«Speaking about it. Won't do any good.»

He threw a molotov and made the console explode. The security camera fell on the ground and the emergency protocol opened the door.

But the alarm ringed inside the auxiliary eardrums.

He ran to Ninetynine's room and with his high-voltage kodachi sliced the glass of the neuroenergetic tank that contained her.

The naked and completely grayish body, filled with filaments and cybernetic plates, was slipping together with stasis liquids, which dried up on the floor.

«What...» she woke up from lethargy, «Terry, what are you doing?»

«I will explain that later. Get up, we're leaving!»

He rolled the high-tec revolver out of its case and opened explosive fire on the sentinels.

«You could have warned me neurally. I was having a wonderful dream!»

«The one where you were out of here?» Continued to shoot.

She dressed up as fast as she could, and once covered herself in a winter coat, brandished her long high-tec sword and put on her sonar headphones.

The moment she activated them, she cut an opening at the wall.

«You must pass me the recipe», said Terry, «I want to cook like that too!»

«Five from downstairs and three from upstairs are coming. Better move on.»

«Yeah. I got it.»

«What? That there are still five from below and three from up?»

«You know what I mea—»

Suddently, Ninetynine pushed him.

With a heavy step she crushed a sentinel.

Then smugged: «Will you ever learn to aim?»

Terry was so offended he didn't even respond. Actually, he just threw himself into the opening.

Both of them slided on one of the tubes that transported the life energy for cyborgs in all the rooms of the structure.

«So, you actually believed me when I was said we're just experiments for them.»

«Of course. Otherwise, I would never listened to someone like you.»

He was joking and she knew.

Finally, they touched ground.

The main entrance was a few steps in front of them.

«Jokes aside, you did a great job to keep those colours with the upgrade. Red always suited y—»

Complimenting her hair, two sentinels came out from the emergency manholes.

«Oh, come on! Can I end a sentence?»

To answer him, they roar a growl from their mechanical jaws.

They both get up on two feet: one of them waved its arms and long claws came out, almost as big as Ninetynine's red katana; the other one instead, from a compartment, it whipped out two whips full of spikes, with a dangling spiked mace.

«Yeah, fair», lamented Terry.

«Focus on shooting.»

Ninetynine activated the gravity inhibitors and started to skate on the pavement at high speed, dodging heavy spiked balls.

Terry fired a shot that destroyed the leg of one sentinel.

The same one saw his head chopped by Ninetynine's sword.

However, the other foe was in the act of crushing her head with the spiked sphere.

Ninetynine raised up her blade, caught the whip, and rotated the ball until it stopped to spin.

Then finished with a raw kick at the sentinel's stomach.

Its head exploded.

«Headshot!» Shouted Terry.

«You're too slow!»

«It's not easy to aim if you're in the middle!»

«Naturally, you're a second-hand cyborg.»

«You boast just because you got more power-ups!»

«I only hear excuses, from who has two engines.»

She took away any satisfaction to try to counter that, by running toward the entrance.

An ominous and giant mechanical monster blocked their way. Three meters high, with mighty arms and legs just like the ones of a competitive bodybuilder, and in the middle of the chest there was a cabin with transparent red glass.

A voice came out from the intercom: «Seventyfour! Ninetynine! What is this mess? Get back to your rooms!»

«Not even by chance!» Aimed Terry.

The bullet exploded, but not the enemy.

Actually, the exploded fragments bounced off.

«Do you not understand? You are Government propriety!» Said again the man in the cabin, «you don't have permission to leave whenever you want to! Your technologies are illegal if used off-duty! If you desert, you'll have the entire world against you!»

Ninetynine brandished her sword: «It is your policy that should be prohibited!»

«Watch your mouth! I only need a button to shut yourself down. And another one to erase your memories.»

She got stuck. Memories were the only human thing left in a cyborg.

That man was pushing something, but something else interfered with his systems.

His screens went blue and black.

He saw Terry smiling down there, holding a device built with makeshift materials.

«Chiyoko, it is pointless to speak», brandished his kodachi, «let me borrow some of your energy, I'm dry.»

«You fools! As if I let you!»

An electromagnetic pulse projectile staggered him, blocking his action.

Ninetynine took the advantage and opened a hand: from her palm a circle opened and a luminescent sphere came out.

«Be careful. It's pure energy.»

Terry took it gently.

Then smugged and slapped it on his blade.

The sphere threw some sparks, but melted like an ointment.

He spread it all over the steel of the blade, and this reacted with an exorbitant amount of electricity.

«Now we're gonna have some fun!»

He wielded his weapons.

Other sentinels arrived and the mechanical monster was attacking again.

Terry raised his sword and swung it several times in the air: electric waves with the form of vertical lines, just like sea waves, travelled low shot towards them.

At every impact, debris from walls and mechanical parts were dismantled.

Whereupon, the cyborg dodged a giant punch that cracked the floor.

«Stop this! You don't know what you're doing!»

Terry ran over the arm of that monster, headed for the cabin, opening the way with a kick that broke the glass into thousand pieces.

«It's over, Fiftyeight!» Aimed.

But that man rose up from the seat and rang him a metal headbutt, defenestrating him outside.

«Dammit...» Tried to get up, «Ninetynine... we got to find a wa—»

He saw her behind the giant monster, bypassing the systems to exit to the main entrance.

«Traitorous bastard!»

«Sorry!» She shouted from afar, smiling, and with the big gate slowly opening, «I have zero intention to waste time by watching you two fighting each other!»

«Damn you!» Cried out in chorus Terry and Fiftyeight.

And like that, she disappeared behind the countless turquoise, purple and yellow lights of the city.