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Chapter 9
If the World Were Perfect, It Wouldn’t Be
Buffy and Xander dashed through the glass doors of the DH Group’s lobby and Xander immediately scanned the area for Gantz.“I don’t see him. He must have gone up already,” he said.
Buffy nodded and angled toward the security desk, where the guard had already noted their unusual behavior and appeared to be alert for trouble. He was a young guy, mid to late twenties, with close cut blond hair and a bearing that suggested ex-military. No surprises there. The DH Group’s security had never been culled from the local rent-a-cop firms.
“A man just came through here. You must have cleared him,” she said.
“That would be FBI Special Agent Harwood, ma’am,” said the guard, his eyes shifting from Buffy to Xander and back again. His hand strayed closer to his sidearm. “Ma’am, could I ask your business with Mr. Harwood?”
“That man was not with the FBI. His name’s Gantz, and I don’t know what line of bull he gave you or what credentials he trotted out, but he’s an assassin and he’s here to kill someone,” Buffy explained.
The guard hesitated for just a moment. Then he reached for the phone and said, “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you and your companion to remain where you are until we can get this matter sorted out.”
“There’s no time for that,” she said hastily as she reached out to grab the phone.
The guard pulled back and started to draw his handgun.
“This isn’t good …” began Xander even as Buffy vaulted the marble security desk and planted one boot solidly into the guard’s solar plexus. The man crumpled with an outrush of breath, his eyes bulging from the sudden loss of breathing capacity.
Buffy took the man’s Glock and his access badge and patted him on the head. “Sorry about that, but this really is an emergency.”
She hurriedly scanned the electronic sign-in sheet and located “Special Agent Harwood”, the very last entry. She looked over to the “visiting” column and froze. Angel Summers. Gantz was after Angel.
She turned to Xander. “He’s after Angel. C’mon.”
“The directory has Angel’s office on the ninth floor,” said Xander.
“We’ll take the stairs. I don’t want to risk them turning off the elevators while we’re inside.”
“They’re going to lock down the building, you know.”
Buffy smiled at him as she slid the guard’s badge through the card reader and opened the fire door to the stairwell. “That’s what I’m hoping. If we can’t get out, neither can Gantz.”
* * *
Gantz was waiting at the ninth floor reception desk when the alarms sounded. Another man might have chosen to employ a string of expletives at that moment. Others might have panicked or simply abandoned the situation entirely. Gantz, however, simply set about methodically reevaluating his options given the new tactical situation.
Downside: somehow, someone had figured out that an unauthorized person was in the building.
Upside: alarms bred confusion and uncertainty, which presented an opportunity. In confused circumstances, people naturally looked for authority to defer to. And FBI Special Agent Harwood was authority.
He sized up the woman at the reception desk. From her demeanor, she appeared to be one of those low-echelon tyrants who delighted in manipulating their minimal sphere of discretionary power to the detriment of others. But he could also see that she was almost certainly temperamentally unprepared to handle anything outside of her routine duties, and this little disruption had caught her off guard.
She looked at him with commingled fear and suspicion and he knew he had to act quickly and give her no time to think. He’d already identified himself as an F.B.I. agent and was waiting for Angel Summers to have someone sent out to escort him into the office area. It was time to capitalize on that.
“I’ll have to ask you to provide me with an access card, ma’am,” he said authoritatively.
“I don’t think …” she began.
“Ma’am, I’m afraid there’s no time to think,” snapped Gantz with drillmaster-like annoyance. “There’re an intruder in the building and I have every reason to suspect that Mr. Summers is in physical danger. I am trained to handle this type of situation. I don’t want to have to charge you with obstruction of justice, so please just provide me with an access card.”
The receptionist swallowed hard and fished an access badge from her desk drawer. He snatched it from her hands and said, “Your cooperation will not go unnoted in my report, ma’am.”
Gantz suppressed a smile as he started for the security door. People really were sheep. All you needed to know was how to herd them in the right direction and the world was yours for the taking.
* * *
They trotted up the nine flights of stairs at a brisk pace, and Buffy was surprised at how fit Xander was for a guy in his fifties. He didn’t flag at all, and he was no more out of breath than she was when they reached the top floor. By that time, the alarms were already in full swing.
“Security alert. There is a level one security alert in affect. Building personnel are to remain where they are until instructed otherwise. This is a level one security alert. Egress from the building is prohibited until further notice,” a recorded message announced in the too-calm manner of recorded messages everywhere.
“You know the floor plan?” asked Xander.
“It’s changed since I was here, but if Angel’s using my old office, I can get us there.”
The two of them charged through the ninth-floor stairwell door into the lobby, startling a terrified receptionist.
Buffy tried the purloined security badge on one of the doors leading into the office area.
“Damn. They must automatically lock out the desk guard’s badge in these situations in case someone tries exactly this. Whatever am I to do?” she said to Xander just before she launched a lethal spinning back kick at the steel door. The electronic lock snapped at the bolt, the hinges ripped from their frame, and the door caved inward onto a gray-carpeted hallway.
“Someday you really need to show me how you do that,” said Xander, ignoring the stunned receptionist and following Buffy into the hallway.
“Sorry, it’s a Slayer thing,” said Buffy. “Let’s move fast. I’m sure the Dark Angels will be on us in a couple of minutes.”
“There are no Dark Angels anymore, Buffy. No need for them post-vampires and post-alien invasion,” said Xander as the two made their way through a maze of work cubicles inhabited by employees too startled to do anything but cower or dash out of the way.
“Good for us then,” said Buffy.
“There!” shouted Xander, pointing to a figure moving with purpose toward a hallway Buffy used to call “executive row” because all the bigwigs in the DH Group had offices there.
“That’s him?” asked Buffy.
“That’s him.”
They angled toward Gantz, cutting across the maze of cubes. Halfway there, Gantz saw them and pandemonium broke loose.
In a rare bit of role reversal, Xander saw Gantz bring the Beretta nine millimeter pistol to bear on them before Buffy did, and he tackled her to the ground just as a round clipped the top of the cube right behind her. The shot sent the employees into panic mode, some hiding under desks, others streaming for the exits despite the warnings on the P.A. system to stay put.
“That does it. Now I’m pissed,” said Buffy.
Xander rolled off her and he said, “We should split up. It’ll be harder for him to deal with the two of us if we come at him from different directions.”
Buffy nodded in agreement.
“Here, you may need this. I can take care of myself without it,” she said, handing him the Glock.
“Thanks. See you around,” said Xander as he started off.
Buffy wasted no time. She headed for Angel’s office at a dead run, covered the few dozen remaining feet to Executive Row in a handful of seconds, and caught sight of Gantz outside of her old office, his gun held two-handed and low as he prepared to kick in the door.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Xander coming in from her right, but she couldn’t wait for him. She slammed into Gantz without slowing down, pushing him so hard into the closed office door that the doorknob was torn out of the wood as the door burst inward.
She wrapped him up like a tackle taking down a running back, and the two of them hit the floor hard enough to knock the wind out of them. Gantz’ gun came free of his grasp and spun away across the carpeted floor. Dimly, Buffy was aware of someone behind the desk, but her mind was focused on Gantz. She dug her knee hard into the small of his back and wrenched his right arm backwards and up, placing painful stress on the abused limb and at least for the moment keeping him incapacitated.
Xander burst into the office a second later and as she looked up she saw Angel, sweet noble Angel, standing over her with a look of the most profound shock on his face.
“Buffy?” was all he managed to say.
The Slayer finally got her wind back and said, “Not the one and only, but yeah, it’s me Angel. It’s really me. I’m home.”