[Perspective switch: Everyone Else]

    The other one stepped back, hands up. He was either pleading for mercy or about to fire an energy blast at me. I threw him through the wall, which shattered. Then the display screen behind it shattered, the one which had held the hologram of the outside world.
    It felt remarkably good.
    "Banzaaaaii!" Phoenix shouted by way of greeting.
    "Hi, Needle, we're here to rescue you!" Scott sang out.
    "It's about fucking time," I muttered—my voice didn't quite crack—and followed the downed thug, ducking an energy blast, which passed through my field and too close to my skin for comfort.
    If this is a hallucination, I like it.
    Aside from my teammates there was a scatter of guards in the hall, most of them pawing at their eyes. One seemed to clear his head, looked around him and ran down the hall, yelling, "We need backup!"
    That left two. One swung a fist at Scott, which was a ridiculous thing to attempt and failed miserably.
    I heard a thunderous crashing sound—Lucky making her entrance, I assumed. The guard I had stunned picked himself up and made a hasty exit, and then Phoenix whipped a concussion grenade at a door at the end of the hall. It fell down, hit what appeared to be a stairwell.
    "That's our exit sign," he suggested, glanced over at me and raised an eyebrow. "Looking good."
    "Some other time, Phoenix." I adjusted the hospital gown to cover a bit more of me, watched Scott home run another guard back into the stairwell; presumably he was unconscious when he landed.
    That left two, one of them the man I had thrown through the wall. He was trying to sneak away, too. I slapped him up against the wall, broke two of his ribs and snarled, "I want to know who's in charge here, and I won't hurt you any more."
    "Needle, I understand but we really have to get out of here," Phoenix Talon muttered, looking at the stairs with what I would have sworn was anxiety.
    "I think I got the main bomb disarmed," Scott pointed out calmly.
    "We have two levels to fight our way through before we get to the main floor," was the retort. Well, that gave me a better idea of the local geography.
    "There's a big block downstairs I couldn't get into," the robot mused.
    "Downstairs, in the cold room!" my victim stuttered.
    "That would probably be it," Scott chirped.
    Phoenix Talon yelled at the top of his lungs, "The self-destruct code has started! The self-destruct code has started!" Then he looked at the two of us. "Psychological warfare," he explained.
    The already-panicked actors stampeded. The remaining guard fired an energy blast and grazed Phoenix Talon, but it didn't seem to have any effect on him. Scott slammed the man's head into the wall in a polite sort of fashion.
    "I assume from the way that Needle is acting that she's rather upset," the robot observed thoughtfully. "We're probably going to have to go down to the big room I couldn't get into."
    They could try to stop me if they wanted to. Phoenix sprinted past me toward the stairs, so he was in the lead as we started down.

[Perspective switch: Lucky]

    We headed down, Phoenix in the lead with a thrown grenade. The door at the bottom fell in. Gas was pouring up through the stairwell, rising toward us. Phoenix whipped out a respirator. I have bad memories of gas, thanks to Javelin, and started backing up again.
    "We could just go through the floor," Scott suggested to me.
    "Meet you there." Phoenix plunged into the smoke.
    My silver companion wound himself up for the blow and shattered both the floor itself and a lot of equipment, then a second blow to get through the intermediate level. "There's a lot of equipment here, they were using holograms on you," he mentioned.
    "No duh."
    "No, I don't want to give the scuttle yet," a man in a lab coat was saying to someone else as we dropped down. "Let the poison gas into the rooms, there's no way any of them can survive that. It's designed to look just like smoke, it'll get them from there and oh my god."
    It was Ellis. I had a lock on him in a heartbeat.
    Smoke poured out the doorway, held back by an energy field. The two guards had their backs to it, confident that no one could survive it. Then Phoenix came diving in through the field, wisps of smoke coming off of him. The guards inhaled that little bit and fell over puking.
    "Bad clams?" Phoenix inquired sympathetically.
    There were about a half dozen scientists down there, a dozen scared actors, and a couple of security guards. An actor ran out into the stair area and died, messily. The rest of them huddled together in a terrified knot, trying to find the elevator to the upper levels.
    Ellis was headed for the cold room. Phoenix and I followed after him while Scott ran interference with the guards. He reached the door—which was extremely impressive, by the way, very solid-looking—and punched a code into the panel.
    Nothing happened. He punched it again, frantically.
    "Having a problem doctor?" I inquired from about six inches behind his left shoulder. He jumped gratifyingly.
    "Open it," Phoenix suggested. "What's the problem?"
    "It—it's reinforced titanium, there's no way in," Ellis managed to say.
    Phoenix pulled out a packet of plastique and suggested that we all get back while he placed it. I shielded bystanders in case of shrapnel, still keeping an eye on the good doctor. The explosion didn't seem to have done much good as far as the naked eye could see. Dented it a little.
    "Keep the guards busy?" Scott asked Phoenix.
    "Banzai," Phoenix barked, grinning at them.
    "You haven't been paying attention, doctor," the robot chided. "There's always a way through." He went to gas form and flowed toward the door.
    "So doctor, any feelings you want to share?" I inquired maliciously. He looked a little pale and didn't say anything.
    Scott must have found a space big enough to squeeze through somehow, because a moment later there was a soft creaking sound.
    Lucky dropped down through the hole in the ceiling a few moments later, found Phoenix Talon holding off the security thugs, who didn't last long between the two of them.
    "Somebody has to open the door now, I've got the locks turned off!" Scott called from somewhere inside the mechanism.
    "Coming," Lucky answered, sent her staff away and grabbed hold. She didn't even have to strain.
    "Didn't that look easy?" Phoenix remarked to Ellis.
    "Do you know you look just like..." Lucky started to say, shook her head.
    "Ladies first?" I told her. This was it. I felt an instant of fear penetrate the fury that had carried me this far, but it didn't last long. We went in.
    Another large room full of computer banks and a row of three tubes linked into the far wall, drawing me like a magnet. They were labeled—Of course they were, I thought giddily. How else could they tell them apart? The first was Susan, or what was left of her post-autopsy, a sight which didn't do my still-shaky mental state any good at all. From the second I got a good idea of what I'll look like in forty years, in the unlikely event I live that long. Shannon. The third was gone. The tag said Tempest.

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