Slavegear 2 - Katsura's Mask

"While you discuss what to do. I have an idea, I'll be right back"

Gamma turns and start to search every corpse of killed enemies to see if they posses anything that would pass them off in the system as friendly. If not she starts stripping them of their clothes, gathering enough uniforms for each person on the team.

Searching the bodies proved difficult as they were still actively burning, as were parts of the corridor. The fire was starting to spread across potted plants and some of the walls, threatening to singe your stealth suit if you got too close.

The clothes were un-salvageable, turning into charred, rigid pieces that stuck and fused with the victims flesh. You had to roll the bodies several times to put out the fires sufficiently enough to search the victims without burning the gloves of your stealth suit, but you still felt the heat as you ruffled through their belongings.

As with their clothing, you couldn't find much of anything among their charred, melted items, they were all turning into a disgusting, burning black sludge that fused with skin and flesh. Strong smell of burning meat filled your nostrils, prompting a very strong gagging reflex.
A strange reaction, considering you didn't have a stomach to wretch and didn't need to consume food to maintain activity. You physically couldn't throw up, as there was nothing to vomit, but strangely enough, the reflex remained, hampering your actions.


Fighting through this assault on your senses, you found some items in the charred remains, that didn't burn in the fire. The victims Data-pads seemed resistant to these high temperatures, they didn't burn up and didn't display obvious signs of damage, but their screen's were still dark, and didn't light up at your touch, no matter how many times you tried to activate them.

And there was one other thing. Some sort of featureless black card that each agent seemed to possess. It looked like a credit card, almost. Some had it hidden in their wallets, others wore it around their necks, but every agent had one.

You couldn't quite tell if the black cards were featureless because the fire burned off their paint and markings, or if they were like this to begin with, but the cards were definitely resistant to fire.


Apart from these items, you couldn't find anything that wasn't a charred melted slug of metal, fiber, and fused burning flesh.

Gamma heads back over to the group and presents the cards. She grabbed every single one she could.

"I'm guessing these will make the security thing we are friendly. That or they're some really nice company credit cards."

She pockets one card and places the rest on the floor in a net pile. Without waiting she activates her cloaking and walks into the room and towards the doors at the back.

"What-.." Roksana asked, just barely following your train of thought as she was still largely preoccupied with scowling at Matej. As the 8 intact cards you managed to salvage, clatter to the floor, Roksana watched you in increasing horror, as you pocketed one those cards and marched into the lobby, flicking out of view.


"No, DON'T!" Roksana screamed, stretching her hand out, but reluctant to follow.


Gamma's silhouette faded from sight, she literally melted out of existence, as her cloaking suit activated. Only her footsteps faintly echoed across the deserted lobby, until those too, faded away, as the girl adjusted her gait to remain silent.


Listening closely, you heard the silence settle over the lobby, only the ambient sounds of the street echoed outside, and the fires slowly crackled around you in the hallway, slowly consuming more and more of the wallpaper on the walls.

Some 10 seconds passed.


The lobby was 25 meters in length and Gamma managed to cross the first 10 meters, stopping in front of the security checkpoint. It was separating the lobby in half, by a waist high symbolic divider, a short fence made of glass, it seems, or some other transparent material.

The only possible ways to cross this short fence, was to either hop over it, or go through one of the half dozen walk-through metal detectors, and their x-ray machines beside them, designed to scan luggage.

The chairs beside those devices, designed for security personnel, were glaringly empty.


As far as you can tell, if there are any security turrets in the lobby, they don't seem to be activating.

Slasher peaks her head inside the lobby before very cautiously taking a step forward inside, completely expecting the security features roar to life. She had picked up one of those black cards earlier, and they aren't turning gamma into boiling hot iron. She creeps in step by step as if the whole room could turn on her at an instant.

Your footsteps echo faintly in the silence, until you too, adjust your gait and turn completely invisible and silent. Step by step, you advance across the vast empty space, becoming increasingly aware how there is no cover here, to speak of. If bullets started flying, there would be nothing to hide behind, apart from the suspiciously transparent short fence, and the x-ray and metal detector machines.

If there are turrets on the ceiling, there would be nothing you could hide behind. They would have a perfect angle at you, from every direction up top.

You slowly walked the next 10 meters and stopped beside Gamma. The red alarm lights were still flashing on the walls and ceiling, but they have been doing so since your assault began some minutes ago. Their red lights cast eerie shadows across the lobby, creating an unnerving atmosphere.


In the silence that followed, Shi-Tong's voice quietly echoed in your earpiece.


"ETA, 13 minutes."

She takes a deep breath, glancing to the roombah next to her before patting her on the shoulder, "15 minutes is plenty of time and your missing your plus 1. We're the fastest, lets move. She breaks into a careful jog searching the walls and ceiling for a staircase label.

Looking around the lobby, there appears to be a staircase label on the door to the right, that was built into the wall, some 15 meters ahead. The only question remained, how to cross the security checkpoint, to reach the door.

Gamma simply walks through the checkpoint.

The walk-through metal detector emits a very annoying beep, the light atop it glowing red. Several tense seconds ticked by in silence, but otherwise nothing happened.

"The enemy hacker is still loose in the building!" Roksana whispered, reluctant to leave her corridor "This seems like a really bad idea!"

"We're running out of time and circling around the building for a different entrance will kill even more and not guarantee a lack of turrets there." Barker said, turning invisible and disappearing into the lobby:
"Spread out and cross the lobby asap, we need to steamroll this thing or we're going to buy the farm."


Krys closed his eyes and muttered something in a foreign language that could've been a prayer, then melted into thin air.

Matej gulped and tried to follow but Roksana caught him by the back of his shirts collar and pulled him back. Her scowling eyes were glued to the ceiling and you noticed her unclipping a frag grenade from her belt.

"The cards work, so either back me up in completing the mission or hold position so we have a cover for our exit. This inept Rumba needs support either way" Her whisper over the radio is venomously sweet and has a vile unspoken threat directed at Barker.  

Gamma heads toward the door with the stair case and attempts to open the door. Trying the handle first, then escalating to kicking it open with the proper technic she would have been trained in. She doesn't head down the stairs if she manages to get the door open right away. Waiting at most 60 seconds for others. After that she heads down the stairs with a sprint and towards the level she knows the other Rumba is on.

Slasher waits for Gamma to try the door if she gets it open the deer is going to pass full sprint through the lobby and into the cover of the staircase as quickly as possible.

As fast as her legs can carry her.

Like her life depends on it!

Geoff pulls himself up off the ground, and quickly gives the bodies of the two agents a once-over to see if they have anything good on them.

He also checks inside the car, to hotwire it as a getaway vehicle once the mission is complete.

Geoff wrote:Geoff pulls himself up off the ground, and quickly gives the bodies of the two agents a once-over to see if they have anything good on them.

He also checks inside the car, to hotwire it as a getaway vehicle once the mission is complete.

Outside the building, by the hatchback, Geoff managed to hotwire the car with some effort. These government issued para-military vehicles had a built in security system in place that made any tampering annoyingly tedious.

The engine simply refused to start, even when the wires were crossed and sent a spark to its chassis. Refused to start, that is, until Geoff found a peculiar black and featureless card, in the wallet of one of the agents and hovered it in front of the touch-screen computer in the cars dashboard. Wirelessly scanning the cards, the hatchback finally rumbled to life, displaying a complicated menu on its touch-screen computer.


Searching the agents for further items you found a pair of handguns with silencers on them, 4 spare magazines for them, two Data-pads that refused to turn on, even with the help of the phantom black card, some loose cash in the wallets and credit cards.

Apart from that, you noticed one of the agents wearing those stylish black sunglasses, but when you tried putting them on, only total pitch darkness could be seen through them, to the point where you couldn't even see your own arms.

Gamma wrote:"The cards work, so either back me up in completing the mission or hold position so we have a cover for our exit. This inept Rumba needs support either way" Her whisper over the radio is venomously sweet and has a vile unspoken threat directed at Barker.  

Gamma heads toward the door with the stair case

Gamma never made it to the door.
As soon as she was within 5 meters of it, a deafening racket echoed across the room, and emergency blast doors suddenly fell down from the ceiling. Almost a meter thick, and heavily armored, they fell down on either side of the lobby, effectively sealing it off from the outside world and turning it, into a death trap.

You only managed to see the horrified faces of Matej and Roksana behind you, as the second door hid them from you. And Roksana's grenade flying into the lobby, a second before the blast door sealed shut. The woman's robotic arm managed to fling that grenade stronger and higher than you thought possible, those cybernetic arms really did pack serious hydraulic power.

Her grenade flew some 22 meters into the air, almost reaching the ceiling, where four minigun turrets slid out of cover, inside the lobby. A deafening explosion painted the ceiling orange, as fire engulfed one of the miniguns, raining metal debris all over the place.

The remaining 3 miniguns on the ceiling turned eerily fast and spinning up their drums, locked on the general direction of Gamma, Slasher and Barker. Their growing hum sent a chill down your spine, as you saw their barrels spun up.




"THIS IS NOT YOUUUUR TOOOOOOMBBBB...... WRAAAAAAAAAA........ BUT YOU ARE WELCOMEEEE IN ITTTTTTT!!!!!!" A deafeningly eerie digital voice rang out of the multiple speakers inside both the lobby and corridor. And a large TV screen inside the lobby, hanging from a wall to the left, that was displaying some news channel a moment ago, suddenly flicked to black and displayed a giant pixelated avatar of a red dragon's head.



"AAAAAAAAH!! FUCKING SKYNET CONTROLS THE WHOLE BUILDING!" Barker shrieked in panic, raising his rifle up to the ceiling.


You have maybe a second left to react, before the miniguns open fire.







Back in the corridor, Matej was shrieking "NO!" as he banged on the blast door, unable to enter the lobby, where the echo of the explosion and the spinning of miniguns roared. This didn't last long, Roksana violently jerked him away from the door, just as two flamethrowing turrets rose from the floor, right next to the blast door and aimed their barrels at Inferno, Roksana and Matej. A tiny flame at the end of their barrels lit up and you heard the distant rumble of fuel, being pumped up from below and up to the Swiss-cheese like barrels of the turrets.


You maybe have 1 more second left, before the fire floods the corridor. If something much nastier doesn't spill out of those turrets

Geoff pockets the pistols, magazines, and cash about his person, and then drives the car around to the front entrance to meet up with the others.

Slasher glares up at the celing, "Shit!" Her curse echos off the lobby walls.

You hadn't seen them before, but beneath her pink coat, two blunted nubby horns at the base of her skull glow for just a moment before she snaps her fingers.

Slasher casts reverse gravity

Slasher jumps and practically slams into the ceiling. Ignoring at the expected the pain from the fall she scrambles across the ceiling at the closest ceiling mounted turret and rounds on it, trying her best to keep the barrels of the minigun off of her as she curves into it. She attempts to slam her blade into the turrets top joint to keep it from turning any closer to her and using the current gun as cover from the other.

Slasher draws her pistol and looks for maybe a flashy light device or an important electrical box or sensor on the gun and if she finds it, she sticks the barrel against it and fires 3 rounds into it.

Gamma raises the UMP45 and fires about a quarter of the clip into the other close turret that Slasher is not attacking while she dives the side. Aiming for what she assumes would be a weak spot.

While he remained passive when the others were charging forward, he sprung into action the moment the flamethrowers were in his face. Knowing just how it's like to take fire, and how it's path rolls, he manevers to the side of least damage, closing in and weaves two fingers to use fire magic.

With the small flames as catalyst, he shot those back into their respective barrels, to make them erupt from the inside.

Inferno wrote:Knowing just how it's like to take fire, and how it's path rolls, he manevers to the side of least damage, closing in and weaves two fingers to use fire magic.

With the small flames as catalyst, he shot those back into their respective barrels, to make them erupt from the inside.

Inferno's Data-pad beeped, indicating his glucose levels dropped to 114 mg/dL as he ran alongside the wall toward the flamethrowers.

"RUUUUUUUN!" Roksana shrieked, grabbing Matej and sprinting toward the exit as fast as her prosthetic legs carried her.

You reached the turrets, just as the rumble of fuel below was growing alarmingly loud, drew an untraceable sign in the air with two fingers and thrust both palms forward. The tiny flames burning at the ends of the turrets ignited and blew inward, into the barrels.

A second passed, seeming as long as eternity, before you heard a very dull, loud rumble under your feet. The echo of an explosion followed, dull, heavy, and very deep below. Then another explosion, and another, before an exponentially increasing chain reaction began tearing apart the turret fuel structure below, right under your feet.

You realized what was coming and bolted as fast as your legs carried you, sprinting down the corridor toward the building's main exit. The bloody hallway seemed three times longer than you initially thought, as you ran, feeling the growing earthquake right under your feet, before the chain reaction reached the turrets topside and a devastating explosion ripped them apart, ricocheted off the blast door and chased you down the hall.


A horrible shockwave struck you like a wrecking ball in the back, blasting you across the last 3 meters of the corridor, right out of the building, as a wave of fire washed over your stealth suit, engulfing you whole for a brief moment, before you, Matej and Roksana heavily crashed onto the cold, wet pavement outside.


Your ears rang. Your head felt heavy and clouded. Your vision blurred as you smelled your own signed hair and suddenly heard the crackle of fire, too hot and too painfully close, tried to look back and noticed your invisibility cloak was missing a patch and was on fire. As was your shoulder and your left sleeve. Your left forearm was already bearing the signs of second degree burns and you felt its pain, as soon as you saw the wound.

Geoff wrote:Geoff pockets the pistols, magazines, and cash about his person, and then drives the car around to the front entrance to meet up with the others.

Pulling a U-turn and driving up to the front entrance of the office building, the ambient sounds of the city carried with them the echo of distant police sirens and the heavy hum of cargo helicopters. Several of them. It didn't sound like a civilian model.

Coupled with the warning Shi-Tong gave you, you began to suspect the approaching aircraft could very well be the military strike team, dispatched to your location from the local military garrison.
You were running out of time.



As you were pulling up beside the front entrance, a devastating explosion blasted out of the front doors, throwing out Inferno, Roksana and Matej, to crash hard on the pavement, a few meters away from the door, their stealth-suits and hair singed and burning in a few places.


Roksana was struggling to get up, her limbs were obeying her properly. Matej was out cold.
Inferno had several small fires burning over his stealth-suit, leaving the most noticeable burn on his left arm.

The others, were nowhere in sight.

Slasher wrote:Slasher jumps and practically slams into the ceiling. Ignoring at the expected the pain from the fall she scrambles across the ceiling at the closest ceiling mounted turret and rounds on it, trying her best to keep the barrels of the minigun off of her as she curves into it. She attempts to slam her blade into the turrets top joint to keep it from turning any closer to her and using the current gun as cover from the other.

Slasher draws her pistol and looks for maybe a flashy light device or an important electrical box or sensor on the gun and if she finds it, she sticks the barrel against it and fires 3 rounds into it.

A phantom blue glow surrounded the deer for a moment, as she snapped her fingers, before she jumped and was suddenly and unexpectedly quickly hurled toward the ceiling. Flipping mid air, she just managed to brace for impact and rolled with it, as she didn't so much land on the ceiling, as 'fell' on it, from a height of near 5 meters.

Your teeth rattled and your elbow and shoulder hurt, from where you first impacted the ceiling, before ralling with the fall. Jumping up and sprinting along toward the closest turret, your senses were sent for a loop. It didn't seem like you were upside down, it seemed like the whole world was.

Hanging lights and small chandeliers were impossibly sticking out of the ground, on thin wires that couldn't support their weight. Krys and Barker were running across the ceiling above in different directions, attempting to escape the minigun's crosshairs, with Krys' whole body beginning to build up visible currents of electricity.

You noticed the turrets were pretty large, waist high, spinning on the floor and the closest one began screeching its servos, as it tried tracking your movements and lagging just a split second behind you. As you began a quick and curving approach to it, the minigun opened fire. An almost uniform barrage of led spat out of its barrel, releasing a deafening hum, as you ran around it.

The stream of bullets looked yellow and orange, almost visible to the naked eye, as it drew closer and closer to you, and you started to feel the small pieces of led flying just inches away from your shoulder and back, getting closer by the second.

Just before the minigun zeroed in on you, you finally closed the distance, jumping in an arc toward it and shoving your knife into its servos. The minigun creaked briefly, frozen in place for a second and spraying a giant hole in the opposite wall, before its servos strained and your knife was violently ejected out of its joints, sent flying up into the ceiling. The blade didn't seem break, but it was hurled away non-the-less.

That one second delay however, was enough for you to grab the turret from behind, hastily examine its circuitry, find an electrical box that looked important and let loose into it with your pistol. Filling the box with led produced a series of violent sparks and a small 'Pop' of an explosion. The minigun jerked in your direction releasing a steady stream of death, before it suddenly stopped turning and began releasing its entire ammo case into an empty spot on the wall.

This continued nonstop and seemed like it would continue forever, as the turret shot at the same spot, destroying the paint and wallpaper and denting and cratering the wall, revealing a heavy thick and armored plating behind the wallpaper.

You got a sneaking suspicion you just destroyed the circuit responsible for relaying remote commands to the weapon, and with this circuit destroyed, the gun continued to carry out its last command without further adjustments, that is, shooting at that one empty spot on the wall.


Your Data-pad beeped, alerting that your glucose levels just dropped to 150 mg/dL. Good thing you had that meal just before the mission. Your body didn't manage to get rid of the excess glucose yet.

Gamma wrote:Gamma raises the UMP45 and fires about a quarter of the clip into the other close turret that Slasher is not attacking while she dives the side. Aiming for what she assumes would be a weak spot.

The UMP released a series of quiet pops, its silencer muffling the sound, as you aimed down the red-dot scope and acquired the turret in your sights. Around 16 bullets flew out, before you were forced to sprint as fast as your cybernetic legs carried you, and the spot were you stood a split second ago exploded with a barrage of death, as tiny pieces of led shredded the carpet and the floor beneath, chipping away small pieces of concrete.

You heard your bullets striking the minigun and ricocheting off of its surface but it didn't seem to do notable damage. Perhaps your aim was too hasty, the UMP45 having too low precision and having too much of a bullet spread, perhaps you didn't fire enough bullets, or perhaps the minigun's front had an armored plate to prevent a direct attack from below. You didn't quite have the time to ascertain the exact reason, you only knew there was no direct result of the spray of bullets you released.

The minigun whirred and started to turn, tracking your movement and you felt the concrete being chipped out of the floor behind you, a near uniform stream of led drawing close as you ran. And you realized the turret was turning faster than you were springing away. And just a few seconds, unless something is done, the turret would catch up and have you dead in its sights.






A thunderclap echoed over the lobby, painfully loud in this confined space, as Krys screamed and snapped his fingers, flicking his wrist in the direction of the 3rd minigun and a blindingly large lightning bolt shot out of his hand, striking the turret. Purple after-images still played in the corner of your vision, as you saw a shower of sparks blast out of the base of the turret and it whined, its servos screeching to a halt and its barrel hanging uselessly down, as a stream of black smoke began escaping it.


Krys looked at it, nodded, and collapsed to the floor, his eyes rolling into the back of his skull, mouth agape. His Data-pad flashed bright red. His glucose levels dropped down to 30 mg/dL


"YOU STUPID ASSHOLE!!!" Barker shrieked, releasing a wild spray at the 2nd turret, as he sprinted toward Krys. Falling down to a crouching position, he slung his rifle onto his back and flipped Krys over, frantically patting his body down and searching for something, flipping open every pocket he could find on the mages stealth-suit.


The turret that was chasing Gamma, suddenly halted and spinning in a different direction entirely. And you realized the digital dragon controlling it, decided to acquire a stationary target. The minigun was turning toward Barker and Krys. The turret even stopped its barrage, so as not to alert the two to whats coming.

It was difficult to predict the firing angle from so far away, but you hastily calculated, you have about 3 seconds before the minigun puts Barker and Krys in its crosshairs and shreds them into slabs of red meat.

Gamma sprints forward, tossing her gun aside, and uses a combination of a hand stand and a front flip to propel herself up and towards the turret. The claws in her fingers extend as she leaps up and grabs into the turret. Ripping open into the body of the mounted weapon and tearing out the insides.

Slasher growls against the pain from the fall but the high of adrenaline pushes her ever forward with a focus you hadn't yet seen from her. Someone who didn't seem to be taking things seriously before she certainly seemed serious now.

Slasher appreciates the new perspective despite the situation. the feeling akin to looking at those liminal space pictures on the internet only she was actually in one of these strange spaces. The appreciation was only at the rear of her mind though given the situation.

She rushes past the turret she busted and towards the one gamma is assaulting. Her run adjusts as the turret turns and she slams her shoulder into the base of the barrel before it can turn any further. Her cybernetic digits grip and fight the barrel to a stop as she fights her weight against the huge gun. her other arm deploying its armblade and jamming it over and over into the guns wires and internals, ganking the gun alongside gamma.

"Oooh, that smarts..." Inferno says, before rolling around. He was already dropped, so as such was the next step.

Once it was out, he got up, giving the arms some squeezes to make sure it wasn't numbed too much. With the sleeve damaged, parts of the skin were visible, and more burns were present on his arm, as if he has been burned many times.

Once he got his full bearing again, he got back into action, being determined to win the fight, or make it as hard as possible for the enemy.

(Inferno & Geoff)



The fires in the entrance corridor were beginning to die down, the blaze not as hot anymore, but pockets of fire remained as the most flammable materials continued to burn, namely, the bodies.

The air was rapidly filling with the sickly sweet smell of charred meat, almost indistinguishable from barbecue, which made it all the more nauseating.

Matej visibly fought off the urge to throw up, before slowly rising to full height from all fours. Roksana wiped the soot from her synthetic face and 'looked' around, or turned her head in every direction. Even throughout this whole ordeal, her eyes didn't open once.

As Geoff pulled up next to you in his car, Roksana frowned at the hallway, and a moment later you understood why. The blast door remained closed.
It didn't even look particularly damaged. Its walls seemed so thick, you wondered if it could even withstand a direct missile strike.



Roksana cursed and tried to enter the hallway, the heat of the flames keeping her at bay, while deep below your feet, you continued to hear occasional, distant explosions that shook the ground.

"Inferno can you snuff out the flames?" Matej asked, coughing wildly "If we try approaching the blast door like this... it will be extremely painful"

Roksana finally zeroed in on something inside the hall, just by the entrance and rapidly approached a wall. Pulling out a black cord from the side of her neck, she prepared to plug it into a socket that once housed a USB based, flat-screen TV, that hung on the wall. Once possibly displaying random news or entertainment programs, its screen had grown charred and cracked all over. Its USB port seemed relatively intact however.


"Wow, what are you doing?" Matej exclaimed, grabbing her wrist and jerking it away from the socket.

Roksana scowled at him "That hacker is going to keep dogging us, until we take him out. He's turning the whole structure into a death trap... not to mention," her head turned toward the blast door "I don't know how else to open that..."

The woman 'looked' at you very sternly "I have to jack in, and take out the hacker.
If I screw up again, I need you to sever my spine, before my Neurochip activates, do you think you could do that for me?"


"Roksana wait!" Matej raised his palms "At least wait for Gamma to join, you'll stand a better chance at this together!" He clicked his earpiece "Gamma! You need to find an access port and connect to it, to open the blast doors, then take out the hacker... Gamma...? Does anyone copy?" He called anxiously but the airwaves were silent.


"Those blast doors sealed them inside a concrete and metal cage, radio signals can't come in or get out." Roksana said grimly "They may be dead for all we know. Cover me." Without waiting for a reply, she jacked in her cord into the USB socked, her body jerked, going rigid, and holograms of green ribbons manifested and began dancing around her body again.















(Gamma, Slasher)


The UMP clattered loudly across the floor as Gamma sprinted and launched herself into the air with all her hydraulic power, the synthetic muscles in her limbs straining up to their breaking point, releasing alarming screeches and crackles. Even with cybernetic limbs, hurling yourself 5 meters into the air was an extremely difficult feat.

You launched yourself at the turret, extending your razor sharp claws, just as the minigun began to whine, spinning up its drum with led and you sunk your claws into its circuits, going around its armored plate.

Your momentum lost, you almost slipped off and fell, and that 5 meter drop promised to be painful. Hanging just by the tip of your claws, you pulled out one hand slightly and sunk it deep into the turrets metal guts, then did the same with the other arm, each time digging deeper and more violently into the miniguns base.

Wires, circuit boxes and microchips were shredded to little bits that rained all around you, as your steel claws eviscerated the turrets sensitive circuitry. It didn't even leave a scratch on your blades.





From Slashers perspective, the scene looked rather bizarre. Gamma flying down from the ceiling and desperately trying to cut into the minigun on the floor, as the ceiling tried to pull and suck Gamma back up into the air.

The minigun's barrel jerked haphazardly, trying to re-acquire its target on the ceiling, to which Krys and Barker were glued. Finally pulling some sort of prefilled auto-injector syringe, filled with god knows what, Barker bit its cap off, spit it out and violently jammed it into Krys' thigh. The effect followed not too far behind, as Krys' motionless form suddenly became very lively as the man began convulsing, thrashing and shrieking, wild eyed, attempting to fight off Barker, who was holding him down.

The minigun finally spun up its barrel and unleashed a deafening hail of led into a spot just a meter away from the two, as it struggled and fought against Gamma's attack, trying to re-acquire its target regardless.

Slasher rammed into its barrel and pushed at it hard, trying to keep the minigun from turning anymore, but the turrets hydraulics were brutal and you felt your feet slipping on the floor, as the barrel began pushing you back and inevitably drawing its fire closer to Barker and Krys.

Your cybernetic katana flying out with a metalic cling that went largely unheard in the deafening roar of the turret, you began violently stabbing the guns circuits over and over. The base of the minigun was completely eviscerated in seconds under both Gamma and Slashers blades. The turret suddenly lost its support structure, cut loose to hang down by a thin wire and the ammo case at its base exploded.


The minigun's barrel and Gamma herself were sent flying down 5 meters onto the floor and the girl felt at the very least 12 different projectiles embed themselves in her bullet proof vest, or her metal chassis, penetrating as far as 1 centimeter inside, to become stuck there, in her metal body. Your internal diagnostic showed only superficial damage to chassis, while all vital systems remained functional, before you violently crashed onto the floor. A violent knock your head received made your vision glitch out and fill with static for several seconds, and your hearing turned into a high pitched screech, before your systems slowly re-balanced themselves and your senses returned to normal.


Slasher took several rounds into her arm, the one that was stabbing the turret, the bullets fragmenting and getting lodged deep inside her cybernetic metal arm. The feeling it produced wasn't pain, more like a vivid tingling feeling that indicated damage to the prosthetic.


The turrets in the lobby released their final dying screeches and slowly went immobile and silent. Krys was still writhing on the floor, screaming in pain and convulsing, but the effect seemed to be lesser than just a few seconds ago. His glucose counter you noticed, jumped up to 130 mg/dL.

Barker swore and finally let him go.




The merc looked around. Two heavy blast doors remained closed, sealing you firmly inside the lobby. He swore again, probably, this time in his native language and spoke:

"...that digital hack was right about this being our tomb. These doors look sturdy enough to withstand a nuclear bomb."

"...the fuck is a nuclear bomb...?" Krys weakly asked in delirium, heavily breathing and keeping his eyes closed.

"..never you mind." Barker narrowed his eyes at the cultist "...it means every explosive, cybernetic and bullet in our arsenal won't put a dent in that thing. They're going to keep us locked up in here until the military shows up and pushes our shit in."


He looked at Gamma, his brows furrowing "...hey... listen... you need to find a port in this room and connect to it. Find the enemy hacker and kill him. Fry his god damn Plume of Dusk if you have to. Then take full control of the building security and open a way for us.
We can't keep going forward with that digital creature dogging our every step. We're in his playground and he will turn every room and corner into a death-trap, unless you take him out."

The man exhaled, growing somewhat more calm "I don't know what happened last time, but if you screw up again, we're dead. At least... everyone in this tomb is."


"Oh... good..." Krys released a tranquil smile and laid more comfortably on the floor "Sweet release... take me, pure prophet Swan and lead a sinner like me to the next cycle!" he released a muffled laugh. The man looks high as a kite.

Barker curled his upper lip and threw a sideways glance at the syringe he discarded.

Slasher huffs in relief as she falls back against the turrets base, "Ow..." she says finally acknowledging the pain from her ealier fall as she catches her breath, "You alright Gamma?" She calls down at her, "You're lookin a little spaced out there!" She pauses before sighing, "Im not a' hundred percent sure how im gonna' get back down." She bumps the back of her head against the broken turrets frame, "You heard the man gamma! Get. us. ouuutta' heeeere." Her tone although encorageing, also suggests shes already bored.

Her head rolls slightly across the frame as she lifts up her hand above her head, pointing at Krys, "I'll have what he's having while we wait."