Everyone tensed as a darkly coloured man stepped from the shadows, everyone except Nicola and Xannon. Nikki did nothing, but Xannon stepped forward and threw her arms around the man's next.
"Ave! It's so good to see you!"
"You sound like you didn't think I would come," Ave teased, returning the embrace. Ave looked to be some kind of canine, but either he was a species Sloan wasn't aware of, or he was a hybrid of some kind. He was blue, but unlike the light colour of Cresenda's coat, Ave's was a midnight blue so dark he blended in quite well with the shadows around him. He was thin, but not gaunt, and he had an evil little smile. He had on very plain, ordinary clothes, nothing fancier than a light coloured leather jacket over an unstained white shirt that looked to be made of good quality fabric. His faded grey jeans had both knees ripped out of them.
"My partner is waiting for us just up ahead, we'll talk more there."
"Partner?" Nikki hissed suspiciously, "I thought you were coming alone."
"It's only my brother, Chas. You remember him, don't you?" Ave asked with a twinkle in his eye. Nikki rolled her eyes. Sloan gave her a confused look.
"Never mind," Nikki said dismissively. Ave gestured with his hand for Xannon to gather up her group and hurry up. The night would not last forever, and they had to finish their task and blow the warehouse before the sun came up.
"I don't think we've met," Wolf said to Ave as they walked, holding out his hand. "I'm-" Ave held up his hand to stop him, before taking Wolf's and shaking it.
"I don't want to know your name. It'll make it easier for me when I'm captured and interrogated if I don't have anything to give up."
"When?" Wolf said, surprised.
"I'm not foolish enough to think I will get away with things like this forever. Unlike Xannon, I have not grown up in the imperial courts of Boolie surrounded in secrets and lies and trickery, so I'm not so good at the subtleties that go along with them. I know eventually I will be captured, and I can't be expected to hold out forever. Imperial soldiers have been known to be quite… persuasive," Ave explained, peeling back his right sleeve to show several deep gashes and painful burns.
"Oh god," Wolf muttered, disgusted but not really surprised by their callousness.
"Indeed," Ave agreed. "I earned these wounds by simply mouthing off as a child. Ah, there's Chas, can you see him?" he asked, skilfully turning the conversation away from his injuries. Wolf followed Ave's pointing finger to a light that glinted not too far off in the darkness. Drawing closer, Wolf could see that it was a Lectro-lamp being held by a man that looked a lot like Ave, but a little younger. His ears perked hopefully as they drew closer.
"Oh, Lady Xannon, has Nicola come with you?" he asked.
"Yes," Nikki snapped, "I'm here," and she stepped out from behind Wolf. Chas tried to strangle a strange smile, but didn't quite get it.
"Right," Ave said, bringing the attention of the group back to him despite his quiet voice. "Chas and I brought the explosives. I trust you brought your own personal noisemakers to this party?" Nikki smiled venomously in response to Ave's question. From her thick, dark jacket she pulled a projectile pistol equipped with a silencer.
"Noisemakers, check," she hissed. Her voice had changed, now it was more… snakelike. Sloan could feel Nikki's readiness to kill peel off her in waves. She looked up into her eyes, and what she found there scared her even more than Wolf's rage.
In her eyes was an animal. A vicious animal with sharp fangs and a black heart. An animal that enjoyed death and destruction and the pain that came with it. The gun disappeared back into her jacket. As it went, Sloan saw the glint of two ten inch hunting blades. The sharp edge of their shafts was the purest gleaming silver a blade could ever be. The other half of the shaft was so black it was as if someone had taken space and condensed it into a weapon. It looked like a longer version of Wolf's weapon.
Nikki didn't even notice Sloan stumble backwards, away from her in fear. What was happening to the people Sloan loved?
XXX
How they had managed to get to their current location without being shot dead, Sloan could not fathom. You knew as soon as you set foot over the zone boundary, because it was crawling with soldiers and gundroids. Sloan had accidentally stepped out at the wrong time on one occasion, almost right into one's line of view. Had Chas not grabbed her back into shadows, the outcome could have been disastrous.
She had started a little prayer as soon as they entered the target zone and had done her best to push her problems out of her mind. She was still praying two hours later as she stared down their target.
From the air, it had looked like just another ordinary warehouse, but seeing it from the ground, it was obvious that it wasn't like the others. The regular, rusted out, corrugated sides had been replaced by thick black steel, smooth and lacking a single imperfection. Staggered every six feet were floodlights so bright it looked like the entire perimeter of the place was stuck forever in daylight. Just outside the light, farthest from the warehouse, she could see several armed guards patrolling the perimeter. Sloan glanced back at the rest of the crew, they were all hiding in the shadow of another warehouse not far off, surveying the best way to execute the plan. Sloan couldn't see how it was possibly going to work.
"Okay," she whispered, "so which one of us was the one in charge of coming up with a way to get in?"
"The only way we could make it is if we took care of every single sentry. If we don't, they'll surely call for reinforcements. That is something we must avoid at all costs," Ave answered. A growing feeling of dread was beginning to congeal in the pit of her stomach.
"So how many guards are there?" she asked, trying to sound casual.
"The most the reports have said is eleven," Chas responded.
"Oh great. That's only what, one and a bit each?"
"If we were all going out there, yes, that would be true," Nikki's snake voice answered. She produced from under her jacket one of her beautiful knives. "I'll make you a bet," she told Leon, "15 credits say I can get more than you." Leon pulled out one of his own scimitars.
"I think I'll have to take that bet," he agreed. In a flash, Nikki fled her hiding place. Sloan watched in horror as Nicola crossed the darkness with Leon hot on her heels, their blades glinting in the night. The expanse that seemed so huge just moments ago was now frighteningly small.
"Hey!" one of the guards yelled as Nikki drew near, "you can't, augh!" he screamed as the silver blade tore through his flesh like water. Another guard ran to his aid, only to be cut down with the same ease.
"Better get a move on!" Sloan heard Nikki tease. Leon simply growled in response. Nikki and Leon, working in perfect time, systematically slaughtered the sentries that barred their entrance to the warehouse. The thing that terrified Sloan was how much Nikki looked like Leon just then. They were both such good killers, and they were both enjoying themselves.
As suddenly as the yelling and the carnage had begun, it stopped. The silence that settled back over the night seemed morbid after the slaughter Sloan had just witnessed.
Wolf, seeing the stunned look on her face, walked over and helped her to her feet. Sloan's head slowly rotated around. When she saw who was holding her, she came back to her senses, if only enough to pull herself out of his grasp and stagger a foot away to lean on the nearby building. Her eyes came up to meet his, then fell again. It easy to see how deeply shaken she was by Nikki's bloodlust. If Sloan hadn't known about it from their time together in Sector Y, Wolf deduced it had to be something Red Generation had managed to bring out in her.
Sloan cringed as the gravel crunched next to her, heralding Nikki's otherwise silent arrival. Nicola didn't seem to notice as she rounded on Leon with a demonic smile.
"I managed to hit six. How many did you fell, Leon?" she goaded. Leon's fists clenched.
"Soon I'll pay you back in triple," he promised. Her only response was a sneer.
"Are you sure the coast is clear?" Xannon asked to break them up.
"We're quite positive," Nikki answered, still with that frightening grin on her face.
"Alright, let's move in then, we're just losing time here," Xannon decided. Sloan gratefully took the chance to break away and jogged towards the warehouse, pushing past Nikki and leaving the rest of the group behind.
Wolf watched in alarm Nikki's eyes snap to Sloan's moving body. She looked for a moment like she was going to attack. A look of shock and confusion suddenly swept over her features. It was as if the thought of hurting Sloan had scared her out of her battle rage. She turned to Xannon as if for some kind of reassurance, but Xannon was talking to Ave and didn't notice. Nikki looked down at the bloodied blades in her hands like she had only been vaguely aware of their presence until that moment. She looked up at Wolf with that same questioning look, but the monster in her eyes regained control as Leon swept past, muttering something to her. Wolf followed close behind Nikki. He glanced up ahead and saw Sloan's shoulders go rigid as she stepped over a body.
They collected at a service entrance in back of the warehouse. Chas had the face plate off the push button lock and was toying around with its insides. Ave was busy handing everyone an explosive from a burlap bag. Eight people, eight explosives. They were making sure this warehouse would fall.
"I got it!" Chas announced triumphantly as the panel gave off a high pitched chime. The still attached front lit up, asking for identification. The smile slid of Chas' face. "Well that's not good."
"What's wrong?" Sloan asked.
"It's asking for fingerprint identification. That's something even I can't fake," Chas said unhappily, trying unsuccessfully to figure out in his head a way around it. Nikki and Leon exchanged glances with each other, then turned their gazes at a nearby corpse.
"Would just a sentry's thumbprint work?" Nikki asked. The look on Chas' face said he knew what she was getting at, and he wasn't pleased.
"Uh, yeah, I guess that would work," he conceded.
"Mhmn…" Nikki turned and walked off a little into the dark. A few seconds later, they heard the sound of a knife slicing through flesh and bone. When Nikki returned to the light, she was holding the severed thumb of one of the nearby sentries. She held out the thumb to Chas, who held up his hands.
"You do it," he told her in disgust, standing up and walking over to his brother. "So she's an Unnatural," Sloan heard him hiss quietly.
"She does not judge you, and you will do the same for her," Ave warned. Chas' eyes dropped.
The panel beeped again and welcomed a Lieutenant William Hull. Sloan swallowed hard. William Hull would never be welcomed anywhere again. After it had served its purpose, Nikki threw the digit away.
"Everyone ready?" Xannon asked. The group took that as a signal to draw there weapons and hold them at the ready. Xannon nodded with satisfaction. "Nicola, would you do the honours?"
"Certainly, miss." And Nikki wheeled around and burst through the automatic door.
XXX
What happened once they entered the warehouse was very anticlimactic. It was deserted. A thin layer of dust said that not one person had been inside the warehouse in a long time. Sloan, secretly a little relieved, holstered her weapon. Panther walked up to the nearest crate and flipped back the cloth cover, revealing about 60 glass containers filled with a blue substance. He squinted as he read the label.
"Anti… hydro… nuc-le-carbon," he muttered, glancing at Xannon for clarification.
"It's a popular antidepressant. The makers want to know how much a patient can take before it becomes toxic to the body. They are also interested in finding out what it does to patients without severe depression," she explained. Her eyes clouded over. "Preliminary findings say that an overdose can cause damage to respiratory and nervous systems."
"And let me guess," Wolf said, "they figured that out by trying testing on Red Generation prisoners?"
"Exactly," Xannon snarled. She looked at the explosives in her hand. "Let's blow this place sky high."
"So what this stuff?" Sloan asked, not hearing Xannon's quiet call to action. She was holding up a red liquid.
"Does it say Biocarnivorous?"
"Yeah, I think that's what it says here," Sloan answered, rechecking the label.
"That is used specifically for torture and interrogation. After someone is given it, anything they eat or drink burns their throat so painfully, it's as if they've just swallowed flames. It doesn't wear off until the antidote is given."
"So if they already know it works, how come they sent more here?"
"To check the potency of the batch." Sloan shivered. She had seen a lot of pretty bad stuff happen to little kids, but nothing like this.
"I vote I put my explosive right here," she said.
"No, Sloan, I want you to climb that support beam and stick it up near the top," Wolf told her, "unless of course you can't make it up there, and I have to do it instead."
"Are you kidding?! That's easy!" she replied, dashing across the warehouse to climb the pole. Wolf smiled a little. It was funny, listening to her light-hearted voice fill such an evil space, and after seeing something like the carnage outside. With the device in one hand, she jumped onto the beam and began to shimmy her way up at an incredibly fast rate. Wolf wasn't sure if even he could do any better.
"Okay, that's one," he said, then brought his voice up so that Sloan could hear the next teasing words, "unless of course Sloan falls and cracks her skull open!" he had to stifle another smile when he heard Sloan blow him a raspberry from a third of the way up. It was good to see that somewhere between her hiding spot and now, she had bounced back from his outburst. But then, Sloan never did seem to stay mad long. "Where else?" he asked Xannon.
"Well, I've already planted two directly in the crates, Leon, yours needs to go on that support beam," she pointed at the beam in the corner the exact opposite of Sloan. Leon, who had been leaning on it before being addressed, turned and started climbing.
"Nicola, yours goes in the crates on the other side, same with you, Wolf. Alright how many is that…" she slowly numbered them off in her head, As Wolf followed her finger around the room, a realization dawned on him.
"Hey, where did Ave go?" everyone else looked around. Ave was nowhere to be seen.
"Ave stayed outside. He wanted to make sure that if one of them manage to call reinforcements, he would be able to tell us before his capture," Xannon explained, still deep in thought. "Okay… alright, Chas and Panther, do you think you could climb those last two beams?"
"I don't see why not," Panther decided after sizing up the climb. Chas only nodded.
"Then go, everybody go. We're on overtime here, I can feel it." Everybody scattered across the warehouse, placing their respective devices and arming them. Wolf realized then that he had never shown Sloan how to do that, but she must have been alright because she hadn't called down for help.
He looked up when he finished his job, trying to spot Sloan on the catwalk high above them. She was leaning way over the railing, watching Panther climb back down. Wolf was just about to call her to come down as well, when suddenly her head turned to look behind her, and she leaned out of view. Wolf rose from the kneeling position he had adopted to place the bomb and walked backwards, craning his neck to try and see what Sloan was doing. The catwalk she was standing on blocked his view, so he gave up and instead walked over and stood next to Xannon.
"This is good," she murmured, "we're almost done. The sooner we leave the better."
"You always get so over anxious. Everyone who knows we're here is lying dead outside," Wolf said to calm her. She smiled and nodded, but continued to pace and shift from foot to foot as the others finished up. This bothered Wolf, too. Usually, when Xannon had a very bad feeling about something, it was warranted.
"Anyways, let's-"
"Uh, guys!" Xannon was cut off by Sloan's worried yell. Xannon's eyes snapped to Wolf, as though her worst fears had been realized. The comm. on Xannon's arm crackled to life. Ave's voice, barely more than a strangled whisper, wheezed out,
"Run." The next second, the door exploded open.
XXX
Sloan gasped as the force of the explosion blew both Xannon and Wolf off their feet. A scuffling sound had alerted Sloan to the presence of someone outside, and by the time she had been able to climb to one of the tiny windows, she had seen one or two armed, imperial soldiers run out of sight. If only she had been able to spot them sooner.
At first she had thought that Ave had given them up, but as the men rushed through the door, Sloan noticed an ape in black power armour. From the ferocious looks of him, he was the one in charge. His hand was around the neck of Ave, who hung lifelessly at his side. Chas cried out and looked like he was about to jump over the railing to save him. Sloan grabbed the back of his coat and jerked him backwards, out of view.
"What are you doing?!" Chas screeched, "my brother, he… he's got my brother!" The sounds of blaster fire echoed in the cavernous space. Someone screamed. Sloan didn't recognize the voice. There was a metallic sound as armour hit cement floor. Sloan glanced backwards nervously. She should be down there. She turned back to Chas.
"You have to stay here," she told him plainly. She held up her hand when he tried to protest. "We're just mercs. If this goes bad, we can always just hightaill it home, but not you. If they see your face, they will hunt all over this planet for you. You'll be as good as dead."
"But, my brother…"
"You're brother is dead! He just hasn't stopped breathing yet," Sloan shouted, ignoring the tears that were welling in Chas' eyes. There would be time for apologies later. Chas must have realized that she was right, because he didn't try to protest again, he simply hung his head to cry.
Sloan ran back to the railing. They were far outnumbered. The soldiers had pinned them in a corner and were moving in for the kill. The Ape leader just sat back and watched with that same look of sick enjoyment that had been on the face of the fox on the train. Sloan couldn't see a way to get down without being seen. She took a few steps backwards, keeping her side pressed against the beam.
Something in her pocket made a scraping sound as it brushed against the support beam. Confused, she reached in and pulled out the tiny knife she had chosen back in the Nicell armoury. She looked at it carefully, wondering if maybe it could help her. As she ran her fingers along it, they connected with a small button at the very base of the hilt. Thinking she had nothing to lose, she pressed it.
The blade of the weapon lit up blue, its edge dancing and immaterial. It gave off a slight hum as it moved. A vibroblade. She remembered Wolf saying something about them. Vibroblades could cut through almost anything. She looked at the blade, she looked at the beam.
No. That would be crazy. Totally insane. But then, how else was she going to get down? Sighing, but knowing she had no alternative, she looked down. If she screwed up, she would be landing a crate full of some dangerous orange chemical. She pulled Wolf's bandana up around her neck. She inhaled. It smelled like him. At the same second, she heard him bark in pain.
"Shit. Well, here goes nothing." she drew back with all her might, then plunged the blade into the steel post. Without giving herself time to think about what she was doing, she pulled out her pistol and jumped. Her weight jerked on the blade and started it cutting through the metal. She started picking up speed, and it didn't take long before she knew she was going way to fast. She braced herself for impact.
Crash!
She felt the containers shatter, the glass pierce her flesh and the chemicals splash onto her. Someone yelled her name. Someone closer squawked with surprise. She aimed for the closer noise, firing without really seeing, trying to shake the burning in her eyes. With her free hand she grabbed the edge of the container and vaulted over it. Able to see a little clearer, she started firing into the crowd of soldiers.
A plasma round shot past her. It was so close its heat burned the skin on her right cheek and sent her staggering.
The pain cleared her eyes at once and banished all other pain from her body. She could no longer feel the glass shards. All the soldiers had suddenly stopped running, attacking. It felt like they were all standing, watching her. No, that wasn't quite right. They were moving, but slowly, heavily, like they were under water. The one who had tried to shoot her in the head was slowly trying to line up another shot. Sloan aimed and fired. The man jerked backwards at full speed, struck in the head by her bullet.
Instead of firing randomly, she was able to pick perfect target. She was only vaguely aware of her own movements, simply finding herself wherever she needed to be to get the right shot. A small part of her mind wandered back six months. So this is what it felt like to have one of her episodes out of the cockpit.
She heard someone yelling. The others had gained some ground, thanks to her. Leon's long scimitar sliced through three people at once. Nikki stepped with her whole body into a lunge, skewering someone on her blade. Xannon was fighting off a half dozen soldiers, her plasma blade whirling through the air like she was in the middle of some intricate dance. Panther had found cover behind a crate, firing plasma rounds over the top. She couldn't see Wolf.
Concerned for her leader's safety she began to glance around, trying to find any trace of him. She was so intent on finding him, she didn't notice that her control was slipping away. Things around her were speeding up again. She didn't notice until a heavy-set wolf in imperial uniform stepped towards her, plasma blade raised. He caught her so off guard that she could only stand there and watch as the shining green blade fell deftly down, aimed for the spot between her neck and right shoulder. With the arcing path it was on, it would split her in half.
A microsecond before it hit, something ploughed into her with a full bodied tackle, knock both Sloan and saviour behind a stack of crates.
"You got distracted," Wolf's gruff voice muttered in her ear, before rolling off her and jumping up.
"What do you…?" Sloan started.
"When you've started, you can't get distracted. If you lose your concentration, you lose the… trance." It sounded like he didn't think that was the right word for it, but threw it in because he didn't have time to think of anything better. Sloan looked up at him. She could tell by the look in his eye that he hadn't lost his. "Gather everyone up, we need to go, now. We can't hold these guys off forever," Wolf told her as he searched for a new target.
"But what about…" she never got to finish her sentence. Wolf's ears picked as he caught sight of a soldier that was hiding not too far away. He had a bead on Panther, so Wolf jumped him. Sloan stayed crouched, finding everyone's position. They were being backed into a corner again, by Nikki and Leon had managed to cut a swath to the door. The explosion that had knocked the door in had also started a fire, so Sloan knew if they didn't get away now, the fire would reach the explosives before they got a chance to cut a new path. She caught Xannon's eye. Sloan pointed to the door. Xannon nodded, understanding. Wolf had grabbed Panther, so Sloan made a break for it, sparing less than a glance at the catwalk where she had left Chas. There was no sign of movement, so she could only hope that he had escaped in the chaos.
The ape realized where they were heading a few moments too late, and by the time he shouted the order to stop them, everyone was out the hole blown where the door used to be.
It was pitch black outside. Sloan stopped to get her bearings, only to be knocked into by Panther.
"Don't stop, just run!" Wolf ordered. Sloan, more afraid outside than she had ever been during the fight inside the warehouse, ran blindly into the night, oblivious to the locations of any of her team mates.