“Da, is fine,” Vodko said nonchalantly and looked at the monitor where information streamed past. He couldn’t possibly understand any of the medical jargon. Doctors would normally use easier terms with patients and caregivers but there was no need for that on their records. Vodko did recognize the mentions of ‘deceased’ as he would generally associate that with a payday.

  “Splendid. I would also like to inform Dr. Niemec that six security paraphernalia necessary for improved employee satisfaction has been installed into the chamber of the productivity device. Please do make sure that the safety is on.”

  The rapid typing of the keyboard stopped for an instant as the doctor checked the gun before shoving it into the back of his pants once more. Wiping sweat off his forehead with a relieved expression on his face, he exhaled before leaning forwards and continuing the typing on the keyboard again. The art of hacking didn’t look nearly as exciting as they made it out to be in movies. Long lines of text streamed down, commands and structures. Numbers, figures, and symbols were flowing rapidly.

  Vodko stared at the screen for a moment but turned away out of lack of interest, sat down in the chair once more and pulled out a worn black leather-bound book, the clear golden Cyrillic lettering on the cover “The Good Book” curved around a picture of a golden gothic representation of a fish in a vodka bottle. He opened the book and flipped a few pages. Inside, his stainless hip flask was hidden neatly in a hollowed-out portion in the middle of the book. Engraved into the center of the flask was the words, “Holy Water”.

  After half an hour of quiet boredom and caressing the flask, there was an eruption of noise in the hospital landscape. Soldiers in black suits with tactical blue iridium visors on their helmets were rushing inside the hospital carrying large assault rifles. Vodko hunkered down and carefully placed the book in an inner pocket of his coat. The phone crackled once more to call out further instructions.

  “Gentlemen, the data has been acquired. You have a hit team closing in, which leaves you with two choices. One of which is the wrong choice. You have thirty three seconds. This phone will self-destruct in three seconds. Evacuation is recommended.”

  Vodko dropped the phone, pulled out a gun from a hidden holster and ran out the door the nurse exited through earlier, with the doctor following close behind him. He weighed his options and visualized the routes as they ran. ‘They’ll naturally stop the elevators. We can’t take the stairs, they would naturally cover that escape route. We need to take a route that they wouldn’t imagine we would take. The option they would suspect the least’ he thought to himself while noting the partially opened elevator doors a bit away from him. Doctors and nurses were pushed away on their run towards it. Vodko pulled out a crowbar out of the duffle bag hanging on his back, wedged it into the gap and forced the elevator door open.

  “They’ve cut zee power already, ve can’t-” the doctor began talking but was interrupted by Vodko, who ignored the fact the doctor’s broken English had taken a leap in proficiency despite being overpowered with another accent.

  “Elevator shaft. Would not look here, is a dumb place to run to, so won’t look,” Vodko said as he fired into the elevator car, obliterating the lock to the emergency hatch before running inside, kicking himself off from the handrail and climbing out of hatch and into the elevator shaft. Vodko stuck his head down the escape hatch and looked at the doctor upside down.

  “Coming, cyka?” Vodko asked.

  “In a second,” the doctor answered and faced the panel of the elevator, yanked open a hatch loose next to the doors and revealed the inner workings.

  He pulled out a cable and connected it to his datapad. A light buzz sound caused the doors to securely shut with a light clang sound, so as to cover up their intended escape route. He pushed himself towards the emergency hatch with great effort, not nearly as acrobatic and fluid movements as Vodko had displayed but it would get the job done. Vodko started climbing down. Stringent and redundant security to screen out infiltration meant that Vodko and the doctor had to climb down through the elevator shaft at least three or four floors between the elevator cables and the blackened walls. A constant echo of the low-hum of working computers and continuous beeping from displays and consoles droned under the echo of conversations throughout the shaft from the floors they passed.

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  “Give me a nudge, I can almost reach zee maintenance panel,” the doctor said with a hushed voice and readied himself mentally. Vodko gave him a kick in the back without hesitation. The doctor wound himself around the railing like a cat out of water. After opening and pulling out a few wires, a blue spark flickered for an instant.

  “Argh, scheisse!” the doctor exclaimed reflexively and shoved his thumb into his mouth to relieve some pain. He pulled out his thumb, connected the wires to his datapad, gritted his teeth and his fingers danced over the display until an image was displayed of the lobby a couple minutes later.

  Vodko peered down at the display of the hospital, moving images flickered on the screen, swapping between the security cameras throughout the hospital. The blue-gray antiseptic lighting was dominant, and it washed out the coloration of the gray-uniformed personnel moving through the offices and emergency rooms. On the display, one of the soldiers squinted behind his visor and stepped forward, raising his left hand as his squadron approached the lobby, his hand forming the army gesture for them to stop. Vodko sighed, eyes narrowed and focused on the man that just entered the lobby. He identified the Heavy AR MK4 rifle hung over the soldier’s shoulder by its strap.

  “Military issue assault rifle. Hey, doctor, outside view.”

  A few strokes on the keypad and the screen flickered once more. The dark outside that Vodko had run through earlier had now been lit up and populated by two armored personnel carriers, a tank and a few soldiers. Vodko hooked himself with his feet around a protruding pipe and brought a hand to his chin.

  “Ah, pizdec! We are dead,” his Russian was as thick as ever, but surprisingly, the English words following the Russian one rang through without errors, as if he had practiced this line a lot of times. A grin spread on his face.

  That blunt assessment sent a chill down the doctor’s spine. Vodko was not a man to be daunted by grim odds, in fact, he reveled in it. But he was also an intense realist when it came to his abilities.

  “Is strange here. Firepower is for Blue Zone military facility, not small yellow zone encampment. Is like a military faction declare war. What was the information you found?”

  Vodko asked the doctor while standing atop one of the many pipes leading vertically down the shaft, as the doctor was silent, he glanced downwards, looking for the next handhold. After spotting one about two meters away, he leapt down and grabbed onto a protruding pipe, with this, he had made some more progress descending the shaft. The tension on the pipe continuously increased. The weight of Vodko surpassed the pipe’s compressive strength and the pipe gave out with a snap and curved outwards.

  “Ah blyat.”

  With his left arm extended, Vodko grabbed another pipe before landing at the bottom of the shaft which decelerated his fall, his body soon crashed into the ground. The doctor looked down on his datapad, the sound from jumping from pipes and the subsequent fall had attracted attention from the soldiers in the lobby.

  The doctor unplugged the wires from his datapad, left them hanging and descended towards Vodko’s location with sweat visibly flowing down from his forehead. Instead of flinging himself down quickly and trying his luck with the pipes, he instead carefully climbed down the metal ladder attached in conjunction with the service panel.

  Soon, the result of the soldiers’ actions made the elevator doors violently shudder. The soldiers’ mechanically supported arms tried to make room to pry the doors open. The doors slightly contorted from the impacts, screeching from the bent steel as the pumping sound of a jackhammer repeatedly slammed into the doors, causing the metal doors to warp just a little more each time; Soon the soldiers’ would have a big enough gap.

  Once the doctor finally reached the foot of the ladder and stepped off, he could once more see Vodko. At the very end of the shaft, there was a slight indentation to the right of two powerful blast doors. Yellow and black diagonal lines with a positive slope framed the door. The pale, hazy light the emergency lights emitted added to the gloomy and enigmatic atmosphere of the elevator shaft. Up ahead, shadows appeared to dance and flicker about as the keypad blinked with a faint light, indicating its presence.

  Vodko felt that the elevator doors wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer due to the continuous impacts and was looking for explosives in his now extremely dirty duffel bag. Without skipping a beat, the doctor moved forwards to the keypad next to the doors.

  “I know zee code. Previous repairmen vere not allowed to vrite down zee.. the.. code, so they kept valking around singing, and later humming it around zee office whenever they were told to make repairs. I couldn’t forget zee code. Hopefully zey haven’t changed it since last veek.”

  The stress caused his German accent to become more pronounced as the doctor spoke, he started pushing in the numbers. The elevator doors were getting closer and closer to being pried open.