Soldiers of Misfortune: Parasite Lost

by Kyle Aho

  Chapter IX

  Apate slumped against the door to the laboratory and sobbed into her trembling hands. Bren slowed to a walk as he approached her. There was a look of stunned recognition on the faces of the women inside the laboratory as they saw their former security officer. One of the scientists hit a switch next to the glass. A dark frost to spread over the windows and hid the women from view. Bren stared down at Apate trying to make sense of the situation.

  “Umm… are you ok?” he asked as Dante and Alistair came up behind him, out of breath. After taking a moment to collect herself, Apate informed the rest of the team about her involvement with the facility, her fiancé, and her captive child.

  “Is there a reason you didn’t tell us this before?” Dante asked.

  “What do you care? Was I really supposed to expect three mercenaries to be compassionate?” Apate replied.

  No one argued.

  “Look, regardless of my motives we are in this together because if we don’t get into that lab you guys are all going to die from exposure to the parasite.”

  “According to everything we’ve been hearing the three of us are already dead,” Dante said.

  “If we get inside this lab there may be a way to fix that,” Apate said.

  “Are y’saying they have a cure?” Alistair asked.

  “I don’t know but the only way to find out is to ask them,” she replied.

  “I never thought I’d see the day I wished I didn’t have a dick,” Bren said. A beep started up behind him. Everyone looked at him and stepped back. “Really?! I can’t say dick? Are you kidding me?” he shouted as the beeping sped up. Everyone took another step back as Bren let out a frustrated groan.

  “Can you use that digi-key you have?” Dante asked after the beeping ceased.

  “Well I could but they can just stand there and hold the manual override. If we get to the security bay I can maybe grant us access to the complex by writing new security codes,” she said.

  “Couldn’t they just hold down the override from their side?” Bren asked.

  “Not if I give us priority over the override,” she said.

  Exchanging wary glances, the three men conceded their fate with a mutual shrug.

  “So where do we go?” Dante asked.

  “The main security bay is toward the bottom of the facility. Luckily we can just take the elevator to go most of the way, assuming it still works,” she said.

  “What about all them?” Dante asked, pointing a thumb toward the darkened window.

  “They won’t go far knowing we are here. If we can get down to the security bay fast enough they might not even realize we’ve left.”

  “Then let’s hurry the crap up,” Bren said as he stomped toward the elevator.

  Bren rounded a corner and was greeted with the iconic hum and crackle of an energy weapon readying to fire. He registered the drone’s presence and the meaning of the noise just in time to shriek in fear and jump back. The immovable object that was Dante stopped his retreat and he fell to the ground as a bolt of energy whipped down the hallway and burst against the wall Bren attempted to hide behind. Melted slag dripped from the grav-ball sized chunk missing from the wall.

  Bren scuttled on all fours like a terrified child and rushed to the other side of the intersection. They heard the low thrum of grav-plates as the drone moved toward the intersection the team used as cover. Dante pressed his back against the wall, heedless of the molten metal cooling next to him, and waited until the sound of the grav-plates were closer.

  In one fluid motion Dante ducked around the corner, raised his massive shotgun, and severed the top half of the drone with a deafening shot before quickly seeking refuge behind the corner again. The disabled drone continued to propel forward under its previous momentum and slammed into the wall in a fantastic display of sparks and expensive electronics before it ground to a halt and powered down.

  “What the heck was that?” Bren asked, his heart still racing from almost being vaporized.

  “They must have activated the compound’s defense systems,” Apate replied.

  “You gotta be floppin’ kidding me,” Bren said.

  “Until we are all cured, or rather cleansed, of the parasite this facility sees us as a threat. Fortunately, if we get to the security bay I can turn off the drones,” Apate said.

  None of them felt like she was particularly trustworthy at this point and her sudden eagerness to go deeper into the fray only added to their suspicions.

  “Why didn’t they try an’kill us before?” Alistair asked as he readied his weapons.

  “Perhaps it took that long for you to contract the parasite, how should I know?”

  Before anyone had the opportunity to argue the hum and crackle of another energy weapon interrupted their conversation. Everyone dived in opposite directions as the energy bolt screamed down the hall toward them from a new drone. The surrounding air tasted tangy and metallic as it ionized. A second new drone rounding the corner at the far end of the hall flanked the team and forced them to run down the middle hall back to where the original drone had attacked.

  As the first new drone rounded the corner Dante twisted at the waist, still running forward, and fired from his hip to hit the oncoming drone and send it spinning into a nearby wall. The second drone changed course to avoid its whirling counterpart, a low hum swelling as a shot charged and fired down the hall.

  Dante saw the shot coming and turned to shove all three of the other team members to either side of the hall as he ducked just in time for the energy bolt to crackle past his head. Bren and Alistair both fell awkwardly from the shove but Apate’s finesse allowed her to turn and fire her weapon at the oncoming drone. Everyone could smell the singed hairs on Dante’s head.

  Despite the impressive rate of fire all Apate’s weapon managed to do was chip glossy white paint and disable some of the more delicate and expensive looking electronics. The drone still functioned and bore down on them thanks to improved armor compared to the surgical drones. Dante rolled over onto his back and fired a massive shotgun round into the drone’s underside. He hit it center mass and carved a hole through the middle that allowed everyone to see right through it.

  The drone collided into the ground, its metal fuselage screeching as it bounced across the floor and toppled over before turning to slag. A third drone appeared from the smoke and fired an energy bolt that exploded against a nearby vending machine. Coolant gushed out across the floor and drowned the area in a cool fog, effectively blocking line of sight to and from the new drone. The team scrambled to their feet as Alistair drew his torch sword and released the fuel switch. A flick from his thumb was all it took to engulf his hand in flames. A quick turn of the dial focused the flame to a crisp white-hot blade that hissed as is devoured oxygen.

  Sprinting for their lives, the team continued down the hall unaware that Alistair stayed behind. Grav-plates strained to maintain control of the drone as it rounded the corner after them. A shower of sparks and flame filled the hallway as Alistair bisected the robot with his fiery weapon. The bottom half of the drone attached to the grav-plates separated from the top half with all its navigation sensors and collided into a nearby wall as the top half simply slammed into the ground, bolts and electronics shooting out like shrapnel.

  Alistair took a deep breath and gazed into the flaming metal long enough to notice two more drones coming down the hall after them with their weapons humming into a crescendo.

  “Down!” he yelled as he threw himself to the ground. Two energy bolts erupted from the drones and careened down the hall towards the team. Dante saw Apate and Bren hit the deck and looked back just in time for the searing bolt to whip past his face. It scalded his flesh and burnt the hair of his beard along with melting some of his shoulder plate.

  Dante gritted his teeth in agony and stopped in his tracks. He turned toward the cause of his pain and charged the oncoming drones with savage ferocity. He thundered passed Alistair and crossed the distanc
e to the drones in a few vehement steps. Like a battering ram to a fragile light bulb, Dante rammed his massive fist into the lead drone and crushed it into the ground with a satisfying crunch. An impact like that would have shattered every bone in a normal man’s hand and left the drone unscathed. Dante was not a normal man. His knuckles cracked as the nitrogen bubbles between his titanium laced bones popped. His skin tore slightly and blood welled up between the cracks only to coagulate almost instantly.

  The metal of the drone crumpled like wet cardboard under his fury and his second fist came smashing down onto the disabled drone for good measure. Dante grabbed the heap of scrap metal that was once a drone and hurled it at the second drone with a grunt, knocking it off its course just in time to redirect its next deadly shot into the wall. Metal shrieked as the drone smashed into the ground and Dante leapt onto it. He tore out the most expensive looking equipment first in a fit of blind rage from receiving such a close shave.

  Another shot tore down the hall over Dante’s shoulder that came from the direction he had ran from. Dante looked up in time to see Bren, Alistair, and Apate run past him, all blind firing over their shoulders. A large energy cannon-wielding drone flanked by two surgical drones blocked their previous escape. Dante shoved the fallen drones together in the middle of the hallway and ran. Both of the oncoming surgical drones simply floated over the debris but the larger gun drone was forced to change course, turning down the hall and moving out of sight.

  “Hey guys, it’d be really swell if we could turn these off,” Bren yelled.

  “Follow me!” Apate shouted back as she picked up her pace and sprinted through a set of doors while the three men struggled to keep up. The whirring of saw blades got louder as they ran and Bren risked a look over his shoulder to gauge how long they had before they would need to confront the oncoming drones.

  Not more than a couple of arms lengths away, the drones barreled down on the team with cold efficiency. Exhausted and fed up with running, Bren planted his feet and turned toward the drones. He aimed one arm at each oncoming drone and fired his forearm-mounted harpoons. Both harpoons sailed through the air and headed toward their marks, the electric chains snaking behind them. A faint grin pulled at Bren’s cheeks as he imagined the impending explosion of his harpoons impaling their targets and frying the internal circuitry. His grin faded as the drones nimbly darted up and away from the oncoming harpoons, causing them to extend their full length down the hall without purchase. Both drones activated their impromptu weapons and converged toward him with the intent to kill.

  Bren activated the winches in his forearms and rolled forward under the swooping saw blades, careful to keep his arms wide so the chains didn’t cross mid retraction. The harpoons locked back into their housings and Bren turned to fire once more at the drones. A puff of smoke ejected from his forearms as the internal combustion device launched the spearheads forward. This time he nailed both drones square from behind as they passed him and tried to attack the rest of the team. He howled in surprise as the shock batteries in his forearms overloaded, sending a ripple of electric feedback from the drones and up his arms as the electric pulse generator shorted out. Bren jerked his arms and brought the chase to an abrupt end. He watched with a satisfied grin as the drones fell out of the air and slammed into the ground with about as much grace as Dante in a ballet class.

  Damaged but not destroyed, the drones wobbled as they floated up and turned back toward Bren to resume their charge, flying over each other and accidentally crossing the attached chains in the process. Bren activated the winches in his arms, which were thankfully on a separate circuit than his pulse generator, and waited for the slack to tighten up before giving another violent jerk. The crossed chains sucked both drones together and resulted in a horrid screech of torn metal as the whirling blades of each robot hacked into the other after falling out of their flight path. Opposite trajectories of each drone twisted the chains further and forced them back to the ground in a mess of metal.

  Bren lifted his boot to stop the oncoming debris and tore his harpoons from the downed drones just in time to hear the hum and buzz of an energy weapon behind him. He dove over the sparking drones and narrowly dodged an energy bolt aimed at his back. A quick pivot later secured his footing and gave him the momentum to sprint to the rest of the team as they passed through a destroyed lab.

  Another searing bolt screamed down the hall and turned an overturned desk to slag. Bren jumped over it, careful to avoid the white hot metal as he struggled to close the distance between him and the rest of the team. Apate ran into a stairwell and jumped over the railing at the top. She fell past two flights of stairs and landed on her feet with effortless grace. Dante entered the stairwell and hurled his body over the rail. Floor tiles cracked as he landed. Alistair gauged the drop.

  “Oh frak that,” he muttered, choosing to take the stairs instead with Bren following at his heels. At the bottom of the stairwell Alistair heard the energy weapon charging above him. With only a short ways left he hoped there would be enough time to escape. He heard the weapon discharge behind him and hurled his body down the last few steps just as they melted from the energy blast. Bren fell through the resulting hole and collided chest first with the rim of the vaporized stairs. He landed flat on his back at the bottom of the stairwell and gasped for air. Alistair noticed that Bren was no longer running behind him. He looked back and wasn’t sure if he had enough time to close the distance and pull Bren away without getting incinerated in the process.

  That moment of hesitation gave Bren enough time to fire a harpoon across the room and plunge the chained spike into the far wall. A quick activation of the harpoon’s winch yanked Bren out of the energy bolt’s trajectory and his armor scraped across the floor in a shower of sparks. Bren tugged his harpoon out of the wall, picked himself up and darted out of the stairwell with Alistair. A bead of sweat sizzled as it fell onto the back of his armor where friction had heated it up.

  The energy gun-wielding drone was either unable to descend the stairs or had been programmed not to try because it simply waited at the threshold for another threat to present itself, weapons and sensors searching for a target.

  The hallways in the lower level were much more industrial than the clinical white ones above. Concrete from floor to ceiling, exposed wiring and air ducts mixed with harsh pools of light from wall sconces offered stark contrast to their previous surroundings. Dante and Apate ran ahead as Bren and Alistair stepped into a long spacious hallway. It was so massive it could have been the spine of the entire complex. At the end of the hall Alistair could just barely make out the words ‘Security Bay’ on the holo-display above a door. Alistair and Bren booked it as fast as their legs would carry them in an attempt to close the distance.

  Apate approached the door and punched in a code, wondering if it would even work since she had been gone so long. It didn’t.

  “Need a key?” Dante asked as he revved his chainsaw bayonet.

  “I’ve already got one,” she said as she began searching through the pouches at her hip. Apate used the butt of her pistol to smash the faceplate of the security pad as she pulled out her digi-key. She yanked a wire from the digi-key and plugged it into the security pad, watching as the screen filled with numbers and a series of notched cylinders projected from the device that looked like they could fit together if manipulated properly.

  Visibly deflated, Dante turned as four surgical drones poked out of various hallways and split up to pursue the team at either end of the facility spine. Dante raised his shotgun to blast the surgical drones out of the way but with Bren and Alistair closing in he wasn’t sure they wouldn’t take some of the blast as well. Both Bren and Alistair shared this fear and violently shook their heads and hands in dissent as Dante’s shotgun leveled in their direction. Instead, Dante flicked the switch for his chainsaw bayonet and revved it as he advanced toward the two oncoming surgical drones. Hopefully he could buy Apate more time. Bren and Alistair simultaneously le
t out a breath of relief once Dante pointed his gun away from them. That moment was short lived once the two surgical drones heading in their direction activated their surgical saws.

  Alistair hit the ignition on his torch sword and adjusted the dial, concentrating the flame to a white-hot blade once more as he held his opposite hand out and gestured at Bren to keep his distance. Twin saw blades swirled on their bearings and separated on tiny arms with the intent of decapitating Alistair before he could swing. A sidestep followed by a quick thrust up dissected the first oncoming drone vertically and forced Bren to jump over a saw blade falling in the path of his shins.

  The second drone dodged Alistair’s backswing and slashed with a mass of scalpels in the shape of a hand. It scored fine grooves into Alistair’s armor and sliced open fabric and skin in the gaps where armor was foregone to allow movement. A hiss of pain escaped his lips as Alistair hacked toward the second drone, his torch sword roaring through the air chewing up oxygen but unable to find purchase. Bren wanted to join the melee but a reckless swing from the torch sword would maim him into uselessness or possibly kill him. Forced to just watch the skirmish in front of him, Bren glanced back at Dante as he shredded one of the attacking drones in a spray of sparks and metal fragments. Dante’s hungry and enraged visage loosened Bren’s bowels momentarily and he thanked the gods for allowing Dante to be his ally.

  With a glance back to Alistair, Bren watched as the drone tried to maneuver past the flaming weapon flicking through the air toward it. Alistair squared off with the drone at each movement, waiting for the AI to over commit and give him an opportunity to destroy it. A buzz and crackle rumbled over Bren’s shoulder. A second quick glance confirmed that another energy gun-wielding drone had found them.

  “Crap, do these things ever end?” Bren shouted. He ran full tilt down the hall away from the charging weapon. He ducked his head as he ran under the drone Alistair fought and hoped to everything holy that Alistair didn’t choose that moment to swing. Air hissed as an energy bolt barked from the new drone’s weapon and flew down the hall. It impacted with the surgical drone Alistair was fighting and sent a mess of molten metal and energy careening out from the drone.

  Alistair shielded his face with a forearm in time to protect his eyes from any of the searing shrapnel but he still took a bit of superficial damage to his skin and armor. The blast knocked Alistair against the wall and Bren to the floor. Both men barely had enough time to scramble to their feet before another charge loosed itself down the hall toward them.

  Dante noticed the bright flash from the first impact and grabbed the remaining drone with both hands. He ignored the lacerations as the scalpel hands tore into his forearms. Like an angry discus thrower, Dante hurled the drone down the hall and into the oncoming energy bolt.

  “It’s open!” Apate shouted down the corridor as she slipped inside the security bay door. Her three compatriots used their last reserves of endurance to follow her.

  They heard the buzz and crackle of another shot readying itself as they ran through the threshold of the security bay. Alistair slammed a button to force the door closed and the two sides hissed together as an energy bolt whipped down the hallway. Their eardrums almost burst as the shot impacted against the closing door. The outer layer turned to slag and made the inner layer of the door glow red-hot.

  “We don’t have much time!” Dante shouted, leveling his shotgun at the glowing door as Apate pressed the controls frantically trying to disable the security drones.

  Close enough to hear the buzz and crackle of another shot charging, the rest of the team braced for the impending slag implosion. Their weapons were pointed at the glowing door. Sweat stung their eyes and the minor flesh wounds everyone had endured. Their hearts pounded in their chests and threatened to explode. Their lungs ached with exhaustion. Gaining steadily in pitch, the buzz and crackle left everyone’s nerves screaming in anticipation. Any moment now the door would erupt in molten metal and there was nothing they could do about it. Then, much to their disbelief, the pitch slowly wound down. Everyone held their breath and watched the door. A moment later Dante risked a nervous glance over his shoulder at Apate.

  “They’re disabled,” she said as she slumped into a nearby chair and brushed the hair out of her eyes.

  All three men relaxed their weapons. Bren collapsed to the floor, Alistair leaned against a wall and Dante just stood there, his enhanced and artificial organs supplying him with the oxygen and blood he needed without much effort. Bren pulled open a locker and found some supplies inside.

  “Anything good?” Dante asked.

  “Eh, some shock rifles,” Bren rummaged through the locker, “medi-gel, and it looks like a few power bars.”

  “No shit?” Dante asked, looking over Bren’s shoulder and grabbing the half empty box from the locker. He immediately ripped a bar open with his teeth and ate it whole. Alistair loaded a medi-gel canister into his dispenser and applied it to his wounds. Dante stuffed another energy bar into his mouth as Bren held up an old issue of Nubile Nymphos and let the centerfold spill out.

  “Dayum,” he said as he looked the centerfold up and down. The back of his head started beeping but he was too mesmerized to care. Dante cradled the box of energy bars and took a step back as he stuffed a third bar into his mouth.

  “Can I get one of those mate?” Alistair asked.

  “There’s only three left,” Dante said as some crumbs fell from his mouth.

  “Great, that’s one each,” Alistair said, pointing to everyone but Dante. Dante looked hurt.

  “C’mon boys, you have to share,” Apate said.

  “But I’m so much bigger than you all,” Dante said.

  “You can have mine,” Bren said as he thumbed through the magazine. Dante ate another bar before Bren changed his mind and put the box on a table between them. Alistair picked both bars up and tossed one to Apate. Dante sighed and licked his fingers as Alistair peeled open a bar and took a bite. Apate reloaded her weapons as she watched some floating status icons spin in front of them. She pulled out four security cards from a small box on the floor and ran them through an encryptor. She punched in new access codes on a nearby computer.

  “Ok, these should give us access to the rest of the facility,” she said as she handed a card to each of them.

  “Should?” Bren asked, finally pulling his attention away from the magazine.

  “I haven’t been here for a while, I granted us access to everything I can remember but they may have set new protocols since then, I don’t know.”

  “Good work lass,” Alistair said. He took his card and put it in a spare pocket.

  “I’ll upload a map of the place to all your holo-pads, give me a minute.”

  Apate worked to get them as much information as possible. They all hoped the rest of the mission would be less life threatening than what they had endured up till now. With the security system turned off and complete access to the facility it looked like most of their problems were solved. The team sat in silence while Apate worked, tending to their wounds and gear. The silence was quickly broken as the collective scream of hundreds of mutated animals roared through the facility, so loud that even in a locked room in the basement there was no question as to what the sound was.

  Wide eyed and horrified, Bren looked over to Apate and shuddered.

  “You let them out?”