Chapter 355: Three Seconds
Ten minutes. That was far from enough.
Raizen knew he didn’t have time to sneak in, to search for the files, to figure out a good escape plan once he had the files.
...So he did the first thing that ran through his brain.
Raizen dropped from the branch onto the narrow stone ledge that ran along the base of the hall’s glass dome - a decorative lip, barely wider than his foot, slick with condensation from where the Eon barrier’s edge met the humid air. His boots hit the stone and he was already running, body low, arms out for balance, sprinting along the curve of the dome with the cloud glow reflecting off the glass beside him in sheets of diffused white.
Saffi shouted something behind him. He didn’t hear it. The blood in his ears was louder than her voice, and his mind had already compressed the next thirty seconds into a sequence of positions and movements that left no room for conversation or comments.
The ledge curved with the dome’s surface, carrying him from the western side toward the northern platform where the aircraft sat. Below and ahead, the four guards continued their existence - the two at the doors, the two near the aircraft. None of them were looking up. None of them had any reason to look up, because nobody in the history of the Echelon’s security protocols had ever attacked from the roof of the building they were guarding.
"You sure you don’t want any?" the guard with the chip bag tilted it again, generously.
"I told you to leave me alone already! Eat your stuff in silence" the other guard shouted, a bit too loud for the time.
"Alright, geez!" the guard with the bag almost flinched from the high tone.
Raizen reached the ledge’s end where it met the platform’s overhang. Below him, the nearest guard - one of the door pair - stood with his back partially turned, looking around. He wondered if that fourty-second sweep Saffi had timed was accurate, but he didn’t have any time to think about it. The sweep was carrying his gaze eastward, away from the platform, away from the aircraft, away from the teenager crouching on the ledge three meters above his head.
Raizen gripped the ledge’s edge with both hands, swung his legs over, and dropped.
The fall was short - three meters of open air, barely enough time for gravity to build real speed. He landed on the guard’s shoulders feet-first, the impact driving the man forward and down, his knees buckling under the sudden weight from above. Raizen rode him to the ground, and before the guard’s face hit the wood, before his hands could reach his belt or his mouth could form a shout, Raizen’s fingers found the fragile pressure points.
Two of them. The junction beneath the ear where the jaw met the neck, and the cluster at the base of the skull where the spine began. He pressed both simultaneously - hard, precise, his thumb and forefinger driving into the soft tissue with the specific pressure he’d been taught during his time in the Rust Room, back when Kori told him "this will save your life more often than any blade, and it’s more useful than your stupid big blades."
The guard went limp. Instantly, completely, his body transitioning from alert to unconscious in less than a second, the muscles releasing all at once and depositing him face-down on the platform in a heap of uniform and dead weight.
One down.
The sound of the impact - the thud of the guard hitting the platform, the scrape of Raizen’s boots on the wood - carried across the quiet night air with the precision of a bell struck in a silent room.
Three heads turned at the same time.
The second door guard was closest - two meters away, already facing the sound, his hand already moving to his belt. The two aircraft guards were further back, the railing guard pushing off the rail, the bag of pickled radish chips hitting the platform and scattering its contents across the wood.
All three drew their weapons at the same time.
Batons. Black-handled, half a meter long. But they weren’t usual. They weren’t ukaian-made. They weren’t the special wooden weapons Raizen had seen before. These ones were dark, with metal heads that crackled as they powered up - a sharp, electric hiss that filled the air with the smell of ozone and the faint blue-white glow of high-voltage electric discharge. Taser batons. One clean hit and Raizen’s muscles would lock, his nervous system would short-circuit, and the mission would end with him convulsing on a platform surrounded by guards who would have a lot of questions and very little patience.
He couldn’t get hit. Not once. Not even a graze.
The second door guard charged.
He was fast - trained, professional, covering the two meters between them in two strides with the baton raised in a quick diagonal arc aimed at Raizen’s shoulder. The blue-white crackling head cut through the air, trailing sparks that died in its wake.
Raizen didn’t block. Didn’t retreat. He stepped forward - into the charge, inside the arc’s radius, close enough that the baton’s length became a liability rather than an advantage. The guard’s eyes widened as his target appeared inside his guard instead of outside it, and his swing, already committed, passed over Raizen’s ducking head and spent its energy on empty air.
Raizen was chest-to-chest with him. Close enough to smell the guard’s last meal, close enough to feel the heat radiating from the baton as it crackled past his ear. His right hand shot upward, two fingers extended, and found the pressure point beneath the guard’s jaw - the same junction he’d used on the first one, the same precise location, the same hard, focused pressure.
His left hand found the inside of the guard’s elbow and pressed the nerve cluster there, and the baton clattered from fingers that suddenly couldn’t remember how to grip.
The guard’s knees buckled, his eyes immediately rolling. He collapsed forward, and Raizen sidestepped, but he didn’t let the body fall past him onto the platform. He caught it, and eased it down with his leg. He didn’t mean harm, but he needed to complete this mission.
Two down. Three seconds.
The remaining two were already moving.
