The Noise (Part 20)
THE LEGEND
Duke swiped off the congealing blood from Agent A’s decapitated head, which was still rolling around on the floor, shouting Uber-Vampyre obscenities at him. He took the Glock from the other dead Agent and reloaded it. He wouldn't need it but it felt good to have. It was a trophy. Well-earnt.
No alarms had sounded so there was no one else monitoring this room. Good. He had time to decide. But Duke’s blood was up and he was ready for a very serious fight. He made the noise. Then he took the headless Agent’s security card — as he certainly wouldn't be needing it — and pulled the metal door straight off its hinges and entered the corridor.
As he entered the corridor red alarm lights began to flash and the noise was as nearly as deafening as Duke’s vampiric guffaws. But he was not responsible for this. Something or….someone else was. But whatever it was it was very, very, serious. More serious than an Uber-Vampyre escaping its confinement it seemed to Duke. And he was right.
Suddenly the opening line from Rudyard Kipling's poem ‘If’ entered Duke’s consciousness. He had loved the poem being read to him as a young boy on Old Earth,
“If you can keep your head when all about you, Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,”
