A ramp dove into the ground from the street, leading down to a set of automated barriers that reached out from either side of a central guard station. The ramp continued down for another twenty meters and opened into the yawning expanse of the KGP car pool.
The trio of sentries standing guard by the barriers stepped casually out. The monitor located on the street had shown four figures wandering down towards them and they were intending to stop them before they tried to reach the car bay. If the trespassers reached this location, the monitors there were watched not only from within their own station but by the security and surveillance team in the upper levels of the building. Such a lapse would be seen and they would be reprimanded.
The intrusion of citizens into this secondary access point was getting to be a constant annoyance and the guards were rapidly losing patience with it. Everyone seemed to think they had a right to just cruise into the KGP facility to take a look.
“No entry without a pass,” one of them said with a strained air of repetition, ducking beneath the candy striped barrier and waving them back.
The forms moved from the shadows, exposing travesties of human forms that had eluded the rough picture of the security camera. But what was far more terrifying was the array of weapons that leapt into view from their clothes and trained upon the startled guards.
Before they could act, the coughing murmur of silenced pistols entered the air, avoiding body armor and placing lethal rounds accurately through heads. The soldiers jerked back and collapsed, slain instantly as a second volley congregated and destroyed the peering lens of the security camera.
Breaking into a sprint the guerrillas grabbed the bodies and dragged them back into the guardroom, checking the monitors to ensure that no trace of their assault was evident. Fortunately they found everything to their peaceful satisfaction.
A camera watched the scene just around the corner, the eye panning like so many others across the vast bay of vehicles. The camera here negated any further undetected passage, their initial surprise entry unobserved and allocated to luck and laziness on behalf of the KGP soldiers, their alertness at this late hour severely lacking.
Jogging to the last remnant of cover before she had to expose herself to the intense eye of security, Anna removed the pin on three grenades and with a fierce throw sent them rolling across the underground car park, the explosives tumbling beneath the parked jeeps, trucks and light tanks. A second volley joined the first, the extended timers allowing a third barrage to be hurled before they erupted in three tempestuous waves.
The building rocked as the blast ripped through the nearby vehicles and tore up areas of foundation. A belching sheet of fire rolled out in all directions, flowing up and across the ceiling to spread above the band as a sky of flickering incendiary color. Ragged chunks of stone and smoking metal bounced out into view as ruptured fuel tanks were licked by flame and joined the fiery symphony.
Acting as one, the group charged across the scene of chaos, the heat of the inferno bringing them out in a sudden sweltering sweat.
Two KGP stepped from the main doors and stood aghast as multiple weapons opened fire and splashed the wall with sprays of bullets and blood. The soldiers jerked as they were pummeled by short bursts and dropped back to the crater-riddled concrete before collapsing as twitching mounds of torn meat.
Kicking open the doors, the group used their aims to check the small chamber and then ran to the line of lifts, summoning the one Anna specified with the frantic pumping of its downward call button.
Anna and Steven backed up and drew aim on the doors, ready to butcher any occupants who might already be present as Gary and Paul kept track of the stairwell and the entrance.
With a soft ping the doors of a lift slid aside, parting and revealing four KGP soldiers with fire extinguishers and oxygen masks. A freely unleashed cascade of bullets ripped into them, the interior of the small metal box suddenly vanishing amidst cones of white smog as extinguishers were penetrated. The two mutants continued to fill the blind view with streams of fire to ensure complete suppression before moving in and starting to drag the gore-splashed cadavers out.
“Into the lift,” announced Steven, stepping in and holding the doors open as they nudged against his hands and retreated after detecting the obstruction.
With a sudden flurry of activity they bundled in and pressed the lowest button, the cool interior filled with the cloying stench of ruptured bodies and blood, mingled with the overpowering perfume of the released carbon dioxide.
The cursory quiet was penetrated by the sounds of deep metal chimes and clatters, the group reloading and swapping magazines, discarding the spent ones and readying to face whatever guards the training ground held.
Anna had divulged that only the card lock existed as a defense but they were not prepared to take any chances.
Descending to the unmarked level at the very deepest heart of the base, the doors slid open and revealed a small room, the plain vault doors to the dungeon blockaded by the key slot.
Stepping from the lift, Gary placed one of the deserted and bullet riddled helmets at the door to prevent it closing, sealing off the only entrance to the lowest level.
Paul bashed a fist to the key panel, staving it in before ripping it free to expose the circuits within. Without word Gary stepped up and shone a pocket torch into the dark maze of wires, applying clippers to reconfigure the lock and permit ingress.
“Come on, this is taking too long,” hissed Anna, jittering on the balls of her feet.
“Shut up, this is complicated,” uttered Gary, cursing as he received a light shock from fastening two live wires together with a bare pinch.
“Nearly there, just a few…Got it!” he announced, and stepped back as the doors slowly parted, operating reluctantly as though they knew this was not a legal access. “The greatest tech wizard in the fucking universe strikes again. I could’ve been rich, I tell ya,” he gloated.
Gathered at the sides, the group swung round and leveled weapons to see Maria standing naked in the middle of the corridor.
“Maria!” yelled Anna and ran forward with elation.
“Anna! NO!” Steven howled, noticing the blank and distant expression in the girl’s eyes. The woman failed to heed his warning or just decided to ignore it.
The air seemed to shimmer as though an intense heat had welled from the floor and the girl’s hair fluttered on an insubstantial breeze. A friction heated wind washed around in wild and chaotic vertices and there was a flesh-muffled crunch as Anna flew back through the air. Her back slammed to the wall beside the entrance with such force that the metal caved in to leave a great dent when she dropped from it to slump on the floor.
“Maria! It’s us! We’ve come to rescue you,” shouted Steven, moving back into cover until he was sure she would not renew her attack.
“She no longer hears your words, mutant,” reported a chillingly familiar voice, the soft tone sending a shiver down his spine and making his stomach knot in dread. It was her without a doubt, the pattern of her voice was forever branded upon his soul in the indelible medium of nightmares.
Turning his fear inside out, he conjured up his long neglected hatred and stoked a sober rage. Jerking out, he took aim in a heartbeat and squeezed the trigger. The assault rifle bucked in his grasp, a jingling flow of spent cartridges flying out as his careful burst targeted the villainess who had befouled him. She stood at a crooked angle, clad in a latex catsuit with thigh boots laid atop it and a waist cincher of gloss fabric hauling at her hips.
She barely blinked, her broad smile remaining unperturbed as the bullets rattled on the floor, stopped by a cushioning wall of psychokinetic force. The officer sneered and aired a snort of contempt.
“What the hell’s she doing?” yelled Paul, keeping in shelter.
“She’s been brainwashed. She’ll kill us all if we fail to reach her.”
“So soon. How?” questioned Gary.
“It doesn’t matter how, we…” S
teven stopped, having caught sight of a ventilation duct. The tiny chute was beyond the capacity of even a child to access, but Gary was not constrained by the physical impediments of an obstinately solid form.
“Flank her,” he spat, jabbing at the grille with his rifle.
Without delay the skinny mutant began to strip off his excess baggage as Paul caved in the panel with a punch to expose the dark interior hidden behind. Locking his torch between his teeth the mutant entered, his bones cracking as they altered and changed to accommodate his elastic flesh. In moments he was slithering in, shuffling down the conduit like an invertebrate.
“What’s the matter, mutants? Surely you can defeat one small adolescent to reach me?” goaded the woman.
“Perhaps the death of that many-armed aberration will bring you out of your rat hole. Slave, kill the bitch on the floor.”
Anna snapped from her coma with a cry as her flesh rippled beneath a sudden vice-like hold, her ribs groaning under the pressure, her skin being stretched tight by a compressing fury.
Maria watched her mentor squirm beneath her new power, the woman clawing at the ground as she gasped for breath, the intensity stepping up. Blood trails emerged from her nose as she looked up to Maria with imploring in her eyes.
The forgotten and sealed recesses of her mind were demanding that she stop, but she could not disobey the Mistress. Besides, it felt good to make someone else suffer for once, to relish the power of a helpless being as she regulated the pains and did whatever suited her desire. It was joyous to see them whimpering and squirming beneath her, begging for their lives as her sanity screamed that what she was doing was gravely wrong. The conflicting commands and alien emotions were filling her mind with a red haze, the fury of her conflict lending further weight to her anger, making her focus her telekinetic crush and have Anna suffer all the more severely.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Black smoke was pouring from the car pool and rising up the side of the tower to spread out upon the breeze. An army of fire fighters and armed KGP swarmed before it while crowds of eager onlookers were kept back by a cordon of police.
The attack had begun, causing Kirsten to break into a sprint, her chameleonic shell falling back into place, the loss of the hood leaving a disembodied head to bob in the darkness. Lifting her arms across her face, she hid most of her visage and made for the main ground level entrance.
Skipping through the doors she entered the lobby and ran for the lifts. The metal detector buzzed loudly as she passed through it, causing the guard beside it to spin and go for his pistol. Upon seeing only a shimmer of air he blinked in puzzlement and then whirled as she dropped a backhand chop into his throat, shattering the soft flesh and felling him in one strike. The soldier gurgled and twitched on the floor, controlled by his death throes as Kirsten recommenced her sprint.
The pandemonium that ruled the interior left her largely ignored, able to reach the lift without obstruction. Finding it disabled, she locked her pointed steel fingers into the seam and exerted her strength. Muscles rippled beneath the dark skin, making the studs dance as she hauled open the doors and leapt into the deep shaft with a carefree skip.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Gary dropped onto the floor with a soft thud. The room was quiet, isolated and insulated from the conflict without, no doubt an accommodation to stop screams escaping the dire chamber.
A faint light ruled overhead, filling the chamber with a soft illumination that revealed the various engines in an even more frightening and ghastly a setting. The metal cross and chair loomed in the depths, the trammels left wide. The soiled surgical glove and weapons of torture were laid aside and ready, the implements of sexual malfeasance striking a numbing chill through his psyche as he bore witness to the trials Maria had been dragged through.
Suddenly he regretted not having vouched for coming to her aid sooner because the thought of such tactics being used to break a mutant turned his stomach with disgust.
Bringing his analytical attention back to the more pressing matter at hand, he averted his gaze from the details of the tools the officer was using to gain mutant compliance and moved to the door.
Flicking open the access panel he began stripping out wires and circuits to defeat the mechanism that only caused it to open to a person who passed the credentials required of the genetic scanner concealed above it.
Holding tightly to their firearms, Steven and Paul unleashed wild sprays of fire at the woman, the ground beneath their feet sparkling with dancing cartridges as empty magazines clanged upon the metal when they were spent.
The machine gun in Paul’s hands launched high velocity, heavy rounds, ripping into Maria’s fortifications, the task of keeping Maria diverted to protection rather than punishing Anna devouring whole belts of ammunition.
Steven switched to the secondary barrel and felt the weapon shove into him as the explosive rounds were set free. Fragmentation bursts tore at the shield, sending ripples through the floor from their savage eruption but Maria still held them at bay. The six shot clip in the butt ran dry, keeping Anna alive a little longer and forcing him to returning to the regular ammunition.
“I’m out,” yelled Paul over the deafening din of gunfire, dropping the weighty weapon and snatching up Gary’s discarded rifle to recommence the attack, the two men trying to buy the mutant enough time to ambush the officer.
Steven’s rifle gave a hollow click as his last clip was devoured and discarding it, he hauled out two pistols and began to fire, praying for Gary’s timely intervention.
Taking in a slow breath Gary crossed the last wires and put his ear to the plate. The sound of sporadic gunfire stopped and Anna’s cry reverberated as Maria’s full attention focused back to this task.
Touching the plate, the door slid aside and he charged forward, throwing his shoulder to Maria before she even detected his approach. The girl was lifted from her feet and driven harshly to the wall, Gary’s body crushing her and dazing her sufficiently to break the psionic projection.
The slim frame toppled to the ground, wheezing, barely able to move from the stunning attack. Maria’s body was nowhere near as strong as her mind.
The mutants stepped out and glared at the officer who maintained her defiant attitude, perched on heels, her body tense as it stretched the folds of latex across her elaborate contours.
“Gary, get Maria. Paul, take Anna. I’ll dissect this whore myself,” Steven growled, throwing open his fingers to reveal his claws.
“Come on then, freak,” she growled, and awaited his attack, no hint of recollection in her eyes, testifying as to how mundane his torture had been.
The harm that had lingered in his nightmares for years was nothing more than a daily chore for her, and this more than anything enraged his scarred mind.
“You’re dead, mundane bitch,” he hissed.
The roof of the lift exploded downward into shards of metal as a flickering shadow dropped into a crouch. The destructive entry tore open power cables, the exposed areas throwing sparks in all directions to reveal the wavering outline of a humanoid form.
The shimmering hint of a body lifted up and Kirsten’s head left the cover of her chameleonic arms, exposing her impassive stare.
“Actually, I believe it is you who are to join the recently deceased, freak!” smiled the woman, and she straightened proudly into a defiant and arrogant stance.
“Slave! Kill these trespassers!”
Kirsten’s presence in the domain of the Mistress restored her submission in full and with a silent charge she leapt out of the lift and flowed like a silken machine, her actions timed and graceful and made with but one purpose. In their previous encounter the mutant band had surprise on their side and the added bonus that she had been wounded and her owner was far from her. Now the field of battle was set in her most precious sanctum, the world that she had almost killed Maria to keep to herself and the Mistress and which the mutants had violated. Also, the battlefield now had a fully restored
Kirsten upon it, one fighting for the life of her beloved Mistress as she watched her slave in person. One glance to the rubber-clad dominatrix and Kirsten’s rancor erupted, bringing a maenad fury to her body.
Flipping into the air as though gravity were something she could ignore on a whim, her lancing kick caught Paul in the chest, snapping a rib and bouncing him upon the wall, his grip upon Anna falling away and letting the wounded mutant fall back to the ground.
Before she landed, a pirouette whirl sent a flash of talons out through the air and red lines were etched across his throat. The resulting spray that poured forth only touched air as Kirsten launched on, leaving the giant mutant to stagger and claw insanely at the gashes, his life flowing through his quivering fingers and down his chest. A moment later he dropped to his knees and keeled over, a pool of his life widening around him.
Kirsten bolted forward to defend her owner, ignoring Steven to assail the mutant nearest to her Mistress. The feral mutant tried to stop her and slashed outward as she sought to bypass him, his claws whistling through empty air as she vaulted over him and into a brief roll before continuing her dash.
Gary turned from the felled girl and saw the calm face of Kirsten whirl past Steven and close in. Before he could react, a pillar of suffering rode up through his torso, her taloned fingers bunching and ripping into his belly, riding up through his viscera and piercing his heart, the mortal jab lifting from his feet, impaling the thin mutant upon her arm.
Hanging on her forearm, his scream manifested as a crimson geyser that rained down to fleck Kirsten’s form, the flood from his opened gut rolling down her arm in prolific torrents and trickling down her body. The pierced frame stiffened and fell limp before being cast off with a flick, the eviscerated carcass slapping to the wall and settling like a leaden weight beside the dazed form of Maria.
Spinning on his heel, Steven whirled to face the attacker as she stood rigid and fixated on her mission, her expertly mimicking hide stained with a glistening coat of gore, the incarnadine layer revealing her in full by staining her skin with the life of his friends and comrades.
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