[ His handlers explain to him in a semi-drugged haze that they want a good show tonight.

They get a show, just not the kind they want.

-

Konstantin doesn't remember the last time he had real blood on his teeth.

This is real blood. The fearful kind, flowing thick and warm into his mouth as he clutches fast onto one body, halting and jerking in his grip. It feels good, the fight, he can feel it churning and twisting in his gut. He wants to take his time, make him hurt, but there's no time. He can feel the prickle of Andyr's own adrenaline rush, so he bites down, severs the jugular, takes one last taste before dropping the body.

He's smeared blood all over the clothing they've forced him into--some kind of exhibitionist get up that was once a beautiful blue color, cut out at the spine and on the sides, gauzy and exotic-looking. It's dark, almost black now with blood, he realizes, casually sliding his tongue over his palm to lap up where a thick streak of the stuff has stayed fast to his skin.

Another man is lying on the ground, spared the agony with a broken neck, gouged out eyes.

He looks good to Konstantin's starved stomach.

Move. Move. Move.

He's tasted blood.

It's more than enough. Andyr is fumbling with the door panel and there are alarms. Here. Four doors down. Five floors up. He can hear a group of armed guards heading their way and by the cant of their boots, there are four of them, carrying rifles--whether they're loaded with tranquilizers or actual live rounds is anyone's guess, they all rattle the same in their casings.

The man at his feet is drowning on his own blood still somehow.

He moves forward to meet Andyr at the doorway, reaching forward with his fingers and gripping fast at where the metal is soldered to metal.

Normally, one might put in a passcode to open the chamber.

But this is not normal and Konstantin is full of all kinds of rage, gripping the sides of the panel with Andyr and giving it a hard tug so that it tears from the wall with a sickening sound of metal twisting and warping and crumbling. ]

There are four, I can hear them-- [ he says, the footsteps coming louder still. ] We could take them.

[ They don't really have a choice, the door is opening. ]