Something impacted his back, tearing through the grey jumpsuit and piercing his flesh. It ripped through his torso in a clean motion: he turned to look down the concrete tunnel, to a flak-jacketed guard holding a bulky pistol up to him. They muttered something then fired again, the bullet smashing into Eamon's pectoral: he ran towards them, as the flesh knitted itself shut around the wound. They followed his motion then turned to run: in a clean movement he scrambled, leaping and pushing himself off the wall in a quick expulsion of momentum, rolling on the ground and sweeping the guard's legs out from under them. They fell to the ground, dropping the weapon: Eamon picked it up. It was metal, a pistol of some variety (perhaps developed by Burya? It looked unfamiliar), bulky and cubic in shape. Bullets were loaded into the handle, it seemed, and the hammer seemed broad and sharp. The guard stayed very still, looking up to Eamon. He thought it best to leave them, though wasn't sure why.
The vault itself was a tangle of concrete corridors cut out from the hollow cavern that Burya Site-1 sat atop. There were different sections, each looking identical yet with different inhabitants, marked only by the numbers painted onto the wall. He was in 'Sector-3' currently ('Sector' being spelled in Russian), and he had passed several other open cells in this region: all were empty. During the walk over to this tunnel, he been dragged through Sector-2 and Sector-1: all of those cells were sealed. It seemed that the prisoners here were being filled up, from Sector-1 to Sector-2, him being the first in Sector-3. He had no doubt that Aeries, being among the first of Emmie and Devyat's prisoners, would be in the first tunnel. The sectors were separated by open spaces of cavern, catwalks of metal linking the tunnels together. Beneath them ran the train tracks, and the train. Eamon pondered the train. He could estimate, as he ran back through the tunnel and towards the vault door of sector-3, the direction in which the tracks were heading. He'd need another look, though: if he thought correctly, then it may be easier to leave than he first imagined. Towards the vault door was one large stretch of tunnel: he ran down it. The guard he had felled was the one who operated the bulkhead, and it was sealed currently. He would have to improvise, as the guard stood sluggishly to his feet and the metal door of the prison cell swung open: Devyat came bounding down the hall, leaning and beastlike. Emmie stood in the doorway, observing a distance, scorn-faced. The guard, dazed, stood: Devyat pushed him aside, slamming the man into the tunnel wall. He leapt, fist balled, and bore down towards Eamon. Eamon, again, sidestepped: the punch smashed into the door. The metal dented with a great crashing sound, and Devyat pulled his hand from the crater. The blow jostled the door, shattering internal components: the force of the strike had knocked it slightly ajar. Eamon landed a strike with his knee into Devyat's side, hitting with force enough such that he didn't shatter the joint, but enough to set Devyat back into the concrete. He was still smiling, still bearing pearl-white teeth in a broad grin. He cracked against the concrete: Eamon surged forward, attempted a punch at the throat, yet the man ducked.
Eamon's fist smashed a crater into the concrete. Cracks spider-webbed about it, spreading up the side of the tunnel wall and into the ceiling. The guard, wide-eyed, swore something indistinct. Devyat came up behind Eamon, wrapping arms around his neck and torso, leaping up and slamming back into the concrete. They lay on the floor, the taller man holding Eamon tight with crushing strength. He squirmed. In one hand remained the gun, holding it by the barrel in a useless manner.
"I gotta say," Devyat said, "You really had me going for a moment there... I think there's something a bit more to you, isn't there?" He looked up to the cracked concrete, and to the snapped metal around Eamon's wrists. "Yeah," he said in his coarse whisper, "I bet there is." Eamon fell slack for a moment, let Devyat tighten his grip. His arms were pinned across his stomach, legs free to kick. Emmie limped forward.
Bad position. Eamon thought. It was a scattered thought, but remained in his mind. He pushed his arms up, squirmed. Raised Devyat's grip a bit, up towards his chest. Close enough. He craned his neck down, raised his shoulders, and bit Devyat as hard as he could. Teeth sank into flesh, steel-like muscle pierced by the crooked fangs that sat in Eamon's maw. Devyat let out a squealing, keening sound that made him deeply uncomfortable, blood trickling down his forearm, slickening his grip. Eamon broke the hold, and flexed to his feet as Devyat crawled, raising to his hands and knees and clutching his torn arm. Eamon spun, gun still held, and smashed the tool into Devyat's neck. He hurled it with such force that the metal tore through his neck and down into his shoulder, tearing muscle and shattering bone as the metal of the weapon exploded into fragments. Devyat's noise grew louder.
Down the hall, Emmie limped, stopped in her tracks by the conflict: around Devyat, blood puddled onto the concrete floor. The guard stood in silent, disbelieving shock: shock at Eamon, who had taken several bullets yet remained unharmed, his wounds stitched back together before his eyes. Shock at the concrete, cracked by a punch and the metal dented by Devyat. Eamon was pushing at the door and let out a grunt. It was heavy but moveable, opened a smidgen by his force. Open enough to squeeze through.
Devyat let out a contented sigh and got to his feet. Eamon looked to him: the man lifted a great hand and flicked the gun's debris from his shoulder blade. Looking to the horrific wound he had inflicted, Eamon felt a tingling sense of intrigue. I suppose I'm not terribly surprised. He thought in scrambled tones, recounting his metallic flesh and immense strength.
Now it gets exciting.
Devyat's wounds were stitching themselves together, the flesh regrowing in strands that wove together, bone differentiated from muscle, the fractures and fragments knitting together as the exposed muscle, raw and slick, rippled atop it. There was a silvery tint to it all, as if it were made of metal: the same silver tint Eamon had seen in his hand when he broke it after hitting the man.
Eamon was made of the Protein, inhuman. Devyat was not. Devyat was an old man rendered young and strong and unkillable through it. A soldier influenced by it, such that the Protein – like it could in Eamon or Floss or Catnap – could reconstruct anatomy and heal grievous wounds, exert great strength and retain health. A super-soldier, of a sort. One on the leash of Emmie, who could enact anything she wanted with ruthless efficiency. Until, perhaps, now. Eamon slipped through the vault door, and pushed it shut behind him. It was a slow movement: Devyat pushed against it, tried to keep it open. Eamon dug his feet into the metal catwalk, a train screaming underneath as the cavern air hit him, grunting in exertion, as he pushed himself to the brink and slammed the door upon Devyat. Another crash of metal, another punch on the other side: the door dented inward.
*
Scalar had no good explanation for the four soldiers now situated in the Cranefly helicopter, soaring over the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska. Supposedly, their mission involved retrieving a kidnapped agent from a highly secretive Russian compound constructed by the criminal organisation that the previous expedition was aimed towards. Scalar had actually asked if Fiona, A-18, wanted to go. She thought for a moment, in cold and silent seconds, and agreed to. See her captors though she might, her will was not dissuaded. She sat opposite A-65 now, lightning-bolt mask and blue hair all. She was with her Veritas mentor, Caprica. A-65 was with his: Gemini. Caprica had been fitted with a metal structure around her leg, the one that seemed wounded and that she used a cane for: it wrapped around her thigh and calf like a brace, some joints actuated with hydraulics and others with simple revolving swivels. She was otherwise entombed in a lightweight metal armour that suffocated her silhouette, compressing her body into uniformity with metal plates set atop the torso, limbs and legs. She had her grey-brown hair tied behind her head, face exposed by the black balaclava she wore. It was similar to the balaclava A-65 wore, the one beneath his mask. Caprica had her own helmet, one that slinked down her jaw and chin and back up to her brow, thin and sleek with its visor retracted. She looked out the window, down to the seawater beneath them, deep in thought. It looked as if she was thinking something: she looked to the ocean, then to the Alaskan coastline, cliff-spattered. She frowned momentarily. There were trees, tundra and snow upon that white-speckled cliffside, blurred into indistinctness with distance. She looked to the ocean, then towards the direction they were going: the cliffside of Siberia, the coastline where Burya Site-1 sat. She seemed in thought, as if she had something to say but no-one to say it to. Gemini was not quite as armoured as Caprica, only wearing light armaments beneath her navy blue jacket. She had a number of weapons, of course, but most of them were hidden: she rubbed her gauntleted hands, and stuck them in her pockets.
"How are you feeling?" She asked A-65, her voice tense but with care. The mission was worrisome, after all.
"Alright." A-65 said. He looked down to the ground, then to his own armaments: the heat in his chest kept him warm in the vehicle, which flooded through his limbs and into his hands. He had been warned, now that the effects of his implant had settled in, not to be over-confident in their application: he had been trained, learned to channel the heat into specific body parts which glowed ret-hot with ember. His weapons were more robust this time, as were Gemini's. Carbines, automatic, with erratic ammunition that seemed impossible when described to him. Stored as tiny pellets within the guns themselves, compacted into tight rows of lightweight matter, the unfolded into bullets as the weapon fired. The gun could not be reloaded easily, yes, but what was the point of such a feature, when the ammunition itself seemed functionally infinite? The weapon was made of a light material, something proprietary to Continuity Corporations, and folded itself into a small letter hidden in clothing, concealed alongside a communications interceptor that could feed data directly into the ELO-17 implant in A-65's brain. Fiona bore a shotgun-like weapon alongside her unfolding gun: Caprica had a piercing laser weapon. In terms of armour there was not quite as much as Caprica, but there was enough: a dark flak vest, worn atop his under suit. He felt secure. It was A18, A-65 thought, who needed questioning. She had been silent for the whole ride, in quiet contemplation. Whether it was contemplation of the mission – of the place they would go and people they would see – or of her past, and where she had been, A-65 could not tell. Perhaps it was a mixture of both. The trauma seemed to drag itself through Fiona: she sat in silence and pondered, tracing a hand over the patches in her suit where the folded weapon lay. Her shooting had been good, in training, her orientation quick. Quicker than A-65's had been. Memories or instinct were returning to her, spurred into motion through the catalysts of rage and injustice. With a hand that fidgeted, and a leg that twitched, Fiona Pullip sat.
Scalar seemed adamant at the exclusion of the Epsilon women on this mission, though a single concession was made: Rayleigh was piloting the Cranefly. She was not the strongest of pilots: that was the speciality of Roe and Eve. No, Rayleigh was the demolitions expert. There was a disappointment, then, that this mission was not of the explosive nature: unstable architecture, confined spaces. This was no place for the Chain Launcher, with its rapid propagation of flame and blast. She carried heavier weapons than the others, as did Caprica, but her leaving that trusty weapon at home seemed to bother her a bit. Not that it made her feel unsecure or anxious; she just liked having it with her, and seemed to hold a special and fierce hatred for the folks they were approaching. Hours had passed, though not many, and the approaching cliff-face grew. It was grey and craggy, devoid of any flora that would be visible from the height of the Cranefly (no shrubs or trees) and seemed to be overcast, the crags and cracks puddled with rainwater that flowed in whipping waves. They encircled the compound. It was a wedge of concrete situated atop a flat, angled hillside. The grass cultivated on it seemed grey. The building itself had inward segments cut from it, pillars jutting out across the façade. Pale figures ran about it, looking up to the hovering helicopter as they circled by. They passed a broad arc around the exterior of the compound, lowering in elevation slowly as they approached the crag. They discussed plans, and had discussed the plan of action: they would enter, retrieve the kidnapped person and leave again. Rayleigh would hover over the Bering Strait and return to pick them up again upon extraction. To A-65 the plan rang flimsy, though Rayleigh, Gemini and Caprica seemed confident.
The sky was overcast as they stepped out upon the plateau, dreary. It was darker than it was over Mt. Asgard. The environment felt the same, though: bitter and cold, the difference only that the plateau was outside, that rain pattered into the uneven land. They were approached as soon as they landed, by the soldiers who patrolled the compound. They looked up to the Cranefly, to the insignia on its side, to the soldiers approaching of an origin different to theirs. Armoured and armed, ready for conflict.
"Continuity Corporations." One of the guards said, raising a hand to their ear. "The fuck are you doing here? You're trespassing on Burya property. Private fucking property." They had raised their weapons to the visitors, as the Cranefly whipped air and rainwater around them. Fiona, Carpica and the others stood alert: not necessarily a show of hostility – as much as that could be, battle-ready as they were – but protective and waiting. The folded guns were collapsed into their clothing. Fiona's hands trembled. Nerves of her first combat mission seemed to be mixing with the broiling mess of emotions that bubbled in her mind.
"Call your administrator." Gemini said, a tone of authority projected in her voice. "Word was sent of us, from Continuity Ambassador Scalar, and we expect to be received." Mention of Scalar seemed to shift the guards; solid as they might seem to be, that was a name they had heard before. The guard talking into his earpiece seemed especially skittish. He looked to Veritas, then back to the concrete bunker up the hill behind them.
"Detain them." He said, jogging backwards towards the structure – "There's been an incident." He turned and ran, fast as he could with the bulky equipment he bore, as spotlights illuminated the plateau. They shone in the overcast darkness, shining patches of white onto the sullied grass that surrounded the facility. Two guards approached the Veritas four, weapons raised: a third arced over them towards the Cranefly, shouting indistinctly in the wind and downpour.
In Caprica's mind, the communications interceptor activated. A guard, muffled by static, spoke in quick tones of fright, of a pink-haired prisoner escaping, tearing through the lower levels of the site. She subvocalized, broadcasted to the team:
"Target deep in facility. Already escaped, raising hell. Guards alarmed." Gemini returned the vocalisation: though whispered in A-65's mind, he could pick out her soft voice.
"Commands, team leader?"
"Approach site. Expression of intent. Find or demand. Resource extraction."
The guards approached, shouting in their tones of learned violence. Oblivious to the pale blue square held in agent Gemini's hand, folded and no bigger than a letter. The four Veritas operatives were fanned out: Caprica in the middle, Gemini and Fiona beside her, With A-65 on the edge to her left beside Gemini. The Cranefly bellowed and raised into the air, spitting rain down upon the group and drawing the attention – just for a moment – of the Burya guards. Gemini reacted explosively. She darted forward, pushed off the craggy stone with a heel, one arm holding the letter (now unfolding with a flick of her wrist) and the other an outreached palm. That palm of her metal gauntlet made contact with the guard's flak-jacketed torso, and an activation occurred. A-65 had not necessarily seen Cygnet-09 in use before: Gemini had mentioned it briefly, the humidity-controlling implant that diffused water into her hands. The gauntlets covered her in that regard, granting her hands protection from the gangrenous effects of the constant exposure to moisture. As she tapped the guard, concealed vents on the side of the gauntlet whirred open: mist, high-pressured, jetted out into the guard, wisping and white and slicing at the clothing they wore.
Fiona had unfolded her weapon and had it trained on a guard: as they shouted she released fire, the gun eerily silent as the guard convulsed, let his weapon fire into the air, and fell backwards: Caprica had similarly shot down the soldier closest to the now-flying cranefly, though A-65 would not have known had he not swivelled to look at the team leader.
The guard Gemini had tapped spluttered, whitish mist coiling around him. Her gun had unfolded: she pulled her hands back, palm still facing forward, and the mist reeled back, slicing anew across the guard as they yelled in a fog-muffled cry. They looked as if paralyzed, Gemini's face in concentration. The density of the mist held them still, arms against their sides. She slashed with her hand: the mist sliced a sharp gouge across the man's neck, and he fell to the ground. Then in a smooth motion she waved her hand; the mist evaporated into the air
Ahead of them sat the facility, the concrete bulk upon the horizon: distantly, they heard a popping noise, gunfire stifled by wind and the monotonous thrum of rainfall. The Cranefly, a black shape upon the grey sky, circled ahead. A-65 shot forwards, running with the other three towards the bunker. Spotlights trailed in the darkness, piercing the gloaming in search. They looked for Veritas, looked for the escapee, eyes grazing slowly over the horizon. Whatever the time of day was, it was dark: colours indistinct by the grey cover above, light and dark smudged into monotony. A-65 wasn't even sure if it was day or night, afternoon or morning, now the time zone had changed from Canada to here. Not that it mattered, he thought, focused on the slope ahead and the concrete mass above it. A small shape detached from the Cranefly as it swooped over the building, an undercarriage in its shape disengaged: the mass fell into the flat-topped ceiling, and crackled in bright light. The spotlights dimmed. A-65 couldn't tell what had happened: whether Rayleigh had dropped a bomb, some kind of electronic-damaging pulse or some other, unknown vestige of Continuity Corporations technology: but the lights had stopped, and their advance remained unimpeded.
"Disperse." Caprica said, "Axis, with me. A-65: remain with Gemini."
A-18 darted, her choppy blue hair flailing in the wind as she ran to Caprica's side. Gemini came up beside A-65, both hands holding the unfolded weapon that was now pressed against her torso. The ground erupted before them. A fragment of stone shot up, dust kicked into the air: a pale figure sat atop the slope, before the building, crouched and staring into a weapon. Another shot, and the ground sparked. Closer to Gemini's feet this time. A-65 looked around: there was scant cover in the flatland, trucks atop the slope, then the building behind them. Nothing much, here. Fiona split from Caprica's side, standing at an angle to her as the armoured woman got to a knee: she raised her own weapon, a bulkier rifle of black metal, took aim and fired. A lance of white light grazed through the air, piercing the prone soldier in a clean and cutting blast. They fell limp instantly: Fiona covered Caprica, firing to the slope beyond A-65's sight. He and Gemini continued, reaching the grass-strewn ledge. Itself the slope was steep: they had to rise up its side on their hands and knees, white light shining above them as the piercing whine of Caprica's rifle fired at approaching danger. Sometimes they heard grunts as the laser shone past, heard bodies and gear drop. Other times, between the laser-fire, they heard nothing from weapons, but the screams as Axis' silent unfolded gun released an engorgement of bullets. The metal of vans clanged and clattered, pierced by the fire: A-65 dug his gloved hands into the sodden soil, and pulled himself up. Upon the slope sat the outcome of their carnage: dead and dying bodies, white jackets pierced or burned, slashed through by the laser of Caprica's weapon. Rain fell atop the ground. Splashes hit the puddles of crimson offal and A-65 felt a churning unrest in his gut. Little time as their was to appreciate disgust of the carnage at hand, he fell to a knee, Gemini beside him, their unfolded guns raised towards the building, covering for Axis and Caprica as they ascended the slope. Waiting for gunfire, waiting for adversary. Yet none remained.
*
Eamon flung himself up, leaping with stark agility towards the catwalk above him. He was in the cavernous space between sector-3 and sector-2; a train roared beneath, slowing to a stop in the wide, dark tunnel between the cavern areas. There was a station in sector-2, a thin platform that the trains stopped at to disgorge their cargo pods and get re-loaded with new material. The trains were longer than the platform, though: some carriages backed up into the tunnel he was now inhabiting. The metal silhouettes sat there horribly, shining in the flourescence above: metal people, gangly and thin, ever limb like a razor's edge. Their heads swooped back, metal face plates looknig up. Tubes trailed from their neck, connecting them to machinery in the middle of the carriage, their bodies otherwise clamped to the gantry. Eamon swung his body around and clambered. He rolled on top ot the catwalk, looked ahead, tensed his body and ran. There were other weapon-shots beneath him, more guards firing at him as he ran: such noise could be safely ignored, as some bullets clattered metal and stone, and others tore through his body. They, when they hit, ripped through cleanly in a small incision that pierced his thin form completely. His body stitched itself back together, the Protein-rich tissue fluctuating in strands of silvery muscle. Muscle knitted atop bone, bone replaced by woven metallic flesh: the Protein, in its genetic alteration of flesh to organic metal, allowed for such durability and purity of healing. He healed uniformly, as he was before the wound: the Protein purified the genome, regulated telomeres. No regeneration would degrade into tumour. His body was, in effect, preserved. Youth would be retained, just as Devyat remained youthful even with his old chronological age. The Protein influenced the body, changed the body at the molecular and genetic level. Changed the building blocks of cells into organic metal, increased density and strength, allowed for regeneration and preservation – at a price. At the edge of the catwalk, ahead where Eamon was running, was an open tunnel. At the level below him was the tunnel to the sector-2 cells: sector-1 was his goal. Ahead the tunnel widened into a largely cube shaped space, fluorescently lit as the cavern and tunnel were, housing metal boxes and wooden storage crates separated by floor-to-ceiling sets of shelves. He could hear shouting within, saw figures flicker past, and felt more impacts in his chest as bullets tore through him. Undissuaded by the impacts, he heard the guards shout in exclamation, duck back into the shelves. Behind him, down the catwalk towards sector-3, a metal crash resounded. Cacophonous noise, of a vault door being smashed from its hinges. Devyat growled.
Eamon ducked into the shelving, distant outcries echoing in the cold hollowness of the room. More shots, wooden splinters from the boxes pierced and shredded by weapon-fire: automatic weapon-fire, loud and contast. Rattling. Eamon felt those impacts trace along his side, tearing muscle and shattering bone: he ducked to the ground, and slid under the shelves. Eamon let out a stifled grunt and looked to his right arm, where the bullets had traced, savaged his anatomy. The difficulty was that these bullets were more damaging than those fired from the pistols: they tore through his body like wet paper all the same, but took more with them in transit, damaging more muscle and bone structures as they did so. That was an issue: temporary, but an issue. Eamon was made of the Protein, constructed from it in the Blood Rains. He could regenerate this injury, just as he was sure a Protein-altered human, such as Devyat, could too. But a snag remained in the meantime: Eamon liked having his muscles and bones, and certainly needed them to move. And run. Devyat was probably approaching, and he was certain that the man had more potential for wounding him than any of these weapons did.
Then he felt a tingling in the back of his mind.
His implant, ELO-17, and the modification within it: the same modification that had allowed him and Wilfryd to track Verity earlier in the year, when she had infiltrated the Alaskan Burya compound, and regained Catnap. Verity was contacting him, now. Only not as Verity. Caprica, leader of the Veritas squadron, spoke in his mind:
"Seems you've caused quite the ruckus." Her voice was quiet in his mind. "I have your position, approximately. Aeries?"
"Not yet." He retorted, subvocalizing. "Close, though – I'm in some kind of warehouse, I believe Aeries is in the cell complex below me, further down the cavern. Heading that way will actually get me closer to the entrance."
Caprica hummed in agreement. Eamon continued: "There's a train line, approximately east bound. We're close to the coastline, aren't we?" "Yah. We passed over the Bering Strait on the way here."
Ecstasy nodded in thought, the gesture unseen by Caprica far above him. He was thinking, though. Earlier in the year, when he and Wilfryd had retrieved Caprica, they had traced the location of a processing facility of Emmie and Devyat. It had been a quiet question at the time, at least to Eamon: how did they get there? He had an idea, now, though he thought it a silly one.
The train linked the two sites together. A tunnel, carved out and impossibly long, dredged underneath the Bering Strait. One terminus was in the guts of Site-1. The other was beneath the processing facility. Caprica had claimed to see women led off into another building at the complex, never seen again. Emmie often followed them. Transportation.
More bullets shot at the shelving, loud footsteps echoing throughout the warehouse. His arm was still stitching itself back together, though that was only one half of his body: with his left arm and legs, he pushed and pulled himself out from underneath the shelf, and then got to his feet. A guard was approaching him: he let out a stream of automatic fire down the alley between shelves. Ecstasy ducked behind the shelf. Wooden boxes erupted into splinters, their contents spilled into the floor. Gun parts. Holsters and barrels, firing chambers and cylinders, all dismantled. Ecstasy reached out and scooped one of the holsters towards him with his foot, kicking it into the shelf. With his left hand he bent over and picked the metal component up. The guard remained. Still shooting, bullets falling everywhere. They paused to advance. Footsteps down the corridor. Another behind them, cover? Ready to protect, should the advance go south. His right arm felt a little better, still a bit weak.
He ducked out from behind the shelf and through the dismantled gun holster with his left hand, pelting it down the corridor with inhuman strength: it slashed into the top of the guard, impacting their flak jacket with a heavy thud. They stumbled back and gasped – the blow would have cracked and caved in the ribs, they vomited some kind of ichor, stuttered and fell. During that motion, they briefly raised the gun to bear: With his hand now free, Eamon snatched it from the grip of the guard, pulling back and ducking behind the next row of shelves before the covering soldier had a clear shot on him. Gunfire exploded; he ran between the shelves, aimed back, and returned fire. This time it was Ecstasy destroying the boxes, clattering metal falling out. They provided good cover, but Ecstasy was fast: he traced the shots between crates, and bodily dropped down the guard. At last, there was quiet.
Footsteps, heavy.
Ecstasy swivelled on his heel: Devyat bore down upon him, and swung a great fist. Ecstasy tried to jump back but the blow caught him in the shoulder, knocking him to the ground and cracking something in the joint: Eamon spluttered, raised the gun, and – sliding back on the smooth concrete floor – unloaded it into Devyat. The bullets peppered his flesh, tearing holes through skin and muscle that knitted itself together, tearing quicker than it could be mended: he growled, teeth still bore in an inhuman grin, and swept a foot over the gun, casting it out from Ecstasy's hands and sending it clattering to the floor.
"Unobservant." The man said, walking closer to Eamon and lifting his booted foot up to man: he raised the sole high and slowly, positining it above the kidnapped man's face: he lingered in the moment, relishing as Eamon prepared himself for the strike. He raised his hands protectively, trying to guard his face from the bone-shattering smash that could very well have put him out of commission. Regenerative though he was, a destroyed brain would make his body completely useless until its tissues fully regenerated.
There was a popping sound; Devyat lurched forward, past Eamon. He scrambled. Ahead, an armoured figure ducked behind a shelf. Blue hair flickered.
"With you." Caprica said in his mind.
*
The Site itself was almost entirely storage, at least at the upper levels that the Veritas squadron entered through. Empty warehouses, shelves upon shelves: most of the guards attempted fire as they tore through the facility, collateral damage peaking as their unfolded weapons shredded wooden boxes and metal support collumns. The more heavily armoured of the two, Caprica and Axis, lead the charge: Caprica with her white laser, Axis with her shotgun. Both were of limited ammunition, not quite as plentiful as the unfold weapons, but immediately greater in terms of sheer destructive potential. Caprica could approximate Ecstasy's position through the tracking implant Site-Aorta had placed in him: through this, she could gauge the general structure of the complex. The ground floor was all industry, warehouses, security checkpoints, barracks for the soldiers. Initially, they passed through a large but empty hangar, then into a warehouse of great scale. They descended an elevator into a second, quieter chamber, into the lower level of storage rooms. That was the level that Ecstasy was at. Underneath that level sat the testing tunnels. That was where Ecstasy had been held. The different segments were separated from one another by wide stretches of cavern: at the lowest edge of that cavern ran the train-tracks, heading out into the Bering Strait, and then towards the mountainside facility in Alaska, where Caprica had infiltrated and met Catnap some months prior.
The elevator brought them down to the lower level of storage warehouses, and this area was largely empty. The guards seemed to have either fled outwards – back towards the area unimpeded by the outbreak, or towards Veritas in an attempt to stop them – or down, towards the commotion. There were split directives, it seemed. Similarly, the invaders were now at a standstill. Gemini, A-65 and Axis were here to retrieve Ecstasy: Ecstasy, unbeknownst to the Squadron, was here to retrieve Aeries. Caprica held both directives, and had a plan for their accomplishment.
Ecstasy, and Caprica too, had a hypothesis for where Aeries was being held. It came in the form of one of Devyat and Emmie's 'LBR' experiments, confidential collaberations that Adelaide had leaked out to them, in bits and pieces from harvested data and unknowingly-recorded conversations. LBR-02 was Sophie Reynalds. Gemini's old friend, kidnapped by Burya due to her association with the Agent. From the outside world, she had vanished. Trafficked into a cycle of torture, one that filled Gemini with a unique kind of rage and longing, that pushed her forward into the investigative position of a Veritas agent. This was the truth, for a while. It had not been long ago that Caprica believed this truth, before the nature of Sophie's vanishing had been uncovered. She had been experimented upon by Emmie, had something lodged in her mind that had something else within it. That 'something else' had been a vague notion of data, but the assumption had been clear enough: the metal in Sophie's mind was a prison, a shell of artificial circuitry and human flesh that trapped a mind bigger than any human conscience within it. Devyat and Emmie had been tasked with storing Aeries. This was the method they had chosen: a cybernetic loaded into a kidnapped woman, imprisoning the mind of the construct within her
Gemini knew Sophie Reynalds. Gemini would help. Fiona would feel sympathy, herself an escaped experiment of Burya. She would help.
A-65 looked to the guards of the site. They were dressed similarly to those that they had clashed with on the previous mission, the white flak jacketed folks. He remained terribly quiet as they walked down the lower levels of warehouses, Gemini whispering, questioning his status.
Urban exploration. Discovery. Trapped women, white jacket. Explosion. Returning to life. Mission in Alaska. White jacket. Mission here, white jacket. I remember everything.
"I'm alright." He subvocalized, his own voice broadcasting mechanical across the open channel. "Do we have a location on the target?"
"On this level or deeper." Caprica said: she and Axis were running ahead. Their footsteps echoes against the silent backdrop. Caprica launched a command, for A-65 and Gemini to split from them and travel deeper into the facility, to check other holding cells in the event he had been recaptured. Ahead lay an open bulkhead door, the cavern and catwalks beyond it. A-65 ran to the doorway, Gemini in tow.
*
The shotgun blast knocked Devyat away from Ecastasy, who grasped across the shelves for more metal blasted from the crate, finding another gun part that he brought up as he scrambled. Devyat growled and spun, the blue-haired assailant hidden behind the shelves. A bolt of white light shot out, puncturing Devyat's chest: he stumbled back again, Ecstasy crawling closer towards the man and swinging with the gun part, slashing him atop his legs and sweeping Devyat off his feet. Another blast: Ecstasy scrambled back and watched as a great chunk of tattered coat and flesh rended from Devyat's back. He made a loud howling noise. The flesh writhed. At this range, the blast should – really – have torn him in two. Durability remained. Ecstasy got to his feet as Devyat twitched on the floor, his toothy grin remaining: the man drew pleasure from this abuse, that much was clear to Eamon. It made him feel genuinely, physically unwell: footsteps behind him – he spun. It was Axis, the blue-haired woman. Her vision was trained on Devyat.
"This way, sir." She said to Ecstasy. Her voice was mechanical and meek, too calm for the scenario at hand. Devyat turned to her, still on his hands and knees. From this side, she couldn't see his eye, only the silver eyepatch that covered the right socket. Axis paused for a moment. Devyat let out a deep grumbling sound. Ecstasy looked to the woman: she had her shotgun before her, a bulky weapon. She held it still for a moment and raised it. There was a bang, and Devyat's head split open, the blast of the shotgun tearing his face apart in a splattering explosion of blood and viscera, body rendered inert with immediate effect. Axis took a deep breath, as if she'd been holding it, and swivelled on her heel. Caprica was securing their position. The blue-haired woman marched after her. Ecstasy looked down to Devyat's temporary cadaver. His head was all splayed out, bisected almost entirely, one eye curled back, teeth spattered around the aperture of crimson where the pellets had torn through skin and bone.
Won't keep him down forever. Wriggling like worms in a rotten apple, the viscera moved slowly, piecing itself back together.
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