For several moments, all Derrick could do was stand there and stare at the debris strewn doorway.
I've got to keep moving.
Derrick turned and saw the body of a scientist with his back against the wall. A wide trail of blood led from the rubble to the wall. It was then that Derrick noticed his pants were covered in blood smears. There was nothing he could do about either his pants or the dead man so he kept moving. The next set of doors he passed through led to a spotless, gray-tiled hallway filled with high-security doors. Of course each one he saw read 'locked' on their status panel. The one at the end, just past the turn in the hall, was actually open.
Derrick entered a small airlock that was malfunctioning because the exit opened as soon as he stepped in. An emergency klaxon was the first thing he noticed, quickly followed by the red emergency lighting that gave the room a surreal quality. The room was a research area of some sort if the equipment visible in the sunken workpit was an indication. Derrick looked to his right and saw a clipboard on a desk. He quickly went to pick it up. It read:
T'lan Warrior Research
Status Report #101
Prepared for Terminus 4 Executive Meeting
We recommend continued research as follows:
Development of an energy weapon that operates on the same wavelength as the T'lan shield.
Purification of T'langen
Administration of T'langen to animal test subjects.
The staff considers the administration of T'langen to humans to be too dangerous and have protested. Therefore I wish to propose termination of the clinical trial.
Guess they did give it to humans. Wish I had one of those guns though.
There was another clipboard on the desk in the workpit. It was T'lan Warrior Research Report #26. It detailed the scientists' discovery of the chemical they believed was linked to a T'lan Warrior's shield.
T'langen? That's not very imaginative, Derrick thought with a smirk.
There was a locked door on the other side of the workpit that was the only exit. Derrick reached forward to hit the button to open it and the pasty hand of a T'lan Warrior crashed into the reinforced glass door. His heart somewhere in this throat, Derrick jumped back, caught the pits of his knees on the low railing around the workpit, and fell the meter and a half to the floor. He took most of the impact on his right shoulderblade and the pain nearly made him blackout. With his breath stolen from the impact, it was all Derrick could do to lay there and not whimper in pain. To his surprise, the pain faded to a dull ache in less than a minute. When he stood and moved his arm around Derrick was stunned that he had full range-of-motion.
"Fuck you." Derrick told the T'lan as it continued pounding on the reinforced door.
There was another door, facing the right wall, on the right side of the set of rooms Derrick was trying to enter. He was more cautious this time as he prepared to press the button. His SMG was at the ready but Derrick had already seen how ineffective it was against the T'lan so he wondered why he even bothered. The door whisked open and he stepped into a morgue. Derrick swept the room in a 120-degree arc.
The T'lan Warrior in the next room walked into view through the open door connecting them, saw Derrick, and charged towards him. Derrick turned just in time to block a haymaker thrown by the T'lan that had been hiding in an alcove beside the door. His SMG took the brunt of the blow, bending in his hands, but there was still enough force to propel Derrick off his feet. He rolled back through the doorway into the main room. The first T'lan was still bearing down on him like an enraged bull. Derrick rolled to the side and the damn thing charged into the wall hard enough to leave a dent in the metal paneling.
How the fuck did the door hold it? The thought was incongruous but Derrick's legs never stopped moving.
The second T'lan was coming at him as he raced toward the other entrance. Derrick ducked beneath a clothesline and kicked the T'lan in the lower back to send it over the guardrail. Derrick made it into the room and locked both doors leading in. The first T'lan hit the door and now Derrick could see the spider-web cracks it was causing with each strike.
Strong, but dumb as hell, Derrick thought as he flipped it off.
There were two clipboards on the examination table in this room. Derrick took them on his way to the door on the other side of the room. It opened to reveal another airlock with a manual wheel hatch that Derrick would have expected on a naval vessel. Derrick quickly undogged it, wondering at the ease at which it turned, and pushed it open. He closed it, tightened the wheel, and used his damaged SMG to jam it up when the T'lan finally did break the door down. Then he took the time to read the clipboards.
The first detailed the transfer of T'lan Warriors from Terminus 4, whatever that was, to the Cellular Biology Research Lab.
Guess that's those two bozos.
The second was T'lan Research Report #84. It told about how a T'lan's shield let it protect itself against physical attacks and collision below certain speeds and force.
No shit.
The interesting thing, at least to Derrick, was that the shields were nullified when the two came into contact.
Maybe they need to fuck, too. That's sick. Can't believe I just thought that.
It was probably the report that led to the proposed development of an energy weapon.
Lot of good that does me.
It was then that Derrick noticed his green bar had gone down by nearly a quarter. His ribs hurt now and drawing in breath was painful.
Guess I know what that means now. I'm totally out of my mind.
Derrick kept moving though and walked down a hallway with more locked doors. He turned a corner, saw an open doorway, and nearly shit himself when a T'lan Warrior came charging at him. Derrick ducked, swept his left leg forward, and took the T'lan off his feet. His leg tingled as though a horde of ants were having a party in his pants as soon as he made contact with the shield. Ignoring the pain, he raced down a darkened hallway toward an elevator lobby where another T'lan was waiting. Derrick slid beneath a haymaker, their fighting technique seemed extremely rudimentary, and charged to a shuttered doorway. Both doors to his sides were locked and the T'lan were coming.
Just when Derrick's heart was about to burst a strange calm came over him. He knew he was probably going to die in a moment no matter what he did so what was left to fear.
The lead T'lan ducked his shoulder to ram Derrick and, with the grace of a dancer, Derrick spun around to plant a sidekick in the small of the T'lan's back. The second one actually tried a ponderously slow thrust-kick. Derrick stepped inside and to the left. He thought the T'lan registered surprise as Derrick spun him around and thrust-kicked the T'lan in the stomach. The T'lan stumbled back and collided with the Warrior that was turning around from its collision with the shutter.
Derrick turned and sprinted back the way he had come. An elevator turned and the doors slid open. Derrick ran in, hit the button, and absolutely nothing happened. An access panel above him was open and Derrick wasted no time in leaping up. He was on the roof in no time flat. The elevator doors closed a second before they were shattered by a T'lan.
By then Derrick had already closed the panel.
Someone screamed above him seconds before an explosion rocked the shaft. Derrick looked up and saw that the doors to the floor above him were open and a fire was raging. A burning body, a man judging from the screaming, jumped into the elevator shaft. Derrick backed up as the man hit the roof of the elevator headfirst and broke his neck with a wet snap. A jet of flame spewed from the open doors to hit the ladder leading to the upper floors. Fortunately it stopped at fairly regular intervals. It was an odd thing to see; he wondered what was causing it, but as long as he could get past it he didn't care that much.
Alex'll head up. Derrick thought and, as she was the only one not trying to kill him, it sounded like a good direction.
Avoiding the fire was easy but touching the metal burned his hands enough that the green bar was reduced a little.
Just like an FPS. What the fuck.
The ladder was broken a floor up but boards had been placed across the shaft. Small worklights had been set up and a tool kit had been left. Derrick ignored the kit and made his way into the large ventilation duck. It was so high that he could move through it in a crouch instead of crawling.
Romeo decided to make his presence known as Derrick made his way through the ducts.
"Watch out for Cole."
Derrick had to make his way through a series of turns before he came to a high wall. He climbed it and soon came to another. This area had a hard hat laying next to a took kit with a flashlight on top of it.
Wonder what happened to him?
The next duct was low enough to warrant a belly-crawl.
"Over there!" A voice echoed through the duct.
"Help!" A different voice shouted.
We all could do with that.
Derrick was crawling down a vent duct when he saw the figures of two scientists through a grate at one of the intake junctions.
"On the roof of the Main Research Center!?" One asked in shocked amazement tinged with relief. "How many can it hold?"
"…Fourteen?" a different voice answered uncertainly.
"Better not tell everyone. Otherwise we won't be able to get out of here."
Escape chopper. Gotta remember that.
"I said don't tell them! Hey!"
There were sounds of a struggle and then someone was repeatedly slammed into the wall above the grate.
"Stupid asshole!" The one who wanted to keep quiet fled and left his companion slumped against the grate.
Gotta love the human race, Derrick thought with a grim frown.
The vents led to a room that looked like it was used for file storage. To his left, Derrick found the beaten man. The back of his skull was crushed and brain was coating the wall in a wide smear.
Derrick shook his head, took the can of juice sitting on the desk beside the corpse, and downed it in one go. To his surprise the green bar refilled and he found that he actually felt better. The pain in his ribs faded to a dull ache and it didn't hurt to breath any longer.
What the hell's in this shit? All natural ingredients, huh. Yeah, right.
Derrick followed the trail of the killer scientist. The next few halls were dimly lit but he was quickly become accustomed to that. Every door he passed was locked but that was becoming old at this point. Strange warmth in his right forearm was proving distracting though. The warmth suddenly flared into an intense burning sensation that made Derrick stop in his tracks and forced out a few pained grunts. He grabbed his throbbing, burning forearm and held it out before him. Derrick couldn't believe what he was seeing.
Crackling white light surrounded his arm up to the elbow.
The light quickly faded, along with the burning, and he realized he was most likely hallucinating again.
One turn later he realized he wasn't.
The pain came back tenfold and so did the intensity of the light. It was all Derrick could do not to curl up into a ball and whimper like a dog. Somehow he kept his feet until the pain subsided. He wiped his tear-filled eyes and was startled to find that his right arm was covered in bright white vein-like traceries up to the elbow. They bored a startling resemblance to the ones on the T'lan.
This day just keeps getting better and better.
Derrick looked up and saw the scientist scampering into a room just as another colleague was broken like a doll by a lone T'lan Warrior. The man closed the door and Derrick grimaced when the red lock panel was lit.
"Open the door!" Derrick shouted as he jogged down the hall.
There was little fear until the Warrior charged at Derrick much faster than the others. Derrick barely managed to sweep the brute and the jarring felt like it would break his leg. Derrick stood and ran for the door. It didn't open even when Derrick ran into it palms first.
"No way, man." The sweating scientist looked him right in the eye as he backed away shaking his head. "Fuck that."
"You fuck!" Derrick roared and turned at the sound of approaching footsteps.
Derrick ducked beneath a haymaker that shattered the glass window and instinct planted his fist into the T'lan's gut. His right arm's traceries flared an instant before contact. A sound like crystal breaking filled Derrick's ears as sparks flew from the contact. Instead of his hand meeting hard energy shield, it met hard yielding flesh.
The T'lan Warrior backed up and clutched his gut in almost comical surprise. Derrick planted a snapkick into his face and there was that sound again. This time Derrick noticed the T'lan's shield flaring out just before his boot made contact with the Warrior's face. Bone crunched and the T'lan stumbled backwards with a grunt. Derrick threw a left hook, right hook, left upper-knuckle combination that took the T'lan off its feet. Derrick was on it instantly, throwing flat-palms into his face while clutching its throat with the other hand, and screaming out his fear, frustration, and fury in cathartic release.
Finally he stood and thrust-kicked the T'lan's skull in. Whitish blood flowed, the T'lan wailed in unearthly fashion, and then died.
I killed it, Derrick thought numbly.
Derrick held up his glowing fist, and after a moment, began to laugh.