Chapter 144: In A Mirror Darkly.
"Thirty seconds till drop," the pilot's voice called over the comms.
"Roger that," she replied getting to her feet and doing one last check of her equipment.
The skin-tight modified stealth suit gave her a very low silhouette as it was and it wasn't even active yet, but in the unlit cabin of the Vertibird, she was all but invisible anyway.
She reached up and tapped a switch on the rear of her helmet which activated the suit's systems and immediately the HUD powered up.
She'd been running it in low power mode since leaving the base to maximise efficiency as these things were a bit of a pain in the arse to charge unless you had access to a Fusion core and with all of the advanced sensor and stealth systems the R department had put into this thing it was a bit of a thirsty bitch.
"Ten Seconds," the pilot's voice chimed and she stepped up to the door and opened it.
The ground was barely visible far below her even with the advanced night vision systems active and turning her entire world a very vivid black and white.
It was little more than a black mass far below them with little streaks of white indicating lights, well all except for one point, that stood out like a freshly minted bottle cap.
It was like a hill of light right in the centre of a huge dark mass, that was her target.
"Drop!!" the pilot called and without even thinking twice about it she simply stepped over the edge and into the nothingness of the air.
As soon as she began her free fall an altimeter popped up in her HUD displaying a rapidly descending number that was counting down from 60 thousand feet.
The air whistled past her as she fell towards the ground doing a hundred and twenty miles an hour or terminal velocity, well that was until she decided to tuck up into a dart shape and accelerated to well over two hundred.
Punching through the clouds she streaked towards the ground at high speed, being careful not to overshoot her target she leaned back and opened her arms and legs to slow herself.
Once at an acceptable height she focused her mind and released a powerful psychokinetic pulse that took her speed from one hundred and twenty to basically zero in a split second.
It was like being yanked upwards by an invisible parachute but also for the briefest of moments gave her a solid surface to kick off of.
She hit the ground with a thump before ducking into a roll and emerging from it with her rifle in her hands.
"Dark Sky actual this is Dark Angel how copy over?" she said into her comms after doing a quick sweep of the immediate area to ensure that she was alone.
"Dark Angel this is Dark Sky actual, solid copy go ahead over," a female voice said over her internal comms unit that stimulated her inner ear so that only she could hear what was being said.
"Successful drop, I'm on the ground and proceeding to the target area over," Dark Angel said.
"Roger that Dark Angel all received, satellite imagery shows numerous hostiles in the vicinity of the target zone watch your back out there, over and out," Dark Sky said before the comms line closed off and she turned to orientate herself.
The ground leading up to the target zone was pretty open and flat, it didn't exactly give much in the way of cover options but that's why she was chosen for this mission given that she was a highly trained and specialised infiltration operative.
There was a slight whine from her suit as she activated the stealth systems which caused her to shimmer briefly before her whole body faded from sight as the inbuilt stealth field generator kicked in.
On her HUD a power bar popped up to tell her how much juice was left in the Fusion core that was plugged into the small backpack had left in it.
She had two spares on her but she preferred not to waste them if she could help it so she got moving with haste.
Covering the flat ground at a run was pretty easy as the inky black darkness that surrounded her helped to cover up the constant shimmering effect of her stealth field as it tried to adapt to the rapid movements.
Another trick of this new prototype suit was that her boots were outfitted with a special material in the soles that not only gave her an incredible grip but also muffled her every step no matter the ground she was on.
It was a bit of an odd sensation to get used to however as it was kind of like running on a pair of super soft gel packs.
She broke through a small copse of trees and slid to a stop before a ledge that looked down into the old quarry that lay before her.
No sooner had she done so than her night vision switched over to thermal imaging to save her eyes as the bright lights would have blown out her night vision sensors, the first job she would have to take care of would be to kill the fucking lights.
Reaching behind herself she hooked her short barreled suppresed assault rifle to the clasps on the side of her backpack and retrieved something far more deadly.
The large .50 sniper rifle supported a suppressor on the end of its telescopic barrel that was as thick as her forearm which as she flicked out the bi-pod shot up into the air as the barrel extened into the firing position.
Pressing a button on the side of her scope she synced it to her HUD and a little crosshair symbol popped up in the bottom right to indicate that the sync was complete.
Now she set the rifle down on the floor on its bi-pod firing two small anchors into the ground under it which held the rifle in place so that the gun could move freely on the axis without falling down the slope into the quarry.
The next step was to lower the rotator which was little more than a brace that allowed the rifle to aim where she wanted it, it was a fancy tilt jig combined with a locking sledge.
Once it was done she tested the system was good and then she pulled the cocking handle on the side of the massive rifle feeding a round into the chamber as she did.
Now that her set-up was complete she looked down into the valley that contained the large quarry and instantly saw a lot of heat signatures moving around down there, she was going to have to be careful and make her approach slowly.
Leaping down from the edge of the ledge she'd been on she landed on a hard dirt road that circled its way around the outer edge of the quarry before spirling its way towards the centre where her target lay.
Rather than taking the long way around the bunny hopped her way down between the layers of the road each time using a wave of psychokinesis to kill her fall before impacting the ground softly and more importantly silently.
On her last landing which was the final one before reaching the bottom of the quarry, she heard the telltale heavy clomping of Power Armoured foot falls off to her right.
Turning slowly so that her field didn't shimmer she saw the source of the sound as a patrol made their way towards her.
There were four of them all carrying heavy weapons and she instantly began sweeping their suits for any signs of weaknesses but it appeared that these were very well maintained as was to be expected from these guys.
They were a hundred and fifteen meters out and closing, it was time to turn off the lights.
She quickly looked at the symbol in her HUD and blinked twice to kick the sync into gear which split her HUD in half.
It was like looking at a split screen display with one eye being the world outside and the other the view from her sniper scope.
She quickly knelt and using the controls that were built into the unit on the back of her right forearm she began to sweep the scope over the site until she found what she was looking for.
Right at the centre of the complex was a large yellow triangle which had a ton of high voltage cables running out of it, once she centred the crosshair onto it she tapped the trigger once to release the safety and a second time to fire.
From above her, there was a very faint thud as the rifle fired its subsonic sabot round which would give it a limited armour-piercing capability while remaining under the speed of sound.
The large jacket smashed into the outer metal of the generator sending its sabot core onwards into the guts of the machine where it proceeded to bounce around like a very angry metal hornet.
The result was that the generator exploded in a shower of sparks though thankfully didn't detonate the fusion core powering it.
She didn't even wait to see what the reaction of the patrol was she was already moving.
She needed to maximise the confusion wrought by the sudden loss of power and the darkness that it created in its wake.
Dark Angel sprinted forward leaping down from the last kink in the road to land on the hard concrete floor of the quarry floor which cracked slightly as her psychokinis wave slammed into it.
But this didn't even slow Dark Angel down for a single second and she sprinted forward using the thick pools of inky shadows appearing between the numerous torch lights from the confused soldiers that were lancing back the darkness.
Dodging around the heavy machinery and leaping over the massive shipping containers that littered the quarry floor Dark Angel finally made it to the central building.
As she was about to deploy her electronic lock pic set to pop open the large door that was on the side of the building it opened right in front of her causing her to freeze as she found herself face to face with a soldier in a suit of power armour.
"What is the name of fuck is going on up here!?" the soldier demanded into a radio within his suit as he marched out of the building his helmet-mounted torch cutting a swathe in the darkness before him as he went.
But even with the powerful searchlight, he failed to notice the little shimmering shadow that slipped along the wall and through the door that was closing behind him.
Looking around herself she was in a metal prefab-style corridor that ran from left to right and she called up the floor plan she had saved in the memory of her suit to overlay her HUD.
The place she needed was to her right through a little maze of metal corridors just like this one.
"Dark Angel to Dark Sky actual, have successfully infiltrated target site, making my way to the primary target, any word on secondary over?" she said softly into her comms.
"Dark Angel this is Dark Sky actual Roger that, negative visual on the secondary target they must still be on site, but their whereabouts are unknown at this time, continue with primary mission and check secondary as a target of opportunity, over," Dark Sky replied.
"Roger that Dark Sky actual Dark Angel over and out," she said before shutting her comms down again.
She knew that when she entered the area of her primary target she would be out of comms range so these now would be her standing orders from this point forward, she would not fail.
The sounds of heavily armoured footsteps echoed around in the prefab metal structure causing the whole thing to ring like a bell any time one of the soldiers placed throughout it took anything other than a single step.
This was both useful and a hindrance to her.
Useful in that it covered up any noise she made moving through the installation but was a hindrance as it made it nigh on impossible to tell how many or how far away the soldiers were.
She had a couple of close calls while moving through the complex as the echoes obscured the sounds of the approaching patrols until they were near enough right on top of her, though thankfully as they drew close her thermal imaging gave them away through the walls allowing her to take evasive actions like throwing herself into a side corridor or leaping up to the ceiling of the corridor and wedging herself into the gap to allow them to pass under her.
Finally, she managed to make her way past all of the soldiers and reached her second destination which was hidden deep within the complex.
The elevator that she had been searching for was little more than a platform with a control panel on it but one of the dead giveaways that this was more than it appeared was the fact that it had its power supply off the main grid that she'd shot out.
This was given away by the fact that despite the entire place being in complete darkness the small control panel on the lift was still lit up and her thermal imaging could see the heat being given off by the power flowing through the circuits.
She lifted the handrail guard and stepped onto the platform before lowering the guard rail and hitting the down button.
As the lift began its long descent downwards she crouched down to lower her profile, when it emerged she did not want to be given away as a shimmering silhouette stood on the platform.
The shaft itself was narrow, no wider than the lift platform that was descending through it, it had been cut right into the sheer rock itself a precision and sharpness that was rather impressive.
More than once Dark Angel was tempted to reach out and run her hand along the passing wall as it looked as smooth as glass and the layers of different colours showed the different types of rock that had been cut through on the way down with various shades of blues, greens and greys swirling together.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity the elevator emerged into a massive cavern hidden deep in the earth below the quarry and from here Dark Angel had a terrific view of another facility set up right in the centre of it.
There were flood lamps set up all around that lit the cavern up and exposed the depths of the complex.
The facility itself was a series of prefab-like structures that had been arranged one atop the other like stacked bricks and Dark Angel wondered how in the name of hell they got all this stuff down here.
She figured that there must be a much bigger surface entrance nearby somewhere that would have allowed them to lower all of this stuff down to this depth because there was no way in a million years that they lowered it down that narrow ass little tube of an elevator shaft.
As the elevator reached the ground floor Dark Angel had already hopped off the moving platform and into the scaffolding surrounding it which paid off because no sooner had it hit the floor than two power armoured sentires walked up to inspect it.
"Hey did you call the elevator down?" one asked the other as they both looked at the empty platform.
"Nope not me, maybe one of the scientists?" the other said.
"Nah none of them lot have left the lab in fucking days," the other said.
"Well I heard a call that they were having some kind of power issues top side so a malfunction maybe?" the second one offered.
"Doubtful this thing is on our grid not theirs so what affects them doesn't affect us as the last thing we want is the air going off down here because some yahoo top side got overly trigger happy making sure some jet-sucking raider gets turned into mist," the first sentry said.
"Think that what happened up there?" the second sentry asked as they stepped onto the platform to examine it.
"Doubtful if something like that was going on up there we would have gotten a call on the hardline, that's why the commander went up to take a look," the first sentry said as the second one examined the switches.
Both of them were completely unaware of the shimmering shadow moving over their heads using the support that was anchored into the solid stone walls to move along until she was clear of them and able to drop down safely.
Using the machinery for cover Dark Angel moved along the cavern until she reached the facility which thanks to the loose tounges of the sentires she now had confirmation was the lab she was looking for.
Undoubtedly her primary target was inside, now all she had to do was locate them without being detected.
The lab itself had a large set of what looked like pressurised doors, undoubtedly an airlock system of some kind which would work like a kind of clean room system to prevent any kind of contaminants from making their way into the lab area.
The outer doors slid open with a simple press of a button but once inside the airlock Dark Angel instantly spotted a card reader system set up to prevent unauthorised entrance into the lab, it was once again time to break out her bag of tricks, a lock like this wouldn't stop her from completing her mission.
Reaching into her suit's pouches she extracted a small device that was designed with the sole intention of breaking through these kinds of electronic locks, it was shaped like a card with a series of small clamps along its outer edge to hold it in place.
Pulling a small coupling wire from her wrist-mounted computer she connected the device causing a small symbol to pop up in her HUD to indicate that the device was connected and active.
Sliding the card side into the slot provided on the reader she engaged the claps which held it in place in the reader while allowing her to monitor its progress on her HUD while also making decisions on the algorithm that was used.
A series of five red lights cycled along the top of the reader as the hardware and software did their things in extracting any code fragments from the memory cashe and assembling them into usable code.
Essentially the device worked along a similar principle to the old trick of using fingerprint dust on a keypad and then once you had the numbers used to try to assemble the code order, just much faster.
In only a single minute the device had the code and the five red lights all went green as the lock was popped.
As Dark Angel packed her breaker away she hoped that she wouldn't come across any more of these locks as it was a pain in the ass to unpack and repack every time she wished to use it.
Before the door opened there was a loud hiss from above her and the sprinklers in the ceiling began to rainwater down onto her.
It disrupted her cloak somewhat as the water interfered with the matrix controlling it plus it also gave her a human-shaped translucent appearance in the water itself where it was hitting her and sliding off the hydrophobic material of the suit.
This only lasted for a few seconds before the water shut off and was replaced by a high-pressure air drying system to blow any water that was currently clinging to her off.
Once the cycle was complete the door slid open and she was granted access to the inner labs beyond it.
Now while the outer walls of the labs appeared to be made out of metal the inside was nothing like that, the corridors seemed to be made out of some kind of polycarbonate or some variant of polymer.
The inner walls were all see-through so you could see exactly what was happening in each of the labs from the corridor without having to enter them.
Whether this was to promote transparency between colleagues and the scientists working within or so the higher-ups could keep an effective eye on their subordinates was unknown.
By the layout, there seemed to be six labs per level with three being on each side of the corridor with a set of stairs at the end of each that would lead to the level above it.
Inside the labs, each of the scientists were wearing clean suits but not hooked up to oxygen which meant that while they were taking the clean part seriously there was nothing in there that was toxic or biological in nature.
Moving forward down the narrow corridor slowly she glanced into the labs one at a time looking for her target, with them all wearing clean suits that covered up the vast majority of their faces this was going to get a little tricky.
That's when she had an idea, most likely her primary and secondary targets were going to be together so if she could identify the primary then she would easily be able to identify the secondary so glancing once again at the stored picture in her suit's memory she moved off.
She found herself amazed that the Int section had managed to get pictures this clear, the only way they would have been able to do this was if they had managed to get someone to infiltrate this lab, which begged the question if they had already managed to get someone this close why the hell didn't they do the job themselves, why send her?
Shrugging internally she moved on after confirming the lab she was looking at didn't hold what she was looking for.
At the end of the day hers was not to ask why, hers was to do or die, the duty of a soldier.
The second floor also held no sign of her targets so this only left the third and final floor, this was going to leave her with a long way to go to make her escape from this place when the job was complete, she hoped that no one would be able to set off any of the alarms she'd seen located around the place otherwise in a close quarters environment like this one there was going to be hell to pay.
As she reached the top floor she realised that the layout had changed, instead of the six smaller labs there were only two, one on either side of the corridor.
On the left, they seemed to be studying what appeared to be some kind of weapon, with a rather odd-shaped rifle set into a holder while the scientists circled it with scanning devices.
In the other lab, she saw a sight that made a smile crack out on her face.
In the centre of the room was a large glowing crystal about the size of a baseball, it sat on a plastic plinth with all sorts of electrodes and sensors hooked up to it and standing next to it were two men in white clean suits, bingo she was in the right place.
She looked at the door to the lab and sighed heavily as she noticed one of those fucking annoying card readers but she would not let this minor inconvenience deter her.
So once again she reached into her pouches and connected the cracker before sliding it into place.
The locks released with a satisfying click that made both of the men turn to look at who was joining them in their lab.
The looks of confusion on their faces were readable even with as much of them covered as they were when they saw no one there.
"What the hell? Oh, don't tell me the locking systems on the fritz again?" one of the men said approaching the door and pulling it open to look at it.
As he got close enough Dark Angel saw that the man had black skin and dark brown eyes, not the one she was looking for, so with a swiftness born of a lifetime of practice she snapped up her heavily suppressed 10mm and fired twice in rapid succession.
The first bullet hit the man square between the eyes and the second dead centre in the heart, impacting even before his head had time to fully snap back on his neck from the first impact.
"What the hell!!" the second man yelled and went to run for the alarm only for a bullet to hit it before he had a chance to slam his hand down on it.
The box popped like a metal zit as the 10mm smashed into it rendering it useless despite the scientist slamming his fist against the large red button in a futile attempt to make it work.
"Doctor Rudenberger I pressume?" Dark Angel said and the man snapped his attention towards the sound of her voice.
"Yes and who the hell are you!?" he exclaimed.
"That is not your concern," she replied happily with confirmation from his panicked lips.
She fired again but this time it wasn't a 10mm slug that slammed into the man's chest but a large hypodermic dart filled with a green liquid.
The scientist barely had time to pull the dart out before he slumped to the ground but he wasn't dead, only unconscious though when he woke up he probably was going to wish he was dead.
Ever the one for thoroughness she walked over and pulled back his clean hood and mask to check his face against the picture she had on file, when she saw the weathered face of the elderly scientist staring back at her she nodded before reaching into her pouches again and pulling out some zip tie handcuffs for his wrists and ankles.
Once he was secure she made her way over to the crystal and looked at it, the thing looked like the head of a Morningstar weapon but was made of glowing emerald, their intelligence indicated that the crystal didn't give off energy that was harmful to humans so it should be safe to handle.
But as she reached into the stand to grab it no sooner had her hand made contact with it than her body went ridged and her vision was wiped clean away.
Flashes of light pulsed through her mind and for a brief moment she could see what appeared to be a Deathclaw, but she wasn't in the lab anymore but outside in what appeared to be a town of some kind.
There were people and creatures all around her, but they weren't fighting, infact they all seemed to be talking and getting along, though she couldn't hear or understand anything that was being said.
What the hell was this where was she!?
That's when the vision flashed out like someone turning off a light and she was back in the room again.
She shook her head to clear it and she looked down at the spiky crystal in her hand, there was a green electrical charge arcing between her and it but it didn't hurt, infact she could barely feel it but somehow she was aware of it pulsing through her body.
She quickly stuffed the circular crystal into the carrier that was strapped to her back that was designed to hold it and once it was sealed away inside that lined case she felt a lingering effect tingling in her skin, like she had held a live wire.
That's when shit hit the fan.
Apparently, the charge had not only disrupted her cloaking tech but disabled it temporarily, but it was long enough for the scientists in the other lab across the way to notice her, they also noticed the dead scientist and the now cuffed one lying on the floor.
They hit the alarm.
"Fuck!" she cursed as the klaxon began to blare above her and from the ceiling above the door a large shutter dropped to secure the lab and to lock its occupants inside, obviously a measure designed to hold any would-be thief or intruder in place until security arrived.
She dashed over to where her unconscious captive lay and she lifted him up and onto her back fixing his ankle around her waist, he was heavy but nowhere near heavy enough to impede her movement.
She slapped a small Stealthboy to him which rippled into effect and joined his field to hers encasing them both in a bubble of invisibility, now all she had to do was to get out of here before any power-armoured morons showed up.
There were no locks on this side of the door and outside it had been sealed off by the shutter, she could hear the heavy footfalls of power-armoured soldiers below her so this left her only one option, she was going to have to fight her way out.
Focusing her mind she felt a rush of energy coursing through her though usually she didn't feel any of the pain that usually came with it.
Infact if anything it felt like she had more power than before, like the energy rippling through her now was connected to her, changing her somehow.
But whatever the case was when she released a psychokinetic blast towards the door while she expected it to damage it enough to possibly allow her to break out, she wasn't expecting it to blow the entire door and the shutters behind it clean off their mountings.
She felt the power tear through her like a bolt of fucking lightning that when it exited her left with the force of a fucking bomb, she felt the wave colliding with the door and felt the material it was made out of compressing under the weight of the force behind it.
When the pressure became too much for it the door and the shutter simply exploded outwards, smashing clean through the shutters over the other lab and blowing them inwards as well.
"Holy shit!" she exclaimed looking at her hand and for a moment she swore she saw smoke rising off her fingertips, but she didn't have time to sit and speculate what in the name of hell had just occurred, those heavy footsteps were getting really fucking loud.
She darted out into the corridor and instead of heading for the stairs she headed for the other end of the corridor where she crouched down and remained still.
Just then four soldiers emerged into the tight hallway and looked at the damage to their left and right.
"What in the name of fuck happened here!?" the leader of the squad asked looking around.
"Did one of their experiments explode or something?" one of the others asked.
"No idea but heads on a swivel until we know for sure," the leader said.
"Ahh fuck Paladin look at this," one of the others at the back said pointing into the lab opposite and the four soldiers turned to look into the lab.
"Ahh fuck, looks like whatever blew this out took them out along with it, looks like the blast originated in this lab, better check for survivors," the Paladin said and the four soldiers climbed in through the hole she had just made with her power.
As the last man climbed in she moved, slipping past them and down the hallway into the stairwell, "Holy shit this one has been shot! We've got an intruder!!" she heard one of them shout from above her and this made her pick up the pace rather quickly.
She raced down the stairs to the main entrance to the labs, as she reached the door she found them opening inwards towards her and instantly found herself staring at another group of power-armoured soldiers.
"Fucking stealth armour!!" the soldier in the front exclaimed as he saw the shimmer caused by her rapid movement and four large weapons snapped up in her direction.
Without even thinking about it she reached out with her mind and flung her hands outwards, a burst of power tore through her and exited from her fingertips impacting the men and sending them sailing backwards like they weighed no more than leaves in a breeze.
It was like someone had hit them with a giant invisible golf club, all four of them rocketed backwards and simply smashed the outer airlock door clean off as they travelled.
Dark Angel stood there for a moment blinking at the pure destruction she had managed to unleash without even thinking about it, she knew this ability of hers could unleash quite the force but it had never been this easy to focus it or indeed this potent.
Something had changed in her and she had the feeling it had something to do with that crystal, it was like it had connected something up inside of her that was loose before, like someone binding two loose wires together so that current could once again flow through them.
Now whether it was a short-lived thing or a permanent one was up for debate, but what she did know was that she was going to use it to her advantage, it had just become her ticket out of there.
As she exited the labs through the shattered remains of the outer door she could see more soldiers coming up from further down the cavern, she figured that they must have barracks hidden down there somewhere but it didn't matter, there was no way they'd reach her before she got to the elevator and so she ran.
She reached the elevator where the two sentries that had been stood there checking the elevator were still at it, they never saw what hit them as she simply flung them out of her way and sent them spinning down the cavern like a pair of metal cartwheels.
Closing the gate as she got in she slammed the button to send the cab shooting back up the shaft and thankfully it climbed faster than it fell as she didn't particularly feel like getting trapped in this shaft if someone up there got smart and simply dropped a grenade down on her head.
Fortunately, it seemed that whatever comms the Brotherhood was using here no-one had thought to pick it up to call ahead to the surface because when she arrived up there the place was still in darkness and they were still trying to figure out what the fuck happened to their generator, but they must have been suspicious of a saboteur because there were now a lot more patrols than there had been earlier in the night, but this was no problem for her.
Slipping past them unnoticed in this wide open space was childs play as she made her way up the slip road that led out of the quarry but as she reached the top where her sniper rifle was awaiting retrieval she heard the blaring of klaxons from the bottom of the quarry and she turned to see a flood of lights arcing around as more soldiers flooded out to search for her.
"Too little too late fuckers," she said before thumbing her comms system.
"Dark Angel to Dark Sky actual how copy over?" she asked and there was a moment's silence before the comms kicked in.
"Dark Angel this is Dark Sky actual solid copy go ahead over," the comms operator replied.
"Primary and secondary targets secured, now heading to evac site over," she said.
"Roger that Dark Angel nice work, see you soon, Dark Sky out," the operator said and Dark Angel turned and headed off into the night