Infiltration

by A. K. DuBoff

  “Might be. We should disable it,” Kira suggested.

  With Ari’s help, she pried open the doors and found that the elevator car wasn’t on their level. She shined a light from her armor downward to find the mech crumpled four stories down. “That’s not going anywhere.”

  For good measure, Kira blasted the guidance track in the wall of the elevator shaft with her rifle.

  The plasma blast instantly melted the metal at the back of the shaft, making it impossible for the car to rise if there was anyone still down there. Presumably, there was access to the area through D Wing; they could go searching for survivors that way.

  “Nothing left to worry about here,” Kira announced. “Let’s go for the rest.”

  Upon re-entering the lobby, she skirted the front reception desk for cover. She gestured for one of the Guard soldiers behind a support column near the front door to blast the doors with a specialized breaching gun he had custom-fitted in his armor.

  A projectile flew from his armor. White goo radiated from the impact site, rapidly coating the door. When the surface was covered, the substance solidified in an instant, shattering the metal.

  Cries of surprise sounded from the corridor within as MTech’s mercs backed away from the opening.

  Kira sent out three rapid sonic pulses from her handgun, stunning the mercs—who apparently only had in one earpiece for their comms, presumably so they could better listen for the inevitable attackers. The mercs dropped to the ground.

  Guard soldiers ran in to clear the fallen enemies from the corridor and secure them.

  While they worked, Kira scanned the corridor for any signs of additional mercs, but she saw no heat signatures or electrical signals beyond the environmental norm. “Looks like this one is clear.”

  “We have movement in A Wing,” Ari announced.

  The doors parted with a hiss, and then a man shouted, “Don’t shoot! We’re coming out.”

  “Surrendering?” Kira asked over her suit’s external comm.

  “Yes!” the merc said, coming into view. “We heard what was going on out here… and we’d rather not get shot in the arms.”

  Kira lowered her weapon slightly while still keeping it trained on them. “Seriously, guys? Where’s your professional integrity?”

  He shrugged. “We’re not getting paid enough for this shite.”

  “I respect your honesty.” Kira waved him forward with her off hand, and he was followed by another six men and five women.

  “What are you going to do with us?” one of the women asked.

  “Lock you up out front until we’re finished here, and then there’s a major and a colonel outside who probably want to talk with you,” Nia replied. She waved the mercs toward the exit with her gun.

  They were received by a team who applied the securements around their hands and ankles.

  “Yeah, this is way better without a bullet wound,” the first male merc commented.

  “Smart thinking.” Kira gave him a thumbs-up. She switched back to internal comms. “All right, time to move in. We’ll lead the charge into D Wing,” Kira instructed her team assembled in the lobby. “We’ll go through B Wing, since I know that route best. I’m passing the map now.” She transferred the instructions over the secure connection.

  “Hopefully there aren’t any more of those bomaxed mechs lurking inside,” Nia mumbled.

  Kyle chuckled. “But they make for such good target practice!”

  Kira stowed her rifle and readied her multi-handgun on the sonic blast setting. “Focus, team.” She led the way toward B Wing’s arch.

  Like the rest of the lobby, the arch had sustained damage during the shootout. Sparks flickered as Kira passed through, but it still let out an angry beep accompanied by a red light.

  She smirked behind her helmet’s faceplate. “I think they already knew we were here, armed and dangerous.”

  “Effective system,” Ari jested.

  Kira swung what remained of the doors wide and propped them open with the nearby debris to facilitate a swift exit, should they need it—or for their backup to run in.

  The white halls were silent and empty. The soldiers used the external comms on their suits to call out every dozen meters, in the event a captive was being held somewhere. There were no replies.

  Kira peeked inside several of the supply rooms to check the weapons caches she’d observed on her previous investigation, but nothing seemed to be out of place. However, with so many storage rooms throughout the facility, it was impossible to know if other places had been used to arm the mercs.

  After four minutes, Kira’s team reached the seemingly dead-end corridor that led to the secret D Wing. Opening that door would be slightly more involved than anything around the lobby.

  Nia evaluated the wall. “I say we just blow it.”

  “I guess we’re already in pretty deep with the property damage. One more hole won’t hurt.” Kira backed her team up.

  She and Ari fired their plasma rifles, cutting a crude archway clear through the wall. The reinforced material was thirty centimeters thick, and it took several blasts to get through each segment. After several minutes, it appeared to be cut clean through.

  “Lemme try it.” Ari approached the wall and gave it a firm kick. Then another.

  The interior piece of the arch dropped backward with a thud and a reverberating clang.

  Kira smiled. “Nice work.”

  Ari swapped his rifle for his handgun and passed through the archway, followed closely by Kira and the other two members of the team.

  “We’re coming up on the holding area,” Kira said using the internal comms. “I didn’t go through it before, but I saw it on some monitors. Keep your cool.”

  “We’ve got this,” Ari replied.

  They had advanced another five meters down the corridor when an inhuman shriek echoed down the hall.

  “What was that?!” Ari halted.

  Kira grimaced. “If I had to guess, one of the Robus.” She held her handgun at the ready. “Keep moving forward.”

  The enhanced audio receptors in Kira’s armor detected approaching footsteps—what sounded more like bare feet than boots. Her HUD confirmed the approaching forms a second later. They were moving far more quickly than a person should be able to. Two of their heat signatures flickering, like they were at the edge of a spatial distortion.

  “Is anyone else’s HUD glitching?” Ari asked.

  “That’s not a glitch… Run!” Kira about-faced and sprinted toward the exit.

  Proximity alerts flashed across her HUD. Before she could react, something swatted her legs out from under her.

  She stumbled to the side, smacking the wall and then falling to her back.

  On top of her was a person-sized creature with luminescent orange eyes. Its skin had a metallic sheen to it, muscular and scaly. The creature’s lips were contorted into a snarl, revealing that the inside of its mouth was covered in the same metallic coating, its fangs shaped to tear flesh from bone. The creature’s arm was poised to swipe its fifteen-centimeter-long silvery claws across Kira’s neck.

  Kira tried to raise her weapon, but her arm was pinned under the creature’s other arm.

  A sonic blast rippled through the air.

  The Robus recoiled in pain and retreated down the hall. As it ran, it suddenly disappeared from view before reappearing a meter from where it had been a moment earlier.

  What the…? Kira looked around and saw more than two dozen people, robed in medical gowns, running down the corridor. Their skin had a metallic sheen to it, but they didn’t have claws or fangs. Though all of their eyes glowed with bioluminescence, indicating Gifted abilities, none were orange. Her team was busy subduing them with sonic blasts. Kira leaped to her feet and joined in.

  “You okay, Captain?” Kyle asked when the final opponent fell.

  “Yeah. Thanks to whoever got that thing off me.”

  “You’re welcome,” Ari replied.

  Twenty-six
unconscious hybrid creatures lay in the hall. They began transforming back into their normal forms.

  “There were two that weren’t like the others,” Nia commented.

  “I think those must have been the Robus,” Kira surmised. “I guess the procedure didn’t take like it was supposed to.”

  “Did you see how they were moving?” Kyle shook his head with wonder.

  “Was it ‘stopping time’—that thing TSS Agents can supposedly do?” Nia wondered.

  Kira frowned. “That’s a really rare skill, as I understand. And a misnomer—they just create a spatial distortion around themselves, like initiating a mini-spatial jump.”

  “Oh, ‘just’.” Ari snorted.

  “Regardless, we should proceed as if the Robus have that ability. We’ll need to be extra careful now that they likely know they’re cornered.”

  “You don’t say?” Kyle tightened his grip on his weapon.

  “How many total captives did you say there are?” Ari asked.

  Kira shook her head. “Jared said one hundred, but I wasn’t able to confirm. More than are in this hallway, for sure, from what I saw on the monitors. And that’s not counting however many were taken from town last night.”

  “The four of us can’t subdue that many if they’re all this aggressive,” Kyle stated the obvious.

  “We should fall back and come in with a bigger team and more concussion grenades,” Kira suggested.

  “Hey, she’s coming around!” Nia approached a woman lying near her. She kept her distance and had her weapon ready to fire. “Do you know who you are?”

  The young woman startled awake. “Yes, I’m… I’m Emmie.” She sat up. “Where am I?”

  Kira stepped toward her. “You’re in an MTech lab. Do you remember anything?”

  “I’ve been in a cell, I think.” Emmie grasped her head. “Where’s Melissa? She was…”

  “I don’t know—” Kira cut off when she noticed the other people rousing.

  Questioning murmurs filled the hall.

  “It looks like they’re themselves,” she told her team using the internal comms. “Let’s start the evac while they’re manageable.”

  Keeping their guns ready just in case anyone started to revert, Kira’s team shepherded the captives toward the exit.

  “We’re coming out with twenty-six right now,” Kira messaged operational command and the soldiers waiting in the lobby. “We’ll need concussion grenades and backup to continue the search.”

  Kira’s group was in the final stretch of hallway leading to the lobby when she saw Colonel Kaen, Leon, and a dozen soldiers approaching.

  “Leon! What are you doing in here?” Kira asked on a private channel.

  “Kaen thought I should come along as a guide to help access the computer network for evidence, now that things have settled down,” he replied.

  “It isn’t safe yet.”

  “If this armor is good enough to protect you, then it is for me, too.”

  Kira looked down at herself and realized that a new set of claw marks had been raked across her chest. That settles it—this set is officially ‘broken in’. “But I have weapons,” she countered his statement.

  “And I have you.”

  Good point. She sighed. “Okay, just stay vigilant.”

  While they had been talking, two of the mercs had begun directing the prisoners toward the exit while the others prepared to press forward toward D Wing.

  “Sir, I suggest you and Leon hang back while we clear the path,” Kira suggested.

  Kaen nodded and allowed Kira’s team to lead the way back.

  The support soldiers handed two concussion grenades to her and to each member of her team. She stashed hers in a pouch at her waist.

  They broke into a jog and kept the pace until they reached the point in the D Wing hall where they’d first encountered resistance. Her HUD indicated that no one was lurking around the first bend.

  After the turn, the corridor opened into the observation room. An open doorway on the left wall presumably led to the holding area.

  “Should be through here,” Kira directed.

  “And back there?” Kaen asked.

  “That’s a lab room—one egress point. I suspect Monica and her accomplice, Jared, are holed up in there.”

  Kaen nodded. “They’re not going anywhere right now. I’ll keep watch with a couple of soldiers while you take care of the captives. Then we can deal with them.”

  “Yes, sir.” Kira continued toward the holding corridor.

  The open doorway provided a peek of the cells. The first two cells Kira could see were empty. She stepped through the opening and passed by a three-meter segment of storage cabinets to either side, and then the passageway split in two directions. Cells lined both sides of the hall, and the doors to those on the left were open. At the end of that section, two Robus were facing off against a huddle of several dozen people together.

  “Some help?!” one of the people shouted when he saw Kira.

  Without hesitation, Kira fired sonic blasts with her handgun at the two Robus. It took four blasts to take them down.

  A middle-aged man with dark hair at the front of the group cautiously stood up. “They couldn’t be reasoned with.”

  “Are you injured?” Kira asked, stepping forward.

  “Nothing that won’t heal,” he replied.

  “Let’s lock up the Robus until we figure out how to get them to change back,” Kira said to Ari and Kyle when they came up behind her.

  The two soldiers secured the creatures in cuffs and anchored them inside cells on opposite sides of the hall.

  Kira spotted the door controls and sealed them inside, just in case they were able to break free.

  “What happened to the others?” a woman asked.

  “They’re outside with our people. They attacked us while transformed, but they seemed fine once back in their standard forms,” Kira replied.

  “Probably thought you were one of the mercs,” the first man said. “They opened all the cells at once. We were all agitated, but the others were different—like animals. Vicious killers. We all ran for the exit when the cell doors opened, but then the Robus, as you call them, came charging back, and we ended up trapped here.”

  “We’ll get you to safety now,” Kira assured him. “More of our people are in the next room. They’ll get you out.”

  “Thank you.” He bowed his head. “I don’t even know how long I’ve been here… or where ‘here’ is.”

  “This is the planet Valta,” she told him. “We’re with the Tararian Guard.”

  He looked surprised. “The Empire is involved?”

  “Well, the Guard. The whole point is sorta that it’s not official,” Kira corrected.

  The man nodded. “Whoever you are or whatever reason you’re here, thank you. We owe you our lives.”

  Murmurs of thanks passed through the crowd.

  She smiled. “It’s what we do. But if you’ll excuse us, I need to find the others. They took some locals last night.”

  “Other section of the hall,” the man said with a nod down the corridor. “I saw them brought in.”

  Kira jogged toward where he’d indicated while the prisoners filed out into the outer administrative area. The first few dozen cells were empty, but then she found smiling, relieved faces pressed against the plexiglass walls. They were speaking, but no sound escaped; the comms must have been muted.

  She checked down the length of cells to make sure everyone was okay, and to make sure that everyone had seen that help had arrived. Her heart skipped a beat when she reached a cell containing her father, and then another holding her mother.

  Kira tore off her helmet, and her parents pressed their hands against the plexiglass. She held one of her hands out to each while looking around for a master door release, but none was to be found. She held up her index finger and then ran back to the white room.

  “I found the others!” she announced. “Where’re the door c
ontrols?”

  “This might be the right time to track Monica down,” Kaen suggested.

  “Yes, we’re well overdue for an honest chat.” Kira turned to Leon. “Will you go wait with the remaining prisoners in there to the right? My parents are among them. They’ll recognize you—without the helmet, of course. We should have the door open in just a few minutes.”

  Leon slid off his helmet. “Got it.” He jogged into the holding corridor.

  Kira glared at the lab door the soldiers had been guarding. “Now for Monica.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Kira stormed toward the lab door. “If Monica thinks she can get away with hiding in here, she better reevaluate.” The control panel next to the door was nonresponsive. This isn’t a room we can shoot our way into without risking too much damage. We need to examine that tech.

  “Kyle, a little help with an override?” Kira requested.

  “I’m on it,” her teammate replied, jogging over.

  Before he had a chance to interface with the control panel, the door suddenly slid open. Kira instinctually took a step back, drawing her weapon.

  Monica stood in the doorway, her hands raised in defeat. She still wore her white lab coat and seemed unfazed by having multiple weapons pointed toward her. “You have me.”

  “Yeah, you’re foking right we do—” Kira began.

  “No need to berate someone who willingly turned themself in,” Kaen interjected. He approached the room. “You’re Monica Waylon, the director of this facility?”

  “I am,” Monica acknowledged. “My assistant and I became trapped in this lab when our medical patients broke free. They were in some kind of frenzy.”

  “Your ‘patients’?!” Kira laughed. “We have all the evidence we need against you. You can drop the benevolent doctor act. You were what caused these poor people to turn vicious.”

  Monica’s eyes narrowed the slightest measure, focusing on Colonel Kaen. “You must believe that I did what I thought was right, to help advance our species.”

  Kaen grunted. “I don’t think so. We value the independence of people and the chance for them to choose what happens to their own bodies. Forcing genetic modification is never justified.”