by Ben Ormstad
Ayamii pocketed the crystal, drew one of his knives and followed behind us as we entered. “Tha-thanks.”
“What kind of crystal is that?” Frida said.
“I… I don’t know. Nothing special. Quartz, m-maybe.”
“Shhh,” I said, ushering them to be quiet. Something could pop out from any of the closed doors at any time.
Frida slowed down to catch up with Ayamii. I heard her whisper: “If it’s just a random crystal, then where did you learn to use it like that?”
“Did not learn it. Was born with the s-skill.”
“You mean,” Frida continued, “before the daemonorgs spliced your genes with theirs?”
“No, I was never alive like that… Before the genetic modification all I was was two test tubes with extracted g-germplasm.”
“Oh my,” Frida whispered. “So that means you’re actually–”
“Enough!” I snapped and abruptly turned to face them. “It’s all very interesting, but we don’t know what’s waiting around the next corner, so could you please wait until we’re–”
Hinges squeaked behind me and stopped me mid-sentence. Just like this, I thought and froze. Felt the skin on my knuckles stretch as my fingers tightened around the gun’s grip.
The sound of boots stomping the floor behind me mixed with Frida’s words: “Get down!”
I threw myself on the ground as weapons began roaring around me. Bullets flew, biting into the walls, smashing potted plants. I gritted my teeth as a tiny bastard dug itself into my back.
-5 HP
I crawled on my elbows back to the door we just passed, while Frida ran toward the enemy, the machete in one hand and a gun in the other. Ayamii equipped both knives and ran toward the enemy as well, in a strange, yet effective staccato way that probably made it harder to hit him.
Wait a minute, I thought as I reached the doorway. Am I actually running away from the enemy? But no, of course not, I was crawling toward cover. My knife- and blade-loving companions wanted to be up close and personal. Bullets crashed into the doorway as I stepped over the threshold. I curled up against the opposite wall, readied my weapon and peeked out.
My jaw dropped in awe. Shocked, I saw Frida and Ayamii make chopped meat out of the daemonorg guards. Like a gracious, horrendous dance of death, they swung around waving their blades like dancing partners. Each sweep sliced another guard, scattering a fine spray of red liquid on the walls and windows around them.
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered, shook my head and left my cover. They’re not getting all the XP for this.
Four guards lay lifeless on the floor. Frida and Ayamii fought one each, and three more kept their distance, hiding behind stone columns and the door they came from. Advancing rapidly, I steadied the gun with both hands, closed one eye and got the closest column in my sight. When the guard behind it moved to fire at Frida, I tapped the trigger twice. One bullet hit the column and broke off pieces of stone, while the other hit him square in the face. His arms flailed as he tumbled sideways, bumped into the column and overturned it. It cracked against the floor.
I registered movement in the corner of my eye. Pain stabbed me in my right shoulder.
-5 HP
Another guard farther up ahead saw what happened and had switched his focus from Ayamii to me. I clenched my teeth, tried to aim at him, but bent over from a new flash of pain in my lower abdomen.
-9 HP
The fucker probably hit a vital area, because it hurt like hell. I screamed in anger, ran past Frida and fired multiple rounds in his direction. No hits, but the column he hid behind crackled and broke. He got second thoughts about his cover and left the position, sprinting toward the open door where the last guard peeked out.
Bad idea. I planted three bullets in his broad-shouldered back, sending him stumbling nose-first onto the green carpet.
The last guard popped his hand out from the open door and fired blind. I ducked, avoided his shots, and ran close to the wall. Equipped my machete, snuck up and surprise-attacked him with a blade thrust to his throat. His yellow eyes looked at me in shock as he lost control of his body and dropped to the ground.
Killed 3 Daemonorg Grunts – Level 2
+60 XP
I glanced around the new room while reloading the gun. A well-lit, medium-sized storage. Boxes, lockers and shelves along the walls, stuffed with all kinds of containers, books and stash. A wooden box with its lid open lay beside the dead guard. They’d probably been busy stocking up on something when they heard us in the hallway.
I went back out to check on the others. “You two okay?”
“Ye-yes,” Ayamii said, sheathing his knives.
Frida gave me a nod, busy examining the bodies for necessities.
“There’s a storage room here. Seems pretty interesting.”
“Cool,” she said. “Help us check these guards first, and we’ll take a closer look.”
After picking up everything worth anything and split it fairly, I pocketed my stuff.
+40 Ammo – Daemonorg Light Handgun
+10 Consumables
+125 Cash
+30 Scrap
About five minutes later, we’d searched the room for valuables. Frida and I got ourselves brand new armored chest plates that could easily be fastened on top of other clothing. We both strapped them on underneath our jackets, increasing our armor with 50 points. We snatched an extra one each.
Unfortunately, even though there were multiple sizes available, none were small enough to fit Ayamii. However, he made some minor modifications to a pair of military pants and draped them around his upper body, covering arms and chest. It looked like nothing I’d ever seen, but was nevertheless functional. In addition, I persuaded him to take one of the Daemonorg Light Handguns and a few packs of ammo.
In addition – a bitter-sweet one, at that – I found an almost empty crate of elongated magazines with fully loaded clips. Sweet, because magazines! Bitter, because, well, no weapons to go with ‘em.
“Yes!” Frida almost shrieked of joy while rummaging through a white locker with a red cross on. “MedKits, consumables and magic vials!”
When done, we all smiled at the awesome catch. If the guards hadn’t stuck their ugly necks out, we might’ve moved straight past the storage room. Great luck in a shitty situation.
+2 Armor – Daemonorg Officer’s Chest Plate (req. 1 Item Slot each if unused)
+50 Armor
Only one may be equipped at any time. Will deteriorate upon reaching 0 armor points.
+½ MedKit
+100 Ammo – Daemonorg ‘Rap-Attack’ Automatic Rifle (req. 1 Item Slot per 300 rounds)
+20 MP
+50 Ammo – Daemonorg Light Handgun
+40 Consumables
+320 Cash
+110 Scrap
“Too bad there weren’t any actual weapons here,” I said, managing the items and drooling over the thought of eventually experiencing the so-called ‘Rap-Attack’ automatic rifle.
“It will come,” Frida said. A red color flashed over her as she munched some consumables.
Ayamii’s bulging eyes flickered between us and the exit. “We should go before they send m-more.”
“True,” I said, but stopped on the way out as my eyes fell on a metal locker hanging on the wall next to the door. A cable hung from the bottom and disappeared behind a shelf next to it. It was marked with a symbol I actually understood: An old-school cell phone.
“Ey, check this. Might be exactly what we need.” Upon inspecting it, I found it was closed. Equipping the machete, I squeezed the blade in between the locker’s door and lock, creating a nasty high-pitched sound resembling nails scratching a blackboard. When the top part was deep enough in, I forcefully ripped the door open by putting my full weight onto it. A crack smacked in my ears as the lock busted up. A pair of black walkie-talkies stood in a charging station inside.
“Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better,” I said, grabbed them and hand
ed one to Frida.
+1 Communication Device – Short Range Two Way Radio (req. 1 Item Slot)
2 kilometers communication range
3 channels
Requires recharging once a day
Can be used to communicate with any other communication devices tuned in to the same frequency channels at less than two kilometers distance.
“Well, not what I’d call cutting edge technology,” I said and laughed.
Frida flipped the big, white switch on top of her radio. A green light turned on next to the antenna. “Better than nothing. Try yours.”
As expected, mine was also fully charged. Now they both hissed with mild static. I took a few steps away from her, pressed the large push-to-talk button on the side of it, and spoke: “Do you hear me?”
My voice crackled from her radio’s lousy speaker. She pushed her button and answered. “Loud and clear,” her voice said from my speaker.
“Awesome. Over and out,” I said and clipped the walkie-talkie to my belt. “Do you have enough item slots to bring the charging station?”
“Indeed,” she said. “Smart thinking.”
We left the storage room, whereupon Ayamii led us to the end of the hallway. Before entering the next door, I looked out of the last window and saw the interior wall of the volcano laying right in front of us, which meant the coming sections of the building were built into the mountain stone itself. The same claustrophobia that crept up on me as I had sunk myself down in the cocoon-like VR-pod came over me again now that I knew solid rock would surround us in all directions. It somehow reminded me more of the fact that my real body right now was enclosed in an airless, vacuum-sealed metal box ten meters up in the air in Virtuality Inc.’s VR-pod station.
Frida brought me back to the present moment by clasping a hand on my shoulder. “You okay, Dex?”
“Uh, yeah, no problem,” I said hoarsely. “What are we waiting for?”
“Nothing a-anymore,” Ayamii said, his lips flashing a smile as the door’s locking mechanism clicked. I hadn’t even noticed he’d fetched the crystal and was kneeling beside the door to unlock it.
Goosebumps tickled my spine when we passed the doorway and entered another corridor. No more windows, cozy carpets, lamps or framed pictures. Here the walls were painted white and fixtures in the ceiling lit everything in a cold, fluorescent light.
“Just like the corridor outside the prison floors,” Frida whispered.
I grunted in agreement, but kept my mouth shut since we shouldn’t be talking.
Appreciation for Ayamii’s well-developed sense of direction grew in me as we snuck deeper into the prison-lab’s intricate set of interlinked corridors. What seemed like half an hour of meaningless walking ticked away. Ayamii unlocked doors with the crystal, Frida sliced surveillance cameras, and I suppressed their need to fill the silence with chit chat. A few times we took out patrolling guards, but mostly nothing happened – other than the continuously diminishing remaining time before the poison boiling in my veins would destroy me.
When my poison timer had sunk just below two hours, Ayamii suddenly stopped us with an outstretched, shaking arm. “Around this corner we will find the entrance to the main gene-splicing f-facility.”
The muscles in my stomach twitched. “In other words,” I said, “this is where they up the ante on security, right?”
Slowly Ayamii nodded, his face flickering through myriads of different expressions. “Ye-yes,” he said in a hushed tone. “I’m not a hundred percent sure how it is right now, but last time I p-passed by… there were two guards at the far end of the hallway on the other side.”
“Protecting the entrance to the facility?”
Again Ayamii nodded. “But that’s only the outer doors. M-more of them are guarding the entrance after it, which is the primary entryway.”
“I see,” I said and watched as he climbed a pile of boxes stacked against the wall, enabling him to reach the ventilation grill up under the ceiling.
Frida stepped past me. “Need some help?”
He quickly glanced down at her, flashing a smile. “Tha-thanks, but no thanks.” Using the edge of one of his knives, he meticulously screwed loose all the screws in the grill before lifting it off and leaning it against the wall. “R-ready?”
I caught Frida’s blue crystal eyes. “Be careful.”
“Yeah,” she said and flung her long, white hair back over her shoulders. “But you’ll be alone for a while now, so you be careful.”
“I’ll be alright.” I knocked on the walkie-talkie clipped to my belt. “These things make a lot of noise when we speak, so I suggest you merely make clicking sounds with your tongue when you’re ready to enter the lab’s locker room. And then I’ll simultaneously take out the fuckers patrolling the entrances.”
“G-good idea. See you on the oth-other side,” Ayamii said as he disappeared into the ventilation shaft.
Frida held my gaze a moment longer than normal before she climbed up the boxes and entered the shaft after our purple friend.
When I couldn’t hear the rumbling from them anymore, I stepped up close to the corner. Listened for any sounds of movement, voices or maybe the clacking of guns being reloaded. It was dead quiet, however.
Instead, I let my breath all the way out and focused on sensing what might be going on further ahead.
After standing like that for about a minute, focusing on somehow maneuvering my sense through a vast, incomprehensible blackness, I suddenly jolted back to my body as a dense wave of desperate emotional energy flooded my mind. I opened my eyes, held my breath and whispered in awe: “Holy shit. Someone needs our help.”
25
Ten minutes after Frida and Ayamii entered the ventilation system, the walkie-talkie hanging in my belt crackled. Fear of being heard by the unseen enemy around the corner speared me in my stomach. I snatched the radio and muffled the sound by squeezing it between my arm and stomach. Luckily, Frida did as we agreed on. Rather than talking, she simply made clicking noises with her tongue:
“Thok, thok, thok…”
As silent as possible, I clicked back and felt adrenaline pour into my veins like battery acid.
It’s happening.
They had reached the last ventilation shaft which led into the biotech lab’s locker room. They’re probably watching guards or scientists changing clothes and talking right now. I took a deep breath. Maybe they’ve even found Darius’ hidden stash.
Frida stopped clicking. I clipped the radio back to my belt. After getting used to Frida and Ayamii’s company, it felt weird being alone again for the first time since I rescued Darius and her from the spiders. I mused at the sweat trickling out from my palms. So frikkin’ real it’s unbelievable.
“No time to waste,” I whispered and munched consumables to replenish my health.
+11 HP
I snuck up to the edge of the corner, equipped the Daemonorg Light Handgun and reloaded it. Double-checked the Celestial Basic Pistol – its status was at blue, which was enough that I wouldn’t waste refilling it just yet. Lastly, I made sure the Ball-Buster grenades still were safely stocked in my jeans’ item slots.
Getting an immediate sense that Frida and Ayamii was currently busting through the locker room’s ventilation grill and attacking whoever unlucky enough to be present, I knew my preparatory time had reached its end.
Ready for anything, I jumped out from my cover behind the corner. The white corridor stretched straight ahead for another ten meters. Piled wooden crates obscured some of my view, but at the end of the hallway I made out a metallic double door. Heavy steel frames ran around its edges. My eyes flipped from an illuminated medical sign above it, to the camera in the top right corner, and finally down to the two daemonorgs guarding the entrance.
These weren’t dressed in the same ragged tunics as the others, rather, they wore brown uniforms, black gloves and boots.
They’d been busy showing each other something on some cell phone-looking devices,
but now turned their humanoid, demonic heads toward me. Intensely yellow eyes glowered at me from under black helmets.
The right one ran to a panel on the wall next to the door, while the other grabbed the assault rifle hanging from a strap around his shoulders.
My gun jolted as I fired a bunch of rounds at them, blinking my eyes at the bright muzzle flashes. I didn’t wait to see whether the bullets hit, but threw myself on the ground behind a stack of crates. They returned fire with rapid streams of bullets from their automatic rifles.
“Jesus F. Christ,” I said through gritted teeth and lay flat on the floor as splinters of wood spewed around me when deadly projectiles chewed through everything.
A short break from the bullet storm ensued. Busy reloading, probably. Popped my head out from the cover and emptied the magazine at them. Most of the bullets missed, but at least four or five of the fifteen hit. The asshole on the right lost his weapon, reeled backwards and hit his head on the door before falling to the ground.
I yelped in pain as I heard the remaining guard’s assault rifle. It spit a new storm of projectiles – many dug into my chest and right arm.
-5 Armor
-2 HP
-4 Armor
-1 HP
-7 Armor
-3 HP
Jumping back behind cover, I broke the fall by landing on the side. The chest plate had probably saved half my health already, if not more. I heard the guard shout guttural, meaningless words, but I ignored him and reloaded the gun.
As soon as another pause from his stream of bullets ensued, I got to my feet and leaped past the closest crates, by now blasted to shreds. Focusing totally, I bit the insides of my cheeks, leveled the gun at him and smashed the trigger like a kill switch. The weapon recoiled and released five bringers of death. He didn’t even get the chance to lift his rifle before my deadly helpers mercilessly cut through him. The assault rifle crashed into the wall as he flung his arms out and stumbled to the floor.