Chapter 3: Heart of Darkness

RFB didn't know who shot first. It wasn't her, that much she knew for sure. But once the others opened fire, she instinctively let loose as well. As soon as the lights gave out, an overwhelming surge of fear enveloped her neural cloud, as if the darkness itself had wrapped its tendrils around her core and was threatening to rip it out of her body. Countless muzzle flashes erupted within the lightless lobby, but it was all a blur to RFB. Not long after, a set of emergency lights from the backup generator kicked in, bathing the entire lobby in a ghostly red light.

"Shit!" RFB exclaimed as emergency lights came on. The intruder had vanished without a trace, as if she was never there to begin with. The group of Griffin dolls stood dazed in the circle, each equally as shocked as RFB was.

"Where- Where the hell is she?!" Glock 17 shouted, turning her agile body around as she desperately swept her gaze across the edges of the lobby.

"Guys…" MP41 weakly muttered.

"What happened to the lights?" T65 nervously questioned, her eyes also darting around the room. "Are we under attack?"

"Guys…?" MP41 repeated again, her voice shallow and panic-stricken.

RFB turned to look at the doll. Her heart instantly sank as she saw the two smouldering bullet holes in the centre of MP41's torso.

"MP41!" wz.29 shouted as she rushed towards the doll.

RFB watched in horror as MP41 slowly tilted and collapsed forward into wz.29's arms. As MP41's body became completely limp, her face still frozen in disbelief and terror.

"Oh, god!" wz.29 weakly cried as she held her teammate's lifeless body in her arms. Faint acrid smoke emanated from the bullet holes as the red machine fluid tainted wz.29's soft pink hair; the two bullets had surgically punctured MP41's battery and main data line.

"RFB, this is M60!" a voice anxiously called out over the radio, "I just heard a bunch of gunfire! Is everything alright?"

"M60! Watch out!" RFB frantically responded, "There's an- an intruder!"

"What? Are we under attack?" M60 demanded, "How many are there? What's the situation in the lobby?"

"Uhm, Uh- It's a single doll, I think!"

"A what? A single doll? If it's just a single- Wait- What the-"

RFB heard M60 yelp, followed by a thud and smashing glassware.

"M60!"

Three muffled gunshots rang out from down the hallway. There was no further reply from M60.

"My goodness, she's dead too!" wz.29 choked out, "RFB, what do we do now?"

"Now? Um…" RFB felt the eyes of the other dolls turn to her. She looked down the dimly lit hallway where M60 was killed. RFB shuddered in apprehension. The intruder was loose in the building; she could be anywhere by now.

"RFB…" Glock 17 said, gently nudging her team leader. "Orders?"

"We- we have to find the intruder," RFB finally decided, trying to put on a brave face. "We'll stick together… and we'll figure it out somehow."


"Swiss, report," Night Eyes calmly ordered as she flipped M60's body over with her foot, double-checking that the Griffin doll was indeed dead.

"Night Eyes, the backup generator just kicked in," Swiss replied, scanning the exterior of the building complex. "I think I found it, give me a few minutes and I'll take it out!"

"Do it," Night Eyes curtly responded as she looked around; the Griffin dolls in the lobby would probably be rushing in any time now. Using the old electronic blueprint of the building complex, Night Eyes located a doorway leading to an adjacent room and silently slipped through it.

Swiss dashed towards the backup generator beside the wall of the warehouse. She swiveled her head as she crossed an open yard, looking out for any Griffin defenders. As she rounded a corner, she smashed straight into another doll who was equally as surprised as she was.

"WWuAAaggh OhmygodI'msosorry!" Swiss exclaimed as the two fell onto the ground. The two exchanged glances for a split second before Swiss swung her carbine towards the Griffin doll and dispatched her.

"Swiss? What the hell is going on?" Dazzle demanded.

"Uh- fine! I'm fine!" Swiss stammered as she got back up and scrambled away from the motionless Griffin doll. "I'm fine I'm fine!"

Swiss ran up to the backup generator, quickly shooting off the lock and swinging the door open.

"Okay, let's see…" Swiss muttered to herself as she studied the generator's internal components. She didn't bring any of her tools with her on the mission, but she was confident she could come up with a solution with her engineering skills and ingenuity.

"Swiss!" Night Eyes hissed over the radio, "When?"

"Ah, screw it- this should do the trick," Swiss mumbled as she stuck a grenade into the generator.

"Night Eyes," Swiss shouted as she sprinted away from the building complex, "Now!"


"Fuck!" RFB cursed as the emergency lights suddenly flickered off. She and three other dolls had entered M60's room not long ago, finding her lifeless body lying on the ground. The faint moonlight from the windows cast an ethereal silvery glow upon M60's delicate face, making it look as if she had merely fallen asleep.

"What now, RFB?" T65 asked. She stared at the open door leading back into the hallway. The faint moonlight faded into the darkness of the hallway like the gaping maw of an abyss. For a moment, T65 wished she could simply jump through the window and run away from it all.

"We still need to protect this facility and supplies in it," Glock 17 replied as she switched on her flashlight, "Whoever this Sangvis doll is, there's only one of her; she can only be in one place at a time."

"Y-yeah," wz.29 shakily agreed, "We have to protect the neural backup at all costs!"

"That's in with the rest of the logistics, correct?" Glock 17 asked, "We should split up into pairs to have one team activate the security firewalls in the control room, and another to secure the supplies."

"What about the others?" RFB noted, "There's still ten- nine… nine other dolls in here with us."

"Have 'Tiss and Stechkin lock down the main entrance," Glock 17 said, her eyes narrowed in thought. "K31's team can lock down the elevator and stairwell from their floor… EM-2's team can-"

"C14 to RFB, C14 to RFB!" a frantic voice shouted over the radio network, "I've got contact here, I need help!"

"What?!" RFB demanded, "How did she-"

A loud gunshot crackled from the radio.

"Jesus Christ!" the voice shouted, followed by a loud crash.

"This is EM-2!" another voice interrupted, "We're on our way! Hang in there!"

"Wait- No! STAY BACK!" C14's voice screamed over the radio amidst the sound of a violent struggle, "AARGH!"

"C14!" RFB helplessly shouted.

"NO- STOP!" the pained voice howled, "HEELLLPP!"

RFB clenched her fist as C14's IFF signal disappeared from the communications network.

"Holy shit, C14- she's dead!" T65 shuddered as she looked at the others.

"Tsk. No use crying over spilt milk," Glock 17 muttered, a grave expression on her face. "EM-2's team will deal with the intruder for now. That should give us plenty of time to get to our objectives."

RFB frowned. She didn't like how Glock 17 used the term "for now."

"RFB," Glock 17 said.

"Huh?"

"You're in command here, Give us your orders."

"Oh, right…" RFB grimly acknowledged, "RFB to all units—orders: Team OTs-12 will secure the guard room and lock down the front entrance. Team K31 will move to lock down the B1 elevator and stairwell area. Team EM-2… Stay safe and defeat the intruder if possible. Glock 17 and T65 will activate the emergency security firewall in the command office, while wz.29 and I will secure the supply depot. Help is on its way, so we just need to hold on! Please acknowledge!"

The other teams quickly acknowledged RFB's orders, with silence returning to the room the four dolls found M60's body in. For a moment, each doll was engrossed within their own thoughts. Never in their imaginations did they think they would be spending their night in a pitch-black warehouse with a… a monster on the loose. Whoever this Sangvis doll was, she didn't even seem to be a ringleader. Just what the hell was Sangvis Ferri cooking up down in the depths of those factories?

Glock 17 was the first to break the silence. "Come on, T65, we'd best get going."

"G17…" RFB said as she watched Glock 17 walk towards the hallway.

"Yeah?"

"Stay safe… Alright?"

"Don't worry," Glock 17 replied, forcing a smile back at RFB. "I'm not that much of a pushover anymore. We'll be fine, just focus on getting your job done too."


"No…" RFB whispered in defeat as she sank to the ground. The last IFF signal from EM-2's team just vanished from the battle network; they lasted mere minutes against the Sangvis doll.

"RFB…" wz.29 muttered to RFB, who was now slumped against the wall of the storage room with her head in her hands.

"Panakeia…" RFB weakly replied, "They're gone…"

"I know…" wz.29 sighed, unable to find the words to comfort the garrison leader. "Um, it's not your fault, RFB."

"But it is!"

"They did their job, there's nothing more you could have done."

"Was there really nothing, though?" RFB questioned, raising her voice as she felt her eyes tear up. "It's all falling apart! I'm the leader of this entire facility, but nothing I'm doing is working!"

"RFB…"

"And we're fighting against what, a single doll?! MP41, M60, HK33, C14, PSG-1, all of EM-2's team, they're all dead! All because I couldn't lead them properly! If only I paid more attention to the surveillance feed, if only I had reacted faster when she appeared in the lobby, if only I had gone and helped EM-2…"

"But-"

"I can't save anyone!" RFB sobbed, "I'm not like KSG, or FAL, or Lee, or JS9… I'm not fit to be a leader! I thought I was just going to watch over the facility for a few days, I didn't think any of this would happen!"

"R-RFB!" wz.29 suddenly shouted, temporarily startling RFB out of her despair. "You're wrong!"

"Panakeia…?"

"You- you're wrong, RFB! You're a great leader!" wz.29 explained as she crouched down to RFB and firmly put her hands on RFB's shoulders, "Y-you're great at getting along with people, you can talk well, you're caring and kind, you can think on your feet…"

"If KSG was here, she would've been able to save everyone…"

"No she couldn't! And why is it so important that you have to save everyone, anyway?!"

"Wh- huh?" RFB asked, stunned by wz.29's response. "Panakeia?"

"Part of being a leader is learning how to live with sacrifices, RFB."

"But-"

"…Back when I worked at UltiLife, I helped design a clinical trial for a new drug we were developing, you know?"

"Huh?"

"We had to split our participant pool into a treatment group and a placebo group, so we could prove that receiving the drug was safer than not receiving it. Do you know what happened?"

"What happened?"

"Half the people in the placebo group died before we ended the trial, RFB. If those people hadn't been randomized into the placebo group, and received the treatment instead, they probably could have survived as a result. I couldn't save any of those people."

"…Where is this going?"

"Am I sad that they died? Of course. Do I regret conducting the trial? No!"

"Panakeia…"

"This may seem cruel, but their deaths were a necessary sacrifice to prove the effectiveness of the new drug, and necessary to convince the government to greenlight its production. This resulted in hundreds, maybe even thousands, of lives being saved!"

"So what does that have to do with what we're doing here?" RFB mumbled, "Is it wrong for me to be upset that everyone is dying?"

"No, of course not," wz.29 replied, holding RFB's hand tightly. "But sometimes it is necessary to have sacrifices in order to achieve a greater goal. Now that our fellow teammates have laid their lives down for us, we must make sure their sacrifices are not in vain!"

"But… What are we even fighting for here?"

"This," wz.29 replied as she placed the hard drive onto RFB's lap, "We are fighting to protect our friends from those who would seek to torment them."

"The neural backup…"

"Whatever happens, we cannot let these backups fall into the hands of Sangvis Ferri."

"I understand…" RFB said as she sighed heavily. She blinked a few times, steeling herself before standing back up. "I think I'll be fine now. Thanks, Panakeia."

Just then, the sound of a door being flung open appeared from the far side of the warehouse. RFB and wz.29 instantly trained their guns at the approximate source of the noise, their vision hindered by the darkness and rows of shelving and crates. RFB's body shuddered as she peered into the pitch-black void before her.

"Shit," RFB cursed under her breath.

Suddenly, something fell onto the ground on the other far corner of the room. RFB's eyes darted between the two locations, even though she could see neither.

"R-RFB," wz.29 shakily whispered, her eyes still fixated towards the darkness. "Y-you gotta get out of here!"

"W-what are you saying?

"The backups- RFB, you gotta go now!"

"But what about you?!"

"I-I'll hold the exit for y-you," wz.29 replied, clearly shaking in her boots.

"I'm not going to leave you here!"

"GO!" wz.29 exclaimed as she pushed RFB backwards towards the exit, "You're our only hope!"

"Panakeia- I, I-" RFB stammered as she slowly turned and begin stumbling towards the exit, "I'm sorry!"

"RFB, please survive! D-don't let our sacrifices be in vain!"

"I won't, Panakeia, I won't!" RFB cried as she ran out of the exit into the hallway, tightly clutching the hard drive against her chest with one arm.

As RFB sprinted down the lightless hallway with reckless abandon, she heard a series of gunshots emerge from the storage room. wz.29's IFF signal faded from RFB's command interface.

RFB continued running as fast as she could. Tears streamed down her face once more. She did not look back.