Program Erin

by Alex Fall

  "They also happen to not be humans, which we happen to be!"

  "Captain, should we consult the De'mus board first?" Lori asked.

  "Absolutely not! They don't need to be involved." Maybe I should have said that softer. "We can split up the party, have Lori and Vick covering this side. I'll have Reggie and Wyatt come with me to the other side."

  "What?! No way I'm trusting that thing," Wyatt objected.

  "You're a tech op. I need you on the other side to do your job. It's not a question." I paused to drive the point in. "It's an order...Now everyone, get your gear. We're going in fully armed, no chances."

  My crew was a good one. They complied, though begrudgingly. Not many would follow orders like that without the threat of injury hovering over them. Soon Reggie, Wyatt and I found ourselves armed to the teeth while Vick and Lori set up base camp on this side of the gate. I personally had two pistols at my sides, two SMGs on my upper back, and a heavy shotgun on my lower back stored and ready on me, not to mention heavier armor and a few assorted grenades and a large pack of medical supplies for me. I couldn't even keep up with what Reggie and Wyatt had.

  Lori had been messing with a control console this whole time, but learned enough to reload the warp on my signal. The blue energy brightened and the yellow energy pooled together in the middle of the first ring. When enough yellow energy collected, it all imploded to a small sphere, then burst with a deafening boom as if it were exploding and headed to consume the whole building. It paused a couple meters out then all swirled back to the loops with a gentle but mostly flat funnel shape on the first loop. The boom lightened slightly in intensity and sustained, trembling the ground as it occasionally pulsed. At first, dust and trash were forced away from the gate, but now it was slowly being sucked into it. Even my hair was being tugged at by the soft breeze being generated.

  "Follow me closely!" I shouted into the comm.

  "What?" Reggie replied. I had to rely on hand signals to get my point across. Wyatt wanted to object to the idea once more, so I sent a series of hand signals that included a fist and finger pointing at him. He grimaced to hide his anxiety, but he was coming through whether he liked it or not.

  I approached the gate slowly. As I got closer, the pull was stronger. I reached my hand out and touched the pool of energy. The part of my hand that was in contact tingled like my hand fell asleep, and the part of my hand that wasn't in the energy began to cramp. I gritted my teeth and jumped in.

  Intense yellow light flashed for a moment, but darkness followed. My whole body felt as if I were in slow motion. It took several seconds to reach the peak of my slight jump, then I hovered before slowly descending back down. The whole time I felt overcome by dizziness, numbness, and an inability to think straight. My body throbbed, and all was quiet. The air felt electrified, and the longer I was in here, the more a migraine grew. Right as my leading foot was about to touch the ground, the yellow light flashed again and everything returned to normal. I landed, stumbled forward and dropped to my knees, dazed by my first warp gate experience.

  I was outside now. In an alleyway? This wasn't like any alley I had seen, as it wasn't connected to any street. The area seemed as if it was a bunch of low buildings with a maze of alleyways for you to navigate. The gate on this side was set up in a dead end alley, though the surroundings suggested that this alley was meant to accommodate a warp gate. The cables were neatly organized, and the machinery and operating consoles were all integrated into the walls. Before I entered, it was bright and sunny outside, very few clouds. Now it was later in the day, but with thick cumulus clouds and the sun peeking through only here and there.

  Seconds later, Wyatt stumbled out of the gate, followed by Reggie, who was so dizzy that he tripped on his way out. I helped him up while assessing the situation.

  "Status report, anything missing at all?"

  Reggie rubbed his head and began feeling for all his equipment, while Wyatt began checking vitals. "Equipment is in check captain," Reggie said. "I can't promise it all works though."

  "We'll have to wait and see," Wyatt commented. "As far as our human side, I think we're ok....or at least, I am anyway."

  "I'm fine, don't you worry about me," I replied with a distant look on me. "Wyatt, any idea where we are?"

  He glanced down at a small gadget clipped to his belt for a second. "No fixed location. It doesn't it say how far we are from our original location." He paused to check his earpiece. "Comms are down too. How far away do these particular ones have to be from each other before they lose connection?"

  "Far...very far," Reggie answered gravely.

  We sat in silence for a moment to contemplate what all was happening. When I let my gaze go to the ground however, I spotted a slight blood trail from the leftover that I tagged. "Time to get what we came here for. Everyone, upload Wyatt's tracer that he planted to your tracker. Wyatt, mark this location for when we come back."

  I led the party as we tracked our target. Hopefully all of them were still together. I was mostly after the leftover that activated the machine to begin with. A good fifteen minutes or so yielded nothing, except that the creature took to the roof. As we clamored onto the flat building tops, I heard something.

  "Stop! Both of you, no moving..."

  "What do--"

  "Sh!....." We all froze as my ears struggled to hear that noise again.

  There.

  I faced the direction I heard it from. It was like a slight scratching noise, probably from the creature dragging its foot.

  "Reggie, Wyatt, go covert and follow closely. We finally got somewhere." I crouched, pulled out my shotgun and quickened my pace, focusing on being as noiseless as possible. We got quite close before the sound stopped. I held my hand up and the other two froze again. We were on the middle of the rooftop, but it sounded as if the creature was just beyond the roof to our right, prowling in the alley. It too fell silent, no doubt because it heard one of my crew. I held my breath to make sure no noise emanated from me.

  A slight breeze maneuvered through the dead city. Somewhere a cable kept tapping against the flagpole it belonged to, and something far away creaked in the wind. I might have even heard a rat squeak.

  I heard gravel shift very near us, so I shouted, "Heads up!"

  Wyatt, Reggie, and I all jumped away from each other and the monster landed in the middle of us all. It had four legs that served as a level base for its body, which was tall and slender, but it stayed hunched over, with two long arms, half the length of them being long claws much like blades. Its head had flared out chitin plates and gobs of teeth. A metal plate had been tied to the front and back of its chest to serve as crude armor. This one seemed to have a form of intelligence like others I had run into that carried weapons and armor. This one might be an anomaly. However, this isn't the one that activated the warp gate.

  I raised my gun and blasted it straight in the head, but most of the shot glanced off the plates. It turned its body and charged in one fast movement, hissing loudly as it moved. I saw as it came that the plate I hit was cracked and blood seeped out. Before its claws eviscerated me, a couple of white lights lit up on Wyatt's gauntlets, and a force field blocked each arm from hitting me.

  The creature did have a higher level of intelligence than normal, because it turned and lashed at Wyatt upon seeing the force fields. Most leftovers don't recognize the source of a force field like that. He lowered and reformed the fields, appropriately blocking the hits. Reggie opened fire with an auto rifle, forcing the monster to go on defensive. I stood and took aim, waiting for a clean shot.

  A crunching noise behind me told me to move now, but despite my reaction, a big three fingered hand grabbed my leg and threw me across the alley at a building. As I was going over the alley, I swung my shotgun up and landed a shell into the second monsters left shoulder.

  "Erin!" I smacked an angled force field before hitting the brick wall, and subsequently the floor. Wyatt somehow found the reaction time to break my tra
jectory with a barrier. My head throbbed and my body ached from the blow.

  "Reggie, assist the captain. I've got this one," Wyatt said. I hope he is not underestimating these things.

  I heard the heavy steps of the second leftover approaching. I have to get up. I have to move. It took focus to roll over onto my hands and knees.

  A distinct thump sounded right before something exploded on the back of the leftover in front of me. Bits of gravel and fiery embers shot out and stung my skin where it was exposed, so I jerked my legs and effectively rolled behind an electrical box for cover. Two more thump explosion combos followed, then the creature landed hard on its chest and let out its dying breath. I peeked over my cover to see Reggie in the alley, holding a grenade launcher and making sure his target was down. Good Reggie...

  I pulled myself up to my feet, and my body fell back under my command again. I trotted and snatched my shotgun before running at the opposing wall and jumping off it to gain enough height to grab a ladder. When I came in view of the roof fight, I saw Wyatt charging the leftover. It slammed both claws down on him, but glanced off a spherical barrier that was in the way. At the same moment, he had slid underneath its legs and unsheathed a knife coated in some kind of glowing liquid. As he passed under its legs, he sliced one leg open like warm butter, and pulled himself onto the creature's back before it fell and tried to crush him. One slash led to the armor falling off, and the next plunged to the hilt. The monster screeched, reeled up and threw itself down while writhing. Wyatt fell off and slid away, pulled a pistol, and between that and my shotgun, it was dead in a few seconds.

  Wyatt stood and wiped a tad of blood from his nose. "Ugh, my head. I got cornered for a second and my shield took a beating."

  "That's captain to you," I said.

  He looked at me with a puzzled look before saying, "What?"

  "Earlier you called out 'Erin.' That's captain to you." I heard Reggie start chuckling in the alley.

  "Really? That's what you're worried about right now?" He gawked while retrieving his knife.

  I smirked. "I'll forgive you this time, but don't..." A new noise caught my attention and I turned my head to better hear it.

  "Captain?" Reggie inquired while getting ready with his launcher.

  "Wyatt, upload the gate coordinates to all of us," I commanded. He quickly worked to follow orders with a concerned look on his face.

  Subtle clicking noises... Something about it didn't sound organic. A few seconds of silence opened up to a growing whistle noise, not much unlike a.....wait.

  "Cover!" I shouted as I shoved Wyatt away from me. I dashed to the edge of the rooftop, but when the rocket hit, a piece of the roof still managed to fly off and jar my body forward. Though I landed on my feet, my momentum spun me around and slammed me on my back hard enough that my helmet halfway slipped off.

  "Contact!" Reggie radioed in.

  "Human contact! I repeat, these are people firing at us!" Wyatt said over the comm in a distressed voice. Well, at least I know the rocket didn't get Wyatt. But...people? What are they, scavengers? Derelicts? What are they doing outside of the Decapolis? What are they doing here?

  Bullets started ripping through the area, and Reggie and Wyatt took cover to return fire. I scrambled to my feet, trying to get my helmet back on. One bullet knocked the helmet out of my hands and onto the ground, and another stopped on my armor that covered my side, sending an intense stinging pain up my body. I dashed behind a small part of the brick building that stuck out to switch out weapons. This is a bad situation all around. Botches! How did this happen?

  Reggie's grenades provided enough fire and smoke cover for me to run onto the electrical box then the roof without getting shot again.

  "I count four units, maybe five. I can't tell," Wyatt said.

  "I just neutralized one with a taser, there should be less," Reggie said. "I'm trying not to kill them. We need to talk to them."

  There was so much noise, but it didn't line up. My two men were firing and I heard three other guns, but if there are two more aggressors, what were they doing?

  Reggie let out a yelp, then an explosion nearby knocked him to the ground. He wasn't moving much. Come on, get up!

  I dropped from the roof with both SMGs ready. As I fell, I saw a clearer scene. There were two men on this side of the alley, one holding both a rocket launcher and an automatic rifle. That one was dashing to my side of the alley, firing the rifle into the smoke screen as cover fire. Another, a woman stood behind with arms crossed, no apparent weapons, just simply some strange armor tech on her body and legs and a sleeveless jumpsuit. Both were wearing black tactical suits, with a strange red bracelet that served as some kind of identifying badge. What are they doing with so much firepower? Why are they attacking without reason?

  "Holy mess, they brought backup. At least fifteen more men!" Wyatt alerted.

  I opened fire with both guns at the man, who dropped very quickly. The girl stepped back in surprise and glanced around for cover. I landed, rolled back to my feet, and fired both guns in a sweeping motion as I dashed into the building between me and Wyatt. The girl barely managed to find cover before getting shot.

  "Captain? Reggie? Where are you guys?!" I barked into the comm.

  Though it was dark in the building, I could see just fine. Ahead of me through the window, I saw a man in a sleek black tactical suit holding a hand to his temple and aiming with a one handed shotgun. I charged him also, weapons blazing. He raised a hand up to do something but fractions of a second later, he also dropped. I busted through the remains of the window and ran to Wyatt. I found myself looking down his barrel while he wore a look of surprise. It irked me that I had to shoot unknown people outside the Decapolis, but they attacked me first, and the situation is tense.

  "Erin?" Wyatt asked in surprise. "You took out all fifteen of them?"

  "Fifteen? What are you talking about? I only shot one man on your side."

  We traded confused looks before more bullets zipped past. Wyatt threw a shield up while I told him the plan.

  "Reggie's down. Get him out of here and back to the warp. I'll hold them here. You have to get him medical attention!"

  "Wait, you're not coming? You're the medic!"

  "Vick has medical knowledge also. Get him and go!"

  "No way I'm leaving you here alone!"

  "Wyatt that's an order!" I said suppressing my irritation. "You can wait for me, but if I don't show up in fifteen minutes from now or if you're being followed, go through and shut down the warp!"

  "No, I can't!"

  "You have to! It's my job to protect my crew!" He was about to say something again, but a loud clang on the forcefield caused him to growl and drop to one knee. I signaled that he had to drop the shield, then get up and run to Reggie. I turned and rained SMG fire in the direction of the clang, only to glimpse my target dash inside the building. I returned my weapons and pulled the shotgun back out. I blasted at a man standing far back, but he had incredible reaction time and was able to dodge. I could hear them talking on comms of their own. Why are we even fighting again?

  We spent several moments stalking and occasionally trading shots. Before Wyatt and Reggie left the area, Wyatt tossed me something.

  "Ice unit, in case it gets bad. Keep your tracker on so we can find you also."

  I stuck the gauntlet in a pack on my belt. "Thanks. Breaking comm link, over and out."

  Me and the three antagonists stalked for a moment before I started to talk. I lined up near an alcove where my voice would be hard to pinpoint.

  "I know that you are human, not monsters like the ones we were just fighting. Why are we fighting?" I heard one of them whisper that I might be getting low on ammo. Another whispered in a foreign language.

  "Don't think you can get out of this," a strong male voice replied.

  "Out of what exactly? You opened fire on me and mine."

  "You're just stalling. Come on out so we can end this," replied the female.

>   "If I do, what will you do for me?" I began to get the feeling that they thought I was someone else.

  "Are you surrendering?" The male asked.

  "Suppose I am. Then what?"

  "Then we take you back to see Big Man. However, I'm pretty sure you don't want that to happen," replied the female.

  "If I come out, I don't think it'll end the way you want it to," I warned.

  The male voice whispered something about 'over there.' A crunch of glass suggested he was nearing my position. I turned the corner and blasted at him. He managed to duck behind a brick wall where trash cans were kept. I charged him, blasting to keep him behind the wall. He shot a few shots as cover fire, one of which hit me in the right shoulder. The bullet stopped on my armor but the pain was like irritation in raw form. He leaned out to fire again, but I kicked his gun out of his hands, dodged a second hit and did a spin kick that landed on his back. He hit the ground hard and rolled out of the way of another oncoming stomp. He pulled out a staff, but before he could swing, I open palmed him in the face, then the chest, and landed a solid kick in the gut as he stumbled away.

  He hit the wall behind him and I raised my gun to finish. A very articulated chain-like whip snatched my gun out of my hands, causing the shot to miss. I knocked the man aside with a roundhouse kick, then faced the female with the tech armor who was now holding some kind of metal whip. I ducked one blow, but the next wrapped around my arm. I grabbed it with both hands to jerk her off of her feet.

  Electrical bolts crackled down her arm and into the whip, effectively electrocuting me. An involuntary yelp escaped me and my body locked up. Did that electricity come from the suit? Stinging pain was all over and all I could was yell. No...that wasn't ALL I could do.

  I reached within myself and found that sickening disease that has hurt and helped me so often. I awakened it and felt its sweet, warm power grow quickly inside me. It channeled its way down one arm and clawed it's way out. My hand lit up instantly and the chain melted where I held it, leaving fresh burns on my hand that hurt bad. But now the electricity stopped, leaving me trembling.