The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

I-Toys

By William Lee

VI—

The perspex skylight had been repaired and the stainless steel chair was gone.

So I autodescended through another skylight and started to move through the building, following the redprints floor-by-floor and avoiding anything that moved—including the two powered-down sentries on the eighty-fifth floor.

Two elevator shafts later, I’d worked my way across to the space that had been unregistered—but had definitely been occupied—on my visit only two days ago.

I needed a lead—any lead—but the space was empty.

And I do mean empty.

Any traces of the people who had been here were removed—sprayed over and sponged away.

But the shadow along a far wall that slid and dipped and then moved toward me was here—and I avoided it only by ducking as it leapt where I had been, missed, and dropped into a roll. So much for the StealthSuit.

I rolled away into a corner and the shadow was on me again—this time in a flash.

Thinking quickly, I pulled out my autodescender, fired it across the room at the shadow and missed—but it locked in tightly. In another moment my new, illegal SlugLauncher had punched out the perspex windows, clarifying the view of the lights across the street, the whine of Rotors zipping past stories below filling the room.

The shadow came at me again and I ran straight across the empty, sanitized space, and straight out into the twilight of the evening air, pushing off of the ledge and dropping violently toward the brightly lit street—I watched as the perspex glittered below me in the air, falling before me. It would’ve been pretty if I wasn’t about to be flattened or eviscerated.

In the time it takes to exhale, I braked, swung in, locked in at probably the fiftieth floor and looked up.

The shadow was peering down at me—a little bulge of head sticking up over the smooth vertical surface of the building’s facade—and in a moment it was coming closer, racing down the exterior of the building, screaming in a high-pitched voice, somewhat female but all nightmare.

I whumped the perspex in front of me with a wide-beam circle and slid in through the hole, ejecting the end of the autodescender from its clamps and running through the office space, blowing the door into the hallway, and making my way to the elevators, prying open the doors, autoascending quickly.

The shadow was still screaming.

Actually, this was handy because I could tell it was still following—and it’s scream filled the shaft as I pried open the eighty-fifth floor doors and ran like hell down the long, open hallway.

I pulled my StealthSuit mask off, letting my hair fly free, exposing my head, and—like clockwork—the Sentries powered up and moved down the hall toward me.

The screaming shadow blasted into the hall just a few seconds behind—and I donned my StealthSuit mask, dodging left and then rolling as the Sentries locked onto the shadow instead of me.

As I crouched in the hallway’s far corner, they opened industrial-strength Neuron fire.

The shadow kept coming.

They swung out heavier ordinance from side podbays and the hallway was filled with sonics that jangled my teeth—even through the StealthSuit.

The shadow kept coming.

Just as the shadow was about to pass the sentries, gas billowed from another set of podbays, filling the hallway with what I assumed was lethal nerve agent.

The smoke curled around the shadow’s legs as it kept coming.

I bolted through the stairwell’s door, slammed it closed, and whumped it with a low grade cutting force, melting the door’s edges to the frame.

The gigantic dent in the center of the door that appeared suddenly and forcefully tipped me off that the shadow, although unseen, was still in pursuit. I rolled to one side just as the door and walls around the door was peppered with hundreds of small holes—Kevlar slugshot from the Sentries.

The door’s dent grew again—suddenly—as the door and frame loosened from the wall.

More slug holes—and the sound of them bouncing off of surfaces in the stairwell as they rained on the stairs.

I moved—up to the roof, whumping the access door.

In another moment I was on an adjoining rooftop, autoascending with a new line.

In another moment I was yet another rooftop over—just now thinking to pray that my StealthSuit was enough to prevent detection. It was guaranteed to shield, even from orbital scans.

Not that I would be around to collect on the guarantee if it failed.

Back on street level, StealthSuit balled up and stowed in my cargo pouch, I wove in and out of the punks crowding the sidewalk, aimlessly traveling.

I was sure the shadow had been waiting for me—but it was a good thing, I suppose. I’d rather be dead than Meat and it looked like the dead part of the deal had been arranged.

I glanced over my shoulder as I walked, expecting to hear screaming from an open mouth just inches from my face.