Editing City Series:Volume6a Chapter5 (section)

===Part 5===

The barracks seemed dark after being outside.

The wind was gone and the air-conditioner heat surrounded Berger and the motorcycle.

A long hallway stretched out in front of him. The outside windows were on his right and 150 yards of barracks room doors were on his left.

He could see two men at around the midpoint of the hallway. One was Schweitzer and the other was Schweitzer’s aide Bermark.

Berger pursued them.

He shifted into 3rd gear and slammed on the accelerator. The rear tire slipped a bit on the hallway’s wooden flooring, but a moment later, the rubber fully dug into that wood.

The speedometer needle shot up as he prioritized forward movement above all else.

He moved fast.

The 350cc BMW engine provided him with 50 mph in an instant. That was around 24 yards per second, so he would catch up to those two in 4 seconds.

A wind whipped up around Berger.

That wind rattled the windows to the right as if that noise was chasing the fleeing figures as well.

The wave-like noise continued without end.

Berger wordlessly pushed his sunglasses back up and then grabbed the handlebars with both hands.

In that instant, he heard a sound from behind him. It was the refreshing sound of shattering glass.

It sounded a lot like a clear spray and it was joined by many more identical sounds. All the windows he passed by were noisily destroyed one after another. The continual destruction sounded like shattering ice.

More than just the winter air came in where those transparent panels had been

Bullets did as well.

Machinegun caliber bullets were fired toward Berger from outside.

The bullets shattered what glass was remaining and continued on to punch into the wall on the other side or destroy the barracks room doors.

All that noise pursued the roar of the speeding motorcycle’s engine.

Berger did not even look back.

He only needed to see the 5 armored trucks aiming their guns his way from the road alongside the large storage buildings to his right.

“What kinda childish game is this!?” he shouted as he looked out ahead.

He was now only about 20 yards away from Schweitzer and Bermark, but those two were approaching the building’s western exit. The rectangle of sunlight shined bright at the end of the dimly-lit hallway.

If they made it to that light, they were outside.

And they were almost there.

“Is this all the Geheimnis Agency can do!? Turn tail and run!?”

As soon as the words were out of Berger’s mouth, a giant armored truck slid into the sunlight at the western exit to seal up that opening.

And its gun was already aimed at Berger.

“!?”

He saw Bermark press his back against the wall while Schweitzer jumped to the right onto the stairway up to the second floor. The armored truck’s machinegun opened fire at the same moment.

Berger frantically tilted the handlebars to the right and locked the rear wheel’s brake. He diagonally lowered the motorcycle’s height and began a powerful inertial drift.

The floor tore at the tires and the leaning motorcycle’s exhaust pipe let out a scream by the floor, but the machinegun fire passed by overhead.

In no time at all, he slipped past Bermark and onto the stairway landing.

He looked to the stairs and did not see Schweitzer. The man must have continued on up.

The armored truck was blocking the barracks entrance and its machinegun aimed down to compensate for Berger’s lower position.

“Outta the way.”

He tossed a grenade underneath it.

Without seeing it through to the end, he released the rear wheel lock and twisted the accelerator.

The tires slipped a bit, but then they caught at the floor and he was jerked forward.

He accelerated ever forward, which meant up the stairs now.

He lifted the front wheel while approaching the stairs. He shifted down two gears but kept the accelerator on full.

He lifted his hips and prepared for impact as the front and back wheels caught the edges of the stairs.

The motorcycle more hopped up the stairs than climbed them.

Without a break, he arrived at the midway landing between the 1st and 2nd floors where the stairs turned 180 degrees.

He twisted the accelerator further as if pushing the tire into the joint between wall and floor and then used the inertia of climbing the stairs to push the motorcycle forward, like it was crawling along the bottom of the wall.

He let the back wheel slip while he tilted the motorcycle to the right. He moved the front wheel toward the next flight of stairs and kicked his right foot against the floor as soon as it was oriented right.

The motorcycle tried to straighten itself out, but Berger did not wait for it to finish.

“Go!”

The motorcycle was still tilted diagonally as he climbed the stairs in a lean out pose.

He did all this in a short period of time that could not even be measured in seconds.

The motorcycle bounced up onto the 2nd story landing.

The hallway cut by perpendicularly in front of him. It led to an emergency exit on the right, but that did not appear to have been opened. The hallway continued for a ways to the left, but the corner wall got in the way and he could not see its full length from the landing.

But he did glimpse something gold out of the corner of his eye.

It was Hazel’s hair.

It vanished into the part of the hallway he could not see from the landing.

His only response was to smile.

He squeezed the accelerator to move forward.

The motorcycle took off, the roar of its engine rumbled through the stairway behind him, and he entered the long hallway.

Now the windows were to his left and the barracks room doors to his right. He was now moving east, the opposite of when he had first entered the building.

He looked out ahead and saw Schweitzer about 50 yards dead ahead.

The man was running. Quickly.

“But I’m faster!!”

With that, the motorcycle shot forward with a roar of its engine.