Some words of warning beforehand: This story is the product of sheer boredom during a time of working from home since the office is closed. I might not write much more than what is currently sitting in my folders on my PC.
It's also going to address some body issues that the canon introduced, although I will expand in that area a bit. I don't want to spoil anything so I'll leave it at that, but I'll try to remember to update the tags as I go.
You'll notice a clear Mass Effect inspiration, but I guess that's fine since this is fan work and I don't care.
Regardless; if that's not your cup of tea, you'd best turn back.
Caitlyn pushed off the wall with a shrug of her shoulder and started walking down the street.
Her hands were buried within the depths of her pockets and she had her ponytail tucked into the back of her coat. The high collar was popped up and brushing along her cheeks, concealing part of her face from unwanted attention.
After all, nobody needed to see her uniform and draw attention to her. She needed to be invisible for what she was currently doing and the criminal trivialities of the people milling about were her smallest concern.
Her eyes were trained on the man twelve metres ahead of her. He was also in a coat and strolling along without haste.
The city around Caitlyn was lit up with bright neon lights — signs that were advertising all kinds of things; spanning from current news and gossip over the most popular diet recently across to material things like the latest fashion trend and newest tech wonders.
The machinery was running smoothly; grinding ruthlessly. Trying to force things onto people who had neither the need nor the money for them, imposing upon them the pressure of owning them simply for the purpose of owning them.
The entire city was overflowing from excess and decadence, preying upon the slaves of vogue and their desire to be a part of it. And it all showed in the way the people strove for it.
And so the man seemed perfectly inconspicuous among them. But no, his disinterest in his surroundings gave him away. This was a shopping mile, and the throng of people Caitlyn was weaving her way through was staring at everything and nothing behind the windows proudly displaying wares from all around the cluster.
But he, in his casual gait, was disregarding all of it.
Caitlyn smiled a pleased little smile. He probably had no idea that she was onto him.
One after the other, they rounded a corner and passed onto a side street. This was where Caitlyn needed to be more careful. She fell back a bit, but kept her gaze fixed firmly on his back.
He glanced over his shoulder once, but Caitlyn had foreseen this and swiftly ducked behind an advertising column before he could see her.
Then he himself ducked around another corner and Caitlyn followed silently. The noise of the main street was echoing in the distance and the farther they moved away from it, the darker the surroundings became.
Great looming warehouses lined the winding narrow paths here, shabby and rusted from the perpetual rain that saw a great part of the planet's surface from time to time. Caitlyn saw him reaching into his pocket and she tensed in anticipation.
What he pulled out was a phone, however, and Caitlyn slowly exhaled. He put it to his ear and soon after began speaking in a hushed tone with someone. The conversation was over quickly, having lasted no longer than maybe fifteen seconds, but Caitlyn took note of it regardless.
He weaved his way through the tall buildings until he came to a stop in front of a warehouse that looked abandoned. Caitlyn hid behind a corner and blinked, her oculars activating heat vision mode and easily finding the man even behind the brick walls.
The storehouse itself was layered with something that blocked her heat vision, which was simultaneously suspicious for a common storehouse and exactly what Caitlyn had expected.
This was where things got serious. She waited for a minute and began prepping herself before venturing forth.
She unholstered her plasma blaster and the firearm spun to life in her hands; the retractable barrel clicked into place and the lens quickly adjusted themselves before going into standby. Caitlyn made sure the weapon was on safety unless she absolutely needed it not to be.
She linked it to her tech-tool and briefly checked its functionality. Her nano suit rippled across her skin, a protective layer that would allow her to withstand gunfire without actually wearing any cumbersome protection.
When Caitlyn was satisfied with her equipment, she approached the door and quietly entered the building.
It was dark inside, safe for a sole lamp with a bright bulb hanging from the ceiling. It illuminated the immediate space right behind the door, but not much beyond that. Her oculars switched to night vision and Caitlyn crept forward.
There were no heat signatures in her vicinity. Caitlyn followed a rather winding route through the storehouse that ended somewhere in the north-western part of the building. The closer she got, the clearer became the subdued voices. Two people were talking with one another, only briefly pausing their conversation to greet the new arrival.
Caitlyn took position behind a large boulder that was shrouded with a grey woollen blanket. Peeking around it, she could see what was essentially a laboratory of some sorts, hidden from view by a wall of stacked crates.
The man Caitlyn had been following was in the middle of shedding his disguise, revealing a white lab coat underneath. He was busying himself over a military-issue table made out of sheet iron to her left. It looked dented in some places, as if it had been moved around carelessly.
On top of the table lay various data cubes, a few of them currently accessed. Their holographic displays threw a warm glow into the workspace.
Caitlyn couldn't make out their contents, but she saw a handful of diagrams and a logo she had seen a lot of times recently — and the reason she was after these men in the first place. It was a mechanical skull with burning eyes.
A symbol of anarchism and destruction, having its origins in a man named Viktor. He himself called it "innovation" and "betterment" of humans, but it was really only the lunatic visions of a madman.
Caitlyn set her jaw; she had been following leads of missing people and mysterious abductions and connected them all to this Viktor, although she was still missing crucial parts in her investigation to bring him in. Mostly, because she still had no idea where he was hiding.
She swept her gaze around the space; green liquid was bubbling like acid within giant glass containers lining the walls. Two other men were standing in front of them, talking and gesturing. They also wore white lab coats.
But the real catch was to their right: In the biggest tank, filled to the brim with a clear, liquid substance, was a human. The man in the tank was naked, his body shaven free of any hair growth. Caitlyn noted that he had not just been sterilized, but his genitals had been completely removed. Tubes had been inserted into his skull and into his spine. His body was skinny and almost malnourished, he seemed to be comatose.
Caitlyn's face darkened as she took in the enhancements — his arms and legs had also been removed and exchanged with cybernetic replacements. A metal plate was strapped over his mouth and nose, small barbs dug into his face to keep it in place. Attached to it was another tube, this one pumping with bright orange liquid that led to an orifice in his chest.
The right side of his face was blackened for some reason and Caitlyn could see an orange lens socketed into the hollow of his eye. Whatever had been done to this man, it was horrific.
Caitlyn returned her attention to the two men — scientists? She'd have to run them through a BFR later — that were talking animatedly to the third man that had now went to join them.
"Is everything set?" he asked his colleagues, who nodded enthusiastically.
"Good, then let's begin. Viktor is waiting for our report."
He walked over to the tank with the man in it and began typing in commands to the console in front of it. Red lights on the small holographic display switched over to green as he worked and his colleagues went over to the data cubes to take more notes.
He stepped back when he was finished and Caitlyn felt the familiar tension coiling in her abdomen that came right before she sprung into action. Her rifle lay in an easy grip in her hands, but her hackles rose at the direct mention of Viktor's name.
She was in the right after all. Finally, after chasing leads that had only led to dead-ends for three weeks.
For a moment, all was still in the laboratory, save for some beeps and flickering lights. Then, the man in the tank jerked awake.
His eye was wide open, the other one glowing bright, and bubbles rose from his mouth… compartment? He seemed to find his orientation and fixed the three men gleefully observing him through the glass. Then, his arms and legs twitched, he threw his head around and strangled sounds reached Caitlyn's ears.
Dread rose in her stomach.
The ocular turned red and with a screech more befitting a feral beast than a man, he slammed against the glass tank, breaking it with one swift strike. It burst, and suddenly everything was chaos.
The tubes connecting him to the machinery around him ripped, he fell to the ground unceremoniously, the liquid was splashing everywhere. The three men jumped back from the mess, their eyes still trained intently on their creation.
"Quick!" commanded one of them, "Restrain it before it breaks anything!"
But it was too late; the cyborg had already risen and was roaring as he all but threw himself at the scientist nearest to him.
A crevice along his arm snapped open and the hilt of what was undoubtedly a weapon slid into his palm. He made a quick motion and just like that, a vicious, brightly glowing blade manifested on the hilt. An analysis via her oculars told Caitlyn that this weapon was some sort of silicon-carbide mixture.
The other men could only look on in horror as their colleague was ripped apart right in front of them, the sheer strength and fury of their experiment rendering them motionless.
"Shite!" Caitlyn swore loudly and trained her rifle on the cyborg.
Her cover would be blown, but she had already waited longer than she should have.
The cyborg threw away the arms he had torn from the scientist's body, his remains a bloody mess on the warehouse floor, and was stalking over to the other two. His chest was heaving, veins popping out on his skull.
He was so focused on the two men that he didn't notice Caitlyn rising from behind the crates and firing a precise shot right towards his head. Her face was an iron mask; there was neither time nor reason to make this an apprehension anymore, this man needed to be put down immediately.
To her horror, the shot from her rifle only clanked loudly against his skull, before bouncing off and disappearing within the interior of the warehouse somewhere. His head bent back from the impact, before quickly snapping back into place. He rounded on her as soon as his eyes found her and Caitlyn's blood ran cold.
Another angry roar left him, irritation and rage written clearly across his blemished face, and Caitlyn bolted. Luckily for her, not so lucky for the remaining scientists, they re-attracted the cyborg's attention with their incessant screaming.
They were stumbling over themselves to flee, having fallen to the ground and writhing in the liquid. The cyborg stalked over to them and all Caitlyn could hear were their screams dying out in bloody gurgles as they were swiftly and brutally killed.
She repositioned herself behind another wall of crates, clutching her rifle to her chest and setting her oculars into combat mode, displaying various new visuals to her. Her heart was beating wildly in her chest, her mind racing as she heard the cyborg closing in on her position.
His heavy breathing and loud footfalls gave him away immediately. He mumbled incoherent things and as Caitlyn spied around the corner, she noticed him grasping at his head. He doubled over with an angry scream, obviously in pain. His weapon lay next to him, discarded. Where the tubes had been ripped form his skull and spine, dark fluid was flowing down his body; it didn't quite look like blood, but it must have been something similar.
Caitlyn didn't stop to examine it however, and instead seized the opportunity. She aimed her rifle and fired squarely at him. His head snapped back up, red ocular rotating at her, but he fell nonetheless as Caitlyn shot him in his chest with a special round.
The bullet popped open and an electrical net quickly crawled over his entire body, like black tendrils, before lighting up and sending a vicious shock through his system that instantly rendered him unconscious. He screamed once more, an agonised and broken sound, before he fell to his knees and then keeled over with a heavy thud.
Caitlyn kept her rifle trained on him for a long moment after that, searching for any movement, but he was still. She exhaled the breath she had held inside her chest and stared at the heap of a man lying on the ground before finally getting up.
Her rifle was slung back around her shoulder, but not retracted, and she wiped a hand across her forehead, wiping away the sweat that had gathered there.
She approached the cyborg. His ocular was blown out, fluid still leaking from him, and Caitlyn swiftly stepped back into the laboratory to check on the others. As expected, they were all dead. One had been torn apart, the others had their chests slashed open and ribcages punctured, respectively.
"Bloody hell," she murmured.
Caitlyn gave herself a moment, then she called in.
*BFR = biometric facial recognition
This idea is something I had sitting in my folders for about three years now, but never gotten around to actually writing it. Since corona being rampant here in Germany as well, I've been banished from the office to work from home.
I like to count it as a small blessing, since now I've got some time to give a bit more thought to this scenario.
This — is the result of that time.
I'm really hyped for the Arcane series btw :)