First Movement: The Lady, Fortune

Unrecorded time; undisclosed location

Lucky devil...

The same two words were repeating over and over at the back of Shakahnna Morgan's mind as she approached the outer boundary of the Umbrella compound, her feelings a mixture of fear, anticipation and barely restrained elation. Surveying the looming buildings that protruded from within the walled area with a quiet awe, her mask of manic rapture would have increased all the more had it been possible at the knowledge that it was all for her. An entire complex of guilty Umbrella employees and their pet abominations for her to wipe out, and at the heart of it all, the ultimate fifty point target. One hundred points if she played her cards right.

Pushing the pleasing thought aside once more, she quickly assessed her condition and equipment. She had been walking for a few minutes in the direction that the GPS attached to her belt indicated was the way to her secluded playground. Though she was bored of the monotony of both it and the wasteland that comprised her surroundings, she was still full of that boundless energy and insatiable bloodlust that she was known for. And with good reason, as the weapons lining the harnesses and body armour that covered her stout form were making it hard to keep from thrusting her hands into her underwear right there and then.

With free reign over one of the most extensive armouries in the world, she had almost never made it beyond the walls of her starting location, though the promise of things to kill had eventually lured her out of her treasure trove. The acquisition that she had been most proud of, as well as quickest to equip, had been a pair of fingerless gloves on the backs of which were mounted her favoured cat's claws, this variation curved to allow easier disembowelling. To supplement these items in the field of close quarters combat, she had slipped two of the small, scythe-like Kamas into the back of her belt, just behind the pair of Colt .45 semi-automatic handguns.

Her ranged arsenal consisted of the dual pistols, as well as a larger calibre .50 Desert Eagle holstered under her right arm. Strapped to her back was an M16 that she had modified with a grenade launcher attachment to make it more interesting, as well as a shotgun of unknown manufacture, but which made a sound like a building being ripped in half when it was fired. Everyone knew that you had to have a shotgun when fighting the undead. What space remained on the straps criss-crossing her torso was filled with incendiaries and explosives, and every pocket was stuffed to bursting with ammunition for her various toys. Though she preferred to fight hand-to-hand, particularly where that involved dismemberment and evisceration, she understood the importance of making the correct preparations.

Though she momentarily wondered whether she would have to climb the thick metal gate that formed the compound's main entrance or simply blow it up, her ponderings were rendered moot when the door ground open, shaking dust and sand from its surface as it retracted into the concrete sheaths on either side. The smaller buildings, which shrank into the shade of the looming walls and towering edifices beyond, seemed disused and decrepit. As though to immediately confirm her suspicions, a chorus of low, rasping moans began from within the catacombs of the outhouses that lay between her and the main complex, like the stones of a graveyard with their church rising in the background.

Spacing her feet and lifting her arms in front of her body, Shakahnna readied her frame to engage her first target as the long-dead denizens of the Umbrella facility came out to greet her. Clad in tattered overalls, the uniforms of in-house security and occasionally casual attire, the zombies were emaciated, shrivelled shadows of what they once had been, ravaged by the heat and sun as much as by the virus rampaging through their veins. Whoever had opened the gate had perhaps assumed that she would be unable to reach the main buildings, although if that were the case then they evidently didn't know her very well. That or they simply wanted to play with her, in which case she was game.

Her first victim was a man clad in the sun-bleached blue overalls of a member of what was likely the maintenance crew, who may have at one time been rotund before decay had wasted the majority of his fatty tissues. His skin hung slack on his bones, drooping from his face around his cheeks and neck, giving him an appearance that was at once ghastly and faintly comical. She snatched his right wrist with her left hand, jerked him to the side and stamped on the reverse of his knee to bring him down, before gleefully punching four holes through the matted hair that clung to his withered scalp, puncturing his brain inside his skull. He jerked erratically, ejected blood from between his weathered lips and then hung slack on her claws. She kicked him off quickly, rounding on the rest of the pack that was encircling her.

"Mmm, tasty," she announced loudly, lifting her right wrist to her mouth and pretending to gnaw on it as if to show her opponents what they were missing out on.

Almost as though they were rising to the bait, three of the deceased employees lunged forward with what strength their gradually decomposing legs could manage. What had once been a young woman, whose skin had been reduced to peeling parchment and whose hair was a dry web gathered about its cranium, suddenly found itself without whatever had remained of its face. The grinning redhead ripped it from the front of its skull, before hooking her right arm under the opposing shoulder of the staggering cadaver and hurling it head over heels into the face of the next creature to approach her. The second corpse of the trio was swiftly disembowelled even as it collapsed under the weight of its thrown predecessor, lengths of rubbery, disease-ridden intestine spilling out from its corrupted innards as it slumped into a heap.

Almost nonchalantly, Shakahnna span on the spot, tearing the throat out of the last of the nearest cadavers, before grabbing it around the chest, using her right hip as a pivot, and throwing it onto the top of the pile she had created. With the stack completed, she lifted her right leg to its upper extremity, stretching the muscles in her thigh and calf as though she were trying to kick the sky, before slamming her heel down in an axe kick that crushed the brittle rib cages of her three challengers in one stroke. Raising her leg out of the bloodied hole that she had punched neatly through the small group of undead, she turned quickly enough to decapitate the next zombie to reach her, and followed it up by kicking the severed head so hard as it fell that it smashed the reverse of one milling abomination's skull open in a spray of blood, bone chips and cerebral matter.

Her blades transfixed the rib cage of another creature, impaling its lungs and heart, eliciting a haggard groan from its crumbling lips, before she lifted its wasted frame with her other hand and tossed it into the body of another approaching spectre. To ensure that the pinned corpse did not manage to free itself and pursue her, she slammed her heel through its skull, listening to the bone crack like brittle kindling beneath her boot. Shooting a wary glance about her person to search for more of the approaching dead and finding none, she bolted deeper into the compound, muscles humming gently with adrenaline and nostrils alight with the scent of corrupt blood and dead flesh. She didn't care for the ambience of the place; things were too quiet on the outside of the buildings and she hoped that it would be livelier within. Zombies weren't worth that much on the league table anyway.

Of course, that didn't stop her from taking her points, as well as her gratification, where she could find it. Gripping one meandering monster by its face with her right hand as she passed it, she smashed the back of its withered head against the wall behind it with enough force to compact its cranium to two thirds of its original size. Grey matter spilled in a putrid waterfall down its reverse as she spun on the spot and drove her blades into the next creature's spine, quickly opening her hand and seizing the string of ivory knots tightly in her fingers. She tugged the chord away from the sheath of flesh that had surrounded it, giggling as the zombie's limbs buckled all at once and it crumpled into a heap on the floor.

There were probably dozens more like them in this area, but Shakahnna was eager to locate something more fun to play with, and it wasn't as though there were any innocents here who might run afoul of the decrepit undead. Judging from their current state of decomposition it would be a few days at most before they became too rotten to even move, let alone pose a threat to anyone.

Heading in the direction of the ever-looming main complex towards greener pastures, she skidded to a halt as she came to the courtyard at the foot of the wide, concrete staircase that led up to the front of the building, seeing the front doors over the thick crowd of restless corpses. The staggering mass seemed almost like an awkward social function with each of its members avoiding both physical and eye contact with one another in a kind of bizarre, unrehearsed dance. The jubilant redhead was always on the prowl for new dance partners of her own, and she was eager to make the acquaintance of the several dozen former men and women before her. Allowing her hands to fall to her belt and seize around the handles of her Kamas, she joined their ranks with a spring in her step and rhythm on her side, though admittedly she was the only one of them with a pulse.

As the first dead maintenance worker lost its head in a spray of rotten gore, the world became a kaleidoscopic blur of adrenaline and bloodlust, soon to be sated.

--x--x--x--x--x--

The facility's interior was devoid of life, the lobby lit only by the dimming sunlight that shone in through its glass façade, painting everything within a subtle hue of ochre that failed to properly illuminate any of the fixtures. Shakahnna sat casually atop the wide reception desk with a cigarette clasped between her lips and her legs firmly crossed. Her rampage had ended several minutes ago once she had found herself at a loss for moving targets, and so she had abandoned the corpse piles that she had left in her wake in order to take a fag break. Both her attire and skin was stained with blood, thick and foul-smelling, and though she was immune to the infection that seemed to have killed everyone at the complex before her arrival, having it on her person was not as gratifying as fresh blood could be. Beneath a spatter of darkened crimson, the scar that bisected her right cheek was glowing a vibrant shade of purple with her arousal.

She had lost her Kamas at some point, though she was unable to remember exactly when, most likely when she had begun to resort to tearing her opponents apart with her bare hands for that extra, visceral sensation that made her blood pound and her loins ache. While she regretted the loss of what was probably her second favourite close combat weapon after the claws, she hoped that there would still be ample opportunity to indulge in carnage without them.

Reasoning that time was wasting, and that the Umbrella scum weren't going to kill themselves, she hopped down from her perch and spat the stub out onto the floor where it was promptly crushed into a grey smear on the linoleum beneath her boot. Then, with all the caution of a stampeding rhinoceros, she thundered across the entrance hall and slammed through the door into the room beyond. Or at least, that is what she would have done had there not been a man dressed in the familiar black fatigues of the Umbrella Special Forces coming the other way at the exact same moment. Evidently having heard the commotion she had made outside, or seen her approaching via the security cameras no doubt situated throughout the facility, he had timed his investigation so perfectly that it was almost farcical when the young woman shoved the door aside and straight into the face of the male attempting to travel in the other direction.

The redhead pitched sideways out of the doorframe as the soldier's cry of outrage and surprise was cut short by the rattle of his sub-machinegun firing on full automatic and puncturing the wooden panel over a dozen times as it swung back into place. For her part, the stout female was surprised only for the briefest of moments before her murderous desire reasserted itself. She ran the tip of her tongue over her upper lip, catching just the faintest hint of the blood that was staining her face, and began to yearn for something a little more pure.

Her prayers were answered when the individual she had collided with blustered through the door where they had previously had their altercation, evidently hoping to find her shot dead just beyond it. He was unfortunate in two ways, as not only was she still very much alive, she had also worked herself into a homicidal frenzy and no sooner had he set foot on her side of the wall than she leapt on top of him and brought him crashing to the floor with her sitting astride his stomach. With his weapon pinned uncomfortably against his midriff by her bulk, he had no choice but to watch as her claws came down over and over onto his chest, tearing away his tactical vest, uniform shirt, skin and muscle tissue before beginning to slice gouges into his bones. He screamed loudly until he had finally bled to death, something that was exacerbated by the fact that he was unable to lift his hands to staunch the flow from the hollow she had carved into the front of his torso.

To anyone who had been listening then his demise would have sounded excruciating, and they likely would have thought twice about following him. This was the only possibility that the ebullient female needed to consider before she pressed her hands flat onto the exposed rib cage of her most recent kill, feeling the blood-slicked smoothness of the freshly-exposed ivory beneath her bare fingers, and pushed until her feet were resting flat on the floor. Asserting her weight onto the balls of her feet, she threw her head back, glowing hair cascading behind her in a golden torrent and revealing her face with its new sanguine mask. She raised an eyebrow coquettishly and blew her deceased playmate a kiss in return for the courtesy he had shown her, always one to pay her dues. And then she skipped away to look for his associates.

Her second victim from the U.S.F unit, which seemed to be there through nothing more than coincidence, was hurrying along the corridor towards the place where she had killed the first, no doubt having been the one to draw the short straw when it came to the investigation of his disappearance. She had ducked behind an unlit vending machine as he had passed by, before stepping out and sliding her blades into the underside of his chin beneath the filter of his gasmask even while the glowing scarlet pupils on his goggles shrank to focus on her grinning face. Pushing his head back on the long knives that had impaled it, she moved in close as though she were trying to steal a kiss, before running the flat of her tongue along the metal as his cooling blood began to ooze along its length.

It took her a moment to realise that he had been assigned a partner, and was as surprised as the other man was horrified when their eyes met. Fortunately for Shakahnna, her barbarism caused the third soldier she had encountered to hesitate long enough for her to position herself behind the corpse that she had just created, its flak jacket protecting her from the hail of bullets that were promptly fired at her head. She bowled him over with his erstwhile companion, slamming the burden that was the first individual's cadaver into him to throw him into disarray, before neatly slicing through his forearms to render him defenceless. His cry of pain descended into a strangled gurgle as she stabbed downwards and impaled his groin, a move that she took no end of satisfaction in. Confident that the rest of his team were still lurking elsewhere in the complex, she slit his throat and dropped him on the floor, smiling as a mist of gore speckled her cheeks and stained the rounded pearls of her teeth.

Reasoning that she was progressing in the right direction, she continued along the corridor until it reached a fork that progressed through a doorway or ascended via a staircase. Electing to move to the upper level, she found that she had entered an observation deck of some kind where the wall gave way to a wide glass panel that allowed her to overlook what appeared to be a control room.

In the room below, busying themselves with monitors, servers and laptops, was a group of technicians clad in clinical white, each of their uniforms emblazoned with the crest of their employers. Dotted around the chamber were the more nondescript figures of the Umbrella Special Forces unit sent to protect them, and it was seeing them that allowed Shakahnna her first insight into the reasons behind their presence. The facility had been long since abandoned judging from its indigenous undead population, and her visit seemed to have coincided with the corporation's attempt at retrieving its research data.

It seemed that the information that had led her here was not as incorrect as she had first suspected, and her heart leapt at the opportunity she was being granted to stymie the organisation's work.

Eager to make the acquaintance of the ones who would be providing her entertainment, but not wanting to alert them to her presence yet, she hurried back in the direction she had come from, skipping down the stairs and turning towards the door nearby that would lead her into their area. She was stopped in her tracks just before the door when it hissed open and another of the unfortunate U.S.F members emerged. Though she was unable to see his reaction through the mask covering his features, she imagined he had not expected to see someone else within the building, particularly not someone who was drenched in the blood of his team mates.

"Surprise!" she yelled, to which his response could only have been great surprise, before she lunged forward, impaling his heart with the claws on her right hand and his crotch with those on her left.

Sprawling to the floor, the soldier's corpse hit the ground with the young woman mounted atop it, the fingers tightening around the trigger of the sub-machinegun strapped around its neck and loosing a shower of hot brass into the room. There was a scream and an eruption of sparks from elsewhere in the room as the bullets punctured a nearby bank of monitors and possibly slaughtered a member of the retrieval team.

Shakahnna hit the floor on her knees, dragged down by the weight of the body that her blades were stabbed into, and looked up quickly to see another of the men taking aim at her. She responded by twisting her hands to counteract the suction that was keeping her rooted to the spot and ripping them free of their gory sheaths to take hold of her Desert Eagle. Rolling aside as a line of smoking holes stitched along the ground toward her and mowed a gully through the torso of her most recent victim, she drew a bead on the next from a crouch and fired.

The gun bucked furiously as those of its ilk were prone to do, and though the kick bruised her hands it was more than worth it to see the bloody hole it produced in her opponent's chest moments before it lifted him off his feet and carried him backwards along the carpeted row between the cubicles that made up the room. The result was twofold satisfying, as not only had the death been visually stimulating but now her hands would hurt whenever she clenched them, and that was awesome.

Responding to the sound of the high calibre weapon's discharge, the remainder of the Special Forces unit began to move toward her position, the sound of their heavy boots thudding against the floor the only clue she needed as to their whereabouts for her to quickly roll into a nearby cubicle and wait for them to draw closer. She had no doubt that half of the remaining troopers would be searching for her while the other half escorted their charges to safety.

A masked head appeared above, partially obscured by the partition wall that set the cubicle apart from the rest of the room, and the young woman immediately altered her position so that her weapon was aimed straight at the space that the figure's cranium was occupying behind the screen. She waited tensely for the sound of others in the surrounding area and tracked the movements of the mop of dark hair with the barrel of her handgun as she waited for the individual's partners to take up their own positions. Once she was certain that she knew roughly where each of them had positioned themselves, she put one of the fat metal slugs from her Desert Eagle clip into the face of the man she had been watching, grinning as the roughly circular window she had created through the temporary wall gave her a magnificent view of his head vaporising in a crimson mist.

Almost immediately, fire from the sub-machineguns of his associates shredded the upper half of the workstation, before each firearm fell silent. Shakahnna moved from her prone position onto her feet in one smooth motion, stepped from the floor to the decapitated chair nearby, onto the desk whose effects had been blasted into unrecognisable lumps of useless plastic, before quickly vaulting the crumbling wall and coming down on top of the next soldier who was attempting to reload on the other side.

Her claws landed first, cracking the male's goggles as her full weight pushed them through both his mask and his face. Turning on the spot, she brought her pistol around to aim at another black-clad figure as it appeared around the corner in a crouch, lifting its weapon with the intent to mow her down. She shot it a grin as a gesture of commiseration at not being fast enough, before pulling the trigger. The Special Forces member's body vanished between the neck, stomach and shoulders, leaving a severed pair of arms and a decapitated head lying atop a pile of entrails, oozing from the stump of two sprawled legs. Lifting her weapon to her lips in a rare display of theatricality, she blew away the pretend smoke issuing from the barrel as though she were the archetypal gunslinger extraordinaire.

Judging from what she had heard from within the cubicle, the rest of her playmates had left the control centre and now the fun of tracking them down was hers to enjoy. Holstering her handgun neatly under her arm where it belonged, she hopped to her feet once again and began to stalk through the office space in pursuit of her quarry.

"Ready or not," she murmured, the grin on her features holding fast and never faltering even for the slightest second, "here I come."

--x--x--x--x--x--

The first signs that Shakahnna found of the fleeing Umbrella employees was a number of bullet-riddled corpses along the corridors as she pursued them. Though the bodies were already in a state of absolute decomposition, it was clear that they had only recently been slain, and the slumped form of one of the technicians that she had observed earlier, most likely the individual who had been shot in the control room by one of the soldiers' errant blasts, only confirmed that she was hot on their trail. The young woman had quickly bled to death from her wounds, and though she had no great love for the corporation's meat puppets, that they had simply left her behind put a bitter taste in the redhead's mouth.

It was bad enough that they seemed so intent on shitting on everyone else, but then they didn't even look after their own. She also noted with contempt that they had stripped the fallen girl of her equipment before they had left her to die. It was fortunate that she had only bled out; she could honestly say that if she were the leader of a group being chased by her then she wouldn't leave anyone behind to face the kind of things that she did to people from that organisation.

As far as she could tell, however, the white-clad female had been a willing member of the company's retrieval unit, and had likely been receiving top dollar for her participation due to how dangerous the assignment was. The only remorse the S.T.A.R.S Lieutenant felt was for the fact that she had not claimed the points for that particular dead body.

Almost as though some cosmic force was aware of her regret, one of the U.S.F members who had been escorting the civilians to safety suddenly snaked an arm around her throat in an attempt to take her by surprise. It was then that Shakahnna realised that the wounded woman had been left as bait rather than because she was a burden to the other survivors, the man behind her evidently hoping that she would choose to target the casualty and turn her back long enough for him to remove her as a threat to his mission. The abhorrent thought of him waiting in the shadows while his supposed charge died a lingering, painful death was enough to make the stocky girl's blood boil. She hammered her elbow back into the soldier's stomach before he could make another move and he gave ground immediately, backing away from her to better assess his options. As far as the flame-haired huntress was concerned, there were no options.

Turning to face him, she found herself confronted by a man who, to her, was nothing more than another pawn in Umbrella's private army, the gasmask that provided his prevalent anonymity soon to be the thing providing his death shroud. The blade with which he had intended to either slit her throat or puncture her heart through her rib cage was clasped in his right hand as he surveyed her, particularly wary of the four blades attached to each of her gloves that would quickly shred him to ribbons if he were to grow careless. For her part, Shakahnna regarded the male's own weapon with something akin to contemplativeness, as she wondered if he would be willing to give her anymore scars with it before she killed him. After a moment of planned hesitation, both parties lunged forward.

His attack began unexpectedly with a defensive move when he wrapped a hand around her right wrist to keep her leading appendage turned away from his body. He then spun his weapon in his grip so that it was pointing downwards and attempted to slice at her, only for her to catch his blade between her claws. Though she twisted her arm in an attempt to wrest the knife from his grasp, he held it tightly, locking them both into a dangerous stalemate. She aimed a quick combination of three kicks to his legs, the first two aiming for pressure points on his limbs that he blocked by turning his lower half aside almost as though he was dancing with her, before the last thrust towards his groin only connected with his upper thigh. Though each of the blows had obviously caused him a degree of pain, it was decidedly better than the alternative.

Twisting his arms to force her upper limbs downwards, he lunged forward and slammed his forehead into her face. Though he narrowly missed crushing her button nose, he left heavy bruising on her right cheek and split a fresh laceration beneath her eye that she had created previously when it had swollen shut. Momentarily stunned, or so he thought, she stumbled backwards completely unaware of the vertical disembowelling slash that he immediately lashed out at her with. Her disequilibrium had been a feint, however, and with lightning fast movements she whipped the knife out of his hand with a slash of her right claws, opening four deep, parallel gashes in his wrist that began to weep crimson profusely onto the floor and along the length of his arm. Twirling a graceful pirouette on the spot, she kicked him firmly in the crotch to make up for her earlier failed attempt before stabbing her blades downwards into the top of his head.

There was a muffled grunt from behind the soldier's mask and then he slumped onto his knees, held upright only by the sharp metal prongs jutting into his crown. With a wiggle of her hips, Shakahnna used her momentum to dislodge them and watched as he sagged onto his back, dead.

She made a displeased face at the crumpled heap of person, annoyed that he had cost her a considerable amount of time in her pursuit, before hurrying on in a bid to make up the ground that she had lost. The trail of recently deceased undead picked up once more almost immediately after she continued along the corridor, and did so for a long while until she came to an area that had been plastered with signposting indicating it as the part of the complex dedicated to the mainframe. An automatic bulkhead that was supposed to be locked hummed back and forth on its hydraulics as its edge struck the withered corpse of a male researcher over and over again in its fractured torso, allowing the redhead to move through it without the proper clearance. She bowed her head respectfully, in the manner of a young lady of high society showing the proper courtesy to a gentleman suitor who was kind enough to hold the door.

There was the blip and whir of electronics from all around, noises that even the constant buzz of the door could not drown out when combined. On top of that, Shakahnna could hear the muffled sound of several people sobbing from the room directly ahead as well as hushed voices as two or more people held a separate conversation away from the rest. She wondered if the group had stopped to collect more data in spite of its considerable lead, and at once thought of how pig-headed Umbrella could be in regards to its research. Though it wasn't sensible to pause while being pursued by a violent multiple murderer with a grudge against their employers, it was exactly the kind of thing that members of the Special Forces would do.

"They're terrified," intoned one of the voices behind the next door, an older woman whose tone was stern and indignant, showing none of the emotion that her colleagues were evidently suffering from in the current situation, "and no wonder, considering what you're making them do with that woman right behind us..."

"She isn't a factor anymore, Professor Wells," someone, a male, interjected sharply, evidently someone who was used to giving commands and having them obeyed without question, perhaps the U.S.F unit's leader. Shakahnna allowed herself a knowing grin at his words, though this expression barely changed the broad smile that was already decorating her rounded face. "Simply have your subordinates finish up here as scheduled," he continued, asserting himself in the face of the female's aggression, "let us concern ourselves with your safety and that of your group while you concentrate on retrieving the data the company needs. Don't make this any more difficult than it has to be."

"Are you threatening me, Sergeant Lansing?" the one identified as the Professor queried, apparently intent on pushing the issue.

"Why would I waste my time?" he responded bluntly, "believe it or not, this isn't about you, your work or your current status within the company. All I care about is doing the job and getting out of here with my life intact. This pissing contest is a moot point considering that we're in exactly the same situation."

"Don't presume to talk to me like that, you drone," his antagonist shot back, most likely through gritted teeth, "we're nothing alike. My star may no longer be in the ascendancy, but there was a time when I had a bright future. The only fate you have ever been fit for is the kind that leaves the barrel of a gun, or a syringe. I'll hold my tongue for now, but that girl had better be as dead as you think she is."

The redhead sniggered quietly at that, aware that the squabbling Umbrella employees were both in as much trouble as one another because she was still very much alive. Unfortunately, while the first bulkhead into the mainframe had been conveniently propped open, the second was very much locked. Of course, that was why she had been sure to bring a sizeable amount of plastic explosives in her equipment. She reached into her pocket and brought out a block that was around the size of her palm, already primed with the detonator, which she then affixed to the centre of the door. Pausing for a moment, she pondered the unwelcome possibility that some of the men and women on the other side would die in the explosion before she had the opportunity to play with them.

"Knock, knock, knock!" she called through the metal barrier, timing each of her exclamations with a rap of her knuckles upon the surface, leaving them with no doubt that she was still a threat to their mission and their lives, "time to play! You guys hide and I'll count to ten!"

She paused for a moment, listening intently as the Sergeant began to bark out orders and arrange what remained of his unit into a defensive pattern while the female Professor hurried her group of civilians out of the mainframe and to a place of comparable safety. Once she was certain that they were ready to greet her with a warm reception, the redhead prodded at the face of the explosive to arm it before running back to the first door that she had passed, grabbing the corpse that was still blocking it by a handful of rags and hauling it out of the way so that the portal could finally be sealed. Then, with a look of manic glee on her cherubic features, she put her back to the wall beside the entrance to the mainframe and clamped her hands over her ears, waiting impatiently.

The detonation shook the corridor, its force crippling the door that she had just allowed to close, allowing it to breathe a hot, white tongue of flame from its bent edge before it began to vent foul-smelling black smoke all around her. The fire suppression system activated over her head and began to douse the area with water, while at the same time an air conditioning system began to draw the fumes out of the air. There was something vaguely ironic about how safe the facility would have been if it hadn't been experimenting with the Tyrant virus. Turning to her left, Shakahnna aimed a brutal kick at the edge of the warped panel that was blocking her path, forcing it back into its frame and causing it to stick halfway, more than wide enough for her to pass.

Almost immediately after kicking the debris aside a flurry of gunfire cut through the smoke that was still thick at the entrance to the next area, forcing her to duck back to her original position beside the broken door. The explosion she had caused had likely destroyed the sprinkler system and air scrubbers in the mainframe section, and though that would not cause any of the soldiers to suffocate due to their masks, visibility for both them and her would be drastically reduced.

Fortunately, it was situations much like this one that was the reason she had brought so many grenades.

She moved a hand to the bandolier that was strapped diagonally across her chest and selected one of the incendiaries from it, plucking it as though she were taking a plump, ripe fruit from the branch of a tree. For a reason that she was unable to fathom, it suddenly felt that much hotter within the complex, despite the fact that she was currently being drenched by the indoor downpour. Whipping her slick hair backwards out of her face with a shake of her head, she licked her lips and toyed with the explosive's detonation tape as she prepared to toss it back towards the waiting U.S.F members.

She was not given the chance, however, as the soldier who had drawn the short straw and been sent to confirm the unit's kill suddenly stepped out of the smoky hallway beside her. Acting on impulse, her arm shot out and snatched the throat out of the individual's neck with one abrupt motion. Realising what she had just done and coming to a rather devious conclusion, Shakahnna lifted her right hand and slammed the ball that she was holding into the gory cavity, tore the det-tape away between her fingers and kicked the dead man back into the smoke. He staggered out of sight and the young woman slid back to the wall as the rattle of fully-automatic fire resounded from within the opening, the remainder of the military group mistaking their deceased colleague for their opponent before a bark from their commander made them realise their mistake.

To what the redhead could only assume was their great surprise, the supposedly dead male unexpectedly exploded amongst them. There was a scream as someone was maimed by the detonation, followed by the authoritative roar of the leader and the clatter of boots on linoleum as the dregs of the unit began to run once more.

From what she had heard, there were only two soldiers left; if circumstances would allow then she would have to take her time with the last pair.

--x--x--x--x--x--