25 February 2013

Yamato woke with a splintering headache. He felt as if he'd been whacked across the back of his head, what with it being in some serious pain. Slowly, he rose his head upward, trying to take in the image around him. Wherever he had woken, he was certainly not in his apartment.

He seemed to be in some form of cell. His first reaction when he saw iron bars at the top end of the room was that he'd finally been caught by the cops. However, he was still wearing the dreary white vest and combat trousers of the previous night, which told him that he hadn't been arrested. What he did know was that he were inside a prison, although judging by the mould that was growing all over the place that this prison hadn't been used in decades. That meant that he were inside only one place: the Veretas maximum security detention centre.

The Veretas detention centre had been the city's main prison for almost half a century, before the building had started to collapse in places due to unforeseen circumstances, killing at least four convicts in the process. As a result, the centre was officially closed down, but the place hadn't been destroyed, leaving different gangs within the city to take over the cells for their own benefits.

Yamato sighed. "Who the hell have I pissed off this time?" he asked himself, standing up to examine the room. Above his head were monkey bars, and at the bottom wall there was a pipe that would've been used for radiators. Thankfully, when he put his hand on it, it wasn't scalding hot. He tugged against the pipe, and grinned when it held stiff. "Let's climb," he said quietly, before climbing up to the top. He arched his head back, and saw that the monkey bars led into a different room. "Sweet." He then jumped away from the pipe, grabbing the bars with a soft thump. The bars creaked dangerously, to which Yamato looked up to with fear. "Oh crap." He quickly made his way across the bars, with them falling as he let go. As he reached the final bar, one end snapped. "Oh shiiit!" he yelled, swinging forward to try and grab the top of the wall, which he managed to achieve, but only just. The bars clattered to the floor, each with their deafening ring.

Yamato pulled himself upward, and then vaulted over to drop into the next room. 'At least I'm getting somewhere,' he thought, his head turning back into the cell and the monkey bars. His eyes then snapped up to the distant sound of people talking. He scuttled back behind a set of crates that were nearby. His foot disappeared just as a pair came near, talking.

"I'm telling you, I heard something crash! He's escaped."

"No, he should still be out cold by now. The drugs those guys used would knock out a freaking rhino."

'So I got drugged with rhino tranquillisers?!' Yamato thought, almost grinning. 'How the hell am I still alive after that?' He knelt down, stabilising himself with his hand, continuing to listen.

"Look, he's- Oh shit!"

"What?" The other sounded afraid. And rightly so.

"Dude, he isn't in there!"

"What?!"

Yamato took this as his chance, and sprinted out toward the pair. With a hard whack, he knocked the pairs heads together. One of them collapsed immediately. As the man fell, Yamato swiped the baton and pistol from him, before he whipped out the baton to full length. He turned to the other, who was trying to scramble for his gun. Yamato wasted no time, cracking the man's knuckles with the baton, then hard on the shoulder. The man cried in pain, dropping the gun as a result. Yamato kicked the gun away, and then hit the man hard across the forehead with the baton. "Lights out!" he had yelled as he hit him.

The man fell into a crumpled heap. Yamato panted, before pushing the baton back down and hid both that and the pistol into the back of his trousers. "Let's get moving."

He walked through the warehouse until he came to a point that had no other doors. The window was open, and from outside he could hear a woman's voice barking orders. Yamato pulled a crate over to the window, and then stepped back a little. He then ran at the crate, jumping up onto it and then using that as a springboard, he pushed himself up. He grabbed the windowsill, grunting as he did so. He pulled his head up over the sill, but immediately ducked back down when he saw the woman quite close.

What Yamato saw when he looked outside was rather curious. He had looked out onto a balcony, with wooden floorboards. A woman and two men, both of whom held rifles. From this distance, Yamato couldn't tell what make, but they looked powerful, whatever they were. His eyes had initially been blinded by the setting sun, which glinted against the dark grey sea that was overlooked by the balcony. Surrounding the balcony and the warehouse that he found himself in was a very dense forest. Wherever he was, Yamato was nowhere near Cardiff.

The assassin waited in silence as he listened to their conversation.

The woman he heard first. Her voice was silk to the ears, and had this natural authority underlaying her tone. "How does the shipment of that equipment go, mister...?"

A young voice answered, perhaps in his mid-twenties. It wavered slightly, perhaps out of nerves, but no stutter came. "Porter, madam."

"Mister Porter. I'll ask again: how does the shipment fare?"

"Well, madam. It is due to arrive tomorrow morning at six-thirty AM."

Yamato heard the woman sigh in relief. "Good. And what of the cyber assassin?"

Another voice came, much older than the previous man, obviously with more experience in dealing with darker matters. "Still in our control, madam. He is within the cells of the warehouse behind us."

Yamato adjusted the grip on the windowsill, then he slowly edged his eyes over the top.

"Brilliant," the woman said. Yamato instantly recognised her as Eve Dexter, a wealthy business woman who frequently deals in the underground for hired muscle. "We don't need him running around here."

"Why's that?" he whispered, watching the trio. "What have you got hiding, Dexter?"

Dexter picked up the hem of her cream dress, walked back down the balcony then down a flight of stairs. He waited until the sound of feet of soldier boots were distant before vaulting over onto the wooden floorboard. He rolled on landing, almost smacking into the metal railings. He had to stop, if only to see the sight of the setting sun on the sea. It were a truly stunning scene.

Yamato then turned, and walked over to the left side, when his brow arched downward. There was a knocked-out guard hidden away behind a stack of crates. He only found this mind because of the walkie-talkie that was barking with the sounds of an angry guy.

"Unit sixty-seven. Respond! Commander Mitchel, please respond!"

Yamato looked back and forth, doubly making sure he was alone, before picking up the radio. "Who is this?" he asked, deepening the tone of his voice before doing so.

"It's Corporal Knoyle, Commander... Are you ok? You sound different."

"I got a cold coming on," Yamato answered, throwing in a cough for good measure.

"You sounded fine earlier, sir."

"Well I'm not now, am I?!" Yamato yelled, thinking he played the part of 'Soldier' very well.

"Sorry for my rudeness, Commander. How is the prisoner?"

"You mean the cyber-assassin?" Yamato almost let out a laugh. That title was quite funny, to him at least. "He's still out cold."

"Oh, good. We can't get ahold of the two stationed inside."

"Probably just sleeping on the job."

The man on the other side laughed. "Indeed, they are lazy, that pair."

"Remind me, Corporal," Yamato said, trying his luck. "Where did we put the prisoner's equipment?"

"Warehouse six, Commander."

"And those stationed there?"

"Only a handful, sir."

"Perfect," Yamato smirked, then clicked the radio off before the Corporal could respond. He dropped the radio, and quickly ran to the specified warehouse, and found that indeed there were a handful of guards, but they were all talking amongst each other. As long as he got to his phone, he won't have to worry.

As he used the baton to smash open the door, he realised that the guard from earlier was out cold. He certainly hadn't knocked him out.

So who did?

Yamato didn't take long to find his equipment. His jacket, the one he wore around the city, as well as his phone, collapsable baton and a earpiece that he used to tap into conversations that were beyond normal hearing distance were on a wooden table. He put the jacket on, flexing out each arm with a small grin, then replaced the baton inside the jacket. He put the one had earlier on the table in its wake. After putting on the earpiece, he checked his phone, and almost froze when he saw the message pop up the moment he touched the screen. It was strange, how a simple, single word held so much terror in its meaning.

"RUN"

He processed the word for perhaps a split second, before turning on his heel sharply and sprinted out of the room. What Yamato didn't know was that the moment he entered the room, he set off a tripwire device that was hidden behind the workbenches. The breaking of a wire set off a spark behind this bench, igniting a wire that ran along the objects inside the warehouse, all the way to a small but very dangerous bomb.

Needless to say, when Yamato got outside of the warehouse, it exploded in a shower of wooden planks and a massive fireball. Yamato was sent flying forwards, smacking into the floor. He let out a small groan of pain, shaken for a couple of moments, but he quickly recovered and stood up.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered. "Talk about a heated show." Taking a second to find out his surroundings, he then pulled out his phone and turned on the transmitter. What that did was give him a reading of any wireless frequencies within a hundred-metre radius of his surroundings, and pinpointed it to a third of a centimetre of its location. He grinned at the movement of the guards on the other side of the warehouse. "Let's get going," he then said to himself, before running out into the fore

DemonCarterWhere The Hell Am I? • Opuss № I