First Person: The Calculus in Chaos
The silence in the infirmary was my canvas. The eleven unconscious or groaning bodies on the floor were proof of my thesis. And the look of horror and awe I could feel through the camera's lens was my validation. I had shown them the wolf. Now, I had to prove they couldn't cage it.
My mind, now a cold, sharpened instrument, worked at lightning speed. Shock is an asset with an expiration date. In the observation room, Chifuyu Orimura would already be recalculating, adapting. The guards outside would be receiving new orders. The organized response, the one I couldn't overcome, was on its way. I had minutes, perhaps seconds, before this small bubble of chaos I had created solidified into a prison from which I would never escape.
I couldn't wait to negotiate. Negotiating from a cage, no matter how formidable you are, is still negotiating as a prisoner. True strength came from freedom of action. I needed out of that room. I needed to move. I needed to become a ghost within their own fortress.
My gaze swept the room, ignoring the fallen and cataloging resources. Medical supplies, useless. Beds, too cumbersome. And then, I saw it. In the inert hand of one of Sir Reginald's guards, a man now snoring thanks to his own truth serum, there was a pistol. A projectile weapon. An anachronism in this world of energy and mechas, but a familiar, comforting object to me.
It was a tool. And I was a craftsman of improvisation.
I knelt beside the guard, the cold floor beneath my bare feet. The ozone smell of the stun batons and the faint stench of fear filled the air.
I picked up the pistol. It was a Sig Sauer P229, a classic. It felt solid, real in my hand. A piece of my old world in the middle of this sci-fi nightmare.
In the observation room, this act must have caused absolute panic. A prisoner who had just proven himself a CQC expert now had a firearm. They were expecting me to point it at the camera, to make a demand. They were waiting for the terrorist.
I gave them something else entirely.
Third Person: The Disarmament Lesson
On the observation room screen, the images were sharp and chilling.
"He has a weapon!" Ichika shouted, taking a step back as if Leo could leap out of the screen.
"All back!" Chifuyu ordered, her voice tense for the first time. The girls instinctively recoiled, their eyes glued to the screen. Cecilia, who had seen Leo's brutal efficiency up close, felt an icy knot in her stomach.
But Leo didn't aim.
Instead, in a display of absolute, insulting confidence, he sat cross-legged on the infirmary floor. He placed the pistol in front of him. And then, his hands became a blur.
To the girls, it was an act of incomprehensible magic. To Chifuyu and Laura, it was a demonstration of skill that left them breathless.
With the efficiency of a watchmaker and the speed of a predator, Leo disassembled the weapon. It wasn't standard field stripping for cleaning. It was a complete breakdown.
Click. Snap. The magazine was ejected. Click. The slide slid back and off. Whirr. The recoil spring and guide rod were extracted. Click. The barrel was released.
In less than ten seconds, the deadly pistol had become a kit of metal and polymer parts, neatly arranged on the white floor.
The silence in the observation room was total. The act was so unexpected, so strangely disciplined, that it was more terrifying than if he had started shooting. Shooting was an act of aggression. This was an act of dominance. It was a message.
"He... he disassembled it," Houki stammered.
"He knows firearms at an expert level," Laura analyzed, her single eye wide. "That's not a common soldier's skill. He's a specialist."
Leo, on the screen, wasn't finished. He ignored the larger parts and carefully selected several small components: the firing pin, a thin, hard metal rod; the magazine spring, flexible but strong; and a small lever from the slide release mechanism.
He stood, the small metal pieces in the palm of his hand. Then, he walked to the door.
"What's he going to do now?" Charlotte wondered.
Chifuyu watched, her face a mask of concentration. "He's not going to break it down," she said quietly. "He's going to open it."
Leo knelt in front of the door's control panel. Using his fingernail, he pried open a small maintenance cover no one knew existed. Behind it, amidst the fiber optic wiring, was a manual lock. A metal cylinder. An override system for power failures. An archaic system no one at the academy would bother to use.
But Leo wasn't from the academy.
Using the thin firing pin rod as a pick and the small, bent lever as a tension wrench, he went to work. His fingers moved with a delicacy that belied the violence he had just unleashed.
In the observation room, they watched, mesmerized. The tension was unbearable. There were no explosions, no combat, just the silent, concentrated sound of a man picking a high-security lock with the guts of a pistol.
Click.
A soft sound, barely audible through the room's microphone.
Click. Click.
"He's doing it..." Ichika whispered.
And then, a final, satisfying CLACK. The light on the door panel changed from red to green. It was open.
Leo didn't smile. He made no gesture of triumph. He simply stood up. He picked up one of the stun batons from the floor, activated it with a menacing hum, and weighed it in his hand.
He turned one last time towards the camera. This time, it was just a fleeting glance. A final punctuation mark to his demonstration.
And then, he opened the door.
First Person: The Welcome Corridor
I slid the door open just enough to peer out. I knew it wouldn't be empty. Chifuyu was too smart for that. She would have anticipated an escape attempt the moment I moved.
And she was right.
The outer corridor was a sea of academy security uniforms. I quickly counted. At least twenty. They were forming a human wall, a modern phalanx, all armed with the same stun batons I held. They were waiting for an order, waiting for the door to burst open from the outside. They weren't expecting me to step out and greet them.
Good. Surprise was still my ally.
I took a deep breath, the fresh hallway air mingling with the antiseptic scent. The ache in my head was a dull, constant throb. My muscles protested. I was exhausted. But adrenaline is a wonderful fuel.
There was no strategy here. No subtlety. This wasn't a chess board. It was a battering ram against a shield wall. My only objective was to break through.
With a yell that was half war cry, half frustrated expletive, I kicked the door wide open and charged forward.
The first line of guards, startled by my suicidal charge, faltered for a split second. It was all I needed.
I didn't attack the man directly in front of me. I attacked his feet. My baton moved in a low, swift arc, striking his ankles. He fell forward with a shout, creating an instant obstacle for the men behind him.
I used his body as a springboard, leaping over him to land in the middle of the second line. Now I was surrounded. Exactly where I didn't want to be. And exactly where I could do the most damage.
The fight became a blur of motion and pain.
CRACK! The sound of my baton connecting with a guard's helmet. WHIZZ! The air crackled as one of their batons whizzed inches from my face. THUD! A dull thud against my ribs. I gasped, the pain stealing my breath. Ignore it. Keep moving.
I wasn't fighting to win. I was fighting to destabilize. I twisted, ducked, used my elbows, my knees. My hands were still cuffed, so I used the metal shackles as improvised brass knuckles, smashing a jaw, blocking a blow.
Every guard I took down was replaced by another. They were a swarm. I took a hit to the shoulder, and a burning pain shot through my arm. Another blow to the leg made me stumble. I recovered, using the momentum to spin and strike the guard behind me.
I saw their faces. They were professional, but they were confused. They were trained to subdue rebellious students or standard intruders. They weren't trained to face a man who fought with the desperation of a wild animal and the precision of a surgeon.
I took another hit, this time to my back. I dropped to one knee.
It's over, a part of my brain thought.
Get up! the other part screamed.
I braced my free hand on the floor and pushed myself up, just in time to dodge a blow that would have split my head open. The guard's baton struck the wall, tearing out a piece of composite material.
In that moment of unbalance, I saw my opening. A small gap in their formation. A path barely a man's width.
I stopped defending. I stopped counterattacking.
I just ran.
I forced my way through, pushing past guards, ignoring the blows raining down on my back and shoulders. One of them grabbed the arm of my hospital gown. The fabric ripped. I kept running.
I broke through their line.
For one glorious second, I was free. The corridor stretched before me, empty and white.
Behind me, I heard shouts of "After him!" and the sound of twenty pairs of boots running.
I ran.
I ran with my lungs burning, my body bruised and aching. I ran for my life, for my freedom, for the simple need not to be anyone's lab rat.
In the observation room, no one breathed. They had watched a single man, armed only with a baton and his wits, face a force twenty times his size and break through. It hadn't been pretty. It hadn't been Hollywood heroic. It had been brutal, ugly, and utterly breathtaking.
The screen now showed an empty corridor. Leo was gone, out of that camera's range.
Chifuyu Orimura walked over to an intercom. Her voice was ice-cold.
"All units, status report. Target heading for Sector Gamma. Seal all bulkheads. Do not engage directly. Repeat, do not engage directly. Contain him. I want to know where he is at all times."
She cut the intercom and turned to the girls. Their faces reflected a new understanding. The man they had captured wasn't a prisoner trying to escape.
He was a wolf loose in their fold. And the hunt had just begun.