Per 
Let me tell you about the worst night of my life. So far.
It was early hours in the City; myself and two of my team had driven out to some shitty, abandoned motel, on the authority that one of our own had been taken by some people who were gonna do some less-than-kind things to him. Which had been happening a lot, lately, y’know - Foundation folks going missing, turning up dead with their fingerprints removed and clothing tags missing. Pretty shady shit. We were hoping we’d catch this one before it was too late. Me and one of my assigned teammates - a brute of a man we referred to as Laszlo or ‘Steel Hand’ - had taken to the motel while the other - Rob or ‘Spectre Gadget’ - sat with the car parked and ready to drive.
We were expecting a scuffle, not a bloodbath.
Our unlucky agent had been executed firing-squad style by a crew of three, all of which still had plenty of bullets to spare when myself and Laszlo had made our way to the second floor. A firefight ensued from there, and I’d be lying if I said we got through unscathed; by the time we were finished the apartment was painted bloody, gunshots pocking the walls and blood spray and various other chunks of viscera splattered over the floor.
I was on orders to get information from the victim no matter what; that’s what I was there for. Neural tapping, they call it in professional terms. Brain hacking, for the layman. Laszlo had me settle in and go mind-diving while he stood watch at the door.
As far as I can recall, there wasn’t much to gather; our agent had been amnesticized before they killed him, and honestly in hindsight they likely did that on purpose. I was in no state to do a second run into his subconscious memory, so after the first I told Laszlo we were packing it up and heading back to Site-97. Since he was both stronger and a lot less bullet-holey than I was, he shouldered what he could of the dead guy and we started heading downstairs.
We were about halfway down the stairwell when we both got the feeling something was off. Cybernetic implants, you see, tend to pick up on a lot of things ordinary human senses can’t - and it tends to manifest as a pretty intense gut-feeling. We were midway through pinging Rob to let him know what had happened when a gunshot blew through the lobby and a bullet embedded itself in the banister. Laszlo was for drawing his gun, ready to shoot, but in the moments between his hand finding the grip and me hearing a shift of broken glass and plaster-board I rammed a hand into his back and told him to “ - fucking run!”
We took off through the lobby, footfall muffled by moth-eaten carpets and damp plaster, and behind us we could feel the shifting presence of the gunman on our heels. Laszlo crashed through the front door using the body at his shoulder, slamming it off its hinges and to the ground with a crunching of already-broken glass. I was right at his heels, my own gun drawn, waiting for the assailant to round the corner as we made off down the sidewalk.
It almost felt like precognition; I could see the gunman coming around the corner before he actually did, and I had skidded to a wobbly halt to plug a shot straight at him. The gun cracked off and the bullet hit its mark, but I didn’t wait to watch as I took off running again. I guess I had hoped he’d stay down.
I remember seeing dawn peeking through the smog and clouds hanging over the city; grey and oppressive stained with neon and silver, deep purples and reds seeping through the gaps like blood. Below, under the sickly yellow of tarnished streetlights, we bled grey over the sidewalks. We slowed to a brisk walk once we assumed our gunman wasn’t going to catch up with us. The bitter morning cold compounded the sharp pain in my chest as I gulped air like a fish. My forensic hardware could pick up on bile, blood, diesel, and ozone.
We rounded another corner and made our way onto the street we’d parked the car at; it was sitting in a dodgy-looking alleyway with dripping gutters and a sprawl of waterlogged garbage. Rob was stood at the entrance, and I’d motioned for him with mad flailing of my arm for him to get in the damn car. “I’m driving!” I shouted, breathless. In hindsight, I probably wasn’t fit to drive.
We got to the car, and Laszlo piled the body into the back seat along with himself, and I clambered into the driver’s seat. The sickeningly-sweet, coppery tang of blood almost immediately saturated the car’s interior, but that was honestly the least of our worries.
“So we got nothing?” Laszlo sighed.
“Nothing yet,” I hissed out in response, keying the ignition. The car stuttered and roared to life, and Rob made a point of cranking the AC to control the smell. “If we can get his skull on ice we might get ahold of his subconscious memories or something -”
Just as I was bringing the nose of the car out of the alleyway, another car pulled up at the junction in the street we’d come from. It only took a split second for myself and Laszlo to recognise the crazed, agonized face of the gunman who’d gotten the jump on us in the lobby. And he still had the gun.
I had my foot slammed to the accelerator before either of the two could even say ‘floor it’; I wasn’t for taking any chances. The car leapt forwards, and for a terrifying moment I was afraid the fucking thing would stall. It squealed into a turn as I brought it out onto the street, then I flung the wheel straight and true as we tore down the road. Our assailant was right on our tail, and I could see the barrel of a gun reflected in the rearview mirror.
“ - Rob -?” I said, my voice rising in panic.
“Quit drivin’ straight or he’s gonna shoot us!”
“ - if I do that it’ll slow us down!”
Spitting curses, Rob wound down the window and tried his best to deter the gunman with his own piece. But frankly he couldn’t shoot for shit in a moving vehicle. Retaliating shots were fired, caving in the back windshield. Rob and Laszlo had the sense to duck; the bullets thudded through the upholstery of my seat and one lodged itself in my shoulder. I remember slumping over the wheel in that moment, my vision hazing out in an aberrating blur. Rob had been shouting something I could barely hear, trying to yank the steering wheel under me, and Laszlo had taken his own sidearm to the bastard tailing us.
A jolt to the rear-end of the car had knocked me back into the realm of then, though my vision was still dangerously fuzzy as I veered the car into the middle of the road. I’d loosened my foot on the accelerator in trying not to pass out at the wheel, and remembered the fact much too late as the gunman pulled up alongside our car with the barrel of the pistol pointed straight at me.
And that’s the last thing I can remember.
