Omega [REDUX]
Chapter 44
Whether she wanted to admit it or not, she was ready. And she was going to have to accept that.
The operatives sent to kill them may not have known who ordered the hit, but their agreement to use Empyrean gear was surprising, to say the least. Maybe they just didn't care. Either way, that decision might just have saved her.
The armor Elsa had reconstituted was identical to that of the standard Empyrean soldier. In line with Elsa's desire to minimize collateral damage on the mission, they'd use stun rounds instead of live ammunition. It was common to see Empyrean units utilize recovered or salvaged UIF gear and ammo, so it wouldn't give them away.
At least, that was what she hoped. A lot of things could give still them away, like if they caused injuries far more severe than what the average soldier was capable of, or if the analysts decided they were running far too quickly even by the standards of an augmented Empyrean soldier, which had been known to deploy on specialized missions before. The operation hinged on the higher-ups, including the mole, believing that there was discord amongst Empyrean ranks and/or bureaucracy as to why a rogue squad had been sent to the facility to extract data. Naturally, the actions Anna and her undertook would be scrutinized post-operation.
Elsa sighed as she looked over her shoulder at the system diagnostics, checking its progress before turning back to her gear, manually sliding stun rounds into her assault rifle magazines one at a time. Icy meditation aside, it was one of the other things that seemed to calm her somewhat, and she couldn't quite figure out why. She slid a clip into the weapon, waiting for the satisfying click before she hefted it and took aim down its sights. It fit well in her hands, as she'd expected; she'd always been able to use it well in a fight.
"Everything ready?"
"I'm good on my end, I think." She triggered the shield on the suit and prodded the energy surface with a finger. "Looks fine to me."
"I'm glad you think so," Anna responded as she stood before Elsa, fully geared up. "I wouldn't want to have to do a troubleshooting session right now. Not In this piece junk, at the very least."
Elsa completed her diagnostics and deactivated the shield, disengaging the suit from Cradle Alpha's mainframes and opening up the suit. "This piece of junk might just save us today," she replied off-handedly, loading up her magazines and flashbangs in their respective compartments, pretending not to be bothered by the eerie black faceplate the suit's helmet possessed. She'd lived her entire life learning to fear that faceplate, the cold hard stare of the black faceplate. She almost expect that hidden, traumatised part of her to start screaming EMPYREAN again.
It felt strange putting it on.
It felt wrong.
She brushed aside the thought. She had to do this. Her fingers gripped the helmet a little tighter.
She felt a gauntleted hand on her shoulder. "Penny for your thoughts?"
"Just… thinking." Elsa sighed out loud and began to put on her suit. "I don't know why this bothers me so much now."
"I could always count on you to keep worrying," Anna chuckled, prompting Elsa to smile just a little. "You know we'll be fine."
"I know." She'd said it with a little less conviction than she should have. "I know."
"Is it about, you know, the armor or something?"
You read my mind. "It's just…" Her mouth failed to find the words suddenly.
Elsa looked down, suddenly unable to meet Anna's gaze. "I… I swore to fight the very people that put on this suit when I got out. I swore that I'd never let them make anyone else suffer." She slid on a glove, pressing it down to ensure it made a good fit for her hand. "Now I wear their armor. I use the same equipment they've been known to use. I'm about to attack a UIF military asset, along with the soldiers guarding it. What makes me any different from Empyrean now?"
"You know that's not fair to yourself."
She clenched her fist, finally satisfied with the way it moved, reaching for another armor piece. "You know that it's still arguably true."
"It's a means to an end," Anna said. "The endgame being the enhancement of your ability to fight them in the long run. It's just a measure we have to employ, nothing more."
Elsa donned the chest plate, feeling its mechanical seals connect securely with the rest of the armor pieces, and reached for her helmet. "And how long can I go down this path before I eventually become them?"
"You'll never be like them—"
"They made me, Anna. They made me. I—"
Her voice gave way again. Her heart felt hollow. Her mind blanked out. She stood there, helmet in hand, half gawking and half choking, no words left in her mouth, tears stinging at the corners of her eyes.
"I…" It was a long time before she'd managed to gather her scattered frame of mind. "I'm sorry." She turned to look at Anna, her beautiful features hidden behind a similar black faceplate. "You don't deserve to hear this. I shouldn't be unnerving the both of us before a mission."
She watched Anna pull off her helmet, shaking her red hair free and pulling Elsa closer. "You are your own person, Elsa. You're free. You're not a part of them, and they're not a part of you either."
"I'm finding that more and more difficult to believe."
Warm lips pressed upon her forehead, and she shuddered at the touch. "You chose to be the person you are today. You're better than them, no matter what you believe. No matter what you have to do."
Their gaze locked, Elsa's eyes brimming just a little as Anna pulled her in for a tender kiss.
The United International Front's main datacenter was codenamed Matrix. It was a large complex situated in a valley, difficult to detect because of the mountain range surrounding it; it was too hazardous to find it by flying low, and was too small to detect when flying high. Even then, its state of the art radar jammers were more than capable of preventing any possibility of fluke detection, rendering it near undetectable.
So on the deployment drone's projection of proximity scans, the coordinates Charles had given them turned up blank. Logically so; even his access to UIF databases didn't disclose all the details about the facility. They were going to have to improvise as they deployed.
It was just unnerving, Elsa reasoned, to have to burn in into set coordinates without knowing what exactly was under them. The high altitude they were at didn't help either; they had to skydive from outside the facility's enhanced radar detection radius. They'd also have to burn in at an increased velocity to avoid showing up as anything more than static interference on local scanners.
High altitude, high speed, high uncertainty. A terrible threesome of troubles; not ideal to actualize just before this kind of deployment.
Her faceplate would conceal her fear superficially. If Anna had scanned her bio-signs to determine her current mental state, she was not mentioning it. Just as well. Elsa felt for her weapons to ensure they were secured to her bodice, grabbing onto a strap as the drone's ramp deployed, air blasting into their troop bay.
"That doesn't look promising in the slightest!" she heard Anna yell into her comm, barely audible over the sound of the wind. And she was right; whatever was beneath was obscured by a thick blanket of clouds, a series of ominous flashes illuminating their translucent surface. "You sure you still want to do this?"
"What choice do we have?" Elsa yelled back, steadying herself against the buffering air currents. The telltale signs of a storm were brewing, but their drone would exit out of their deployment vector soon. It was now or never.
She sucked in a breath and broke into a run, hearing Anna's footfalls behind her as she followed suit, leaping off the ramp and plunging into a dive. She stretched out her arms behind her, feeling the familiar pounding in her heart and lurch in her gut as she plummeted into empty air, watching the shades of grey and black shift as rapidly as the altitude meter ticked away.
"Drone exiting close-air-support range," Anna reported. "We're on our own."
Her HUD initialized, trajectory protocols kicking in. The wind was blowing them off course severely; the red marker indicating their ideal drop route was somewhere off in the distance. The suit's thrusters proc'ed off as she angled her body to find the most ideal course of descent, allowing the suit to engage in course corrections at efficient fuel burn levels. All around her clouds rushed by in great grey wisps, the first telltale droplets of rain sliding across her faceplate.
Come out, come out, wherever you are…
"Entering troposphere now."
The cloud layer gave way, the ominous sound of thunder crackling in her ears, to reveal a valley laid complete bare, untouched by civilization in the slightest. "What the fuck?" she managed, her heart leaping to her throat as she continued to plummet, the darkened grasses beneath becoming ever more visible. "Where's the facility?"
"That's… impossible," came Anna's voice. "But my scanners aren't picking up anything. What the hell? How did this go wrong?"
No no NO this can't be happening. What the hell did we do wrong? Did we deploy from the wrong coordinates? Did I make a calculated error? Did I just put us out in the middle of nowhere—
Lightning cascaded across the sky. In its thunderous aftermath Elsa thought she saw the ground she was falling toward shimmer just a little. Her eyes narrowed. That wasn't a hallucination in her attempt to rationalize her failure.
Was it?
"Well if we're not going hitting the facility anytime soon," Anna began, "we should hit the ground and rendezvous at the extraction point—"
An electric fizzle. The scene beneath Elsa changed as she felt static coursing right through her suit and across her skin, just as the grassy view of the valley suddenly shattered to reveal a darkened series of buildings, metal structures erected all across its surface. The facility came into full view, its series of antennas, dishes and data conduits now visible to the intruders.
And so was the ground, now quickly rushing up to meet them. "Shit—!"
Elsa engaged her retrograde thrusters in a panic, hastily spread-eagling to increase her air resistance and slow down however she could, the low altitude warning blaring inside her helmet. It wasn't quite enough; the blackness of the metal flooring surged upwards a little too quickly, and she hit the ground in an awkward manner, spikes of pain surging through her body despite the kinetic dampeners in her suit. Her helmet slammed into the ground, sending shockwaves through her brain, the HUD's interface fading from view as she lost visual focus. She wanted to swear, to curse or to exclaim in agony, but she couldn't will her vocal chords to move, her throat constricting from effort to do so.
Can't… feel myself… think…
Hands cradled her swiftly but gently; a wave of light seemed to sweep over her. "…an you hear me?" a disembodied voice called out. "Els… …eed you to wake up!"
"Unnnghhhhh…." was all she managed, hands flailing about. A firm grip pinned her down and dragged her a short distance. Under other circumstances she'd be panicking. Right now she could barely figure out what was going on.
It was a while before she could gather her bearings, willfully force the blurring out of her vision and block out the ringing in her ears. She clenched her fists a few times, and took stock of her surroundings. Darkness blanketed the facility, and the area she lay in, the metal cuboids filled with circuitry and machinery dotting the landscape. Her lover cradled her, taking occasional peeks around the cover they hid behind.
"Are you okay?" Anna said behind her.
Elsa sucked in a breath, the agony easing somewhat. Her HUD came back into focus and she stared back up into her lover's faceplate. "I'm good now. You?"
"I put some additional power into my suit to ease descent more. Couldn't react fast enough to overcharge yours in time." She felt Anna's grip tighten around her own arm. "A patrol just passed by, but I think we're clear. Based on my scans, we don't seem to have triggered any alarms."
"What the hell happened up there?"
Anna took another glance around them and ducked back down. "Best guess? Next-gen input shield. They were able to camouflage the facility with a layer of energy, blocking both standard scanners and visual detection." She thumbed the safety on her sniper rifle on and off. "Mission timer states at least five minutes has elapsed. Drone wraps back around in about an hour."
"Then let's get to work." Elsa exhaled again, drawing the rifle from the magnetic grip on her back and pushed herself into a kneeling position, hefting the weapon and bringing it up to bear. The red dot sight was a stark contrast to the greyness that shrouded Matrix, but that only seemed to make their mission even more ominous than before. She'd underestimated how dark the place was; aside from a few lights, every piece of machinery, every bundle of wiring was shrouded in black metal plates, cumulatively forming metal box after metal box. The cuboids made up an uneven landscape that was looked to be a nightmare to navigate.
"Find us an access point and get us in."
Anna's training to endure torrent after torrent of information was failing her. Shutting off the inflow to her brain was still possible, but without detecting flows of data she'd be unable to determine potential traps, surveillance systems and targetable mainframes. So she had to "listen" out for these data streams.
But – goddamn – listening to it was turning out to be really difficult. It was hard enough to listen to the buzz outside the facility. After Elsa had instructed them to push into a promising-looking building to seek out potential leads, the sensory stimuli had only intensified. Exponentially. It was difficult for her to predict when things were going to get worse.
She realized she was completely unprepared for the mental strain only when they rounded a corner, and a full blast of data packets figuratively hit her square in the head. Wordlessly and suddenly she collapsed to her knees, overwhelmed by the influx.
Elsa's first instinct was to take a knee, do a quick sweep of the surrounding area to ensure it was clear, before turning back to her. "What's wrong?"
Anna tried pushing herself back up, raising a hand to wave away both her lover the static that seemed to cloud every corner of her mind. "I'm okay."
"You don't look okay." Hands clasped her underarms and gently hoisted her to her feet. They felt funny under Anna's own weight. "I'm calling this off if this is too much—"
"No no no." Anna clasped Elsa's hand and gripped it tightly as she tried to rest upon her feet. "You know we have to do this. We both know what's at stake here."
"Which will be for moot if this is too much for you."
"It's not," she tried to protest. "I just need to—"
Anna made the mistake of opening up her mind a second time and the facility seemed to respond to her rebellion, slamming her mind back down. She barely caught herself with her hands before hitting the floor. "Fuck."
"Cut the link off, Anna."
"I—"
Hands wrapped around her again. "Anna, you need to cut the connection off. You can't operate properly like this, it'll only hinder you more."
She couldn't take the stress. As loathe as she was to take that advice she knew Elsa was right. With the last of her will she forced herself to seal off the connections, creating an impenetrable wall against the data. She was safe.
"We're going to need to be a lot more careful from here on out," she breathed as soon as she found herself able to speak again.
"That won't be a problem," she heard Elsa say behind her. "Part of the plan is to get caught, remember?"
"…sir?"
The worry evident in the private's voice was not a normal occurrence, the commander noted. "What is it?"
"I… think you might want to take a look at this." With a mix of tentativeness and fear the soldier walked briskly to the main display and keyed in a few commands. A sweep of his hand and the current display dissipated, replaced with the motion detector networked feeds across the facility, the scans they used to monitor all personnel on site and ward against potential incursions.
Two ominous red dots stood out amongst the other signatures.
He felt his heart sink. "Is this what I think it is?"
"Yes sir." The private, to his credit, seemed marginally calmer about all of this than he did. He brought up surveillance feeds from the area, the cameras gradually rewinding their recent footage. The footage cleared to show two fully armoured Empyrean soldiers navigating the inside of a mainframe.
Holy fucking shitballs—
"Mobilise task force on hand," he said to the soldier, who scrambled off as the commander shifted back to his own console, trying to control the shaking in his hands as he activated the necessary bypasses and made a station-wide broadcast. "Attention Matrix personnel. We have a breach. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill."
"They know we're here now."
"How do you figure?" she heard Elsa snort behind her, the both of them ignoring the blaring red lights above them as they scrambled through the rooms, searching for an access point.
Anna vaulted over a series of cables just as she spotted an exposed datapoint in the maze of servers and storage banks. "Found one." She aimed down the nearest corridor as Elsa skidded to a halt near her position, drawing a datadrive from her suit pockets and slotting it in. "Transfer in progress. You'll need to interface with it to siphon out data effectively."
"Not a problem. Give me cover—"
Elsa turned back to her abruptly. "Are you sure you're up for this? Because—"
"I know," Anna said, hand already on the drive. "I'll be fine. I promise."
Elsa sighed, then nodded, turning back to the corridor and moved to secure the area. Anna returned her gaze to the drive and let her mind open, feeling the figurative floodgates open themselves to the torrent of data once again. For a brief moment she feared she was being overwhelmed, the successive waves of information seeming to strain the sinews that held her mind together.
She gathered her stray mental highways and focused on Elsa. Just Elsa. Nothing more than Elsa.
And suddenly her mind seemed to clear, the waves of information repulsed away from the confines of her mind. Her consciousness stood whole and true against the battering, and she could feel a mental acuity she hardly knew. She was fine.
Anna took another breath, gripped the drive tighter and delved into the facility's servers.
It was thirty seconds before onsite forces responded. Not too shabby. She could hear their footsteps echoing down the hall; they were charging in. They had no reason not to after all.
Elsa chucked a flashbang down the corridor and pressed her back to the wall. She heard the pop, whipping around the corner and bringing her sight to bear. Four soldiers, clad in standard white security armor, all disoriented. Four bursts of stun rounds left them writhing on the floor, knocked into unconsciousness.
White armor, stun weapons. The soldiers were part of the standard security detail deployed to guard important installations. She scanned the area opposite where Anna was kneeling. No contact yet.
More footsteps. Same corridor. She popped out of cover and fired off a burst. She watched the rounds fizzle harmlessly upon the surface of a riot shield, eyeing a stun baton behind the soldier who carried it. It didn't deter her; she emptied the entire clip into the reinforced plastic shield and threw out the empty one, sliding in a fresh mag just as the new squadron of soldiers caught up. Elsa slid the rifle back over her shoulder just as she sidestepped the shield bash directed at her, fingers quickly finding the shield's edge and yanking it from her adversary's grasp, sending him tumbling away in the same motion.
"They're hacking the databanks!" one of them yelled as they spotted Anna. "Get the other—"
Elsa's own energy shield slammed into him before he could complete his sentence, her other arm now wearing the plastic shield she'd recovered. The remaining two soldiers began flanking her, one of them still aiming a sidearm at her. The other raised his stun baton, slowly circling toward her back. Elsa retreated step by step, careful to not let either of them into her blind spot, wielding both shields to ward off any attack.
She was the first to break the tension of deadlock, feinting a dash to the right. Her eye caught the shift in aim, and she dodged to the left, the taser rounds zipping past her ear, right hand slamming the shield edge under the helmet. Simultaneously she raised her left hand defensively, and she felt the fizzle of the stun baton on the shield's energized surface as she whipped back around, pulling away the energy shield and stumbling her attacker. With another swift bash she knocked the attacker off his feet, and just as he crashed into the ground she slammed the other shield down onto his head.
"Any luck?" she called out as she spotted another group of soldiers, winding up her right hand and chucking the stolen shield straight at her new adversaries.
"Well—" Elsa could hear the strain in Anna's voice over the sound of the shield hitting its intended target, "—there's a lot of Empyrean stuff here, that's for sure. Including the augmentation-neutralizing signal and the counter-signal we found. There's also a bunch of UIF stuff that I extract as cover for our real operation. I'm siphoning out anything relevant while I look for the kinesis signature file."
The remaining soldiers that charged in were carrying stun lances. Elsa vaulted herself backward, dodging the initial prodding, managing to retrieve a dropped stun baton in a single fluid motion. She recovered just as another soldier took a swing at her, aiming at her upper torso; she dodged under the wide arc, lunging forward, swinging the baton in a wide arc which connected with the back of the soldier's helmet as she moved past him. The weapon vibrated as jolts of electricity coursed through his head, dropping him limp, Elsa managing to grab the lance that fell from his grip.
The other soldiers visibly backed off at that. She twirled the lance and leveled it toward them, feinting a step forward that drove them another step back. Elsa swung the lance, then stopped mid-swing to whirl in the opposite direction. Having guarded himself against the wrong direction of attack, the lance slammed into the first soldier, which Elsa used to rebound quickly and hit the other one. This one was ready, raising his own lance vertically to block the swing.
"Found it," came Anna's voice in her ear. "Augmenting file contents now."
Sensing her preferred fighting style, the last man jabbed at her forcefully, forcing Elsa to bob and weave, eluding his prodding repeatedly with no clear angle of attack. Her eyes darted wildly as she followed his movements, and then she lunged when he overextended his reach, slamming the tip of her lance under his helmet, instantly incapacitating him. The man crumpled in a heap.
"She's not going down!" she could hear down a corridor. "We need fire support!"
"Are you done yet?" Elsa asked, drawing her rifle and putting three rounds straight into the first soldier that rounded the corner. "This is getting dicey."
"Done." She heard Anna extract the drive. "File is altered, operation is covered up. It'll be extremely difficult for them to determine it'd been changed. I've got a bunch of other data in here as well."
Another group of soldiers entered her line of sight. Elsa fired off another burst; the rounds connected with the foremost soldier. To her surprise, they fizzled upon contact, and the soldier remained standing.
He looked right down at where the stun rounds had hit his chestplate. Then he raised his own rifle.
"Shit!" Elsa managed to bring up her shield in time just as the gun fired, feeling shockwaves course through her arm as she shielded Anna from the attack. Those were live rounds; they weren't playing around anymore or aiming to capture the two of them. They wanted her and Anna dead. "We need to get out of here. You got a route out?"
"Marking it on our HUD now."
"Flashing!" She chucked a flashbang to the left, rebounding off a dataserver and right into view of the soldiers. Elsa snapped around just as the grenade popped, following Anna and running in the opposite direction. "Why the hell didn't our rounds work again?"
"Might've been reinforced anti-riot armor." Anna barreled down a corridor, her arm lashing out and striking the soldier that she encountered. Elsa slid across, swinging her leg and knocking another soldier down, recovering in the same motion to block a punch directed at her. Another punch from Anna knocked him down, and Elsa knocked out the one getting up with a swift kick to his forehead.
Anna's eyes gleamed for a split second. "Definitely reinforced. We have to engage at close quarters; stun rounds won't work against these."
They broke into a sprint again, their footfalls echoing off the metal corridor as they followed the marked route. "So we can't shoot them," Elsa said, feeling her chest heaving as she ran. "Any other ideas?"
"I could charge our stun rounds with a few more jolts to spam their suits with electrical interference. Could probably increase the charge to stun them too, but that will take longer."
"Do whatever you can." They reached their previous entry point. Elsa kicked the door open and brought up her shield. Lead slammed into the energy surface, staggering her, but she pressed on amidst the scrambling and the gunfire. Behind her came the "pip pip pip" of Anna's own rifle as she picked off the attackers. Her electrified rounds seemed to be working; every time they connected with an attacker the soldier's accuracy seemed to deteriorate rapidly as the suit's feedback threw their aim off.
She caught sight of the security detail of soldiers clad in white, a stark contrast to the dark grey that shrouded the facility. Elsa charged, holding the shield in front of her, bowling over the first soldier she hit. His companion raised his rifle and took aim; she ducked under his line of fire, rolling and launching herself feet first off the ground, kicking away his rifle and landing just as he recovered. She ducked under his first punch, raised her arm to block a rightward swing and delivered a solid elbow strike to his helmet.
White gauntleted arms closed in around her neck, trapping her in a chokehold; she'd been careless. She struggled, swinging her elbows backward in an attempt to hurt her attacker, but her own armor constrained her movement. "Need a little help over here!" she managed to say before her assailant, clearly of bigger stature, managed to grab her torso and raised her above his head. He raised his knee pre-emptively, ready to slam Elsa down. Panic blossomed through her chest.
A spray of stun rounds caught him in the chest, staggering him backward and weakening his grip. She yanked her body to the left, freeing herself and tumbling to the floor, recovering just as the soldier did. She blocked his second attempt to grab her, raising both her hands and knocking away his inward swoop, then angling her body to connect both fists with her head or torso, knocking him away.
"Maybe next time you should give me cover instead," Anna said drily as she caught up with Elsa, repositioning to behind another set of grey circuit boxes. "Then we both won't get flanked."
Another soldier joined the fray, drawing a knife and swinging wildly at her. Elsa backtracked, narrowly dodging his swings, and as he stabbed forward she seized his arm and forced it unnaturally upward, yanking the knife out of his now broken hand and delivering a swift punch to his helmet. She turned back to her original target, striking him with her backhand to further disorient him, dealing the first elbow strike to his head, slapping him back in front of her, delivering a solid beatdown upon him.
"They're not letting up!" Anna said from as she tossed a magazine of charged stun rounds to her, who caught it in midair, slamming it into her sidearm and managing to raise her shield just as new opponents opened fire. "How many of them are there?"
"Too many to engage at long range effectively," she replied. "We go in close. They won't fire on their own soldiers."
"Charging rounds to a higher voltage."
Elsa lowered her other arm, raising the weapon over the shield and fired as she continued to move forward along the line, the route to the rendezvous point still marked on her HUD. Her rounds connected with the nearest two soldiers; she watched them twitch uncontrollably as the feedback kicked in and lunged toward them, emptying the clip into the nearest soldier and swinging upward with her shield, knocking him away. Anna moved in behind her, raising her arm to bock the other soldier's swing and swung her elbow the other way, connecting sharply with his helmet. The man crumpled, unconscious.
"Incoming!" Elsa grabbed Anna's arm without prior warning and threw her lover behind her, raising her shield as a new contingent of soldiers appeared, sending another barrage of fire her way. She kept the shield up, backing away as she watched Anna's own hails of fire lashed out, sending them sprawling. "Any ideas as to how we shake off this mess?"
"I did bring the charges."
She groaned as she backed away from the corner, rounds sparking the ground near her. "Even after I told you we were going in silent?"
"It's not silent anymore," her lover snorted, flicking her rifle around and picking off another bunch of soldiers. "They probably sent their data to backup after they discovered our intrusion anyways. UIF won't lose anything of value."
She still wasn't convinced yet. "What about collateral?"
"Their combat protocol dictates engaging at range, doesn't it? If we plant explosives along our route it's less likely for them to be in detonation range. We can blow them up one at a time; the chaos will be the same."
Elsa whipped around a corner and fired off another few rounds, pulling back as soon as they fired at the bright blue of her energy shield. "Doesn't look like we have much of a choice, do we?"
She didn't need to see past Anna's faceplate to know she was smirking. Anna chucked another mag at her, then pulled out a detonation charge and planted it on the side of the nearest piece of machinery. "We should get clear."
"Empyrean soldiers, this is Garrison Command," the loudspeakers in the facility blared as bullets ricocheted off the nearby metal boxes, prompting Elsa to duck. "You are outnumbered and outflanked. You have nowhere to run. Drop your weapons and surrender immediately."
"I feel bad for these guys," Anna said as she vaulted over a series of encased wiring, Elsa close behind. "This is going to be one hell of a clean-up job."
She watched Anna hit the detonator, a cacophony of ear-piercing detonations roaring behind them as they surged forth, firing at the contacts scrambling to establish an effective resistance. Loud yells followed in the wake of the explosions, an unwelcome addition to the symphony of gunfire and boots on metal and they sprinted along their designated route. A group of three soldiers appeared on an elevated walkway to their left, raising their rifles toward Anna. Elsa leaped over a pair of vents and vaulted onto a series of metal pipes, raising her shield as she rolled to preserve momentum. Rounds meant for her lover slammed into the energy surface, abating as she rolled off and landed back on her feet. "Show off," she heard Anna chuckle.
"You can just say 'thanks', you know," she retorted as she took aim with her pistol and fired, unable to keep a small smile off her face, no matter how dire the situation was right then. Anna triggered another explosive, sending debris and smoke into the air, the blackness of the facility seemed to leak out in the form of smoke. In the distance she could see the facility's external wall. "How far to extraction?"
"We're still a few kicks out from rendezvous, but I can redirect the drone—"
Rounds caught Anna in the side, barrage after barrage slamming into her. "Shit—!" Her cries were garbled and panicked. Elsa lunged forward, tackling Anna into cover, raising her shield again in the same motion. They crashed into the ground, Elsa finding herself staring and the cracks and dents on Anna's armor. Only then did she feel the adrenaline pumping in her veins and her heart hammering in her chest.
"Are you hurt?" She somehow lost the will to express her worry in more than three words.
Not that her lover minded. "I'm good," Anna replied, dusting herself off and pressing her back against the low wall Elsa had found for them. "No breaches yet. Minor pain, but I'm okay." She sucked in a breath, staring into the distance. "My scans show perimeter patrols redirecting to this part of the external wall. We have to get out of here fast."
Elsa scanned the thick wall, then along it, watching small white figures sprint along its parapet. "You're right. Can you breach the wall?"
"I'll need some time to charge the explosives further. And some cover would be nice."
"You got it." Elsa drew her rifle from her suit grip, bringing it up to bear and firing down on the soldiers beginning to surround them. Three fell by her aim in quick succession; she snapped back into cover just as return fire came her way, swiftly moving to the other side of the wall. She drew another flashbang and tossed it upward, shielding her eyes as she turned away.
"Not cool!" Anna yelled as the projectile popped. "I wasn't ready for that!"
"Neither were they," Elsa said, popping back out and picking off the soldiers in the open, their hands clutching at their visors, eyes reeling from the blindness. The electrified stun rounds made short work of them, sending the soldiers crumpling to the floor. She dropped the mag out and reloaded, dashing to another black box and sliding into cover, blind firing at another group of security personnel.
"It's getting dicey out here!" she yelled.
"Planting!" Anna's figure whipped into action out of the corner of her eye. Elsa focused on the encroaching soldiers, realizing they were tightening a perimeter, and she was having trouble fending off from all angles. She leaned out from behind the metal box and held the trigger down, the white flashes of her bullets zipping across the battlefield, the soldiers ducking in response and scrambling to avoid her hail of fire. "Get clear and take cover!"
She complied with the order, picking off one last soldier before bringing up her shield and hiding behind it. The telltale beeping of the charges reached a crescendo over the sound of gunfire, and one final, huge explosion rocked the facility. Lights fizzled and died, sparks crackled and flew, soldiers groaned and tried to recover.
In the mayhem, two dark figures darted through the hole in the wall, disappearing under the cover of darkness and vanishing into the night.