Several men from 1564 jostled their way towards the entrance of the building, brandishing carbines. A new fleet of fools to finish. Smith and Williamson reloaded their weapons. Continuing to hide behind their improvised shields. What useless ones!
Dave Barret grabbed his loudspeaker. “What are you waiting for?” he yelled. “Especially you, Inspector Taylor. Do it.” Taylor obeyed and charged into the base, entirely alone. Soon, more flashes and smoke shook the building, with sounds of shots and shells and submachine guns, and shattering glass and cracking concrete.
Meanwhile, as Xander quickly recovered from the shock of getting shot, he stood up again. He rushed around the bonnet of the car to strike at where he thought Devon was. But to his shock, he was gone. The officer had instead gone the other way, creeping up from behind him.
Smith seized the chance and fired at him, hitting him in the shoulder. Xander fired back thrice, wounding her in the chest. She tumbled onto the ground with a thud. Another unnecessary loss. But Xander’s gun was now empty. Devon came up from behind the car.
The injured bald thug, seeing the latter’s reflection in the car mirror, turned around. But Devon, with his usual sharp senses, reacted instantly. He emptied his whole magazine into the man, dealing such forceful fire that his body was blasted back into the far end of the base. He was undoubtedly done now.
Smith was still moving. She tried hard to crawl away from the battle, smearing her blood across the floor. “Hello there!” Tate suddenly shouted to her. “Xander may be careless enough to let you go, but not me! Bye, girl!” She turned to him, coughing up mouthfuls of blood. He shot her through the head, blowing out her brains.
“Deborah!” Devon shouted.
That loss was insignificant despite the man’s subjective sense of it. He would get over it. The outcome was more or less decided. Taylor would handle everything within the base. Outside it, virtually only Xander was left. He reloaded his cartridges, like an idiot who did not know when to surrender. Devon, seething with rage, walked towards him. Barratt was glad. Experiencing that loss right in front of him was enough to refuel him with drive. Coming before the gangster, he simply looked on with his pistol pointed at him.
Xander looked up. Devon shot him in the chest. He dropped his gun. “That’s what you get for playing with the police, man,” Devon scoffed.
Xander raised his gun. Devon fired and fired and fired. All at point blank. Six holes through his body, for the fun of it. “What the hell have you done? I’ll give it back to you. A little better than jail time, though, right?” Devon yelled. The tattooed thing collapsed in a contorted pile on the ground. Barret squinted through the binoculars. Here was a mess indeed. Xander’s body was now scattered around the car. Too bad for him.
Devon walked towards the door, probably to blast apart the body of the other gangster he had earlier decimated, to relish his victory. A shot from up above passed through his shoulder, dyeing his white police car with splatters of red. He slumped against the side of the car. God damn it! Barrett lowered his binoculars to curse.
“Ah. That’s what you get for messing with 1564.” The Hawk lowered his sniper rifle victoriously. With Taylor gone, things were more convenient. “Tsk. I usually get people with one shot. But your friend has messed up my aim. Still, it’s not bad to watch you bleed out and die.”
Devon struggled to stay on his feet, pushing his body away from his car. That rather clever Williamson, observing the dead bodies and his injured comrades, and thinking only of survival, decided to turn his back and creep slowly away from the warzone. Truly a master of self-preservation! Tate glanced briefly at him and turned his rifle. Williamson realised the danger at the last second and leapt aside, but one shot to the chest caused him to crash to the ground in a pool of blood.
Tate continued to speak, like nothing had happened. “My efficiency has prevented me from enjoying simple pleasures like this. Thanks to your stupid first strike, I think it’s pretty fair for me to do this and watch you die slowly.”
“Y—You! You piece of shit! You were the one who initiated the provocation!”
Probably thinking that he was referencing the fact that he was stationed at the roof of the base, Tate replied, “No, we didn’t. What ideas do you have? Shooting at police unprovoked is an idiotic thing to do. But I must say I enjoy killing your people.”
“But you were— You were at the—”
Tate turned back to him and laughed, then, he took his time to orient the rifle so it was trained on the officer. “You are always such a pain in the ass to us. So this feels like an even better hunt than a politician.”
At this, Devon raised his weak arms and pulled the trigger. It missed Tate by a wide margin. Barrett sincerely felt he could do better. Even for an injured officer, that was quite embarrassing.
Tate fired a shot at Devon’s chest. He fell onto the bonnet of the car, gripping onto the frame for dear life.
“Screw you! Matt will get you! He will—”
He was shot through the head. Wow. Even good old Devon was gone!
The body was blown off the car by the force, and landed on the ground with a thud. His blood dyed his windshield red. The Hawk lowered the sniper rifle from the parapet. That was done.
Nevermind. The clearly inevitable outcome of the battle would be decided downstairs. And Barrett knew this death was a great addition. A new variable.
Matthew Taylor turned his head towards the direction of the sound. He glanced out the door and his eyes widened. “Devon!”
Good! With a meaningful death, there was proper motivation. He cared about the rest of his team, but he and Devon were truly two peas in a pod. This was going to be effective. Taylor’s irises burnt in a stronger hue of yellow, which Barrett always loved to see. It was a good omen. But now they were glowing more than he’d ever seen. “You bastards,” Taylor cried, “You will pay for this!”
