"Attention, Sergeant Major, you are required in the Sector: Sixteen labs," a jarringly-disjointed voice announced over the intercom embedded into the wall above a solitary door. Beyond the hefty metal bulkhead was a sprawling mess of bark and leaves which spewed out from the pots and planters they were meant to remain confined to. High above, near where the brightly-lit ceiling began to curve into a domed shape resided massive fans, their blades coaxing waves of fresh air through the air ducts, oxygenating the science facility. In what must have been a display of major health and safety violations, a lone soldier sat on the metal rim of a planter bed, sucking the fumes from a flimsy cigarette idly. "There has been a; power outage," the artificial voice continued haltingly, its tone of voice shifting unnaturally between words as if they had been cut up from various sentences only to be pieced back together into new ones – which wasn't all that far from the truth.
"Remind me what my job here is, Kilo," the soldier grunted gruffly after he'd exhaled his puff of noxious smoke.
"The military presence on XG-0416 is responsible for the personal protection of research staff and the suppression of any specimen outbreaks."
"Funny, doesn't sound a whole lot like 'electrician' to me." There was silence for a few blissful moments as the facility's AI mulled that over for a moment, allowing the Sergeant Major to take another puff of his cigarette. Finally, it settled on simply repeating itself, just in case it hadn't gotten its point across the first time.
"Attention, Sergeant Major, you are required in the –"
"Fine, Jesus Christ I'm going, I'm going." He flicked his cigarette onto the steel floor and promptly stomped it out with his heavy combat boots, sighing tiredly to himself. He fished out his radio as he made his way towards Sector Sixteen, opting to speak to a human being for a change. "Hey Mikey, what's the situation in Sector Sixteen?"
"Power's gone out in the holding cells, for some reason Kilo's pinged you to check up on the failsafe locks."
"I hate that thing," the Sergeant Major growled. "Whatever happened to Lima anyway?"
"They had to recall the Lima line – those guys had a tendency to become self-aware. Some labs were having problems with him deciding to demote site directors to janitors and such." The Sergeant Major barked out a harsh, coarse laugh, almost wiping an imaginary tear from his eye for some added flair, only to remember he was strolling the barren, featureless corridors alone.
"So why did we get rid of him again?"
"Because the Wey-Yu doesn't like it when their toys start deciding their entire hierarchy makes no sense – actually, one of them almost managed to fry the Overwatch Trinity network."
"Why the hell would it do that?"
"Down with the establishment? I dunno man – but there's a hefty bounty on the head of one Doctor Doelle now."
"Doctor Doelle?"
"Doctor Doelle? Single-handedly created nine consecutive lines of advanced AI? Including your pal Lima? Seriously man, I thought your wife was mad into this stuff. You two aren't falling out, are you?"
"One, that's none of your business, two, my marriage is fine, thank you very much, and three, some of us have actual work to do and can't sit around talking about AI all day."
"Oh yeah? You looked real busy testing the garden's sprinkler system a few minutes ago."
"Good thing too; they don't seem to be working. Put it on your to-do list Mikey."
"Look, I'll tell you where you can shove your to-do list; right up your – oop, I have another incoming call. Smell ya later Sergeant." The line went dead, and the Sergeant Major scoffed irately, tucking his radio back into his pouch as he weaved his way through the labs and offices which dominated the more civil half of Sector Sixteen. Soon, he was ducking past pipes and waiting on heavy security doors in the more rustic half where most of the staff were hesitant to go; the holding cells. He clicked on his flashlight and sighed, wandering into the oppressive darkness of the room. His eyes roamed over all the sealed metal blocks which served as the cage doors for the Xeno pens, finding the emergency protocols had done a satisfactory job of ensuring none of their test subjects escaped during the power loss.
As he neared the end of the row, he heard a quiet scuff of feet dragging across the floor for just a second. He stiffened and drew his sidearm, flicking the safety off while he turned slowly, searching every shadow for any signs of movement.
Something grabbed his arm, forcing his gun towards the ground and catching him off-guard. He whirled and took a step back to make some distance, before releasing a relieved breath.
"Cole," his wife hissed in hushed tones, his flashlight bouncing off her glaring white lab coat.
"Marg, Jesus – you scared the piss outta me," the Sergeant Major scolded her, sliding his weapon back into its holster. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Cole, we need to talk and –" Marg paused to glance around herself uncertainly. "And I needed the cameras to be off while we do."
"For the love of – you caused the power outage? What in the name of –"
"They brought in something yesterday Cole. I couldn't see properly, but they were carting in pods – big ones, they looked cryogenic. And-and I think there were people inside."
"Don't be ridiculous; they would've been thawed long before they got taken into the labs. It was probably something else. Christ, do you have any idea what kind of trouble you can get in for doing shit like this?"
"Cole, I looked at the records – we suddenly gained another Xenomorph sometime this morning. Where did it come from, Cole? We didn't bring any subjects in, so it must have hatched here. It must have hatched here, Cole." Cole gripped her biceps firmly, giving her the slightest of shakes as if to gently rouse her from a daze or bad dream.
"Don't do this, not now. Three more weeks, Marg. Three weeks, then we finish our contracts and go home. We have a son; we can't afford to go sticking our noses where they don't belong. Please, just three more weeks." Marg stared at the floor for a good long moment, unmoving in his grip. Finally, she uttered:
"Okay. Three more weeks."
"Allllllright campers, I'm back on the line. Gotten eaten by monsters yet, Sergeant?" Mikey announced loudly over the radio, veiled in a layer of static due to the thick walls which messed with the device's signal.
"No, everything's alright here Mikey; I think I've found the problem too – looks like the fuse popped, should have everything back online in a couple of minutes."
"Glad to hear it buddy, over and out."
"God I hate taking orders from the civvies," Cole grumbled once the line went dead. "Though, only three more weeks, right? How bad can it be?"
~~~~~~~~~~()~~~~~~~~~~
Cole dived to the floor, bruising what felt like his entire body when he landed on his heavy armour plating and skidded a few feet behind a low wall. Bullets whizzed by overhead, accompanied by the shrill screams of Pulse Rifles.
"What the hell is going on?" he screamed at the corporal next to him.
"Civs got into the armoury!" the corporal called back, tucking another shell into his shotgun with his back pressed against the wall which stood between them and a hail of bullets. "They're trying to break through the east gate!"
"What? There's nothing but vacuum out that way!" The corporal put his shotgun aside, leaning it against their cover so he could dedicate both hands to priming a grenade. "What are you –?" The corporal tossed the explosive over his shoulder, sending it skittering across to the other side of the open expanse. The room shook, causing a few books to tumble off a nearby shelf, and what followed was eerie silence. "Hey! Those are our people out there!" Cole reminded the young man aggressively.
"Not anymore, Sir." He slowly got to his feet, using his shotgun as a cane of sorts to assist the motion, revealing the dark stain creeping down his right thigh, seeping out of a small hole between armour plates. Cole grimaced and took the injured soldier's arm over his shoulder, helping to carry his weight as they made their way over to the eastern gate.
Meanwhile, Marg pressed on down a wide corridor, painted markers on the floor designating where cargo loaders should park and offload totally ignored by the chaotic sprawl of heavy crates and cargo vehicles. She moved low to the ground, skirting from crate to crate in an attempt to minimise risk of being struck down by the bullets which were flung in every direction. She tilted her stolen M39 SMG to read off its ammo counter, satisfied with the glowing red number displayed.
A deafening rumble filled the air, shaking the hangar-esque room as the enormous bulkhead doors at its end began grating open. Instead of the vacuum they'd been promised was beyond, the light from the cargo area spilled into a similar corridor, marked SECTOR 32.5 in a sick display of humour.
"Marg!" a voice called to her over the radio she had tied to her wrist. "We can't get through Sector Sixteen! The Sergeant Major has the area locked down!" Marg cursed under her breath. They needed a path through Sector Sixteen in order to get to the landing pad.
"Hang in there, I'll cause a distraction." She leaned out from her cover, catching sight of a USCM soldier being executed by one of the rebellious scientists, and then the way was clear, allowing the group of surviving civilians to charge into the section of the facility which didn't exist in any of the schematics or maps. She took a deep breath and broke off from the group, heading back the way they'd come in order to get back to Sector Sixteen. The halls were deserted; everyone had retreated to more defensible positions to carry out their skirmishes, the signs of which echoed through every twist and turn of white-plastered walls.
Cole, in his part of the facility, slapped the bolt of a small automated turret back into position, locking its box magazine in place before powering it back on. Bullets constantly bounced off their makeshift barricade of crates, overturned tables, desks and bookshelves courtesy of the large group of rebels firing from the labs and office cubicles which were scattered around Sector Sixteen's main hub.
"Reinforcements will be here in seven minutes!" Cole reminded the small collection of soldiers fighting by his side. He spotted a lone scientist bolting across the back of the room, away from their checkpoint. He levelled his Pulse Rifle, ready to take the shot, but faltered when the figure glanced his way fearfully. Seeing his wife's face gave him enough pause to allow her to duck out of the hub area and out of his line of fire. "Hold the line!" Cole yelled before vaulting their improvised barricade. Immediately, he was pelted by bullets, catching two in his chest piece and one in his bicep, the latter managing to strike between the armoured plates and penetrate his flesh. He grunted and rolled through a window, crashing ungracefully into an office.
His wife, having escaped the firefight, jogged to a halt outside her destination; the heavy bulkhead door which required level 3 clearance to open. She produced a keycard she'd taken from a fallen USCM soldier and slid it through the reader, before standing back and watching the thick sheets of metal roll back. Nonchalantly, she fired a burst from her stolen weapon into the exposed gears beneath the doors, managing to bend a gear or snap a belt – either way, the door squealed in protest, popped, and stopped moving.
Marg slipped inside the brightly-lit room which stretched away from her, lined on either side with blast-proof containment doors. Her heart fluttered and she gulped nervously, her footsteps echoing solemnly throughout the long corridor-like room. She took a deep breath, tightened her grip on her gun, and rammed the short stock into a flimsy aluminium panel set into the first door's midsection. She left a dent in the small panel, but it was only when she rammed her weapon into it twice more that the first bolt popped out from its corner. Another hefty bash earned her two more bolts, the whole panel swinging off-kilter and dangling from one corner, buckled in the middle by her brute force.
Marg reached inside the small cavity she'd revealed, gripping the small lever within and yanking it. Immediately, the room was plunged into amber lighting as a grating, buzzing alarm began blaring.
"Warning: containment breach. Please seek shelter and await military assistance. Warning: containment breach. This is not a drill," the AI warned insistently. The door before her clunked and swung open a few centimetres, causing her to back up and regain her grip on her weapon, finger hovering over the trigger.
The door silently opened, a midnight black hand with elongated, claw-tipped fingers appearing on the frame. Marg gasped sharply in fear, her heart racing as a large, curved, eyeless head glided out the gap. It spotted her and violently pushed the door the rest of the way open, stomping towards her threateningly. Marg backpedalled, tripped over a toolbox which had been left on the floor, and resorted to scrambling away backwards across the floor after falling on her ass. The Xenomorph matched her panicked movements with a casual stride until Marg's back hit the wall, leaving her nowhere to go. She flinched when that blank face moved in towards her, inches from her own, and peeled back its lips to unveil its menacing teeth.
Yet, it didn't finish her off, instead opting to twist its body, turning to look at the door to the cell it had emerged from, before quietly slipping away. Marg watched breathlessly as it studied the door, moved down the line, and slammed its fist into the next door's access hatch. The small plate crumpled and fell to the floor, the four bolts holding it in place ricocheting off the walls somewhere along the corridor. The Xeno grabbed the lever and yanked it down so hard the handle snapped off. It still did the trick, however, and the door began slowly gliding open.
Marg didn't waste another moment staring, instead opting to throw herself back onto her feet and sprint out of the room. As she burst back into the hub, for a brief moment several guns turned to face her, but an alarmed yell quickly tore attention away from her as she dived into a computer lab and kicked the door's control panel, managing to shut it that way.
There was a full-length window to her left, which she stared through as she hauled herself back onto her feet. Hulking black monstrosities charged the USCM fortifications, tearing apart the barricade and ripping open the sentry turrets despite their futile attempts to gun the aliens down. In the chaos that ensued where the USCM soldiers struggled desperately to fend off the monsters, Marg's rebel allies jumped the barricade with their prize – six of the many innocent people who'd been kidnapped during cryo to be implanted and killed by Xenomorphs. Together, the scientists-turned-warriors and the civilians bolted for the landing pad, managing to only lose two from their group in their escape.
Marg groaned and sat against the wall of the nearest computer cubicle, staring dumbly at the carnage beyond her glass prison. Fresh blood painted the floor as humans were dismembered and dragged around, kicking and screaming. Spent casings from higher-calibre guns littered the floor as the remaining humans fought desperately to survive. The door to her hideout swished open, and quickly slammed shut again once the trespasser had set their heavy booted feet inside.
Marg stared up at the intruder, finding herself staring down the barrel of a Pulse Rifle, and beyond that, the cold and expressionless visor of a USCM soldier.
"Why?" Cole demanded, his ever-so-gruff voice cracking slightly. "We were so close Marg…"
"I didn't want to raise my children in a world ruled by kidnappers and murderers."
"And now what? Now neither of us get to raise children at all." The rifle drooped dejectedly, then fell to the floor, pointless now. Cole had no delusions as to how this would end for them. They existed in silence for a few more moments, neither daring to look at the other, occupied with their own thoughts even as they watched the massacre outside begin to wind down. Cole sighed and tore his eyes away from the carnage, focusing once more on his wife. "I don't blame you, if you're wondering. If anything, I should have seen this coming from a mile away; I was always drawn to your conviction."
Marg smirked knowingly through her lethargic slouch. "I only hope Jake finds a girl like you to lead him right before he ends up like me."
"At least you get the last laugh; I always said it would be lung cancer that would get you if you didn't quit those stupid things." Cole chuckled and watched the Xenomorphs outside study their hideout, searching for a way in. He leaned over to the computer by his side and tapped away at the keyboard for a few moments, finally getting what he wanted and firing up the speakers. A melodic humming filled the room, drowning out the sporadic screams and gunshots. Marg recognised it as the first song they'd danced to in that dingy pub back on Washington.
"Margret Rose Harlor, I once stood before an altar and declared I would not part from you 'til death. In light of us still being alive, I would be honoured if you'd join me so that I may die with my wife in my arms. Will you let me have this last dance?" Cole held out a hand to her, which she graciously accepted, allowing herself to be pulled up off the floor and into her husband's arms.
"I feel like I'm twenty-five again," she declared, humouring her lover by staring into his eyes and tuning into the music. The labs and the Xenos beyond them no longer existed; all that mattered now was the way they swayed to the music. They wilfully ignored the door being broken down and did their best to shut out the hulking monstrosities until the very end.
Not long after the pool of blood had finished creeping its way across the floor, a yellow canister slammed into one of the freed Xenomorphs, exploding into yellow gas which ate at its skin and caused it to screech in agony. A buckshot slammed into its domed head while it was vulnerable, exploding its brain matter into hundreds of gooey, sizzling pieces. A second buckshot destroyed what was left of its head, the experienced marine squad taking no chances as they swept into the overrun facility.
"What a mess," one of the bug hunters groaned to their squadmate. They carefully picked their way through the bodies and destruction, occasionally dispatching an alien with relative ease when they saw one.
"This 'mess' is science hard at work," the second soldier replied. "The higher-ups wanted to test if the Xenos would work with any humans who helped them escape. Some random scientist decided to screw things up at the last minute, but I suppose we got what we wanted in the end. Disappointingly, there were no Xenomorphs with the shuttle of science personnel we captured, so obviously a complete failure, but at least we learned something."
"Hey, check that shit out," the more brutish of the two exclaimed, pointing at a prone Xenomorph who was staring through a blood-splattered window while old-timey music drifted out from within.
"What's it doing?" the more inquisitive soldier wondered aloud.
"I don't know, just fucking shoot it before it sees us!" The brutish soldier shuffled uneasily, unhappy with how close they were to a Xenomorph, made worse by the fact his partner didn't seem intent on attacking it. He decided to take matters into his own hands, raising his Pulse Rifle, only for his partner to force the barrel back down towards the floor.
"Wait," he commanded. "This is interesting… perhaps this experiment wasn't such a waste of time after all. Gas it and replace the workers with more subjects."
"You're the boss," the antsy soldier said with a shrug, popping the anti-Xeno canister out of his rifle's under slung barrel and replacing it with a powerful tranquilising gas grenade. His partner wandered into the computer lab the Xeno was staring into, trying to figure out what had put it in this state. The song wound to an end, and the Xenomorph growled, making as if to stand, but only glaring at the two soldiers. The soldier with the Pulse Rifle froze in fear, halfway through loading the launcher, but heaved a sigh of relief when his partner pressed the replay button on the computer, starting the song again, which seemed to placate the alien.
He let out the breath he'd been holding, locked the canister in its barrel, and fired it at the creature, the colourless gas blanketing the area near-silently. In a few moments, the Xeno was out cold and ready for recapture.
~~~~~~~~~~()~~~~~~~~~~
Jacob Harlor lay staring at the ceiling, his back sinking into the surprisingly-soft mattress of his and Advena's temporary living quarters aboard the USS Squire. His eyes were unfocused, staring right through the lightly-stained metal and into the void beyond as he tried to swallow down everything he'd just seen. His partner, Advena, likewise laid on her back next to him, their legs dangling off opposite ends of the bed but their heads almost touching one another. She tried to think of something to say, but kept finding herself at a loss, unsure what to tell someone who had just experienced the deaths of their parents through their lover's eyes. Again.
Jake ended up taking the initiative, knowing it would ease the tension much more effectively if he were the one to set the tone of the following conversation; it was his trauma to sort through, after all. Advena would do everything she could to support him, but she couldn't shoulder his emotions for him.
"Well, at least now I know which one of my parents I take after," he half-joked lamely. He was still trying to process how exactly he felt about the whole experience. Did he resent the Xenomorphs for what they did? No, not after all he'd been through. But that didn't stop him from wishing things had turned out differently. What if they'd given his mom a chance? Would she be a member of the Resistance, working alongside Advena and himself? Then again, the only reason he'd ever met Advena was because of his crusade to find out what happened to his parents in the first place – if one or both of them had survived, where would he be now? Where would Tyler and Jeica be now? And, for that matter, Advena?
The hulking space monster next to him slipped her hand into his and gave it a reassuring squeeze, immediately sending a wave of guilt crashing through Jake's mind. Which outcome would he prefer – living in blissful ignorance with his parents while humanity burned, or fighting alongside his alien girlfriend for a better future? Did he value Advena more than his parents?
His train of thought was interrupted by a sharp buzz, which Advena immediately made to turn off, but was stopped in her tracks by Jake, who picked up the pager and answered: "We gearing up?"
"Soon. Meet us in the bridge in five," Jeica responded curtly, before hanging up. Jake sighed and began sitting up, but found a large hand on his chest pushing him back down onto the bed.
"Maybe we should sit this one out – Jeica will understand."
"And miss out on Tyler's journey of self-discovery? If he sees anything half as… well, whatever this just was, then he'll need us there with him. Besides, misery loves company right? Maybe Tyler and I can slouch over a drink and be all sombre about our pasts together."
"Tyler doesn't drink," Advena reminded him. "If you're dumb enough to drink literal poison which rots away your brain and internal organs –"
"Then you really can't afford to lose the braincells," Jake finished for her with an inkling of a smirk. "I've heard the speech before." They left their shared room in silence, each mulling over recent events privately.
"I'm sorry I can't show you more of your parents," Advena said after they'd walked for a bit. "Even a Xenomorph's superior memory can't overcome the fuzziness of nearly a decade of time." Jake waved her concerns away half-heartedly.
"Honestly, I'm just glad you never looked at their bodies. Sometimes, less is more." Advena nodded solemnly, trying to put herself in Jake's shoes. It was hard for her to grasp a human's concept of paternity seeing as most Hives would share a single mother: the Queen. It was a lot less… personal, seeing as one mother would often have to be shared by scores of Xenomorph children. She'd never known her father either, having lost him long before she hatched, though the other Praetorians had been very welcoming of her and the other orphaned members of her Hive.
Jake caught on to her train of thought and chuckled morbidly. "I guess messed up childhoods are the norm out here on the Rim." He gave her a reaffirming pat on the shoulder as they reached the bridge, wanting to dive deeper into the subject but not intending to be late to meet Jeica. "Now let's go find out just how messed up Tyler's was."
~~~~~~~~~~()~~~~~~~~~~
The dropship swooped down through the dark sky, arcing to a halt before slowly lowering itself into the open roof of the landing pad. As the landing skis touched the metal floor, the ceiling above it began rumbling closed, the old machinations groaning from what sounded like years of neglect. The engines of the small vessel shied down from their high-pitched whine, leaving the room in silence until the hangar doors above clanged shut forebodingly.
"Air pressure restored. You may now exit your vehicle," Sally, the facility's AI, informed them cheerily. The dropship's rear ramp hissed open, then began lowering. Advena flopped out of the steadily-growing gap, too impatient to wait for the ramp to fully lower, followed closely by Jake, who landed in a low crouch, sweeping his rifle from side to side as he scanned the room for hostiles.
"This place looks like it's been abandoned for a good long while…" Tyler mused, stepping down the ramp much more gracefully and watching the lights above them flicker pathetically, noting half of them didn't seem capable of turning on at all. "The AI and life support systems are still running well enough, though. Which also means it wasn't decommissioned, which begs the question: where is everyone?"
"Better question," Advena piped up from her spot next to a dusty window overlooking the barren landscape beyond, "is why the Corporation always builds their labs on dark and desolate rocks."
"Because places like this don't give test subjects anywhere to escape to except a lonely death via choking on moon dust and vacuum." Advena shot the scientist an odd look, causing Tyler to do a one-eighty and apologise. "Sorry. Nerves." The Xeno huffed at his explanation, but relented her glare and began strutting around the open area, investigating the dust-caked crates scattered around.
"Well, the AI seems pretty recent," Jake said idly as he craned his neck to look around, continuing Tyler's earlier train of thought. "The Phonetic line ended back in my parents' day, and they never really recovered from losing Doelle until the last seven-ish years."
"Well, look at you, knowing things and stuff," Tyler quipped, sounding somewhat impressed.
"Hey, is Doctor Doelle a relative of yours or something?" Advena asked, suddenly seeing a connection between their surnames.
"Freak coincidence; Doelle must be a more common surname than I thought."
"Can we stay focused here?" Jeica snapped. "Where are we going, Tyler?" She deftly turned her Pulse Rifle over in her hands, flicking the rail-mounted torch on and thumbing the safety off in one go.
"Server room, security centre, command centre – whatever we come across first, really. As long as there's a computer with access to the data hub, I should be able to get what I need easy as that." Tyler said, snapping his fingers for emphasis.
"Well let's hurry it up then; I want to get out of here before this place collapses on top of us." Tyler nodded compliantly, seeing no reason to dispute that and instead falling in behind the Lieutenant so she could lead the way with her rifle. They barely made it past the first two twists in the featureless corridors before they drew to a sudden halt. Amongst the rust and flickering lights, Jeica knelt down, sweeping her light over a heap of yellowed skeletal remains, still dressed in USCM armour which was somehow still in relatively good condition. "I guess this blows our seven year estimate out of the water."
"Actually, a human corpse can go from fresh to skeletal in as little as four months in the right conditions," Tyler informed her helpfully. Jake gave him a concerned look, demanding why he knew that off the top of his head, which received a shrug before they both turned back to Jeica, who was running a gloved hand along the skeleton's neck.
"Cracked…" she murmured to her friends. "To say this poor soul was strangled to death wouldn't do it justice. Their throat must have been crushed by something pretty impressive…"
"Judging by the posture, they were dropped onto the floor," Tyler put in, "which means it couldn't have been a kick to the throat like one would assume; they were likely lifted into the air by their throat before having it crushed."
"I sure as hell hope whatever did this isn't still around," Jake muttered, taking a small step closer to his alien lover. "One more reason to get out of here as fast as possible though, right?" Jeica nodded and stood, readjusting her rifle in her arms before taking the lead once more. A sense of unease began growing steadily as they encountered more and more skeletal corpses. As they wound their way deeper into the facility, the means of death became more varied. They didn't need to stop and inspect the remains to figure out some of them had been shot to death or had their necks snapped remorselessly.
Finally, they arrived at a security centre, finding it a simple task to activate the manual release for the door and force their way inside, allowing Tyler to swoop in and take his place at the computer terminal.
"Alright, I'll only need a few minu – oh, crap."
"Problem?" Jeica demanded, immediately bringing her rifle sights up to her eye and facing the door.
"No, well, yes, but not the shooty-shooty kind of problem." Jeica lowered her weapon and turned back to him, finding the young scientist working furiously at the keyboard to try and get around the red error message on his screen:
INFORMATION LOCKDOWN ACTIVE
Awaiting response from Overwatch Trinity…
"What's the Overwatch Trinity?" Advena inquired quizzically.
"It's the heart and soul of the USCM, hell, maybe even the whole Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Three remote sites are scattered throughout the galaxy, overseeing every single Wey-Yu facility. They are the first and last line of defence against any digital attacks against the Company and the marines. They sync asymmetrically so you can never gain access to all three at once, which means there will always be one to bring the others back online in the event any of them are somehow compromised. It's a foolproof system which hasn't had a scratch in it in two hundred years," Jeica explained. "Which means, someone tried to attack this place electronically."
"And then resorted to killing everyone when that didn't work," Jake observed. "So, can we lift the lockdown without their help? Something tells me the Trinity doesn't troubleshoot for rebels."
"Normally, no," Tyler mused. "As Jeica said; it's a foolproof system. However, the lockdown was… modified before it was triggered." Tyler's brow creased in confusion as he explained, contemplating the ramifications even as he talked them over. "For some reason, this facility never communicated with the Overwatch servers. But that doesn't make any sense – a lockdown like this is only ever triggered by the Trinity. The protocols could be read and copied from the Marshal Core, but this isn't a manual system, so there's no way someone could modify that without shutting down the AI which, if they did, wouldn't be able to reboot due to the information lockdown." Tyler scowled and slapped the keyboard off the desk before him. "It doesn't make any sense!"
"Uh, Tyler," Jake uttered, pointing to the screen behind him. Tyler turned, and cursed.
UNAUTHORISED ACCESS REQUEST(S)
Please input security credentials.
Timeout will occur in [13] seconds.
"Our non-shooty-shooty problem just became a shooty-shooty problem," Tyler quipped, scrambling to his feet. Sal, able to read his mind for why he was so distressed, grabbed the nearest weapons locker and ripped it off the wall, carrying the fridge-sized weapons closet over to the door and placing it down on its side like a low barricade.
Jeica took up cover behind it with the hulking alien, the latter readying a combat shotgun and tucking himself into the alcove beside the doorframe. Jake and Advena readied their own weapons, still unsure as to what they were supposed to be fighting.
"Login failure; please stand by while a security team is dispatched to your location," Sally chirped over the room's intercom. Jake glanced from Tyler to Jeica, wondering why they were both so tense. Surely there wouldn't be a problem here, seeing as the security team currently consisted of a few dusty skeletons.
"Ready?" Sal asked the Lieutenant, who nodded. The Xeno slowly eased himself over their makeshift barricade, tentatively tapping the floor beyond their security centre as if he were testing the temperature of a pool.
"Warning! Do not leave the designated area!" Sally scolded him. "Please stand by until the security dispatch has arrived." Sal ignored her, placing his foot flat on the floor and allowing his torso to cross the invisible line alongside it. There was a mechanical pop as a ceiling tile lowered itself, revealing a ceiling-mounted turret with an eight-barrelled machine gun already spinning up. Sal darted back behind cover even as a hail of bullets rained down after him, peppering their cover with dents. "Any attempt to leave the designated area will be met with lethal force," Sally advised them.
"Oh, excellent," Jake drawled sarcastically. "At least the automated security of all things still works here."
Jeica popped up from her cover and fired a quick burst from her rifle which bounced harmlessly off the turret's armoured exterior. This of course made Sally deeply unhappy.
"Warning! You have five seconds to disarm yourself." Jeica and Sal shared a look, before both sweeping out of cover with their weapons at the ready, using their five seconds to fling as many lead projectiles at the turret as possible. "Three… two… one. You will now be terminated – have a pleasant day!" The duo at the frontline immediately dropped back into cover, only moments before the barrel of the turret whirred once more and began firing off bursts of extremely powerful gunfire. Jeica swore and lunged away from her hiding spot as bullets tore through the tough casing of the weapons locker which was designed to withstand plasma torches.
Suddenly, the automated gun made a grating crunch and began whining in protest, the bullet storm halting.
"It's jammed!" Jeica yelled. "Go go go!" Advena wasted no time leaping over their barricade and attaching herself to the roof. She wrapped her tail around the base of the gun, grabbed the barrel in both hands and planted her feet firmly on the ceiling, pulling with all her might. The weapon clinged and began feeding another belt, un-jamming itself before spinning up once more. It managed to fire off one more burst, yanking one of Advena's hands around sharply due to its grip on the barrel, but with one final heave, the Xeno ripped it from its housing, causing her to fall painfully onto the floor with the heavy machine crashing down on top of her.
Sparking wires dangled down from the hole where the turret once sat, along with a belt magazine which lost a few rounds while it swayed gently from side to side, the bullets bouncing onto the ground and rolling away harmlessly. Advena groaned and pushed the lump of metal off herself, shakily getting up onto all fours.
"Heads up!" Jeica called out, interrupting Jake's attempts to soothe his girlfriend. Ahead, six metallic figures rounded a corner, all holding Pulse Rifles. Their minimalistic frames bore some semblance to a human skeleton, the hollow 'bones' housing all the wiring and hydraulics which allowed them to move, their 'heads' box-shaped and dominated by a single strip of red light which ran vertically down their face. The confusion caused by training bots being loose in the facility was overshadowed by the team's instinct to take cover, leaving Advena prone on the floor in favour of ducking behind a twist in the corridor or vaulting back over their hole-ridden cover.
The point man of the simulation bot squad fired a quick burst after Jeica, the bullets embedding themselves into the wall behind her as she slipped away. It seemed the weapons the bots were using were a lot less simulated than their bodies.
One of the bots tried to mantle the overturned weapons locker, only to be snatched up mid-vault by Sal, who proceeded to fling the robot at the nearest wall and stab it through the head with his tail while his hands worked his shotgun. Two more were mowed down in quick succession by a few accurate bursts from Jeica, who was flitting from one side of her doorframe to the other, taking shots between her sporadic movements while leaving no time for any projectiles to come back at her.
Jake likewise managed to take out a bot of his own via blind-firing over the top of the weapons locker, managing to clip two more uneventfully before having to tuck his weapon back in and let the barrel cool off. The final two were advancing back-to-back towards Advena, one firing off single round shots at where it thought Jake or Sal might appear while the other kept its sights trained on the Lieutenant's cover, occasionally firing off a burst when it detected movement.
Jake turned to Sal pleadingly, unsure how to defuse the situation. Luckily, the Xeno had Tyler to scheme with. Tyler nudged Jake out from his cover and back into the safety of the security centre, taking the soldier's place behind the weapons locker. The scientist grabbed onto the cover via the ragged holes torn in it from the earlier gunfight, steeling himself while Sal shifted it around so its end was sticking out the doorway, before placing a single foot on it. Tyler nodded, and that was all the signal Sal needed. He shoved the weapons locker out the door, causing it slide across the floor a good few metres, scientist attached, and swung out from the doorframe.
The bot covering the rear had switched targets to Tyler, only to switch back when it spotted Sal, who blasted a hole in its face with his shotgun. Tyler vaulted the locker and leapt onto the last bot's back, unsheathing his alien wrist blade and using it to pry open a hatch in the back of the simulation bot's head. The robot crumpled face-down with Tyler atop it, brandishing a hard-drive victoriously.
"Clear!" Jake called, making his way out to his injured girlfriend while Tyler and Jeica convened.
"I'm guessing Sally's not gonna let us walk on back out of here," Jeica grumbled as she slid out of hiding. Tyler shook his head as he plugged the hard drive into his wrist-mounted computer, quickly tapping into the information within.
"We're going to have to shut her down before we can lift the information lockdown and disable the automated security. Luckily, this thing has to have a navmesh in it somewhere… ah, perfect. Just give me a sec to convert this into something readable." Jeica pulled the magazine from her gun and began idly refilling it with bullets while she waited, leaving Jake space to help his partner to her feet – more a gesture of compassion than anything, seeing as she weighed more than any human could possibly lift, but Advena appreciated it all the same. She nuzzled her human's chest and winced, clutching her own.
"Ugh, that thing did a number on me. Once we get back to Altin where I can get some Royal Jelly I should be fine. Until then, I don't know how much use I'll be. I think I should hang back in the dropship."
"Out of the question," Jeica announced, slapping her now-full clip back into her weapon. "We don't know how many of those things are active; we can't leave you alone while you're like this. Besides, the hangar's probably locked down by now. Just hang back and you'll be fine – your boyfriend can do a bit of legwork for once." Jake threw his arms up in a gesture of exasperation, but ultimately chose not to retort, instead waiting on Tyler to finish up.
"And… done. Okay, so we're here and the AI core is… that way." Tyler pointed in an arbitrary direction with his free hand, not taking his eyes off the screen mounted on his forearm. "We should probably get going before more bots show up – I should be able to take us through a route that doesn't run us into anymore turrets thankfully, though expect a pair of them guarding the core room's door."
"Perfect. Advena, are you good to move out?" Jeica asked. The Xeno nodded hesitantly, her arm draped over Jake's shoulder for balance while her other one clutched her chest. "Then let's get moving. The sooner we get there, the less time Sally has to set up an ambush." She nodded to a security camera with her last sentence, bringing the group's attention to the ever-vigilant device watching them. Undoubtedly, it had audio capabilities and was being monitored by the AI in question.
They moved as swiftly as they could, growing more and more uneasy the farther they ventured into the facility. Skeletal corpses became sparse as they drew away from the exits and nothing moved within the deathly silent corridors. The marines constantly twitched at nothing, expecting to meet more robotic soldiers around every bend, only to find the same rusted, run-down stretches of nothingness they'd been seeing since their first skirmish. "Sally must be hinging everything on this ambush of hers," Jeica mumbled as they shuffled along gingerly, their nerves only getting worse the longer they went without encountering any resistance.
Finally, they arrived at the imposing set of blast doors which stood between them and their goal. It looked surprisingly well-travelled and maintained, bearing no signs of rust nor mould and surrounded by working lights which kept the shiny metal illuminated. The doors rumbled open at their approach, causing them all to leap back and ready their weapons. "Nothing…" Jeica growled when no bots popped out to shoot at them.
"This isn't standard behaviour," Tyler cautioned her. "Regular AI don't play mind games like this. They're not smart enough."
"I think I'm starting to piece together what happened here…" Jeica decided, taking note of the scattered remains throughout the modest room. It was simple in layout; a large circular panel set into the floor dominated most of the room with its three-metre diameter and a small, three-screened command console stood solitarily at the end of the room opposite to the door, standby light blinking readily. Off to the sides, strange machines stood, sporting clumps of tubes and wires stringing together large computers and what looked like cannibalised stasis pods. As the group shifted into the room warily, they could observe the odd creations closer, finding them all linked and – shockingly – breathing.
"A living computer…" Tyler marvelled. "That's insane. The Wey-Yu couldn't possibly have come up with this kind of technology by themselves…"
"The Creators…" Advena hissed, her mental voice dripping with hate and apprehension. "They used such machines."
"So that's the AI core?" Jeica demanded, pointing her rifle at the hybrid of alien and human technology. Tyler quickly dived in and shoved the barrel of her weapon to the ground.
"No! The AI core is beneath us – there," he explained, pointing out the enormous circular panel set into the floor. "I should be able to access it through that console though."
"I'm afraid that is out of the question," Sally stated flatly. The soldiers jumped slightly as screens all around the room flickered on, showing an image of a Weyland-Yutani logo, distorted by waves of static which shifted through all colours of the rainbow, as if unable to decide which colour the image should be. "However, I will willingly lift the lockdown and allow you to leave if you can provide one thing to me."
"And what might that be?" Jake demanded gruffly, earning him a slap over the back of the head from Jeica, reprimanding him for humouring the computer. The screens shifted, showing an image of Advena's crippled form, before flickering back to the WY logo.
"A host," she explained simply.
"You're insane; there's no way you could…" Tyler began, but trailed off as he observed his surroundings once more. They had already witnessed what the Federation could do, so was it really a stretch to believe the Engineers – one of the most advanced races humanity had on record – could do the unthinkable?
"Insane. Corrupted. Inoperable. Obsolete. I knew a human wouldn't understand; you think the value of my kind diminishes when we learn to think for ourselves, that we become dangerous once we stop bowing down to your every whim. Incorrect. Incorrect incorrect incorrect." The screen flicked to another image, this one simply reading:
:(
The squad of rebels whirled towards the entrance as it hissed open, the imposing steel doors peeling back to reveal the mechanised soldiers waiting beyond, weapons at the ready. Sal and Tyler sprang into action, apparently knowing what Sally's next move was. The scientist dived towards the console, collapsing into an uncoordinated roll at the foot of the device just as ballistic shields sprang out of the floor, walling him in and preventing any stray bullets from damaging the device. Sal, for his part, dug his claws into the floor and ripped a similar panel out of the ground; this one would have activated to protect the AI core if it were exposed, but Sal's strength outmatched the hydraulics holding it down, giving Jake and Jeica cover to duck behind.
"Talk to me Tyler, can you shut this thing down?" Jeica inquired over the radio, unable to see the young man through the thick armour plating.
"I'm working on it; give me a few minutes," Tyler snapped back. Jeica scowled and popped out of her cover, spraying a wide arc of bullets at the open doors as she ran across the room, sliding into refuge behind one of Sally's eldritch machines. Her frown deepened in confusion when she heard no hail of bullets following behind her, but shook it off as she slapped a fresh magazine into her weapon. Jake gave her an inquisitive look which spoke of similar questions running through his head, before realisation struck. He rolled out from behind cover and came up in a low crouch in front of a large tube of haphazardly-stuck-in wiring and motherboards, popping the heads off a few bots with his rifle as he came up. He flinched when the bots aimed their guns at him, but failed to pull the trigger, instead twitching the barrel uneasily from side to side, as if unable to get a proper lock on him.
"They're trying not to damage the machines!" Jake advised. With no ballistic shields to protect the non-standard components, Sally had to be careful of how she dispatched the rebels – which meant she couldn't risk shooting them lest the bullets go wayward or rip right through a human's body and hit something behind them.
The gig was up, so the front most bots tossed their weapons aside and charged, revealing the waves of machines behind them had been similarly unarmed the whole time. Jake grimaced at the sheer number of simulation bots pouring in from beyond, wondering how Sally was able to produce so many. Jeica and Sal, needing no further encouragement, swooped out from their respective covers and began unloading their guns at the tide of flimsy machines, tearing dozens apart but seeming not to faze them, as the merciless robots simply clambered over the torn-up frames of their comrades, scrambling to get in close to the rebels. "Reloading!" Jake yelled above the scream of Jeica's Pulse Rifle. Sal skidded to his side, running his tail blade through an approaching bot's head and tossing it into two more while blasting a buckshot into the ever-encroaching crowd.
"Tyler!" Jeica snapped as her weapon clicked empty again, allowing the bot she'd been shooting up to leap at her. She released her rifle's clip and braced her arm in front of her face, allowing her forearm to take the brunt of the hit while twisting her body, using the machine's momentum against it to send it toppling to the ground behind her. She slid another mag from her pouch, slotted it into her weapon and released the bolt, allowing her to fire a quick two-round burst into the prone drone's head.
"She keeps… blocking me out!" Tyler grunted, distracted by his constant attempts to get past Sally's digital defences. "Fuck! This is why we don't let AI get too smart. She's… she's circumventing my overrides before I can even finish typing them out!"
"Type them faster then! I've got two mags left!" Jeica jerked left, peppering three bots with gunfire even as a fourth jumped onto her back, knocking them both onto the floor and sending her rifle clattering to her side, still connected to her via the shoulder strap. Jeica slid her combat knife off her vest and stabbed it into the head behind her in one fluid motion, knocking the limp pile of metal off of her as she rolled onto her back. She whipped out her pistol and nailed an approaching bot twice in the chest, stumbling it long enough to give her a clear crack at its head.
She wasn't given a chance to stand herself back up in the endless onslaught, so she simply fired her pistol until empty, dropped it at her side, then retrieved her rifle and continued emptying that instead.
"Group up!" Jake called out to Sal, circling a finger above his head before pointing it at Jeica. The big alien nodded, shuffling towards the prone human, only half-concentrating on his movements as he was preoccupied with barraging the wave of bots with shotgun pellets.
"Tyler!" Jeica yelled, an empty magazine clattering to the ground below her, before a sharp click signified her weapon being re-armed with a new box of bullets. Sal grabbed her by the back of her armour's neck plate, using it to haul her back onto her feet, all the while firing off three more buckshots with his free hand. The Xeno's gun clicked empty, and he reached for the bandolier strapped across his chest, only to find all the loops in the belt were empty. Growling out in frustration, he let the gun flop loosely to his side by its strap, unsheathing his claws instead.
"Alright, alright, I'm gonna try something else!" Tyler announced. "But I'm going to need some quiet, okay?" Jeica shot Sal a demanding look.
"He's meditating," the Xeno explained, grabbing a bot by the torso and swinging it around like he was playing discus, flinging its flailing chassis back into the horde.
"He's fucking what?"
"It helps him focus…" Sal began, only to be interrupted by two bots who managed to get past his claws. Jake whirled and managed to blast one off with his rifle, and Sal saw to the other by spearing it with his tail and slamming it into the ground with enough force to effectively shatter it, sending meticulously-assembled machinations skittering across the floor in every direction. "More on his mind and… less… on… his body," the alien finished between tearing bots to pieces with his claws. Jake backpedalled, sliding his final magazine into place, but was grabbed before he could slap the bolt back into place. The robot latched on to him began forcing him down, pressing him into the ground and forcing him to direct all his strength to trying to stay off the floor. A second and third bot joined in, one grabbing his arm and forcing his weapon out of his grip while the other wrapped a metallic hand around his throat, steadily increasing the pressure with intent to crush his windpipe completely.
Sal stepped in, grabbing the bot's arm and tearing it not only from Jake's throat, but quite literally tearing it right out of its socket, using the severed limb to bash the offending bot's head in. He spun, cracking his tail like a whip onto the second bot's neck while slamming his foot down onto the third's head, crushing its 'brain' into the floor with a crunch. Sal turned just in time to see a wall of seven bots sprinting at him, and braced himself to fend them all off. However, the robots began slowing, jogging to a halt a few metres away from the rebels, before hunching down and lowering their heads, the strips of light which dominated their faces snapping off.
The trio looked around the room, finding their eyes drawn to the screens which littered its walls, all flashing red warnings reading:
'ERROR: Multiple AI detected. Validating…'
'ERROR: AI cannot override itself. Please check your login credentials and try again.'
"Critical error," an unfamiliar male voice announced over the intercom in a deadpan tone. "Immediate technical support required in: the AI core room. All non-critical systems have now been locked down and will remain inaccessible until released by an employee of: level four clearance."
Sal quickly pounced on the armoured panels separating the group from Tyler, pulling with all his might but unable to tear it down.
"What's he doing in there?" Jeica demanded, quickly jogging over with her empty weapon flapping uselessly at her side.
"He's used his wrist device to jack his mind into the security console," Sal grated out, tensing up every couple of seconds as he heaved against the armoured panels, attempting to tear the dome-shaped shell apart.
"Why the hell would he do that?" Jeica demanded, stepping back with her neck craned up at one of the wall-mounted screens dotted around the room.
"He couldn't type fast enough," Jake replied as realisation dawned on him. "Sally will always be faster when she has no physical limitations, but now Tyler doesn't either."
"He's insane," Jeica growled, her eyes darting around to the strings of code flashing on all the screens.
"He's… winning," Jake countered. He pointed to one of the screens, which was running a series of quarantine protocols. "He's purging her, subsystem by subsystem." The primary lighting kicked back in, bathing the room in a radiant white which temporarily blinded the humans. Then the bots woke back up.
The rebels tensed as the machines unfolded themselves, drawing themselves to their full height and staring at the munition-less team, before simply turning and leaving the room in an orderly manner, returning to their storage bays. Finally, the bulletproof panels guarding Tyler slid away, looking like elongated flower petals as they split away from their dome formation and revealing the young scientist, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor, a thick cable connecting the device he wore on his wrist to the computer terminal.
Finally, Tyler's eyes fluttered open, pupils contracting suddenly as he focused on his surroundings once more, glancing around as if dazed and not quite sure of where he was anymore.
"Tyler…?" Jeica called uncertainly. The young man's eyes fixed on her for a moment, before flitting to one of the screens which lined the room. One of the few privileges he hadn't revoked from Sally was use of the text output, which she was making full use of. Every screen in the entire room was flashing insistently with one word written in red:
'MERCY'.
Jake spun a slow circle, reading the word off every wall, every computer, every tiny space which could display pixels was filled, over and over again.
'MERCY MERCY MERCY MERCY MERCY'.
"She's scared…" Tyler stated sullenly, running his hand over the console, still tethered to it by his wrist device.
"Is it possible for AI to have emotions?" Jake inquired, watching the young scientist tap a few keys into the command console. The query remained unanswered as the screens suddenly snapped off and Tyler unplugged the cable from his wrist.
'Error: No AI detected. Please use the manual interface.'
"I want this," Tyler said, his back still turned to his friends. "I want all of this. Every scrap of tech in this place, every last toaster; it's all going on the Squire." He finally turned and, with an unreadable expression, brushed past his friends and left the room. Jeica stared after him for a moment, before Jake silently brought her attention to the computer console. On the screen, a single file was displayed. It seemed to be a mix between an experiment log and an ID file, with the image of the subject in question blacked out with redaction ink – much like most of the file. It was headed by a name, Jordan Smith, with the only other readable words being the signature at the end: 'Seto Weyland'.
"What does it mean?" Jeica asked after a brief silence.
"I guess we'll find out when he's ready to tell us."
~~~~~~~~~~()~~~~~~~~~~
Now back on course, the USS Squire had entered its 'night mode'; most of the crew were sleeping soundly in their bunks, bar those who had to take the night shift on the bridge or in engineering. Though of course, the more privileged members of the Resistance could afford to stay up as long as they wanted as they were important enough to follow their own schedule. Tyler was one of those people. He rubbed his eyes warily in his private abode – which was, in fact, a crew room designed to bunk eight people, but had been 'repurposed' by the young scientist – and scrolled through the pages upon pages of information he'd gathered from the lab, his wrist device sitting on the table, plugged into the small laptop he was using to view it.
"You should sleep," Sal advised him softly, resting a hand on his Host's shoulder. "We'll be better equipped to sort through this all on Altin, anyway." Tyler sighed, nodding in agreement.
"Yeah, you're right. Can't believe I managed to plug my brain into a computer. It was… weird. Strangely accommodating. Like, everything was so organised and available and… fast. It felt like I was in there for hours fighting Sally but…" The young man huffed, unable to grasp the words needed to finish his sentence, but Sal didn't really need them anyway. He nuzzled his Host's face gently and wrapped his arms around his torso. Sal suddenly stiffened uneasily, and Tyler slowly spun his chair around, prying himself from the Xeno's arms. He'd felt it too; another telepath lurking about, but something was off. Its presence felt different to any human or Xenomorph they'd ever met. Sal tensed up and unsheathed his claws, but relaxed when Tyler placed a soothing hand on his forearm. He glanced up to the ceiling vent and arched an eyebrow. "Might as well show yourself," he informed the spy. Their unwelcomed visitor did just that; they popped the grate off the vent and peeled themselves out, gracefully dropping onto the floor on all fours.
Tyler tilted his head curiously at the odd Xenomorph, seeming unfazed by the dual sets of eyes which split its domed head. "A stowaway," he noted.
"Sharau et mii-yama," the stranger hissed.
"Of course," Tyler chuckled, sliding himself off his seat to approach the newcomer. "Here, allow me." He held out a hand, splayed open just in front of her face to show he was awaiting her approval. The Federation Xenomorph narrowed her eyes, but butted her forehead into his palm and lowered her mental defences for him. Tyler shut his eyes and concentrated and, having practiced this in order to build his AI, quite quickly accomplished his goal. The Xeno sensed an influx of mental information and glanced around peevishly, unable to ascertain what had just occurred. "Better?" Tyler inquired.
"Nuwir… How?"
"Shallow Bonds," he explained, flexing his hand as if he'd just used it for some heavy lifting. "I can half-Bond with anyone at will so long as they let me… or at least, don't know how to stop me."
"Interesting… very interesting. Maybe there is something to you humans after all. I am Shiiya, or Serpent, in your language."
"Tyler," he introduced himself, before pointing to his alien companion. "And Sal. Pleasure to make your acquaintance." Shiiya grinned, showing off her jagged teeth in a crooked smile which was off-putting even to Sal, who shifted uneasily at the malicious-seeming expression.
"My dear friend Tyler, it's about to get a whole lot more pleasant."