"Out of the vehicle, damnit! Move, soldiers, move!"
I hopped out of the APC, as ordered, and joined a squad of soldiers who were stacked up at a door. One of them flashed a card at the large, obsidian lock: the red light began to flash, and the door exploded into paint-flaked splinters. I dug one out of my flak jacket, and entered the building.
I raised my shotgun to shoulder level. I don't know what training they had, but every CP I saw seemed to fire from the hip. Who the hell taught them, anyway?
"Civilian, release your weapon!" Barked a Metrocop from somewhere above me: he was answered by five gunshots, then a monotonous whine echoed around the dingy apartment building. I slowly moved upstairs, and peeked round the doorway into the hall.
Four Resistance soldiers, each armed with an MP7 submachine gun. Easy enough to take out, I thought. If they'd seen me, they weren't showing it – nothing but silence came through the door to me. I reached for a frag grenade, then reconsidered. Resistance or not, they were still human beings. I chose a flash instead, and rolled it through the threshold.
"Flashbang, get down!" One of them cried out, then four thuds and a loud explosion reached me. I was deafened a little – all I could hear was a shriek of protest from my whimpering ears – but I could see perfectly fine. I kicked one of the soldiers over onto his front, and shot out the back of his knees with my sidearm. He screamed with pain as the slugs embedded themselves into the floorboards, carrying shards of his decimated kneecaps with them. The other three I tagged in the gut. Painful, of course, exceptionally so. But not fatal just yet.
I recovered their weapons, and threw them back through the doorway to the staircase. Two Metrocops must have heard the commotion, because I saw two masked figures surveying my handiwork in the doorframe.
"Nice job, noobie." One of them said as he rolled an incapacitated soldier onto his back, examining the bloody holes in his knees. "Four downed, no casualties. Good work."
"Yeah," added the other, leaning into the face of the petrified soldier. "I'm sure they'll be real grateful you spared them when they're on the train to Nova Prospekt."
I could almost see his sadistic, malicious grin through his filthy white façade as he spat those terrible words. The soldier gasped in terror, then shook his head fiercely.
"No... n-no, please, no!" He rolled over and screamed out at the fresh burning in his legs. He faced me, and I looked back at him. Tears welled in his eyes.
"Kill me." He said, desperately. "Kill me now, you bastard! Just fucking kill me!"
Oh God.
Oh good God...