Some parts were still fuzzy, though much of the things he wasn’t even consciously aware of after being hit in the shoulder, came back with surprising clarity. He still had questions, of course but, for now, he was all business. Had anybody watched him move about the room, they might have believed he was ignoring his partner. They would’ve been mistaken. Every little snippet of information Blade gave him was stored away in his brain, either to recall or to cross reference with observations he made himself, as he took stock of their situation. It wasn’t /all/ bad. Their guns were gone, sure, but the morons who tied them up were seemingly of the arrogant or overconfident variety, if not both. So not only did he still have his trusty semtex to work with, but the idiots had locked them in a room with what could only be called a treasure trove.

“No audio, no video. Guess they wanted it quiet for us. Sorry TJ, it was the only thing I could think of.” TJ glared at the half-elf, the hitched up his pants around his paunch. He looked over at the guard who was suddenly on alert as a red light flashed silently outside of the security room. “They’re going to be busy, methinks. What kind of door is it?” He nodded his chin at the metal door at the end of the room.

“No security pegs like a bank vault. I only saw one lock, but there are two others attached to the handle that fit into place. I think the window’s our best bet.” Her voice was raw and hoarse from the acid. TJ sat down, removing his heels, and rolling the plastique into a long thin line. “How thick you think it is?” Blade looked at the guard, who for some grace or luck, hadn’t turned to look at them. “Thick enough I barely heard him bump his head on the glass.”

TJ scanned the room, then slowly move to the locked wall cabinets. He grabbed his jacket, gingerly maneuvering the still active spit and carefully wiped it on the lock, which began hissing. “What the almighty hell did you conjure up?” Hydrofluoric acid. Burns anything except quartz. The lock parted, and TJ flipped it off the cabinet, and opened them. Various pliers, wire-cutters, alcohol bottles, what looked like kinky ball gags, and a surgical kit lay on the shelves. Blade saw the bottle, and said “Bottle, gimme.”

TJ tossed it to her, sparing a quick glance out to where the guard was. The man had shifted, raising his weapon, and gaping at the pair. Then the door blew in. The guard spun in a crouch and fired at the open door as a reddish grey mist rolled into the room. “Oh Christ!” TJ grabbed the wire cutters and snipped Blade free. They both dropped to the floor as a faint thump sounded on the glass. Blade’s heart was racing. A vampire! They were dead if it found them. They had no way out of the room. “Fucking bloodsucker”, TJ growled. His eyes were wide and he was panting. He still had the plastique in his hand. The detonator was back on the shelf under the cabinet. “Wish you was a priestess right now”, he muttered.

Blade stayed silent as both of them hugged the wall under the glass. There were a few more thumps, barely heard, against the glass, then silence. TJ did a slow count to thirty and raised his head to barely peek over the edge of the glass. The vampire was nowhere to be seen. He raised his head a little further and saw that the room had been torn apart in a fast frantic search. The body of the guard lay in the middle of the floor, his throat nearly chewed in half by the vampire’s attack.