by Kyle Aho
“Why won’t you let me see my son?” Apate asked. Dr. Malliny stared for a moment, her eyes icy and resolute.
“It’s not my decision, I’m sorry.”
She turned around and walked through the security team, dismissing the situation as if it were no more important than a child having a tantrum.
Apate screamed in frustration and pushed the nurse toward the security team. She elbowed an intervening guard in the face and cracked his mask. As he fell to the ground she leapt for Dr. Malliny. A second guard attempted to tackle her but a quick change of her footing allowed her to catch the man as he came in and throw his weight over her hip, slamming him to the ground with enough force to shatter his ribcage.
A barrage of shocks from the security team’s rifles forced her body rigid. She lost control and crumbled to the floor. Her teeth felt like they were going to shatter as she ground them together against the pain and reached out with a livid claw in a vain attempt to strangle the woman keeping her from her child. Not a moment later a flurry of shocks sizzled against her skin as the security team closed in. The last thing she saw was a boot heading directly for her face.
An acrid smell that had never before polluted her nostrils woke her up. She could barely move. Her back felt stiff and bruised. Her chest throbbed with pain at every breath. One of her teeth was loose and wiggled uncomfortably in her mouth. She laid on something cold and lumpy. It took a few minutes before she could muster the strength to look around. Her shoulder screamed with pain, as if it had become dislocated. One glance confirmed that it had.
Then she realized what happened. Human and animal corpses in various states of decay surrounded her and she lay atop the pile like a discarded doll on a heap of trash. Apate retched and vomited onto the remains of a nearby dog. They had thrown her out like refuse, hoping the fall would kill her or possibly thinking she was already dead. They didn’t account for the mound of other bodies to break her fall.
She stumbled down the hill of flesh and bone and sloshed through the thick grime of the sewer network. Her brain could barely process the series of unfortunate events that had befallen her. Apate was devoid of emotion. Once the initial shock had subsided, she simply looked around for an escape as survival was her brain’s only function. A ways down the passage she found a maintenance door that led to control pump. The room also had a ladder that led to the outside world.
As she climbed the ladder against the wishes of her aching muscles, Apate vowed to gain her strength and find a way back and retrieve her son or die trying.
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 distance 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.