. A metallic taste filled her mouth, and she gripped on hard with her jaw, then yanked her head to the side.

Blood pouring from his torn throat, the officer tried to stumble backward. Fennel let him, releasing her grip on his shirt to instead slam his gun-holding fist into the wall. His grip loosened, and she ripped the pistol from his hand.

Shouts came from the direction she'd come from; she could hear them trying to break down the outside door. The man slid down the wall, his pained gurgles sending familiar spikes of pleasure up her spine, but there was no time to enjoy it. She started running again, pistol in hand. She had a plan now. The Entralink was off-limits, they'd probably cut off the power, but if she could get to the assistant quarters...

Another door, this one to her right, swung open out into the corridor. Fennel didn't wait to see who emerged from behind it, she opened fire immediately. Her bullets tore through the wooden door, and a uniformed man with an assault rifle slung across his chest stumbled out from behind it, clutching at his stomach. She fired again, blowing a hole in his head.

She didn't have a lot of time to do anything next, because as her motion carried her in front of the open doorway, a truck disguised as a man rammed into her side. She slammed backwards into the wall, the pistol clattering from her fingers.

The man grabbed her by the shirtfront with both hands, pulled her back, then pressed her into the wall. He was *huge*, muscles like tree-trunks, short-cropped black hair and small, dark eyes that glittered with hate.

Oh, she must have mutilated someone he'd liked.

She grinned at him. "Hello! Can I offer you a massage?"

He looked like he was about to respond. Fennel didn't give him the chance. She kneed him in the groin, hard, and drove the points of her thumbs into his wrists. His grip loosened, he groaned in pain, and she slammed her forehead into his face in a vicious headbutt.

Footsteps down the hallway that she'd come from; they'd finally broken down the door. Truck man staggered backwards, off balance. With no time to extract the assault rifle from under the fallen man, Fennel instead elected to shove her assailant to the ground and leap over him through the doorway.

She was going to kiiiiiilll Grimsley. She was going to kill him sooooooo bad.

Another corridor. She was in residential now. The corridors were a lot less linear here, and she used that to advantage, zigging and zagging around corners at full pelt.

And when she whirled around the next turn, she was greeted with two wonderful, wonderful sights.

The first, in its emergency holder on the wall, was a fire axe. She felt like stroking it.

And the second was the door to the personal room of her doppelganger.

Fennel loved her doppelganger. She was a woman who worked in the kitchen who looked pretty much exactly like her. Jokes had been made. They'd never really spoken that much, but Fennel had memorized her schedule. And right now, she'd be in her room, sleeping off the late-shift.

Fennel, of course, had all the keys.

Fennel slipped off her lab coat, leaving her in only her pink undershirt. She pressed the garment up against her face, wiping the blood off her mouth and cheeks. Then she pushed open the door and ran inside.

"Jean! Jean, wake up! They're here, the... it's Rob!"

On the bed in the corner of the room, the woman blearily opened her eyes. Fennel leapt on top of her, shaking her. "Jean! Jean! The mob! They're here to kill you! Jean! You need to run! Jean!"

Doppelganger's eyes went wide with fear. Doppelganger's ex-boyfriend had ties to organized crime, leading to Doppelganger living in more or less a state of constant anxiety. Which Fennel, she had to confess, had intentionally contributed to. Doppelganger got hilariously squirmy.

Fennel pulled the disoriented woman out of the bed, forcibly shoving her arms into the sleeves of Fennel's bloody lab coat as she overwhelmed her with noise. "You need to run! They're going to kill you! You need to run!"

Doppelganger started to say something. Fennel shoved her out into the hallway, pushing her in the direction opposite to the one she'd originally come from. "Run! They're wearing uniforms! They're going to kill you! Run!"

Doppelganger took off in a confused, lurching rush that quickly gained speed. Fennel plucked the fire axe from its holdings, then stepped back into Jean's room, closing the door behind her.

And baring a miracle, that would be the last she saw of her.

She had time to plan now. And she liked having time to plan.

As footsteps thundered past the room, she slipped her amusingly superfluous glasses into her pocket, quickly switched out her attire to a pair of loose blue, belted jeans, a black tank top and a grey jacket, and tied her hair up into a loose ponytail.

Her reflection stared out at her from Doppelganger's mirror. Fennel clicked her tongue appreciatively.

Doppelganger also had a small, en-suite kitchen. The largesse of the E4 never ceased to ceased to amaze her. Fennel removed half a dozen knives of various sizes from the chopping block, wrapped the blades with dishrags, then slipped them into the jacket's baggy pockets. She also picked up a packet of blue, plastic gloves, putting on pair.

Just in case, she checked the window. No dice. The blockade was still in place, if she tried to get out there, she'd be like a moose in moose hunting season. And also, they would shoot her! Because for some reason she couldn't quite put her finger on, they were feeling a bit trigger happy today.

Fennel stepped out into the hallway, then took off at a light jog, keeping her footfalls as light as possible. There was time to be cautious now. She just needed to get outside before her hilarious ruse got shot to death; once she hit the streets, her natural freakish speed would do the rest.

She could hear footsteps around the corner. Fennel pressed herself back up around the wall. No more gunshots, no more flailing. There was a cupboard nearby.

An older gentleman, one of the gardeners, doddered into view. Not taking the chance that he'd mistake her for one of his grandchildren, Fennel grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him away from her, and then slid two knife blades through the corotid arteries of the ol' bastard's neck. Blood spurted from the wound, and he struggled for a couple of seconds, then went slack in her arms.

She felt the muscles in her abdomen twitch pleasantly. Fennel breathed in, savoring the sensation.

Holding up his now dead weight, she riffled around in his pockets, careful not to get any of the blood on her. Her own mobile had been smashed during the chase, and Doppelganger hadn't had one, but... yes.

Fennel extracted the device, then flicked it open. The mobile networks were just starting to recover. She shoved the gardener's body into the closet, then dialed a number. Seconds later, she got an answer.

"HELLO? WHO IS THIS?"

"Brycen!" Fennel saturated her voice with panic. "Brycen, it's... it's Fennel!"

A moment of silence. Then.

"FENNEL! WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?"

Wahaha! Of course, Grimsley hadn't let Brycen in on it! Because letting Brycen near anything was mostly a terrible idea!

Not in this case though.

"Brycen, the... it's Team Plasmar! You were right! Team Plasmar were behind it!"

Another silence.

She could almost feel the wheels clicking in his head.. "...Plasmar?"

"They're at the E4 complex now! And they're dressed like police officers! They're attacking us! Please, you need to help us!"

"PPPPPPLLLLAAAAAAAAAAASSMAAAAAAAARRRRRRR!"

It almost hurt her ears. Fennel couldn't help herself, she grinned. "Come quickly! Please, we don't have much time!"

She hung up.

.x.

.x.

"She's dead? We got her?"

Officer Roberts grinned, rubbing the back of his head. "We think so. Shots through the heartses."

The officer he'd been talking to, a commander, didn't share his good humor. "She tortured cops, you know. Cops n' kids. Sick fuck."

The radio hissed into life. Then it stopped hissing.

That was odd.

Roberts looked at it.

An explosion ripped through the air. An explosion that seemed to come from the front of the complex.

The radio started again. Only snippets came through, panicked, terrified shouts. "Aaar... There's a... Beartic... HEL..."

And then a new voice. "PLLLLLAAAAAAAASMAAAAAAAAR!"

Roberts blinked. "Is that... Brycen Man?"

"Damnit!" The commander leapt to his feet, waving a hand at Roberts. "Roberts, you... just stay here!"

He took off in a run towards the other side of the building. All around him, other officers were doing the same. Within a minute, only four other men remained.

Brycen Man? Why would...

"It's not her!"

Officer Roberts looked up. A female officer, eyes wide with panic, skittered out of the entrance. Her sleeves were stained with blood.

"What?"

"IT'S NOT HER! SHE'S..."

An axe punched through the back of her skull. Her form collapsed like a sack of bricks, and a grinning demon shot out from behind it.

Fennel crossed the space in an instant. The axe came up, curving through a man's throat in a wide arc. A second tried to shoot, but the murderess twirled like a dancer, her leg coming up to kick him hard in the chest. He hurtled backwards, wheezing in pain.

A third raised raised his weapon, and got off a single shot before Fennel was on him, literally crash-tackling him into the side of a car. His head hit the metal surface with an audible crack. Her arm came up, his pistol in hand, and five bullets plunged into the fourth officer's chest.

Roberts went for the radio, leaping into the police van to grab at the handset. He pulled it from its holster

Then his hand was gone.

Hi... his ha...

"Driiiive."

Roberts whimpered. Fennel stood over him, axe slung over her shoulder, face set in a delighted grin.

"My... my ha..."

She leaned in close, her lips almost touching his ear.

"DRIIIIIIIIIIIIVE."