The King of Thieves 53 - Confrontation

"Freeze! Hands over your head!" Hearing the angry voice, Athena complied and spun around, finding herself face to face with three enhanced people, two men and a woman. One of the men was a hefty redhead in worn black leather carrying a strange contraption hissing with electricity and looking slightly familiar, the others were obviously locals, in camo-patterned baggy outfits and bandanas and carrying Uzi's.

"Relax, Amon, that's Ares' sister," said the woman with the catlike face, but the Egyptian with the Uzi didn't budge an inch.
"Whom? Hebe? I wouldn't think so!" the cream-coffee skinned, lean man snarled. He had shaved his head save for a few thin braids running backwards across the crown, his skull shining in the darkness.
"Is Ares here?" Athena cut in, guessing her Facebook try from yesterday had worked after all.
"He's inside," the catface said. "We're with him. You're Athena, right?" she then took one wary step towards Athena holding out her hand. "I'm Bastet Bubastis. Ares told us we might find you around."

"Pleased to meet you, however I'd wish it'd been under a bit nicer circumstances," Athena replied. They shook hands and then the Egyptian man introduced himself. He was Amon Ra. Now Athena recognized the European. It was Thor Aesir, Victoria's father! Clean shaved and out of his posh tailor suit he looked quite different, more like someone who had stepped out of a Mad Max movie. How on Earth had he got here, and why? Was he with Ares?
"Bastet and I are going inside, come with us!" he prompted of Athena, before she got a chance to lay out her own questions. "Your brother is inside together with a few of the others."
"He know what's at stake here?" Athena asked.
"Horus told him on the way," Bastet replied as she reached inside of her jacket, presenting Athena a gun. "Isis and Osiris have been keeping this place under surveillance for quite some time, knowing that something fishy was going on, but not sure if they dared to intervene or not. The enhanced running this outfit is apparently a powerful son of a bitch."

"Lord Azurah," Athena said as they began to jog towards the other end of the large plant.
"Yes, that's what he styles himself as," Amon replied. "It's an old Egyptian honorary title rather than a name, but he has done nothing to deserve it. Besides, he's a Euroguy, and as such should not pretend he has any right to this land. It's ours and he's not wanted here. But how did you get dragged into this?"
"Long story," Athena answered. "Better save that for later."

Her eyes danced over the sand planes in front of the plant, as they neared the entrance it begun to become littered with bodies. Uniformed men and a few women, security personnel, and Athena wondered with half her mind how much they really knew about what was going on here. Then they rounded a corner and while Athena, Bastet and Thor rushed inside, Amon continued towards the outer perimeter. He and a woman named Sekhmet was apparently planning to keep this place from being reached by reinforcement.
"He has a lot of assholes working for him, this Azurah," Bastet told. "A complete militia as a matter of fact. Don't ask me how he managed to acquire that, but apparently he's been doing his thing now since 2012. Flying under the radar, the sneaky bastard, we only learned about him recently."
"But where are everybody now?" Athena kept on looking around for lurking dangers, seeing nothing.
"They've retreated inside," Bastet told. "Apparently shooting about twenty of them got the point across."

They passed through two destroyed glass doors and came into a hall filled with more corpses, bullet holes covering the walls and shattered glass everywhere, and were then sprinting up staircases towards upper levels, from where gunshots could be heard and Athena wondered where her siblings were in this craze. And Victoria. She turned to Thor.
"You came for your daughter, right?"
"I did," the older man replied with a grim expression.
"So I guessed right then, you do care about her."
"Sure I do," Thor confirmed as they reached the landing of the fourth floor. Ahead of them they could see flames, something up front had caught fire, and there was no working sprinkler system to turn it out. "She's my own flesh and blood, and I've failed her so much in life. But this, I hope, might be a beginning to make up for it. If we live through this, of course."
"We will," Athena comforted him with steel in her voice and a hasty glance.

The next thing Athena felt a familiar, threatening presence and swirled around, raising her gun. The hulking figure which came running towards them across the hallway was no other than that Malaik which Athena and Hermes had spied down in the underground hangar the day before. Bastet raised her Uzi and fired off a shower of 9mm bullets into the approaching hulk. It didn't even seem to halt the beast down, soon it was upon the sinewy woman and lashed out with a claw, tearing open her camo-jacket and drawing blood before it dashed her to the wall, and with a grunt she bounced off, but managed to hold on to her sub-machine gun. Thor was fast to react and he raised his odd weapon and the next moment he was showering the beast in sparkling electricity, in a way that reminded Athena of her father's electrokinetic power. Interesting, Athena thought. Very James Bond. Then again, wasn't Victoria's father a former MI6 field agent.

At Thor's onslaught the Malaik wavered and almost fell over. Athena followed up by a low-sniffing roundhouse, sweeping the Malaik's feet off the ground. Bastet, realizing that her bullets had no use, raised her Uzi as a club instead and brought it down at the back end of the beast's head. That combined attack floored the Malaik and Thor had to jump to the side to not being hit by it.
"Give it more volt, Thor!" Athena raised her voice, realizing that this was actually something that worked against these monsters. And with a grim face Thor complied until the beast was not moving anymore. Then, in the last moment Athena remembered Hermes' magic poem, and she was fast to repeat it before the monster died completely.
"What the heck was that?" Bastet exhaled as the thing on the floor twisted one last time.
"A Malaik," Athena said.
"Say what?"
"Tell you later, now we have to move on, if we're about to make any difference in this game."
"As if that wasn't," Thor huffed and stared down at the fallen monster.

***

Hermes had broken a wooden office chair in the room he and Victoria had been locked into, and armed with one leg in each hand, they were now sneaking out in the empty and dark corridor. It was not much of a weapon, but it was better than nothing. Still their best defense now was to hide, to keep out of the way of the fighting parties. Trusting his instincts, Hermes guided Victoria through the corridor and towards the location of the back staircase shaft, which he and Athena had used to reach the basement, and where they earlier had found Victoria. This time they were lucky to not meet a single soul, however at the other end of the compound the fighting was now going on with a terrifying frenzy.

"Good or bad guys?" Victoria asked, she didn't need to clarify.
"I'm not staying to find out," Hermes replied.
"What about Athena?"
"We'll locate her, if I concentrate, I imagine I can sense her in," Hermes replied, hoping at the same time with all of his heart that she hadn't yet been pitched against that Griffin, because then she was probably not with them anymore. Hermes made a concerned face as he felt that uncertainty claw at his belly.
"What do you need to find her?"
"Some peace and quiet to be able to tell the wheat from the chaff."

"This place seems as quiet as you might get around here," she pointed out as she glanced around in the empty and silent staircase shaft. The spiraling stairs, which were screwing themselves in both directions seemed to have taken some kind of battering and the construction appeared tilted. So when Hermes and Victoria stepped out on it, it was swaying disquietingly.  

"Uh-oh," the later exclaimed and took a stumbling step back. "Don't think this thing is safe." Hermes tested it too and made a face.
"Nope, however this area is a bit off the beaten track, it's as good as hiding place as any. Let's hang back here and hope that we can wait the ongoing brawl out. And I'll see if I can find my sister."
"Who do you think these attackers are?"
"Impossible to say. Egypt is full of rough and tumble right now, various groups and fractions battling each other for control. This Azurah character is far from the only badass trying to find a wider foothold for his antics. There are odd cults out there as well as old-school communists and fascists and then of course there's the regular criminals seeing this disorder as a chance to operate undisturbed by the grip of law. So who knows, it could be anybody who considers Azurah and his organization in the way for what they want to acquire."

"Fun," Victoria scorned as she leaned back against the wall and slid down in a sitting position, toying with her make-shift weapon. Hermes first wanted to do the same thing, then he realized that if he sat down, they would be an easier prey should someone happen to come in here. Instead he just leaned back against the wall and sighed. Moments later the light went out.

***

"Ares, Bastet is coming up, and Thor is with her. And there's one more person too." Horus raised his hand to stop the advancing trio of Ares, Isis and Osiris.
"Thor? Bastet?" Ares called out while holding his gun ready, but it was a woman answering him.
"Ares?"
"Athena!"

Then the trio broke up the staircase. But there was no time for tearful reunions, no they hardly got the time to acknowledge each other, because Isis was pointing ahead of her.
"Eh, Ares. Looks like the bad guys found us too!"

The next second they all took cover behind pillars as the crackling sound of gunfire tore the air apart and bullets started to whistle around them. Ares and his trio were returning the fire, the brother of Athena and Hermes downing more than his fair share even before the others got the chance to open fire. Athena dived down in the staircase well again, and used the lover level as a trench. As bullets whizzed by, a lot of them were hitting the structure around them and shards of glass and concrete were flying all over, something hitting Athena right over her right brow, and she felt warm and sticky blood flow down and almost blinding her. With a curse she dried it off and willed the wound to heal adequately.  

Thor was deploying his strange hammer-like contraption, it was creating electric instabilities, and as he used it to attack his enemies, he managed to disrupt the electrical system of the construction, making lights go out and finally killing that alarm which had been blaring up until now.
"Thanks for coming, Ares" Athena managed to get through to her brother.
"You're welcome," he replied. "It's actually fun. Then again, sister, how come you got dragged into this inferno? I thought you were in London."
"Long story," Athena replied. "Safe to say that this Azurah character is up to a quite insane scheme.  

Then suddenly the bullet rain stopped and the bad guys were fleeing.
"After them!" Ares called out before his last syllable turned into a frenzied war cry, and then he did something Athena had never thought possible other than in movies, he was running and shooting at the same time. And she would have smiled at him, hadn't the situation been so dire. Her little brother appeared almost fearless, then again, he always stuck to his guns - literally, figuratively, lethally. And while more strategically skilled people might have either retreated or bit the dust, Ares plowed on, and for some reason he always came out of it more or less in one piece – and often with one more decoration to add to his chest.

The others were following him into a large office landscape. Everywhere there was destruction as bullets were firing, glass shattering, furniture and other objects cracking and people calling out in pain. Osiris was hit and Isis was pulling her brother to the side, urging the others to go on. The hefty Egyptian was bleeding badly, the bullets had buried themselves in his abdomen, and Ares ordered Isis to stay with him here and help him heal.

Horus made a thumbs-up sign as he dashed forwards in the heels of Ares and Athena, Bastet and Thor following. But in front of them a set of double doors exploded inwards as a new batch of bad guys were arriving and Ares and the others had to take cover behind furnishing and pillars again to defend themselves. Athena managed to hit one huge man, but he was hardly bulging.
"That's Anubis," Horus informed where he crouched next to her. "He's a bit of one of a kind. A relentless and die-hard son of a bitch with aspirations. No wonder he joined Azurah."

Athena lashed out and squeezed off a bullet, and saw that she hit a man in the leg before she darted back again, and faced the barrel-chested man with a hooked nose and curly dark hair.  
"Who is this Azurah fellow by the way?" she asked the Egyptian. "What do you know about him?"
"Very little, other than that he's not from here. I believe he's English or at least British."
"Made that conclusion too, based upon his looks and his language. That posh Oxford accent, you almost have to be British to really acquire it."

More wasn't said, because Anubis and his people retreated again and therefore Ares was charging, and all they could do was follow. They entered yet another corridor with doors to lavatories and maintenance spaces lining the wall, and were able to down two men before Anubis' grouping rounded a corner and was now rushing up another set of stairs, and the firing ensued. But when Athena took cover behind a pillar by the staircase, she suddenly heard a high-pitched scream and she felt something landing on top of her, making her dropping her gun. Then she was wrestling with an agile and angered woman with a curved knife. As Athena threw the woman off herself, she recognized Aethyr.

"So the Griffin didn't find you appetizing," the American woman snarled as she backed off and a standoff ensued. The others had made it up the stairs already and Athena hated to be held back and perhaps late for the final showdown.
"Let's just say I took its breath away," Athena replied and then she lashed out with her right foot and kicked Aethyr in her right hand, forcing her to drop the knife. Next thing the women were wrestling dangerously close to the destroyed bannister, and in the end it became Aethyr who drew the shortest straw. As Athena heaved the American off herself, Aethyr tumbled backwards down in the shaft, but in the last moment she managed to grab hold on two of the rods, hanging on for dear life very much the same way as Athena had done earlier and several levels below.

But Aethyr was far from as strong as her European adversary, and now her dark eyes widened and turned from hostile to pleading.
"Help me," she whispered. Athena took a step forward, looking down at the woman hanging on for dear life. Then she squatted and reached down with her right hand – and plucked the Cartier watch off Aethyr.
"I'll take that one back now, thanks," she jeered before she simply stood again and landed two hard stomps on Aethyr's hands, and watched the dark-haired woman losing the grip and then fall down in the chasm with a scream of terror before she landed on the floor several levels down and remained still. Athena gave the body a quick glance before she turned and went after the others, realizing that with Aethyr around Azurah himself should not be far away either.

***

Victoria was just about to say something, when there suddenly was a strong light blinding her eyes, and she lifted her hands to shield them.
"Hands over your head," a voice was barking as a flashlight shone right upon them.
"Seth!" Hermes spat and blinked against the light and then recognized the brawny enhanced Egyptian in league with Azurah. Reluctantly he and Victoria rose their hands, this was getting annoyingly repetitive by now.
"Oh, the little thieves got out of the prison," Seth was smirking. Behind him was that blond and scrawny adolescent with glasses who was called Forsethi. He was armed as well, with a small pistol, which he looked a bit unused to. "Come on over here, punks, we've got use for you!"