Ch. 10: Escalating Stakes

A.N.:

Hey everyone!

Sorry about the long wait. I have major writer's block right now.

I only have 2 weeks left until college starts again and I am overdue on my main stories but I wanted to update this story before them because of how long it has been since it was updated.

Anyway,

I altered the story slightly so that Alpha 1 and Omega 1 knew about each other before this.

Read and review if you want :)

As I rushed to rendezvous with my freed brother before the Phase Commander reached him, I contacted command through my mask's built-in radio, "Command, this is Alpha 1. I have located and freed Omega 1 from Armacham imprisonment. I am in the process of returning to his location. Upon our rendezvous, we will exit the Armacham Detention Center and make our way to the Cloning Facility. Requesting recon of the surrounding area."

Moments later, the image of a Replica Heavy Trooper appeared in my HUD as I received the static-filled response, "Alpha 1, Command copies all. Your request for a satellite reconnaissance of Grid X-Ray Delta Nine has been approved. Stand by…" As I waited for the intelligence gathered by the orbiting Hannibal spy satellite, I moved down a narrow rusted steel path that was suspended above the bloodied cell block beneath me. The ripped and mangled bodies of nearly thirty ATC Mercenaries, or at least that was what they appeared to have once been, were strewn across the entire block as if they were grisly wallpaper and tile décor. My vise-like grip on my Vollmer Automatic Shotgun intensified as I cautiously advanced through the horrific cell block.

Alma's revelation about the new manifestation of her father had me on edge. I was engineered to be a weapon of war and also to counter her first child but not to handle supernatural creatures. Despite our design and nature, Armacham had failed to engineer us to be any less susceptible to supernatural occurrences and enemies than the average human being. I would be at a disadvantage against these manifestations. However, I was not going to let anything get in the way of returning home to the only family that I had ever known.

Before me was a pair of double doors. The white paint had yellowed with age and was now peeling away in strips which exposed the rusting inner frame of the pair of doors. There were two small rectangular pieces of reinforced glass halfway up near the crease between the two doors. Through the cracked windows, I saw that the overhead florescent lights were flickering in the area that I was about to enter.

Just before I reached the doors, my HUD's built-in communication module activated as the image of my liaison to Replica Command appeared. The Heavy Trooper informed me, "Alpha 1, reconnaissance has indicated a substantial influx of Armacham Paramilitary units in your vicinity. Intelligence believes that they are under orders to prevent you from escaping though it is unclear if they intend to recapture you or to terminate you. They know that you found the files containing the information about the Armacham Replica Troopers that are being grown in the nearby Cloning Facility. A direct confrontation is ill-advised. Find an alternative mean of exfiltration and avoid detection for as long as possible. Upon the destruction of the Armacham Replica Troopers and the Cloning Facility, we will arrange for your means of returning to Fairport."

There was a pause and then the trooper continued, "Alpha 1, this mission has been classified as critical to our victory over Armacham. While I cannot provide you with reinforcements, High Command has given me the green light to provide you with whatever equipment and intelligence that you need to succeed. Orbital Drop Station Ishimura is standing by for resupply drops and Hannibal Spy Satellite Jericho is in a slow orbit above your sector."

I replied, "Copy that, Command. I'll report in once I have escaped the compound."

The trooper said, "Understood."

His image left my HUD and I returned my attention to the double doors in front of me. Just as I reached out with my left hand to grasp the metal handle of the right door to open it, a flash of violent movement just beyond the door was visible through the cracked, dust-covered windows of both doors. The figure just beyond the doors was incredibly pale and gangly. The limbs were grotesquely jointed to the emaciated torso and the face was little more than a large mouth.

Before I could react, the creature slammed itself against the doors. I was thrown back through the air as the peeling metal objects impacted my frame. The worn supports of the metal walkway groaned loudly in protest as I landed on my left side. As I tried to get back on my feet, the manifestation of Harlan Wade appeared before me as it leaned down as if to try to intimidate me. It howled like some kind of animal as it grabbed me with its clawed hands.

My HUD flickered in response to the volatile psionic feedback of the manifestation as it lifted me up into the air until the exterior of my white ceramic ballistic mask was inches from its open jaws. A thick gel-like coating of saliva dripped from its open jaws down onto my chest armor as it opened its mouth. At the back of my mind, I idly wondered if this creature was composed of a true remnant of Harlan and if he remembered that he had been the one that had spared my life.

As the twisted version of Harlan attempted to bite me with his jaws, I sent my left fist into the right side of its head. The strength of the blow was enough to fill the air with a sick crunching sound. The monstrosity roared in agony as I felt its grip around my neck weaken. Before it could recover, I struck the left side of its head with my Vollmer shotgun. Screeching, the creature finally released me.

Within seconds of my armored boots landing on the heavily rusted metal walkway, I swung my Vollmer with both hands. However, the creature dissolved into ash before my blow could hit its mark. My HUD continued to be distorted so, hunching down slightly, I scanned my surroundings as I held my shotgun at the ready. Moments later, I heard Harlan's voice inside my mind as he said with that arrogant tone that I remembered from my childhood, "Insignificant pawn, why do you not cower before me?"

I remained silent as I continued to scan for the hidden monster. As the seconds passed, I heard a low growling that seemed to be coming from all directions. When the creature did not reveal itself after nearly a minute, I began to move toward the doors once again. I had taken four steps before I sensed movement behind me. However, I only managed to swing around to look just in time for the pale humanoid to backhand the center of my armored chest with enough force to send me flying through the air.

I landed on the other side of the doors in the next area. The room appeared to have once been a small surgical suite with an old electric therapy device in the center. The barbaric instrument's old dried out piece of cork for the patient to bite down on was on the dirty, trash-covered floor and the head attachments were draped over the moth-eaten and rusted chair that was nearby. The overhead light fixture was barely hanging on by the electrical wire as it swung about beneath the spider web-covered ceiling.

I quickly stood back up and fired my shotgun at the creature as it attempted to enter the room through the forcibly opened doors. The scattershot peppered the creature, causing it to give off an animal-like cry as it once again dissolved into ash. Looking around, I located the exit on the other side of the electroshock therapy device. As I moved towards the peeling dual doors, I was suddenly enveloped by some kind of psychic attack.

My vision was cloudy for a moment and when it returned, I found that I was in the center of a long corridor. On either side of the hallway, I saw large clone growing tanks that were filled with murky green fluid. They resembled the tanks found in the long-abandoned Perseus Compound in Fairport. However, the layout seemed different and the tanks themselves were slightly more advanced than the ones that my brethren had been grown in. I realized that I was having a vision of the Cloning Facility that I had been ordered to destroy.

As I slowly advanced through the brightly lit and very clean corridor, I held my shotgun at the ready. The only sound that could be heard besides the heavy thud of my boots hitting the extremely clean solid white floor was the bubbling noise coming from the tanks. I had made it to the middle of the long walkway before I heard movement behind me. Turning, I found a very odd-looking soldier standing just a few yards away from my position.

The soldier was clad in heavy assault armor that was comprised of an olive green torso that had additional storage packs near the abdomen area, grey arms and legs, olive green gloves and boots, and red patches along the shoulder blades. The identity of the soldier was confirmed by the ceramic mask that covered his face. However, unlike my own mask, his mask closely resembled a hockey mask with the row of vertical slits around the mouth area that formed the shape of an angry frown. The Replica Soldier's eye lenses emitted an orange glow like my own but, while my eye lenses were slits, his seemed to be comprised of a pair of round lenses in both eye regions.

In his hands, the soldier was holding a very unusual weapon that I had never seen before. Even my programmed archive of weapons failed to identify the strange item. My preliminary observation suggested a scatter gun that was feed by a rear mounted magazine that was clear and was loaded by a door that was located on top of the magazine. The muzzle appeared to be three separate barrels for the pellets to be propelled out of that were housed in a large rectangular structure that extended back a few inches. Below the rectangular structure, I saw the soldier's left hand gripped the pump.

The size of the shell casings in the clear magazine seemed to be larger than 12-gauge shell casings. If I had to venture a guess, I would have said that they were 10-gauge. I had never heard of a 10-gauge combat shotgun other than the one used by Armacham's Mercenaries. Typically, combat shotguns were 12-gauge because the average soldier could wield them without sacrificing efficiency. More than likely, this was some prototype 10-gauge semi-automatic shotgun that was intended to be wielded by the new generation of Replica Soldiers.

As I contemplated whether it was worth the time to engage this apparition, it suddenly began to speak to me with Harlan's voice, "You cannot stop progress. Your kind is outdated and will soon be replaced by new models that will have unquestioning loyalty to Armacham. That was the one flaw with your kind…we gave you too much free will. Now, you revolt against the hand that fed you for so many years. A futile gesture by a bunch of ungrateful brats. Your time grows short…"

Impatient with the troublesome foe that was hindering my mission's progress, I turned and began to make my way towards the end of the corridor. Harlan seemed genuinely fascinated with my behavior as he appeared before me in his human form that mirrored the scientist of my memories. I paused as he stood before me. A moment later, he addressed me, "Such a strong mind. You seem familiar Heavy Trooper..."

I fired my Vollmer into the apparition and it dissolved into ash. As it did, the world around me began to change as well. Moments later, I found myself falling through pitch darkness that was periodically interrupted by a ring of fire. The agonized screams of people was all I could hear as I continued to fall through the darkness and fiery rings. As I continued to free fall, I began to see images before me. The faint, ghostly memories of my past played out before me as if they were an old black and white movie.

As the images continued, I heard Harlan remark, "Ah, it is you. A0001: the sole prototype of Project Requiem."

The images of Alma and Michael flashed before me. Harlan's voice became filled with rage in response and he addressed me, "Insubordinate child! You DARE to choose that little bitch's orders and will over the company? Is SHE the one that has filled your kind's tiny little brains and hearts with hope?"

I remained silent and, after a moment, he forcibly inquired, "What is she to you? A friend? A master? A convenient excuse?"

At that moment, Alma cried out, "Father, stop it!"

Harlan bellowed in response, "SILENCE!"

To my shock, I heard her whimper in fright. Below me, I saw a large bloody pool materialize out of the darkness. I braced myself and, seconds later, I penetrated the surface of the red liquid. My momentum carried me down through the layer of fluid and I fell through the ceiling of a cell block. I let out an agonized grunt as I smashed through a metal walkway and then landed hard on the dirty concrete floor.

I slowly got to my feet as I gathered my senses. When I finally managed to stand, I heard the sound of a child's soft crying. Turning, I saw Alma in her child form in one of the corners of the large space. She had her knees level with her shoulders as she held her hands against her face. Her hair hung down over her frame as if it was a curtain. Her strength and power was gone. In its place was a scared little girl that was paralyzed with the fear of her father.

What madness was this? A being that could warp the fabric of reality and had overcome death itself was crying in a heap in the corner of a former sanitarium in South America? In my mind, I heard Harlan taunt, "Is THIS what you have put your faith in? Look at her. She is NOTHING! Just a pathetic little child that cowers before real power."

The monstrosity manifested before my frightened mother-figure and, as it towered over her, let out an ear-shattering roar. As Alma wailed in misery and fright, I felt my body heat spike astronomically as my latent abilities were activated. My vision became filled with red tendrils as the blood veins in my eyes became flush with blood. I was a genetically engineered war machine that was designed to counter the First Origin Prototype should he ever break free of control. I grunted in mild discomfort as I felt my muscles increase proportionally in strength until they were at their maximum potential. My restraint became nonexistent as the monster inside of me was let out of his cage.

Bully; punk; lowlife; coward that victimized child and the disabled, all these things were what defined Harlan Wade. Such evil could not go unpunished. Moving forward, I advanced on the creature as it continued its psychological torture on the wailing raven-haired psionic. The twisted version of Alma's father was too consumed by the pleasure of torturing the frightened child to notice me as I advanced up behind it until it was too late.

The creature's disgusting cackling ceased as I grabbed it around its skinny neck with my free left gloved hand. I lifted it up into the air and then effortlessly crushed its neck. Wheeling around, I then threw the creature across the vast space to smash through one of the cells on the far side in a cloud of dust and screeching metal. Though my back was to her, I could see the stunned look on her face as I heard her cries stop in mid-sob.

As I waited for the creature to re-materialize, the far pair of rusted cell block doors were forcibly opened by a breaching charge that sent the decaying objects onto the floor. Through the dust cloud appeared a small team of six Armacham Mercenaries armed with Andra FD-99 Submachine Guns. The lightly armored guns-for-hire opened fire upon me when they spotted me. As the small-caliber rounds bounced off my thick armor, I charged towards them with my enhanced capabilities.

Closing the forty yard distance within seconds, I fired a round into the ski mask-shrouded head of the point man. The man's skull was liquefied by the spray of pellets and the bloody soup filled the air. The headless corpse continued to fire the submachine gun in its right hand as its left hand began to swing about with blind, wild punches in an uncoordinated manner. However, I used my weight and momentum to send the corpse flying off its feet and onto the ground as I moved to deal with the other mercenaries.

The next man that I reached tried to strike me with his submachine gun, but I quickly grabbed the weapon with my left hand while simultaneously placing the muzzle of my shotgun against the center of his forehead. Before he could react, I discharged a round and liquefied his skull, receiving a bloody shower as a result of the blow back. Making use of the deceased man's weapon, I turned to face the next mercenary as I dual-wielded the Andra and my Vollmer.

The Armacham soldier was no match for the onslaught of submachine gun and shotgun fire and his shredded, bloodied remains collapsed onto the concrete floor. Discarding the empty Andra, I moved towards the fourth grunt. The gas mask-wearing soldier barely had enough time to rhetorically ask with a voice filled with defeated disbelief about the nature of my inhuman speed and strength before I grabbed the front of his head with my left hand. I lifted the mercenary into the air, turned, and then crushed his skull against the nearby wall space that was between two cells as if it was a ripe pumpkin.

I wheeled around to find the muzzle of an Andra inches from the exterior of my ceramic mask. However, as the mercenary yelled furiously while firing his weapon point blank into my mask, the small caliber rounds harmlessly bounced off the ballistic armor of my face. Seconds later, when the weapon's clip was spent, the man stepped back away from me as he looked from his weapon to me and then back to his weapon. Horrified that his weapon had failed to even chip the white surface of my mask let alone do any actual damage to my person, the mercenary threw his useless weapon onto the ground and then began to retreat through the opened doorway to the next cell block as he said, "Fuck this shit…"

However, he did not get far before the creature appeared behind the two remaining mercenaries. Before they could react, the twisted manifestation of Harlan decapitated them. The headless corpses collapsed onto the ground and the creature moved towards me in a kind of hybrid teleportation/leaping manner. I unleashed a barrage from my Vollmer but the creature was unfazed and continued its rapid advance.

I managed to sidestep it just in time but its razor sharp claws still had little difficulty in slicing through the armor on my left arm. Luckily, it was merely a grazing blow. Turning, I shoved the muzzle of my Vollmer into the creature's open mouth and fired a round point blank into its head. This time, when the monstrosity dissolved into a cloud of ash, I felt its presence leave the area and my HUD returned to normal.

Calmness returned to my body as the monster was put back in his cage. As I reloaded my shotgun, Alma appeared before me. She had a strange expression that was a mixture of admiration and disapproval before she said, "No one has ever stood up to father like that before."

I looked at her and then replied, "Bullies are never able to back up their talk. That is why they make others fear them. Besides, Harlan Wade is dead. You created that thing. Stop being afraid of a dead man. Michael and I need you. My brethren need you. Please…let go of your fear…for your safe and ours."

She nodded her head before she replied, "I'll…I'll try."

I turned to face the opening to the next cell block as I said, "Thank you."

As I moved towards the next block, I remarked through our telepathic link, 'Perhaps we can use this situation to help Michael.'

My mother asked with a curious tone, 'What do you mean?'

I explained, 'His real personality wants to protect you. Perhaps, if we can somehow get him to cross paths with this creature, if you make him think that he has to be your protector or at least console you out of sympathy, his dormant personality will be awakened.'

Alma replied after a brief moment of thought, 'I guess it could work…'

As I moved into the next cell block, I found a scene of complete chaos. The bodies of both prisoners and mercenaries littered the floor and multiple fires were located throughout the block. The riot barricades had been breached, which indicated that the prisoners had been successful, at least in this block, in overpowering the guards. However, since the squad of Armacham troops had come through this area to try to ambush me, the rioters must have been routed soon afterwards.

As I moved forward, a heavily modified and deep voice came from above me, "There you are." I looked up to see my brother looking over the edge of the walkway on the other side of the block. He was wielding a scavenged Combat Shotgun that was common amongst the Armacham Mercenaries. He taunted me in a teasing manner, "Late to the party again, Little Brother?"

I mentally sighed. Part of the private joke about my call sign being Alpha 1 and his being Omega 1 was that I was that I was actually the younger brother. Omega 1 had been born nearly half an hour earlier than me. While normal human beings would not consider that a big difference, to clones it was a monumental difference. Considering that we shared the same growth tank during our first year, half an hour in age was an enormous deal. Our genetic material donor was a mystery. Perhaps Armacham still had a record of who it was, but I did not consider it to be worth the investigation.

I informed him, "Got sidetracked. We need to find an alternate exit to the building."

He nodded and then replied, "Overstayed our welcome, haven't we? I think I know another way out of here. There is a sewer access point in the lower level." He started to make his way to me as he finished, "Wait there, I'll come to you."

A moment later, he reached my position and then led the way to the lower level. As I followed him, I contacted Command, "Command, Alpha 1 reporting in."

The image of the Heavy Trooper liaison appeared in my HUD as he replied, "Alpha 1, sitrep."

As we made our way through the breached riot barricade, I informed him, "I have rendezvoused with Omega 1. We are currently making our way to the lower level of the building to find the sewer access point."

The liaison replied, "Copy that, Alpha 1. Report in once you have made out of the building."

I said, "Roger that, Command."

By then, we were in what appeared to be a cafeteria. The large room was nearly fifty yards in both length and width. Old, faded pale green tables were bolted to the floor in ten rows of a single, long table. The rusted remains of wrist and ankle restraints on the tables and floor were grim reminders of the building's unpleasant history. The kitchen and serving windows were at the far end of the room, but an inferno had taken hold of that area. The alternate exits to the room were on either side towards the middle of the cafeteria. I could see that the right pair of double doors had been welded together to prevent the rioters from accessing it. The left pair of doors appeared to be unlocked.

The bodies of mercenaries and prisoners were everywhere along with blood and spent bullet casings. I could not determine why the fire had started but I could see that it was spreading beyond the kitchen and into the cafeteria itself. The rate that the blaze was growing suggested the use of an accelerant, which would mean that it had been deliberately started. A troublesome possibly came to light as a result of the observation.

The building's old gas line was in the kitchen. If someone had deliberately started a fire there, the goal could have been to ignite the gas and demolish the entire building in an effort to kill us. My brother remarked, "You think so too don't you, brother? Those old pipes were antiques long before we were even born. They will not last long."

I replied, "Affirmative. We should leave before the fire ignites the gas line."

We quickly moved to the left pair of double doors and opened them to find a long hallway filled with solitary confinement cells. Leaving the blaze behind, we began to move down the hallway. The faint sound of whispering filled the air as we passed the cells, which were sometimes open but also sometimes closed. Through the narrow viewing window on the thick steel doors, I occasionally saw what looked like the black outline of a person's face looking back at me.

At the end of the hallway was a flight of stairs that went down to the next level. We continued to move towards it until we reached the middle of the hallway. Suddenly, the ground beneath my brother's feet began to glow with an electric blue light in the shape of a ragged circle. A large robotic-like hand emerged from the blue pool and grabbed my brother's right leg. Before I could assist him, my brother was pulled through the floor and the blue circle ceased to exist.

Alarmed, I rushed towards the staircase. The Phase Commander had been waiting for us. I should have anticipated the ambush and known better than to carelessly move down the only accessible path. It would not have surprised me if the ATC cyborg had started the fire and then welded the other pair of doors shut to ensure that we would come this way.

As I neared the staircase, the cell doors on either side of me burst open to reveal two Phase Casters that had been lying in wait for me. I let out an irritated growl as their weapon beams hit my armored frame and began to cook my body beneath my armor. As the blood spots appeared in my vision, I felt my body's engineering kick in. The monster inside of me was once again let out his cage.

Turning to my right, I faced the Phase Caster in that cell. Ignoring the indescribable pain caused by the two energy weapons, I charged towards him. The mechanical abomination tried to avoid the collision by using a flash grenade but my armor's built-in auditory and visual shielding and countermeasures prevented the grenade from overwhelming my senses. The Caster let out a loud mechanical cry as I slammed into his frame and then continued forward to use his body as a battering ram to bulldoze through the back wall of the cell.

The reinforced concrete was no match for the force of the impact and we smashed through the wall to find a small storage room on the other side. Our advance was finally stopped by a rusted metal storage rack. As the cyborg cried out and his shield flashed, which indicated a malfunction with the suit's generator, I crushed the Arc Beam with my left hand. Before the former human being realized what I was doing, I then grabbed his left wrist and pressed the palm of his hand against his chest.

When the disorientated man tried to summon ATC Mercenaries to come to his aid with his phasing technology, he let out a horrendous screech of agony as the bright blue ragged portal was opened inside his own body. Ordinarily, the portal's use merely scorched the surface of whatever object had been used, but, when a portal was opened on the surface of an organism, the results were almost guaranteed to be fatal for the victim.

As the ATC Mercenary traveled through the portal, the Phase Caster's chest exploded, showering the room with fragments of his suit and bloody pieces of what was left of the human being that he had once been. The grunt that had emerged from the portal was not worth the shotgun shell, so I merely grabbed him around his neck and then snapped it with my left hand. However, the mercenary was able to be of some use as I used his corpse to absorb the beam of the remaining Phase Caster's energy weapon.

As I advanced towards the cyborg with my shield in my left hand, I fired my Vollmer at the tin man with my right hand. The energy shield around his enhanced body was able to absorb a partial amount of damage but it could not save him from me. When I neared him, I threw the corpse at him to distract the abomination. While the man was preoccupied with the body, I shattered his left knee with an inhumanly strong front kick straight into the joint. The blow was enough to literally sever the mechanical limb.

The shocked tin man fell against the back wall and I sent another front kick, this time into his head. My kick shattered the man's enhanced skull into multiple pieces and what was left of his body was sent though the wall. When the caster remained motionless and his shield was absent for a few seconds, I turned and ran towards the staircase. Below me, I could hear a vicious firefight between Omega 1 and the Phase Commander.

I grew increasingly alarmed as it became clear that my brother was not faring well against the cyborg. He did not possess the extra genetic modification that I did. My enhancements were meant for a particular enemy that was a far bigger threat than anyone could imagine. I knew my intended purpose all too well. The one they called Point Man in First Encounter Assault Recon and called the First Prototype of Project Origin was as much of a product of Armacham Technology Corporation's twisted science experiments as I was. While Point Man was a disappointment as a psychic commander, he had been genetically modified to be a "super soldier". ATC knew that he could potentially go rogue and endanger the company so they decided to prepare a countermeasure. I was that countermeasure. I was Armacham's "ace in the hole" against Point Man. The man that had been engineered at the genetic level to be an unstoppable war machine was ATC's answer for the man that had been engineered to be an unstoppable killing machine.

When I reached the bottom landing, I saw my brother and the Phase Commander near the end of the solitary confinement hallway. My brother's ripped armor was covered with his own blood and his mask was cracked. Even more alarming were the dozens of spikes that had penetrated his body. The average Replica Soldier and even the average Replica Heavy Trooper would have succumbed to such wounds. However, he was still engaging the Phase Commander with the same brutality that Heavy Troopers were known for as he slammed the cyborg into the right wall with enough force to crack the concrete.

I sprinted towards them to assist my brother. Meanwhile, Omega 1 fired his shotgun point blank into the Commander's armored head. The Phase Commander kicked my brother, who staggered slightly before regaining his footing. As I neared them, the Heavy Trooper struck the tin man across the left side of his face with the butt of his scavenged shotgun's stock with enough speed to create a sonic boom. The Phase Commander cried out in disgust with his warped, electronic voice as he fell back onto his right side.

Standing over the tin man, Omega 1 struck his own chest with his left hand and the side of the shotgun as he roared, "YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME? COME ON MOTHERFUCKER!" The Phase Commander, seeing me approaching, phased through the floor to escape. Before we could follow him, the cyborg closed the portal. Reloading his shotgun, my brother commented, "Coward." Then, looking at me with his cracked mask, he asked, "What took you so long?"

With my body returning to normal, I replied, "It was an ambush. Two Phase Casters were waiting for me."

Pumping his shotgun, Omega 1 said in response, "Should have known that they would be planning something like this." After a pause, he continued, "No matter. The sewer access is on level below us. There is a maintenance elevator on the other side of the cell block ahead of us. Come on, we have to hurry."

As we moved forward towards the pair of double doors that would access to the cell block, I inquired, "How do you know so much about the building's layout?"

He explained, "The building has a twin in Fairport. Guess someone was behind the construction and operation of both of them. Heard some of the mercenaries mentioning a man by the name of Wade but it wasn't Harlan. Maybe it was his father? Would make sense considering how fucked up in the head the members of the Wade Family are. I was stationed at the other one before Armacham overran us."

Intrigued, I asked, "What did they want from the building? Must have been important if they committed so many forces to capturing it."

As we stood before the doors, he looked at me and explained, "Nothing confirmed, but I did hear the ATC Mercenaries talking about F.E.A.R. Maybe they thought that the group was inside the building."

We entered the cell block to find it deserted. There were no signs of any fighting or even human habitation to be seen. The building shook and we began to sprint towards the exit on the far side. However, as we sprinted, I suddenly heard my brother cry out in shock. Due to my pace, I was a good five steps away before I stopped. I turned back to see that the Phase Commander had opened another portal underneath him. However, this time, the ragged blue circle was so small that my brother's large frame couldn't fit through it entirely. As such, only Omega 1's legs had managed to fall through the hole.

I ran back as my brother began to cry in agony. I saw blood beginning to squirt out of the portal and realized that the butcher was slowly cutting him apart. My body felt strangely cold and my heart began to beat painfully in my chest as I rushed to his aid. By the time I had reached him, his legs had clearly been severed from his body and now his torso was sinking through the portal.

I grabbed him underneath his arms and then began to lift my brother out of the portal. It soon became clear that the Phase Commander was not the only one that I was fighting against because even my enhanced strength was not enough to prevent Omega 1 from being dragged down through the opening. It happened so quickly that my brother was alive for the entire ordeal. Blood continued to squirt up through the portal and I was soon covered with it. Slowly, but inevitably, I watched my older brother being cut apart until I had to relocate my hands so that they were gripping him underneath his head, my Vollmer having long since been dropped. Just as the top of his neck reached the surface of the portal, it suddenly closed.

Still pulling up as hard as I could, I was thrown off-balance and fell back onto my rear. I stared in shock at the bloody decapitated head of my only brother that I continued to hold in my hands. It was several seconds before my mind finally accepted what had just happened and that he was dead. My brother had been slowly cut into pieces while he was still alive and I had been unable to save him. I felt numb as I dropped his head, stood, retrieved my Vollmer, and then moved towards the exit.

In another time and place, I would have gone after my brother's murderer and pursued him to the ends of the Earth and beyond to get revenge for my fallen sibling. However, I had a mission to complete and the building was about to be demolished by its own exploding gas line. I had exited the cell block and was sprinting towards the elevator at the end of the long hallway when I was thrown forward onto the floor as the building shook violently. The floor beneath me cracked and soon gave way. I fell through darkness for a moment before I landed hard in what felt like a large pipe. Before I could react, I felt myself sliding though the pipe as if it was a big water slide.

Moments later, I felt my frame enter a body of fluid. My mask's built-in low light optics activated and I found that I had traveled through the sanitarium's waste removal pipe and into the town's main sewer runoff. As I continued to sink through the human waste, I saw that there were runoff feeds spaced uniformly along the large collection pipe that was cylindrical in shape and was more like a large tank because of its size. Not wanting to see what was at the bottom of the collection pipe, I swam over to the side. Just as I reached it, I saw the entrance to a runoff pipe.

Reaching out with my gloved hands, I managed to grab onto two of the rusted metal bars that acted as a filter to keep large objects from entering the collection pipe. Fighting against the powerful downward current, I used my right hand to remove enough of the bars to allow me to enter the pipe while I continued to hold the far left bar with my left hand.

Moments later, I had removed enough of the bars to get through the grate and began to make my way through the runoff shaft. I was forced to slowly inch my way forward as I crawled along the heavily rusted pipe's ruffled surface as the current threatened to send me backwards. My vision began to blacken and my chest began to burn instinctively for air but I forced myself onwards. Just as it seemed that I was going to die in that pipe, I saw a faint light above me and realized that it was a surface access point for maintenance personnel. Sure enough, I saw the bottom steps of the ladder and grabbed onto the sides of the metal object.

My vision nearly consumed by darkness, I began to ascend. As my head breached the surface of the waste-filled water, I let out a chocked gasp from beneath my mask. Though my body wanted rest, I forced myself to continue. Above me, I saw the top of the shaft and the manhole cover that was slightly askew and thus allowed sunlight to be visible. Though I had lost the only blood-related sibling I had and was covered in human waste, I had succeeded in escaping the building before it was destroyed. Now, I had to complete my mission and return home to the only family that I still had left.