by S. A. Lusher
The room he stood in now was the main chamber, a cluster of workstations and tables and randomly assorted crates. Along the left and right walls were doors, each door leading to a smaller, individual labs where the scientists had been working on different projects. Enzo hurried over to the first one, clearing it with a sharp glance. It consisted of a shooting range and a specialized workbench. Unfortunately, whatever they'd been working on was missing, taken by one side or the other. Frustrated, Enzo moved on.
Ten minutes passed. Each of the subsequent testing labs were empty as well, having been pillaged during the war that had consumed the research facility. He was about to give up hope as he came to the final of the eight chambers. But as he stepped within, Enzo grinned. There was something lying in a glass case, right where it was supposed to be. The glass had been hit by a few bullets, though it did little damage, considering the strength of it. Had someone been trying to get in? There was blood on the floor, and part of a hand.
Enzo swiped the security card through the scanner and popped the lid. What resided inside was a long, rectangular rifle made entirely of black material. The surface was smooth and glossy. It looked like it was all one part, as opposed to several assembled pieces. There was just the barrel and the trigger, with a slot at the base of the trigger for what Enzo imagined must be ammunition. There was only a single...clip? Magazine?...whatever the hell served as ammo for this gun residing inside. He picked it up, finding it surprisingly heavy, and slipped it into the gun, which was also heavy. Pulling it up and out, he tucked it into his shoulder.
Enzo took a moment to get a feel for the weapon. As he brought it up to stare down the length of it, frustrated at the lack of any kind of scope or even an iron sight, a digital zoom scope abruptly popped out of the gun, exactly where he needed it. He jerked in surprised, then laughed nervously. As he brought it away, the scope disappeared.
“Nice,” he whispered.
Enzo next fired up the workstation and found a brief description of the weapon. It was called, of all things, the Burner. Apparently, it was a focused laser based on something they found in the Cyr ship. He wanted to read more, but his study session was cut short as he heard a very quiet noise, little more than a soft whisper rising above everything else. It was, he realized, the main door out in the primary room opening.
Turning, he raised the rifle, bringing it into position, and moved towards the doorway that would bring him back to the main chamber. It was time to test the Burner out. Enzo hit the access button and stepped out. Half a dozen Dark Ops troops were moving into the room, apparently setting up an ambush for him. How they'd found him, he didn't know, nor did he care. Enzo grinned darkly as he slipped his finger over the trigger.
“Target is in sight!”
“He's armed!”
“Put that fucking weapon down right-”
Enzo squeezed the trigger. A brilliant beam of crimson light shot out, piercing the neck of the man who'd been demanding he drop his weapon. Playing on a hunch, Enzo flicked the beam left, then right, and openly laughed as the man's head was utterly severed from his body. It collapsed onto the ground, no blood spraying as the wound had been instantly cauterized by the immense heat of the laser beam. The body took a few awkward steps, then collapsed.
“Holy fuck!” one of them cried.
Enzo kept his finger on the trigger and began playing them beam back and forth across the room. Utter chaos broke out. Men screamed. Limbs, heads and bits of flesh began falling onto the ground. Workstations were chopped up, the smell of burnt meat filled the air, black grooves were cut into the metal walls.
Within seconds, the entire group of men was dead and silent, reduced to pieces on the ground. Enzo laughed wildly and let it up on the trigger, noticing the gun was beginning to get uncomfortably hot in his hands. He took a deep breath and let it out, marveling at how flat out powerful the Burner was. His time in the facility suddenly seemed like it was going to be significantly easier. As he thought this, he heard a deep growl come from the vault-like door both he and the Dark Ops troops had entered through previously.
He glanced over and frowned.
Here was something new.
It was big, not big enough to be whatever it was that had been held in the massive cage, but certainly bigger than anything else he'd run into so far. It didn't look natural, not that any of the things had looked natural, but something seemed different about this massive brute. It was easily ten feet tall, its entire body rippling with raw muscle, a patchwork of pallid flesh and crimson lines. It was essentially a massive version of a Mutant...except for the fact that each thick arm ended in a huge, bony scythe-like appendage.
“Holy shit, you one ugly motherfucker,” Enzo said, raising the rifle.
He opened fire right as the massive beast loosed a roar and began charging for him. He sliced off one arm, then brought the beam up and across its head, parsing off a piece of its skull. He then brought the beam straight down through its torso at a slant, the down in the opposite direction, moving through its waist and right leg.
The creature collapsed into pieces while still running, the result being that its several body parts rolled in all different directions. Enzo would have appreciated the sight if not for the fact that the Burner was now doing exactly that: burning his real hand. It was heating up and, he realized, not cooling down. Something was wrong. He heard a loud whining sound somewhere within the device. The metal was singeing his flesh now.
Realizing that something must have gone wrong inside the device, he tossed it back into the lab he'd grabbed it from and closed the door. A second later, there was a muffled explosion. Enzo groaned at the sudden development.
“Oh, come on!” he cried, lamenting the loss of the Burner.
Frustrated, but knowing he had to move on, Enzo stomped across the bay towards the pile of Dark Ops troopers he'd carved up and began rifling through their bodies for weapons and ammo. As he did this, it occurred to him that he didn't run into any weapons lying around in the same way he hadn't found any body parts. At first he'd assumed that they'd been scavenged by the survivors, but now he wondered about that.
He hadn't seen anything, as though whole sections of the base had been picked clean. Were these mutations that smart? He didn't want to believe it, but there did seem to be an underlying intelligence to them. It was a chilling thought. Enzo managed to scavenge a tactical rifle. It was standard issue for the military, a very sturdy piece of hardware. He was glad to have it. He also grabbed a pair of pistols and holsters. Putting one on each hip, he slipped the pistols in and gathered up a surplus of ammo.
For once, he felt a little better about his predicament.
Once more, he lamented the loss of the Burner.
As Enzo stood, wondering what, exactly, to do next, he heard a noise above him. Snapping the rifle up, he saw a familiar face looking down at him from a ventilation grate. The face was clearer now, the woman who had saved him from a no doubt wretched death.
“Don't shoot,” she said.
“Fine,” Enzo replied, lowering the weapon.
She dropped into the room, landing with a grunt. He sized her up. She was another one of the Marines. She was of average height but looked small due to the fact that she was made up of tight, lean muscle. Her black hair was cut short, her features Asian. She had a compact SMG slung over her shoulder and was loaded down with ammo, grenades and knives.
“Who are you?” she asked. “Why were you with Ramirez?”
Enzo spent a moment catching her up on everything that had happened to him so far. While he talked, he led her over to a terminal and began booting it up.
“So who are you?” he asked.
“Lance Corporal Lee.” She stopped and sighed. “God, Ramirez...there's so few of us left now. He was one of the good ones. He was young, hardly into the service. He was so nervous, before all this shit went down, worried he was going to freeze up at the first sign of real trouble. Turned out he couldn't be farther from the truth.
When the shit went down, he did just fine...” she trailed off, lost in her cold memories, frowning deeply.
After a moment, she seemed to come back to herself. “Listen, I need to get back up top. I came down here looking for Ramirez, originally. But now he's dead. I need to get back up to Stern and figure out the plan. And you look like you can handle yourself, so it'd be good if you could come with me. There aren't too many sane, capable people left down here...what are you doing?”
“Trying to get Eve on the radio, you know about her?”
“Yeah, the woman in the Control Room. I haven't been able to get anyone on my radio.”
“I know, Dark Ops has a transmission blocker set up. We have to talk through terminals,” Enzo replied. “That's what I'm doing.”
“Oh.”
“Enzo? Is that you?”
“God, finally. Yes. Look, the shit is hitting the fan down here. Can you give me a way out of here that doesn't involve getting fucked by the mutants or Dark Ops?”
“No. Not yet. I've got another job for you. Last I heard, there were two soldiers crawling around down there. One of them was Ramirez, the other was a Marine technician named-”
“-Lee, yeah, I've found her.”
“Oh, good. Listen, we need to be able to communication, and we also need to fuck up Dark Ops' plans. Luckily, we can do both at the same time.”
“And by we you mean us, right?” Lee replied.
“Yes. You're the only two down there. I can help you figure out a plan, are you ready?”
Enzo glanced at Lee. He sighed heavily, it was going to be a long fucking day.
“Yeah, we're ready.”
Chapter 09
–Dissidence–
Enzo was beginning to get sick of this.
Ever since he'd awoken naked on a pile of corpses, it had been one thing after another. Making repairs, fighting creatures, dealing with jerkoffs that wanted to kill him. Through the whole thing, like a fine crimson thread piercing the continuity of his entire existence, his shoulder hurt, a low, burning ache riding on the frequency of his own personal hell. It didn't hurt too much now, at least, he thought as he moved low through a corridor, the latest arrival watching his back. Something he didn't particularly enjoy, but she'd insisted.
Luckily, he was too busy for the pain, so it had been reduced to a background murmur for now. Just miserable white noise. And he knew that death and blood was ahead, which tended to help as well. Further up the way, a sustained burst of gunfire sounded, punctuated by intermittent shrieks. Enzo and Lee waited, falling back into a side corridor. While they did, Enzo reviewed the plan in his head, not wanting to get it wrong.
It was, at least, simple.
Simple plans were the best plans, given that they had the least likelihood of fucking up.
What remained of Dark Operations had set up something of a headquarters in Doctor Dietz's personal lab, Dietz being the mad scientist character he and Ramirez had run into earlier. Apparently he was the lead brain behind the entire project. They were, apparently, attempting to continue their experiments. The first part of the plan was to cut power to Dietz's lab. From there, they would crawl through the vents, into the lab and mount a surprise attack, destroying the transmission blocker and killing as many troops as they could.
The gunfire fell away and, after another long moment, footsteps sounded. Enzo and Lee kept still and silent, waiting. The footsteps were getting closer. Before long, a pair of Dark Ops troopers walked by the side corridor the two were hiding in. They stopped and shined a light down it. As soon as they did, Enzo and Lee opened fire, cutting the two men down, shattering their faceplates in sprays of red gore. Both men dropped to the ground.
Enzo and Lee waited for reinforcements and, hearing none, hurried forward and relieved the two fresh corpses of whatever ammo they had on them. Enzo was glad for the rifle, but still missed the almighty Burner. He wondered if there were anymore in the entire facility, but doubted it. On the other hand, there had been seven other experimental testing ranges in that lab, so there was a decent chance that there may be something equally impressive lying around. Having finished checking the bodies, Enzo and Lee moved on.
“I don't suppose you can shed anymore light on this situation?” Enzo asked as they settled into a quick walk through the corridors of the derelict research level.
“Not really,” Lee replied. “When it happened, there was a lot of chaos. A lot of people dying, the Altered everywhere, and-”
Enzo interrupted her. “Altered?”
“Yeah. That's what they're called. I'm not sure where the name came from, heard it over the net before the comms died the first time. I guess that's what the scientists called them, officially. We just call them freaks or mutants. There seemed to be a never-ending wave of them. There were dozens of us at first, Marines I mean, but they just kept coming. Overran all our defenses. Now, as far as I know, there's only three of us left. Myself, Staff Sergeant Stern and Corporal Beam. They're up top, in the living quarters, two levels up.”
“And the command center is directly above us?” Enzo replied.
“Yes. Well, technically it's the Military Headquarters.”
“What's the situation up there? I overhead some of the Dark Ops guys mentioning that there's something preventing them from getting up there.”
“There is. Some kind of huge Altered. At some point, we're going to have to deal with it, because we'll need direct access to the Control Room. A lot of shit went down here. Our CO and the people that sent us figured it wasn't exactly legal, ethical or moral. Or safe. Unfortunately, we kept getting the runaround, so by the time we were actually beginning to make progress on seeing just what, exactly, Dark Operations was up to, the shit hit the fan,” Lee explained.
“Political and bureaucratic bullshit. This is why I left Spec Ops,” Enzo muttered.
“You were in Spec Ops?”
“Yeah, a while ago.”
They fell silent as they neared their target. The air was becoming thick with the decayed reek of the Altered. The corridor they were in came to an end. A handful of doors lined the walls, each leading to storage bays and maintenance areas. The one they wanted would take them to a primary power relay that was routing power for Dietz's lab. The first part of their grand plan. Enzo hit the access button and peered into the room.
What awaited him gave him pause.
The maintenance bay was a long, rectangular room, studded with clusters of lockers, stacks of crates and workbenches. Along the back was the primary power relay, built into the wall. Taking up the far right corner of the room was an immense Nest, easily three or four times the size of the one Enzo had burned several levels down. Not one but two Guardians occupied the room. Both of the hideous things let out warning sounds as they settled their disturbing gazes on the intruders. They began to rush towards them.
“Shit,” Enzo snapped, raising his rifle, flipping it to full auto and opening fire.
Lee the did the same with her own piece. Twin streams of burning lead cut through the air, hitting both Guardians in their broad torsos and spraying thick, pulpy spews of gore across the room. Although the initial brunt of the assault hit them, the pair of beasts quickly dodged and duck, scrambling across the room towards the survivors, making them difficult to hit. Enzo cursed as he emptied his rifle, his Guardian still standing and coming towards him.
He began reloading, backing up as he did so, but the thing leaped at him, closing the final distance between them in a second. It smashed into him and they both went flying. The rifle flew from his hands. He heard Lee shouting but there was no time for that. Enzo rolled, not even bothering to look for his rifle. His hand went to the pistol at his side. Tearing it free, he finally came to a halt and took aim, lining up his sights.
Once again, he found himself pumping rounds into a Guardian from a lying position. He stitched a bloody line up the thing's massive chest, put two rounds through its neck and then three more directly into its skull, spraying its br
ains across the ceiling. The creature fell to the ground. His gun empty, Enzo hastily reloaded and scrambled to his feet. He moved to help Lee, but she had put down her own troublemaker and was reloading.
“Fuck, I hate those things,” she said.
“They are ugly,” Enzo replied, retrieving his rifle.
“And smelly,” Lee muttered.
They moved deeper into the room, making sure nothing else was waiting for them. The Nest throbbed and pulsed, occasionally spewing out a stream of crimson liquid. Enzo and Lee came to stand before the hideous visage of biological engineering.
“As absolutely disgusting as this thing is...it's extremely impressive. These things...they must be very, very well designed,” Lee said.
“You think they're genetically engineered, too?” Enzo asked.
“Yes. I do. There's no way they're natural. It's all too perfect. But, I mean, just look at this thing. They built this from the raw materials of people. It's been a little over a day since the whole thing spiraled out of control and already they're this far.”
“Yeah, impressive. Come on, I'm getting ready to throw up. Let's deal with this.”
“Okay. Cover me. I managed to snag some explosives from an armory a little while ago. They should do very nicely,” Lee replied.
Enzo nodded in reply and turned to watch the only way into the room. While he waited, he thought of Special Operations. It seemed like another life, and, he supposed, it really had been. He'd been a fundamentally different person back then. He still had faith, however thin it might have worn, in the Galactic Alliance, in the Marines, the soldiers he shared the battlefield with. He'd been very good at his job, and his superiors had loved him as a result. It was something that Enzo could have seen himself doing for the rest of his life.
