Boothe leaned out over the yawning abyss, but could not see the bottom. He pulled back and sat down next to the open door.
“I’m going to send Marty down to search the floors one at a time. This may take a bit.”
The others sat around him, Mariko with her rifle pointed towards the stairwell doorway, just in case anyone came through. Meanwhile, Boothe turned his focus to the small window at the bottom corner of his vision. He had his drone turn on the light above its camera eyes and guided it into the elevator shaft.
One by one the drone moved down, prying the doors open on each level and scanning the halls inside. One by one he found the same thing - clean office building with very little signs that there had been anybody there. There were some signs though - prints in the dust, cigarette butts, empty soda cans.
Then, about fifteen minutes later, Marty opened the door to the 13th floor.
“Holy shit,” Boothe said under his breath.
“Did you finally find something?” Scarlett asked.
Boothe nodded. “Thirteenth floor.”
“Well that’s not ominous at all,” Scarlett said. “Let’s go.”
Boothe recalled Marty to the drone’s usual position over his shoulder, then they all followed Scarlett down the stairs. She took the steps two at a time, anxious to find a fight, and the others had to practically run to keep up with her. Twenty floors down, they all stopped in front of the door to catch their breath.
“Be careful,” Boothe said.
“Did you see any enemies?” Braddock asked.
Boothe shook his head. “No. You have to see, I can’t explain.”
Scarlett slowly opened the door.
Where on the other floors there had been hallways that split to lead to multiple offices, this one had only a single corridor that stretched out away from the elevator towards a door. The walls on both sides of the hall were lined with windows that allowed them to easily see into the large rooms on the right and left where tripods in the corners shone lights to illuminate the area.
The walls and floors here were all clean white tile. While the other floors were dusty and unmaintained, here every inch had been scrubbed, every particle of dust removed. Lines of beds filled both rooms, each of them occupied by a small body. Children. There must have been about thirty of them, all asleep. Tall machinery rumbled softly next to each of the beds - gears spinning, liquid bubbling, and pistons pumping yellow liquid through tubes that ran from the machines to the children’s mouths, their noses, and into the veins in their wrists.
“Oh my God,” Scarlett said.
“This is horrible,” Braddock agreed.
Boothe had Marty scan the area, but did not see any enemies. Bandits could have been waiting behind the door at the end of the hallway, but Boothe wasn’t sure he wanted to risk checking that right now. Instead, he focused on the children.
“We have to get them out of here,” he said.
“This is just a scouting mission,” Braddock said, with no enthusiasm. “We have to report this back to the Eagles.”
Mariko and Scarlett turned towards Braddock. Mariko shook her head.
Scarlett said, “This is now a rescue mission. We’re getting them out.”
Braddock didn’t argue further.
They made their way down the hall, where there were doors on both sides leading into the rooms. Scarlett rushed into the room on the right, running up to the closest child - a small boy who must have been no older than ten. The veins along his arms bulged, the horrible chemicals pumping through the tubes turning his blood a disgusting shade of yellow. His skin was beginning to change to a greenish hue, and tumorous growths had sprung from his neck and face.
“They’re making mutants,” Scarlett said. “They’re turning these children into mutants.”
Boothe looked around at the other children. They all appeared to be in similar condition, though some had progressed further than others. Some had grown in size, or developed strange new limbs, eyeballs in odd places, or completely transformed into something inhuman. They were all currently asleep, and Boothe wasn’t sure how they should go about waking them and getting them out of here. Maybe it was already too late.
Scarlett grabbed the tube that snaked down the boy’s mouth and pulled, slowly removing it from his throat. When it was out entirely, the yellow liquid inside spewed across the bed and dripped onto the floor. Scarlett tossed the tube aside, disgusted. The boy began coughing up more of the liquid, and Scarlett turned his head so that he didn’t choke.
“Get the one in his arm over there,” she ordered Boothe.
He took the tube in both hands. Then he slowly pulled, watching it slide out of the boy’s arm, until it yanked free and sprayed the yellow liquid onto the ground. Scarlett pulled the tube from his nose, and from his other wrist as well. During this time, the boy began to move a bit, stirring in his sleep as though waking from a bad dream.
When all the tubes were finally out of his body, his eyes slid open. His irises were a milky white, and fully dilated. He looked around, unseeing. He tried to talk, but only raspy coughing noises came from his throat.
“You’re going to be okay,” Scarlett said reassuringly. “We’re going to get you out of here.”
The boy sat up in his bed and said in a raspy voice, “I can’t see anything.” He looked around blindly and began to cry.
“Start freeing the others,” Scarlett said. Boothe and Mariko immediately began moving between the beds, pulling tubes free.
“Look, I know that we should help these kids,” Braddock said. “But this is a bad idea. We have no way to get them out of here, no way of knowing if they’re even going to survive what’s already been done to them, and they’re going to make enough noise to bring all the bandits down on top of us.”
“I’m not leaving them,” Scarlett said. “I don’t care if I have to kill every damn bandit in Oklahoma - I’m not leaving them.”
Braddock sighed, but then nodded. He moved towards the closest child and began pulling the tubes free. Soon the floor was slick with the foul smelling yellow ooze that had once been filling the children’s bodies. Some of them didn’t wake once the tubes were pulled - others were stronger and woke quickly, joining in to help free the rest. Many of the children were now crying, and though Boothe and his teammates tried to quiet them, the noise they made would soon draw the attention of their captors.
“We need to go,” Braddock said.
“There’s still more,” she said, pointing at the other twelve children in beds in the room across the hall.
Just then, a door burst open with a bang, and a huge metal monstrosity rolled down the hall. The robot was tall and wide, with a boxy body and a cylindrical head. A green doctor’s mask was wrapped around where its mouth should be, and two red glowing camera lenses served as its eyes. It rolled on huge tank treads and four long arms extended from its torso. At the end of each arm were syringes with needles that must have been six inches long. Tubes ran from the needles to tanks attached to the robot’s back, each of them pumping a different color liquid through them.
The name tag floating above his head in Boothe’s vision said The Injector.
“More specimens,” the robot said, in a mechanical Stephen Hawking voice. “You have caused… me much… trouble. I will have to remedy… that.”
3
Boothe swung his carbine from its sling on his backpack to aim it at The Injector, planted it against his shoulder, and then squeezed the trigger.
“Watch your fire Boothe!” Scarlett said. Two of his shots had gone wide and blasted through the windows on the opposite side of the hallway, hitting the wall near where the children still laid connected to their horrible machinery.
Screams filled the room, and Scarlett tried to corral the kids towards the corner, where they would hopefully be out of harm’s way. Meanwhile, Mariko flipped one of the beds over sideways and took cover behind it, aiming her rifle at The Injector and blasting shot after shot into its met
al body.
Braddock held his ground, firing away with both pistols. Since he was the closest, The Injector went after him first, rolling into the room and jabbing at him with syringes.
“I’ll hold him back,” Braddock said. “He can’t do anything to me with these needles. I don’t even have veins to stick them in.”
The Injector let out a mechanical laugh. “What are… wires, but… veins for… electricity instead of… blood.”
Then one of the robot’s needles landed, stabbing into the wiring around Braddock’s neck and pumping light blue liquid. Sparks flew and Braddock’s head spasmed, jerking back and forth, then twisting around completely backwards. He made a loud whirring noise, and then tried to speak, but his voice came out garbled, like a radio tuned to the wrong frequency. He fell backwards and clanged to the floor.
Scarlett, having gotten the children to relative safety, turned and aimed her shotgun at The Injector. She spun around him to be sure that she was firing away from the children on the other side of the hallway, so that if any pellets missed, they would punch harmlessly into the walls. There was no need - her shot landed cleanly. She pumped and shot again, each blast ripping metal from The Injector’s body, revealing green circuit boards beneath. Boothe sent Marty in to attempt to connect to the robot’s circuitry. If he could hack it, maybe he could shut it down and end this fight before it got too messy. The drone flew in unnoticed while The Injector rolled forward, towards Scarlett. Marty unfolded the probe from one of its tiny claws and inserted it into the back of the much larger robot’s neck. The Injector paused, its camera eyes spinning and focusing on something unseen.
Hacking (30%) - FAILED!
For a moment, Boothe had thought it worked. The Injector’s neck twitched, the gears inside its chest slowed. Then it shook all of that off, and spun back up to full speed once again. With the same blue syringe that it had used to incapacitate Braddock, the Injector twisted its arm backwards and stabbed at Marty. The drone, still attached to the back of The Injector’s neck, didn’t have time to unplug and flee. The needle must have been made from some unnaturally strong material, as it did not bend when it stabbed directly through Marty’s metal plating and into the vulnerable wiring inside.
The drone sparked, the lights behind its camera eyes faded, and it dropped to the ground with a clank. The picture-in-picture window at the bottom of Boothe’s vision - that camera feed he had become so accustomed to seeing - disappeared entirely and a message appeared in its place.
Connection Lost.
Boothe switched his rifle over to full auto and unloaded on The Injector. The weapon kicked hard into his shoulder, and some of his shots went wide. Even though the robot was big, it moved in odd ways. Each of its arms seemed to possess their own mind, stretching and swinging in different unpredictable patterns.
Even though it was being pelted by shots from Boothe, Scarlett, and Mariko, The Injector rolled forward, unimpeded. The children in the corner screamed, Boothe backed away, continuing to fire, but Scarlett held her ground, emptying her shotgun into The Injector. One of her shots shattered the red tank on the back of the robot, spilling red liquid onto the ground. It hissed and smoked, and then burst into flames.
The robot did not seem to even notice the damage that it had taken, and rolled directly towards Boothe, ignoring Scarlett and Mariko entirely.
Boothe unloaded another volley of shots towards The Injector. Bullets pounded into the robot’s metal body, creating tears that revealed sparking wires underneath. Then The Injector was right on top of him, stabbing with its three remaining syringes. Boothe dodged one, and tried to duck under the next to get out of the corner that the hulking robot had trapped him in. A needle sunk into his shoulder, then another stabbed deep into his side, between his ribs.
Boothe takes 2 DAMAGE!
Boothe HP - 4/6
Boothe is stunned!
Boothe takes 2 DAMAGE!
Boothe HP - 2/6
Boothe is blind!
The pain was extraordinary. The green and yellow liquid pumped into his bloodstream. His eyes rolled back, his vision blurring, the sounds of gunfire and screaming fading to silence. Boothe found that his arms wouldn’t move, he couldn’t get away, he was floating, drifting in a black abyss.
Everything was cold, dark, and empty. He didn’t know how much time had passed like this - couldn’t tell what was happening around him, couldn’t tell if he or his friends were even alive. Then slowly, sound began to return. Then his vision as well. He squinted his eyes open. He was laying on the floor. Fire burned across the room from him sending waves of heat into his face. Marty lay in the fire, broken and unmoving. Braddock sat against the wall to his left, shooting his pistols with slow, groggy motions. Mariko was in the corner with the children, reloading her rifle. Scarlett had put her shotgun back into her sling and now stood close to The Injector, dodging its snakelike arms with their venomous syringes and swinging her axe repeatedly into the robot’s torso, widening a tear in its armor and slicing into circuit boards and wiring beneath.
Boothe tried to stand up, but his legs did not have any strength. He slowly reached for his carbine and rotated his body so that he could lift it to aim at the robot. They needed to end this as fast as possible. They needed to get out of here before the whole damn place burned down.
Another tank burst on The Injector’s back, green liquid spewed uselessly onto the floor. The robot paused a moment, stunned by the damage. Scarlett used the opportunity to twist and slashed her axe directly into one of the Injector’s other arms - the one holding the blue syringe. Her blade severed through the limb in a shower of sparks.
“You are too late,” The Injector spoke in its Speak-and-Spell voice. “Even if you destroy… me, my… work will go on. Orion will win the… war. All the… humans will die. You…”
Scarlett smashed her axe into the robot’s face and its voice died down into a whine. With that noise, Boothe thought the fight might be over, but The Injector kept moving. It’s last functional arm spun around and stabbed the yellow syringe into Scarlett’s back. She arched in pain, her axe falling from her grip as the yellow liquid pumped into her.
Then all her muscles relaxed and she collapsed to the floor.
Mariko and Braddock kept firing, and Boothe flipped the switch on the rifle to burst and fired as well. He could barely hold the weapon steady as it kicked in his hands. His strength was gone, diminished by whatever poison The Injector had stuck him with. Still, all three shots hit their target. With a shot from his pistol, Braddock exploded the final tank on the back of the robot, and Mariko’s rifle blast tore The Injector’s head free of its torso in a shower of sparks. Finally, its arms fell limp, and the fans and pumps inside it whined down. It collapsed to the floor in a pile of broken metal.
The fire from the red liquid still spread along the wall, blocking the doorway. Boothe finally got to his feet, and used every bit of his strength to walk over and pull Scarlett away from the flames. Her eyes were vacant, her body limp, but she still breathed. She would be out for a moment, and then come back the same way Boothe had. Meanwhile, they had to get the children out of here before the place burned down around them.
“Can you grab Marty?” Boothe asked Braddock.
“Who?” Braddock replied.
“My drone,” Boothe said, pointing.
“Right. Got it.”
The robot reached into the flames and pulled out the drone, now broken and blackened with soot. Boothe just hoped that it could be repaired. Mariko rushed the children over to one of the windows that led into the hallway. The glass had shattered at some point during the fight. One by one, she helped them through the broken window and pointed them down the hall towards the stairwell. Then she went over to the other room and began pulling those children free of their sleep as well. Braddock joined her shortly after.
Boothe stayed with Scarlett, shaking her shoulders, saying “Come on, come on, you have to wake up.” He used a medkit to bandage up the
wound on her shoulder, then used one on his own wounds too.
Medkit used (+4 HP)
Boothe HP - 6/6
Finally, her eyes opened.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” Boothe replied. “You ready to get out of here?”
“God, yes.”
4
Scarlett, Boothe, and Braddock led a line of the still half-asleep children into the stairwell and down the stairs. Mariko followed, helping anyone that fell behind. Some of the children were stronger than others, and they helped as well, providing a shoulder for the weaker ones to lean on. In one case, a particularly large boy, his muscles bloated by the chemicals that had been pumped into him, carried a sleeping girl who must have only been four years old on his back. Many of the children were wounded, or mutated, or sick with some unknown affliction, but all of them had a great desire to escape this place, so they pushed on.
They took the stairs as quickly as possible, their feet on the steps so loud it sounded like a train rolling through the building. A door opened somewhere below, and Boothe held his hand up for the children to stop. He leaned over the banister, looking down. The stairs twisted back and forth upon themselves, spiraling in a dizzying optical illusion.
“Who’s up there?” a voice with a strong southern drawl called from several floors below. “We gonna kill you, you know. We gonna kill all of you.”
The bandit leaned into view, a rifle in his hands. Boothe jumped back just as bullets ricochet off the stone walls. The children screamed. Mariko leaned over the bannister above and fired a single shot, nearly straight down into the bandit’s head, ending the echoing gunshots. For a moment, all was silence.
Then more doors opened - some above them and some below. The door in front of Scarlett, with a 9 painted on it, burst inward and a bandit began to raise his pistol, but Scarlett was too fast. At this close range, her shotgun blew his guts out through his back and he fell to the floor with a basketball-sized hole in his abdomen. More bandits poured into the hallway behind the dead man, raising rifles and firing. Scarlett slammed the door shut just in time to block the bullets, which couldn’t penetrate the galvanized steel.
Apocalypse 2020: A Wasteland LitRPG Page 21
