It was no surprise that breathing was hard to do, considering it was Mars. Oxygen flow was only at fifty-seven percent thanks to a valve on the back of his helmet that took damage during the collapse of a rusted floor which dropped him into the basement of the facility. Still, to be alive and barely breathing was better than those who had already died from suffocation, exposure, laser fire, and/or blown to hell after stepping on a good, old-fashion pressure triggered landmine. Whatever the Alliance thought they had found out here on this barren planet better be worth the lives of an entire squad, except for one. Then again, Kyo had always been lucky.
The crimson-red paint job on his repurposed N7 armor was already fading. It had been through waves of Husks, Cannibals, Cerberus troops, and stared down a Reaper or two. Even without the threat of the end of the galaxy anymore, it didn't mean that the sun had come out with rainbows and tweeting birds. Earth had sustained heavy losses along with the slow repair of the mass relays and everyone in need of supplies, a reported secret Cerberus base on Mars that could have some live tech inside not have been massively damaged by the Crucible's giant EMP blast could be a boon. An unknown signal which originated from the base was strong enough to make it to space and shook up the curiosity of several top-ranking military officials. Whatever, or whomever, created that distress beacon was still somewhere in this underground facility.
Oxygen levels at fifty percent.
The message had appeared in text from inside of the helmet as it splashed across the glass visor. "Well, shit."
The flashlight at the end of the N7 Paladin heavy pistol had exposed nothing down here but corpses; Human remains in both lab coats and medical gowns. Some were still strapped to their tables, most likely had died when the building lost power, effectively cutting off their life support. Others may have died from whatever experiments they were a part of, willingly or not. Cerberus was not known to asking for consent or permission. The entanglement of tubes from various bodies connected to jars of fluid, some of which were broken and puddled in gelatinous blue and green designs on the tiled floor. The rank smell of embalming fluid and other chemicals even managed to pierce through the helmet's vents, making Kyo's face tighten up just before his omni-tool lit up.
The signal was stronger now, indicating how he was close, but that was just another way of saying that it was going to get more dangerous. With a quick motion, he cocked the gun and forced a hot thermal clip to ping loudly off the floor. The omni-tool rolled down the numbers in meters as Kyo walked blindly towards his target. Twenty meters, fifteen, ten, five - zero. There, in front of the soldier, was a large glass holding vat filled with a light-blue liquid where small bubbles were still being circulated. Despite the power being long gone from this place, this container still had dimly lit lights and a steady airflow stream. Kyo wiped away the condensation out of curiosity. There he saw it; a light brown-skinned face with closed eyelids topped off with a large mass of swirling white hair. Wiping away more of the film, he then managed to see the rest of the floating body. Thin, male, and in its late-teens to early twenties from the looks of it. It was a bit too blurry from this side of the glass to make out any major details, but the unnatural white hair was unsettling enough.
"Is he even human?"
With a hand on the container, the arm's omni-tool began to static uncontrollably. Kyo put the arm up to the helmet to see better as he clumsily tapped away at the screen where lines of jumbled code began to scroll on their own. There was another cranking noise behind him, causing Kyo to jump with attention and aim the gun directly behind where he was standing. Carefully, he moved forward until he found that it was a damaged console activating itself. A VI maybe, he thought as he tried to navigate to some sort of access menu. Perhaps there was an automatic trigger rigged in case anyone entered this room during an emergency?
His button-pushing did nothing but make the screen beep, but his omni-tool turned itself back on and streamed lines of code on its own to complete a hack the solider couldn't muster on his best day. There was the sound of steam being released from the vat as the hack had finished.
The surrounding glass slid up as the pressurized locks released with a flood of chemicals draining out into pre-cut vents embedded on the floor. "Hey wait!" Kyo shouted as he ran to catch the nude and slippery body as it fell from its holding cell. He managed to get there just in time, but the weight caused them both to hit the floor anyway. Wonderful. Now he was stuck with a naked, wet, and unconscious science project who was going to die anyway in a building without any...Was that oxygen now coming through the vents?
Systems back online.
The announcement came from overhead speakers as the lights flickered before turning back on completely while the sounds of random doors as they opened and closed themselves surrounded him. The fresh fog on Kyo's visor triggered him into taking off the helmet and then to take a deep breath of slightly stale, but welcomed recycled air. His short cut, but rather messy black hair stuck to his forehead from the heat as his dark eyes looked down at what he just caught. Upon release of the body, the signal he had followed down here was now gone.
He took a moment to remember how an entire team had been sacrificed for this, whatever exactly this was, and he wondered how a single person be worth all of those lives, even the risk of his own? With time to spare now that the threat of suffocation was no longer an immediate concern, Kyo gave the body in his lap a good once over. It had been noticeable cut into, cut up, and pieced back together if he could tell anything by the number of scars. There was also an extreme amount of exposed implants he couldn't recognize. Not that he was an expert in such things, but they reminded him of the Husks had encountered. Large, silver and blue bolts trailed down the male's back, across the ribs, down the arms, and were even on the inside of his palms. While running a few gloved fingers through the white hair, Kyo also felt metal attachments on both the skull and down the back of the neck as well. The fingers then forced the closed eyelids open with the expectation to see false metal eyeballs, but they were instead highly organic in a pleasant shade of light-green.
Still, despite all of the touching and probing, the body didn't respond at all, but at least it seemed to be breathing on its own. After letting out a sigh, Kyo hoisted the young man onto his shoulder so that he could start walking through the blood-stained building to look for some extra armor, even if it meant cutting a body out of it first. This was a priority since exposing a human body to barren Mars would kill them almost instantly, not caring how many implants they had installed.
"Suit…suit…aha. Well, we just met and I've already seen you naked. Guess it's not a big deal if I dress you either. I'm Kyo, by the way, an extremely famous galactic entertainer, a newer member of a very desperate Alliance, and now, I guess, a retriever of naked cyborgs. What's your name?" Of course, Kyo was just talking to himself considering. It was his way of staying sane. "Right, you don't have a name. Well, you have freaky white hair, so I'll call you Shiro. Any complaints?" If silence was the answer that Kyo was looking for, he received it in spades. "Didn't think so. Ah, here we go. This has Cerberus written all over it, but you need this more than he does right now." It took a few minutes to pull the suit on Shiro and hung the helmet on the suit's belt, just like he did to his own, and continued to follow the lit-up emergency exit signs on the walls.
"Ah, great." This hallway had been sealed off from an attack with the door tightly locked without any other pathways to redirect to. "Alright, Shiro. Wish me luck here." Placing the body back down, Kyo put on their helmets before holding up his omni-tool to the door. It lit up and spun as Kyo made his best attempt to hack the security lock on his own. "Failed…failed…shit, I'm not an engineer! Come on!" He banged the console with a closed fist. "If you have any ideas on how to bypass this door, now's the time to share them." There was a laugh from Kyo, who knew he was only talking to thin air, but the tool lit up again. After a few seconds of running smoothly through lines of code, the red lock suddenly turned green. The door opened and the sands of Mars rushed through the opening as Kyo found himself, once again, exposed to the dry air of the red planet. "….Huh. Weird. Well, we're outside again. Shuttle shouldn't be too far from here." He turned to look out at the open desert where whipped-up swirls of sand blinded his view. "I hope." After tapping at the screen on the tool, there was a steady beep indicating where their ride was. "Bingo. Alright, Shiro. Here we go."
The body was lifted again and moved to rest against Kyo's back. With that, the awkward pair began their walk.