one.

Harsh artificial light assaulted my eyes. The surrounding stark white walls stained my vision green. I blinked it off. I hadn't been sleeping lately, as I felt more comfortable sitting on the floor, deep in thought until the lights shuddered to life to signal the morning.  I wrenched my neck sideways and grinned at the satisfying crunch. Apparently it induces arthritis. I didn't care.
I began to stretch out like a cat, but was interrupted by a burst of noise. I froze mid stretch, straining to hear more. Soundproofed walls and an inch-thick steel door made it sound like I was underwater, but I could make it out: A muffled scream. A crack. Silence. Immediately I was off the floor, skidding on my socks to the door. Cold steel greeted my ear, but as if my touch had keyed activation, the door disappeared into the wall. I dodged as a mangled body slumped into the cell. Dark red soaked a white vest and battle fatigues. Twitching limbs lacquered blood across the pale canvas floor in arbitrary smears.
Kneeling, I clawed at the body. Nestled in a holster at his hip was a taser. ID encoding made it useless to me. In 2014, private military corporations developed a means for monitoring and controlling the use of firearms through the implementation of a proxy AI system. Today every government soldier utilises this system, injected nanomachines reacting specifically with ID chips in their weapons. I kept searching for something of use. Attached to his belt was a PAN card. I thumbed the card to face me; it read 'Clearance Level 4'. Personal Area Network cards utilize the user's own natural electrical field, transmitting data using the salts in their body as the transmission medium, making traditional swipe cards obsolete. Looking down the hallway there was nothing but spotless white. This would allow me access to most doors in this building: my ticket out of here.
No time to worry about how he was killed. I yanked the PAN card from his belt and weighed up my options. If I stayed, they would unequivocally determine that it was I who'd slashed the guard. That meant death. If I ran, I still had a chance. Easy choice. I toed around the seeping sheet of sticky crimson and inched out the door, taking care not to stain my socks.  I'm adamant they took my shoes just to piss me off. I'm also sure they polished the shiny linoleum floor so thoroughly for that reason. I realised this as I sat rubbing my neck angrily after using it to break my fall. My eyes scanned the hallway. Empty.
My relief was extinguished. Seconds after I heard the echoes of footsteps I saw the lab technician slither around the corner, clipboard neatly in hand. Shit. It took her a few seconds to fully absorb the scene. She came to a stop, staring like I was an abstract entity. I sat there with a dumb 'It's not what it looks like' expression as she soaked up the sweat on her brow with a swipe of a pure white-sleeved lab coat.
What it looked like was pretty bad. I was sitting in the hallway. Blood painted the wall outside my open cell in broad, dripping crescents, framing a pair of ominously protruding boots. I watched her pivot to glance at the alarm terminal across the hallway. She ran for it, the clipboard squirming to the floor behind her. There was no way I was chasing her in my socks. I tore them of and tossed them aside, already working my way to my feet.
I was too slow. A rhythmic pounding pulsated through the compound. No technician. A barrage of footsteps mashed the floor nearby. Dim light descended on the hallway, the walls throbbed red intermittently. Guards clambered around the corner – three of them. Double shit. White highlights of their uniforms glowed red. Shock-batons flourished to life with a flash of dazzling cobalt. Triple shit. Swirling clouds of breath poured from the guards' facemasks and the pounding of boots accelerated at the sight of their mutilated comrade. I found myself drifting backwards, but they were already within range.
"Freeze!" A mist of warm breath blossomed fourth as the centre guard lowered his nylon mask. I solidified. They advanced. My eye twitched as I noticed a scarlet smear of jam carelessly stained across the fibres of his vest. The material of my cargo pants darkened a deeper shade of gray as I pressed my palms to my sides. A nod from the middle guard triggered the advance of the flanking two. The left-hand guard moved in first so I planted my foot into his chest, sending him clattering to the floor.
The jam-stained guard shuffled to my right with an ascending blue tail of light. I felt my hands instinctively shoot above my head. My wrist jammed the shock-baton at the base. A brush to the side was quickly followed by a strike to the exposed side of his neck, using my fist like a hammer. I hit him hard; the shock-baton rammed the linoleum with a jolt. I sprang in, grabbing his neck and right arm. The tips of his boots lifted off the floor with the force of my knee in stomach. His breakfast sprayed the floor. Acidic, beige, doughy. I circled and sent a vengeful elbow to the base of the skull. He embraced the floor, convulsing in a thick coat of intermingled blood and vomit.
Pain seared across my face before I could turn to face the third guard. The image of the floor melted into that of the periodic pounding of bloody knuckles. I felt the bitter floor on my back. He was kneeling on top of me, mashing my face into mincemeat. Vision blurred with blood and involuntary tears, I managed to shell my arms up over my face. The pounding subsided only to be replaced by gloved hands glazing over my throat, tightening like a vice. Blindly I grabbed an arm and used my hips to roll him over. A straight left to the windpipe slackened his grip, and before his arms had crumpled to the floor I was on my feet.
Scuffling boots interrupted the gurgling and spluttering of suffocation. The guard had staggered to his feet, baton slouching loosely at his side. Swinging in vicious arcs he advanced. A stupid tactic; the fall must've concussed him. I timed my duck with an arcing swing, bobbing forward to fire a lightning hook to his floating ribs. I felt a grotesque snap against my knuckles. He hunched forward, giving me the opportunity to launch a second hook to the jaw. A plume of blood, saliva and tooth fragments masked his descent. This time he stayed down.
There was no time to search the guards. Reinforcements would be approaching. The groaning and shuffling of the guards dampened as I rounded the corner. Bingo. The door to the guard's quarters. A tingling resonated in my fingertips as it slipped into the wall in response to my touch.
I stepped in. Glaring natural light cast from tall windows threw a ghostly sheen over the smoky haze of the quarters. Computer terminals and lockers bordered a row of ashtray coated tables.  Movement twitched from behind a table of scattered doughnuts. Jam filled. Pink sprinkles. I resisted the urge to swipe a couple. Coming to a halt over the table I saw a pair of knowingly naive eyes peer up at me through the fog of cigarettes; the technician.
"You..." She spoke first.
"Yeah, me" I restrained myself from driving her head through a terminal screen.
"They'll hunt you." I noticed how she stressed the word 'they'.
I grunted.
I couldn't be stalled by her conversation. I don't know why, but I abstained from ramming a box of delicious doughnuts down her throat until she suffocated. Instead I hauled her into a locker, took her PAN and jammed the door shut. She didn't struggle. She was different than the others, the scientists with their experiments...
I shook the thought. I had to get out. Glancing around, I noticed a rather sturdy chair. Perfect. Moments later it sailed through the crisp air, a following of glinting shards arcing after it. The chair splintered in a hail of glass on the rooftop below. I leapt through the jagged opening. Cool air gushed by for an instant before my feet crunched to the icy concrete. I rolled forward on my shoulder to absorb the impact. It was at least a five metre drop, and I had less glass inside me than I expected.
A moment's pause to inhale the view before me reinvigorated my mind. Melting light pored over frosty towers of steel, infinitely sprawling the horizon. The familiar urban environment comforted me. I noticed that my toes were sluggish and began to wish I had looted a pair of boots from one of the guards. I'd have to tough it out.
At the edge of the rooftop I clawed my way down a rusting fire escape and splashed onto the gravel coated alleyway below. I ran. Echoed cries barked over the fading alarm from the widow above as the hectic beat of blades from a Verti-copter rose in the distance: the clamour of hunting.