Johnny Raptor was lost.

Johnny Raptor NEVER got lost.

Yet here he was, wandering amidst a maze of concrete halls, offices and break rooms, wondering where exactly it was the narration claimed him to be. This was very embarrassing. He hadn’t clawed his way out of Reptile Hell, Florida, just to get lost in some bunker somewhere! How were his keen senses failing him? He’d have found something important by now, or fought an inexplicable wild animal, or SOMETHING. Not files and desks and cupboards! He couldn’t fight in the office environment! Staples got everywhere!

“Any ideas?” He said to Zeus, who was still draped over one shoulder like a sack of wet concrete.

“Kill me,” suggested the leopard, in leopard-speak.

Johnny Raptor didn’t respond, because he didn’t speak cat languages. Instead, he opened another nearby door and peered into the office. Nope. Just Yet Another Office™, with another desk and another swivel chair and another half-eaten apple.

It began to occur to him that all the offices looked alike. Unreasonably so. Same desk, same chair, same layout. Even (and call him paranoid, but…) the same Granny Smith.

Maybe they had finally invented brainwashing. Or they had mindless drones. Or they had simply built too many offices. This was built by “government,” wasn’t it? They’d do something stupid like that. Johnny didn’t trust governments. They got in his way and told him he’d crossed the line or was a loose canon. Or was that cops? No, he’d never worked on a police force in his -

His thoughts were interrupted by an avalanche of footsteps, headed in his direction. Bootsteps. Security? Oh, wait, alarms were blaring. How did he miss those?

It was said that Johnny Raptor had disproved the Fight or Flight Theory, because he never ran away. This was a lie. Sometimes, even the bravest of men had to hide. He ducked into the office, dropping Zeus on the floor and shutting the door behind him. For good measure, he flattened himself against the near wall and waited.

As if on cue, a rush of black-armoured figures thundered by. They were screaming something about a “Code Yellow” and “the President’s Hall,” both of which Johnny made a note of. A second later, they were gone, leaving nothing but the blare of alarms in their wake. Zeus, uninterested in all of this, sniffed at the apple.

Hmm. Action. Obviously, someone was in trouble somewhere. And where there was trouble…

“Come on, Zeus,” Johnny roared, busting the door down in dramatic fashion for no real reason. “Let’s save some innocents!”

Zeus did not want to save innocents. Zeus wanted to go home, and said as much in feline body language and growls. However, since Johnny picked him up and ran after the guards anyway, there wasn’t much point.

-*-

“- told you should have taken the last goddamn right, you stupid HOLY SHIT FOLLOW HIM.”

Artemis paused in his internal conversation with Grendel to stare wildy around.

“Who? I don’t – “

“THERE RIGHT THERE DAMN IT”

The street urchin felt Grendel turn his head for him, and saw the big man in the steston hat – Johnny, was it? – dash down a hallway, a… um…

“I- Is that a leopard?” he stammered.

“Who gives a shit! Follow that man!”

“Why?”

“Have you SEEN his mind? It looks like a train wreck happening in super-slow motion! You have to follow him! I gotta see what this dipshit does! It’ll be like, like, like the Original Sin and Abel and Job all rolled into one! Follow him!”

Artemis wondered, briefly, if his demonic hanger-on had gone mad. Then he realised that the alternative was to wander around the endless offices and listen to Grendel freak out over how every office was identical down to the little scuff in the carpet near the wastepaper basket.

Sighing, he set off after Johnny. Surely whatever happened next wouldn’t be TOO bad, right?