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The Matrix Building
One: The Man in Black
He walked almost casually through Megapolis City's financial district, as though going somewhere specific. It was twilight, dark everywhere save under the dull orange street-lights. Occasionally, dazed clubbers stumbled the other way, heading home in pairs; they barely registered his being there. There was no-one else. Not even foxes looting the garbage. That suited him just fine. There would be an audience soon enough
When he got there, the man in black unsheathed his ornate obsidian bastard sword with his left hand and with his right drew a cluster of innocuous, yet powerful grenades from his cashmere greatcoat. He cleaved through the revolving entrance door and scattered the incendiaries across the black marble floor. Greek fire hatched from small sodium cased balls, that set the lobby a-fire and the sprinklers off.
"How I do adore mankind," crooned the refined English voice, "Imitation Rain (tm) brought to you by Irritating Insects Ltd."
People were screaming, sirens wailing, but the man known as Mors simply disappeared into the angry inferno; it grew like a weed that choked the glitzy new skyscraper. The gas lines ran through the walls like a man's blood vessels feeding the fire. Sprinkler water burned the sodium shrapnel into tributary flames that tore through the post-modernist furnishings and the residue of city business.
Our 'hero' found the fire-stairs and demolished those that led up - after all, he wasn't heading up, so to his mind they were useless. He turned to the floor below, to greet a guard, an advanced lock, and a large armoured door marked 'basement'. Both were easily overcome. He stepped through the door into a lift, which shut and led him deep underground. It was certainly an improvement on the long spiral staircase that was previously necessary.
There was a wrinkly old woman behind the door as the lift opened at it's destination. She was gnarled as an oak and was bundling something into a strong box. His black blade flowed through her with a distinctly dissatisfying silence.
It gave a distinctly human whimper as he strode past towards the arranged meeting place, deep in the bowels of the labyrinthine complex. He retrieved a small slip of paper, yellowed with age, glanced at it, and returned it to a pocket on the inside of his coat. It was a meeting scheduled nearly a century before, the above-ground church had been bombed and rebuilt since then. He didn't remember the way, but didn't expect to either, and had had the foresight to write directions and a meeting time.
He also expected to have to break through walls to get to the meeting place, but little seemed to have changed down here. Save the lift of course. It was still a dark and forbidding place. The dungeon-like labyrinth was Gothic-revival architecture. The stone walls were grimy with a century of filth. The passages were lit dimly by wall-mounted torches. Baroque gargoyles even leered menacingly from above in a vaulted ceiling. These weren't statues, however, and glided from stone cross-member to stone cross-member, hissing and growling and watching intently with their bright green eyes.
"This place hasn't changed much. I'd have liked electric lighting, new décor, chase out those gargoyles..."
That last suggestion earned Mors some spiteful swoops from some of the more eager gargoyles; easily dodged, of course.
Two: The bystanders
Above Mors, dozens of office workers were currying favour with the management by working overnight. Having nowhere to run, they improvised, and their remains littered the pavement below. This triggered screams from the crowd in the road, who watched the fire-fighters struggle to bring the flames under control.
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