A/N: Apparently this is what I do. Every time I get a new fave who has the powers/skills/abilities/any other means to fight a yautja (or a xenomorph) I have to have them do just that. (Like hell could Adam do all this without burning through multiple biocells, but whatever.)
They've been here before. '87, '97, '04, '18.
2029.
It starts with the discovery of a gang of Dvali henchmen in a seedy basement of Prague's red light district, skulls missing and spines ripped clean out.
"Never thought even an aug could do that," MacReady remarks when he and Jensen go to scope out the grisly scene, and neither is entirely sure what they're looking at.
Jensen flexes his fingers, recalls the power in his augmented fist when it punches clean through concrete, and feels certain he has the ability. He's just never had anything approaching the inclination.
"Military spec? No doubt they could. The question is why?"
Stepping on the toes of the Czech police to attempt their own investigation yields no answers. A few days later, with the discovery of more bodies—this time heavily augmented gang members in an alleyway—it's unclear whether they're looking at a depraved serial killer or something else entirely.
Jensen goes to check out the crime scene, dead of night, the alley lit only by the sickly glow of garish neon, and swears he's being watched. Engaging his smart vision, a chill down a metal spine, and there's nothing there.
The first glimmer of light is shed when Interpol commandeers access to classified files dating back as far as 1987. Pre-aug era. Band of mercenaries fell prey to an invisible hunter in the Central American jungle. 1997, a bloodthirsty ghost stalking the streets of Los Angeles. Stranger still, a doomed mission to the Antarctic in 2004, details heavily redacted.
Struggling to make sense of it all, Jensen files the fragmented information away in the implanted storage in his brain, and heads home for the night.
He's barely made it a few blocks when, misattributing blame for the gruesome murders, he falls prey to a vengeful Dvali mob. Heavily armed though they are, they underestimate the arsenal packed inside Jensen's augmented body, and self-defense leads to a couple of fatalities he won't lose any sleep over.
It's when he's turning away, wiping blood from his face and debating whether to call it in, that the real attack comes.
Something moves behind him. Cochlear implants pick up footsteps and a soft clicking imperceptible to the human ear, then as he turns, Jensen sees the flash of steel blades descending from above.
On instinct, his arm comes up. Ceramic slides in an instant from its sheath, extending beyond his wrist, and meets the blow. Whoever wields the gauntlet (aug? arm?) the blades are attached to, he still can't see beyond a vague shimmer, but they're taller than him.
Nothing Jensen hasn't faced before.
The impact jars, but Sarif augs are made sturdy. As the first attack fails, in retaliation Jensen lets the second nanoblade slide out of his opposite arm and aims the end precisely where he judges the chest of his attacker to be.
The air flickers. Something halts the counterattack, ceramic once more striking metal that this time feels like armour, and Jensen is caught off guard as he hears what he can only describe as a growl.
Makes no difference. Another exchange of blows, and then he releases the charge he's been building and lets the nanoblade launch.
The force of it knocks his opponent back, ceramic shattering in an explosive burst, and the result is a dazzling flash of blue that ripples over the outline of a humanoid form. For a moment, it looks like the cloaking system will fail, and then it recovers.
Jensen holds his ground. Behind their shades, augmented eyes narrow. "Two can play at that game." He draws his Zenith pistol and deploys Glass Shield.
In the split-second it takes him to aim the first shot, the strange distortion in the air has already shifted too fast for even his Sarif augs to track. A bullet fires, misses, and Jensen switches vision modes to no avail. Whatever camouflage they're using, it's imperfect, but effective.
Another shot, almost by chance, lands then ricochets off of unseen metal. The air shimmers. Power inches down the bar. Sparing no seconds, Jensen dashes with silent footfalls to where he presumes is behind, pivots, and raises his arm to shoot again, only to be hit with returning fire before his finger has chance to squeeze the trigger. It comes in the form of a ball of glowing, white hot plasma that has his eyes widening behind his shades before it collides with his hand. With a clatter, the pistol falls from his grasp.
Jensen lets out a grunt, more of shock than pain as the temperature barely touches the alloy, but the heat sets artificial nerves alight and sears along his arm to his shoulder where the shockwave meets real flesh. The momentum sends him reeling, balance compromised, and his back hits a wall.
Circuits tripping, the Glass Shield comes down. Another flicker of distortion in the air before him, ground crunching beneath heavy footfalls, and Jensen feels a solid grip close tight around his throat.
The fingers that find his bare skin feel oddly fleshy, he manages to notice, before his brain becomes more concerned with renewing his source of air. As his feet leave the floor, body hefted like it's made of rags more than metal and bone, Jensen raises a fist and lets the Tesla deploy. Sparks crackle between extending knuckles, and then he shortens the targeting range to nothing as he lands it in a punch.
With a crack, the blow finds what he assumes is a jaw. Electricity to the tune of 200 milliamps arcs into flesh and a roar of anger erupts from his opponent's throat, rumbling through Jensen's skull like no sound he's ever heard from a human mouth. Natural or augmented, nothing human should be able to withstand that charge.
The grip falters, and for a moment Jensen dares hope he can throw it off, then the pressure only clamps down harder as his remaining breath is snatched from him in a burst. The carbon fibre implants in his neck are all that keep his trachea from being outright crushed.
The move wasn't completely fruitless. As the sudden electrical surge floods its circuits, the camouflage finally fails.
Jensen doesn't know what he was expecting to see, but it wasn't this.
With a ripple of blue light, cloaking melts away to reveal a torso encased in strategically placed armour and skintight mesh. The face remains obscured, a metal mask revealing nothing through eyeholes as opaque as Jensen's own mirrorshades, while fleshy-looking dreadlocks spring from its crown to skim the top of armoured shoulders. The muscular arm currently hefting him in the air is undoubtedly flesh—mottled cream and brown, and inhuman.
A gasp of shock might have passed his lips, were he able to draw breath. There's a sharp crack as once again Jensen finds himself slammed back against the wall, skull striking brick, and then a hand is pressing on his chest while the other slides up from throat to jaw and begins to tug.
Skulls missing, spine ripped out.
Jensen grinds his teeth, panic growing, threatening to bubble over from beneath his skin. He lets the TITAN do that instead.
Along his chest and throat, he feels the foam deploying, leaving behind a sharp tingle in his nerve endings as it solidifies into a crystalline barrier over his skin. The creature's grip weakens, battling with the carbonyl iron reinforcing Jensen's soft human throat, yet still it doesn't let go. The whirring of his rebreather grows to a roar in his ears.
Power's draining. Fast.
As cybernetic fingers grapple with ones of alien flesh and bone, Jensen finds himself recalling another time he'd been hoisted in the air by the throat at the end of an inhuman arm, life force slowly draining away as he choked. He'd survived that, then. He'll survive this.
A reinforced metal spine refuses to give under the pressure. Jensen siphons the power from the TITAN and instead directs a well aimed blast from the P.E.P.S at the creature's chest.
At this range, the shockwave lands like a hammer onto glass. With a jolt, the creature abruptly lets go, staggering back as an angered growl grows to a rumble behind its mask.
Jensen drops to the floor, gasping for breath as his implanted gyroscope autonomously rights his balance. This isn't over. A white light flashes behind the black eyeholes of the creature's mask as it recovers and stalks forward once more.
Arriving at the last resort, Jensen throws up an arm and activates the Typhoon.
Inside him, he feels a split second of mounting pressure, mechanics whirring, and then the ammunition bursts from its ports. Projectiles fly in an arc around him, and the charges detonate.
Something between roar and scream tears from an inhuman throat. A flash of gold surrounds him, and Jensen keeps his head shielded beneath his cybernetic arm until the last of the shockwaves have faded.
When he lifts his gaze again, it's to see the creature lying crumpled on the floor several meters away, a gaping hole in its chest bleeding fluorescent green onto the flagstones.
Jensen takes a step closer.
Tremors have overtaken the creature's surviving muscles, and as it attempts to lift its arm, he sees the gauntlet mounted on its wrist. There's a console exposed beneath an open cover, unrecognisable symbols blinking red on black. From the clawed finger moving towards it, something is pending activation.
Jensen doesn't think so. He lifts a hand and engages his remote hacker. Alien though it is, at their core, all electronics function the same. He disables the interface then crouches down in front of the creature, watching as the twitches in its muscles grow more erratic and then begin to fade.
It attempts to growl again, staring through those black eyeholes with what Jensen can only imagine is contempt. The clicking that rumbles in its throat chokes on a gurgle.
Jensen is incredulous. Shocked. Bewildered.
And victorious. He extends a nanoceramic blade from his wrist and puts the thing out of its misery with a clean stab through the throat.
Once the body is still, he reaches out a curious hand to hook beneath the mask and lifts it away. Nothing ought to surprise him anymore, and yet it nonetheless does. A flat, crab-like face in a skull altogether too large for its features—dreadlocks sprouting from a ridged, mottled crest; tusked mandibles jutting out from its lower jaw. Green, faintly luminescent blood trickles from a gaping, lipless mouth.
Its eyes are still open. Yellow. Somewhat reminiscent of human. Were the human sick and jaundiced.
"Ugly motherfucker, aren't you?" Jensen mutters, activating his infolink. He's definitely calling this in.