13

She woke up to the sound of people running all over the place in full armor and boots. She checked into Works' office and found him in a hot talk with Xian and Lowlife.

"New stuff!" Works answered. "Get your gear ready, we're coming down in two minutes."

She opened her locker and found her two prides patiently waiting for their next use... Something was odd though. She took the shotgun and noticed the cannon's mouth had changed in color. Seeing a note on the handle, she took it.

Elise - Masahito informed me he had found some parts for your weapons. I had one of my techs install and test them for you. They should work fine; call Masahito if there's anything. Lowlife

Wow! That can only spell good stuff for the mission to come. She hurried to the main room and went for Masahito.

"Oh, Elise! We were waiting for you." Xian announced. "Okay, everyone! We've just caught a very important piece of data. For the first time in God knows how many years, Department Twisted will be conducting a scheduled full security upgrade. The techs were planning to work during the day, at this very hour, to take advantage of the place being full of loyal workers ready to call if anything goes wrong. In fact, they are supposed to start in a few minutes. Your watches should show 2:17 PM. The upgrade will begin at 2:30. Therefore, our goal is the following: while the alarms are disabled, we are to enter the building through the side doors, sneak to the cell blocks, and free as many mutants as possible. Now, this is our first operation in the main labs. The building is most likely a complete maze, and we don't have a map to guide you guys through. So it's up to you to find your way around. Next step is the alarm itself. Though the security system will be shut down for the upgrade, that doesn't mean you're free to roam anywhere you want! Alerts can still go on by word of mouth, intercom, instant messenger, telephone, you name it - send one guy to the guard rooms and you'll have everyone on your tail. Plus, since it will take us a while to get the job done, a hit and run is out of the question here. Thus, we need to remain stealthy. Use silenced guns, knives, and other noiseless weapons. It takes only one man to warn the cops, and if that happens, it'll take us too long to get out. Therefore, exceptionally, you are to kill any and all workers on sight. Do your best to hide the corpses, and make sure the floor is well cleaned before you start doing fancy stuff. Your team leaders will tell you how to proceed. I want to stress the fact that this operation is extremely important, since we have the chance of saving a record number of test mutants. Any questions?"

"Great! Now, on to the next part of the briefing. In the message we caught, DT was talking about beefing up the security around a particular cell block - number 32 I believe. This can only mean there are some treasures in that cell block. Notify immediately if you manage to find and sneak into that block. Take extra care of whatever is there. It might be important, it might be not, but I don't want to take chances. We'll take all five teams along this time, thus Alexanne, Masahito, Lowlife, Gunderson, and me. Gunderson's android team will take care of watching the doors so that we may exit safely. My team will head to the top floors in the hope of catching whatever leader might be present. The others, check out those cell blocks. That's all for me."

"Okay!" Alexanne yelled. "My team, come over here!... Okay. We'll make five teams. We're twenty-two, so... you three, you three, you three and you three, you'll take care of floor patrol. Once the floor is clean, go to the elevators, and stay put. Notify is anyone's coming and you can't handle him for whatever reason. There's ten people left including me. We'll take care of searching the cell blocks. The procedure will be this one: clean the floor, and then set up the rescue. If we have a lot of mutants on our hands, we'll get out immediately and load them into our trucks, which will zip right out of the place. If we only get a few mutants, we go up a floor and see if there's anything we can't do there We don't have many trucks at our disposal, and they can't roll fast, so one run will be more then enough for us to fill a couple of these up to their maximum capacity. Questions?"

"I do." Elise said. "I just got some upgrades installed on my saber and shotgun. Does that change anything into the plan regarding my job?"

"No. My only suggestion: fire away if you think you've got enough power. No need to remind you all that energy armors are tough stuff. You'll need a few salvos to take down or to be taken down, but don't go thinking you can withstand an army of guards, because as far as I know, you still got crap armor on that body of yours. Main labs equals weapons never seen before. DT works on war technologies, so it's a given that we might be going against some experimental stuff. I think that's enough pep talk. Let's go!"

With everything going on around me, I had forgotten to upgrade my stuff. It's a divine luck that I left the bag in the car - I guess Lowlife or some other knowing member noticed it and went ahead to do me a service. However, what I have in offense doesn't make up for the defense I'm stuck with. I don't know how many shots I'll be able to handle with my energy armor. I could always use my natural leg shields, but do I really want to put them to the test in a real combat situation?

#75

"The best stick in the world is worthless if you lack a groin cup."

An old hockey proverb I'm sure to recall one day at the worst possible moment.

Fortunately, as far as silencing went, my weapons were pretty quiet. The biggest worry was the shotgun, but the worst it could do was a small muffled boom everytime it shot, or a little whizz whenever I used beam mode. Wouldn't be a biggie, and hopefully it'll be good enough to go against top-line Department guards. All this without triggering an alert or getting fragged. This has got to be the ultimate shadow run. Shrike's all-out assaults are straightforward kid wars compared to what's about to be done here. And the worst part, honestly, is that I'm really not in the mood to be serious.

I followed Alexanne into one of the trucks and got the privilege to sit on the floor right in the middle. Nice, real nice... I was wondering why I wasn't strapped to the hood here. After all, Alexanne's team is mostly composed of mutants, most of them ugly if anything.

This whole thing actually boils down to three chapters: get in, take stuff, get out. Maybe I might even get to steal a precious weapon or two.