A high-calibre round whined past, inches from my helmet, and crunched into a guard’s kneecap behind me. He rolled screaming on the floor as I darted to a concrete pillar for cover, a salvo of blaster bolts streaming down from above. My pulse pounded in my fingers as walls exploded inwards, showering splinters of metal and plaster around the room in angry bursts, stray projectiles ricocheting off me and the guards’ armour alike.
‘We want him alive!’ someone screamed. Not that anyone in the room seemed to be listening as the room plunged into darkness. A siren screeched around us, the noise catapulting me back to the war for a moment, the ghostly outlines of my fireteam around me between blinks. The air felt denser, gravity higher. Poisonous yellow lighting turned the hallways into a shuttered nightmare. Barely able to hear or think. All rational fear squashed to a pulp by the stormtech grinding against my ribs.
I was slammed hard against the wall, knocking me back to Compass. Felt like I’d been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. I saw the scattershot shooter the moment he squeezed off another round square into my midriff. I choked on my own breath, panting in my cover, splattering the inside of my visor with saliva. There was a warm prickle as the hydrostatic gel inside my armour tightened for protection, a stinging sensation as biofoam oozed into my wounds.
A table beside me erupted into smoking splinters, the scattershot shooter charging. But now I knew where he was. I sprang forward, the armour giving me inhuman speed. My armoured bulk smashed into his, sending him staggering off-balance. I jammed the handcannon under his chin and fired, black blood splattering out.
Search beams slashed across the darkened room, hunting me. I hugged the floor and gripped my weapon as I had in the Reaper War. Close, tight, familiar. The handcannon crackled as I aimed down the sights towards incoming guards, throttling the trigger, blasting through a kneecap, the guard’s legs thrashing as he smashed to the floor. Heart in my throat, I fired up through the walkways, shedding sparks and chunks of metal. Someone collapsed, legs mangled, screaming until a stray bullet from a comrade shattered his face apart.
A warning beamed up on my HUD: out of ammo. The handcannon hummed in my hands, autoprinting bullets. I couldn’t afford to wait and reached to grab a scattershot dropped by one of the guards when a furious spear of pain shivered down my shoulder, a high-calibre round hitting home. I scrambled forward, scooped up the chunky scattershot, grips readjusting to my hand-size as I blasted away with ear-splitting echoes. Chunks of plaster ripping and spraying from the wall as I tracked the shooter with my sights, nailing him on the fifth shot and sending him spluttering against the wall.
I heaved in a series of gulping breaths as sirens continued to scream overhead. My eardrums were throbbing. Plaster rained down on the dead and injured among the wrecked room. Handcannon recharge at twenty-three percent. Had to get out of here.
I burst out of the room, spraying blind fire into the stairwell. Yells sounded as the stairwell collapsed in a screech of tortured metal. I leaped clear with a heavy thud, running for the second stairwell, cocooned in a world of adrenaline and the throttling joy spiking through my body. Had to retrace my steps to find the exit before they trapped me in here.
I reached the second landing, a grenade going off, violent shockwaves spreading out as a salvo of gunfire hammered into my chest. I was slammed flat on my back, ears rippling with white noise, throbbing with so much pain that for a moment I thought I’d been killed. My armour went rock-hard around me, pumping me with drugs. The world blurring into monochrome. Blinking hard, trying to focus, gunfire growing from a muted rumble into a thundering echo as my hearing slammed back to me. A three-round burst tore a chunk out of the wall by my head. I crouched and fired blind bursts into the smoke, my muzzle flash giving me away. Gunfire returned, clattering against my shoulder. Teeth clenched hard enough to crack, the handcannon coughed as I aimed down the holographic sights and fired. There was a wet splatter and the guard collapsed, twitching on the ground before going still.
Mangled yells tore through the constant shriek of the siren. My body clenched, soaking up the dread and excitement of this war-torn nightmare. Given the chance, the stormtech would make me hack and blast my way through every last man, make me do anything to survive and to sustain this rush of adrenaline. That’s what made it so invaluable: it wouldn’t let me stop until I was dead, or they were.
But I needed to be smarter than that.
The exit loomed above: a neon-white rectangle shrouded in the smoky darkness. My palms were sweaty and my throat was tight with hunger. Body curved like a predator as my prey came galloping into my outstretched claws.
Had to remember my training. Years of battling these desires, dodging the pitfalls. Remember my Reaper brothers, telling me not to cave, to be stronger than that. For Alcatraz, Cable, Ratchet, Myra, all the others in that bloody nightmare. The people that had fought beside me. Pushing away my body’s desires. Lifting me back up to the light.
Think
