Into the Abyss

[Dane Summers]

Still trying to catch his breath, the SMG out in front of him, Ketsu kept his footsteps as silent as he could, moving through the skeletal remains of a building, long since bombed out. To his left was the imposing mass of a huge concrete hardened warehouse shell, overlaying the facility (he guessed), keeping it hidden from aerial view. On the ground floor, the whole complex was massive, and intimidating - all the more since it showed almost no wear at all. A few bullet holes, and scorch marks on the outside, but the concrete facade was unblemished, and stood tall as if to say 'come at me. do your worst. i weathered phantoms, and mutants, and bombs, and acid rain - what can you do? nothing.

He was trying to find an alternate entrance inside, and was hoping to do some amidst the aqueduct system underneath. It was a simple matter to find a section of street that had been blown in, exposing an underground public transit monorail. And from there, shadowed darkened man-made caves, hopefully leading to the prize.

As the tunnel darkened, he fished out the night vision optics, turning darkness into a putrid shade of neon green. His peripheral vision went to nothing, but at least he could see. Up ahead, was light, causing distortion with the optics - two amber bulbs - one burnt out, the other out of its housing and hanging by the last thread of its power cabling. In between was a heavily reinforced door, that had recently been opened - the corpse of a dead facility worker was draped into the monorail track, covered in torn ragged flesh from too many high caliber rounds. The door itself, swinging open, was covered in blood.

"This is Ketsu - Ive found an entrance...west side of the building, take the path down, under the street. Ill mark the way..."

He turned around, ripped open his velcro webbing, pulled a small plastic stick, broke it over the hard soul of his boot, and tossed the reddish glowing stick towards the halfway point of the darkened tunnel, between himself and the path up - should be good enough for Dasha and Middleton to see.

he took a deep breath, and peered closer at the body, the long minutes seeming to stretch into hours. As he flipped it over, the technicians face, covered in puked blood, was distended in terror and pain. Not a pretty way to go. Searching for some sort of ID card, maybe even a pass card (might be useful) he heard something that sounded like scritching on concrete behind him - Looking up, expecting to see his comrades, he saw nothing, and paid the sound no mind, thinking of a vermin.

It was when he heard it again, this time much closer, that he got up and looked around, searching for the noise. His optics picked up movement, and he raised the SMG, peering into the darkness, expecting anything.
A human shape, shifting, stumbling, seemingly wounded, came out of the deeper darkness. the White of the technicians coat showed up brilliantly in the night vision spectrum, and so did the dark splotches of blood. The man was stumbling his way in a panic to Ketsu, an obvious survivor of the facility.
Letting out a breath of relief, Ketsu lowered the SMG, waved his hand to signal the man over - "its ok, were Militsiya, were here to make safe the facility" - turning away, he activated the throat mic to signal Dasha he had found a survivor.

Stars exploded in his eyes, and his breath left him - his mind couldnt make a thought as to why he was suddenly on the ground, with the body of some technician on top of him, its lifeless dead eyes, and torn out throat making him obviously dead. Instinct took over and he kicked the body off, just as hard iron vice like hands pinned him to the ground - fire and pain exploded in his abdomen as white hot knives stabbed deep into the flesh of his waist - staring into perfectly machine metal face, and cold glowing electronic eyes...

The Seekerbot had found the body of some dead enemy ordered killed by the TALOS automated defenses - used the body as convenient cover to approach its target - catching its target offguard, it used the body as heavy projectile, thrown to terminal velocity as if it had been small stone - With the target's ability to fight back nullified, the Seekerbot attacked - it showed a 99.9% chance that its victim would be rendered deceased in under 3 seconds. It lifted its left combat talon, blades distended, with the optimum entry point through the visual and olfactory cavities....

Assault rifle fire lit up the darkness, as round after round cascaded around the Seekerbot, penetrating the hardened combat exoskeletal structure, puncturing vital control mechanisms - the tungsten armor piercing rounds were enough to get through, and do some damage, but even after a full magazine, the Seekerbot was still going. It rose to its feet, somewhat worse for wear, and with a powerful hydraulic pistoning of its legs, leapt to the dark recesses of the ceiling, being chased by automatic fire, only to disappear into the darkness.

"What the HELL was that thing?!" Middleton, busy reloading another mag. Dasha helped Ketsu off the floor, who was now bleeding profusely, in obvious pain. "Quick, whose got a medkit?!" She asked, searching her pack, and Middleton's too - "I do" said Ketsu weakly - he reached into his combat webbing, took out the white kit, handed it to her, as she set to work trying to stop the bleeding from the deep wounds to his abdomen.

"As for what it is...I dunno..."

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