Doomsday Hunter 2, page 17
part #2 of Doomsday Hunter Series
Then we inched our way toward the stairwell, and we made sure we didn’t even have the slightest misstep as we walked. Finally, we reached the doorway, and Tracey threw it open before we all hopped in to safety.
“Well, that will make this escape go a bit slower,” Natalie chuckled. “But at least we’re all still alive.”
“I just hope that means the drone is off the table,” I sighed, and then I began to head down the stairs.
The three of us rushed down the concrete steps, and even though it was only eight stories, the combination of our urgency and anxiety made it feel like twenty. Finally, we threw open the door of the fiftieth floor and shuffled our way to the testing room.
Once we were safely inside of the testing room, we let out a collective sigh of relief. The window Natalie and I had entered was still wide open and practically beckoning us to exit, so we dashed over and then promptly helped ourselves out onto the fire escape.
However, as Natalie and I headed to the ladder, Tracey looked over the side of the balcony and froze in horror.
“Wait!” the brunette hissed. “We need to get back inside, right now.”
“What are you talking about?” Natalie questioned. “We’re almost home free.”
“The Deltacorp Strike Team is here.” Tracey pointed down at the ground with a grimace. “That’s their van down there. If we don’t get inside right now, we’re going to be sitting ducks. I’m sure they’ve already got snipers honed in on our position.”
“Snipers?” I raised my eyebrows. “They really trust those security guards with sniper rifles?”
As if in answer to my question, the concrete at my feet suddenly exploded in a spray of dust, and the retort of a rifle reached us a split second later.
“Shit,” Tracey gasped, and then she practically threw herself back through the window.
“Inside!” I commanded as my heart dropped, and I shoved Natalie back the way we came. “Now!”
Natalie regained her balance and then jumped head-first through the window. Once she was inside, she turned around, grabbed my outstretched hands, and yanked me through after her.
Another shot rang out, and this time the bullet went through the window, and it missed both of us by inches as it zipped into the room and struck one of the testing tables.
The three of us went prone on the ground and waited for the sniper’s next move.
“What the hell was that?” Natalie demanded.
“The Deltacorp Strike Force,” Tracey panted as she lifted her head a fraction. “AKA Deltacorp and the military’s first contract. They don’t miss, either, so I think they were trying to herd us back inside so they could capture Hunter without the risk of him falling to his death.”
“Wait, wait…” I grumbled, “so you’re telling me the military has a branch of soldiers that work exclusively for Deltacorp?”
“More or less,” the brunette admitted. “I’ve never actually seen them in action before, but I’ve heard stories of what they can do…”
“What, if I may ask, does a tech company need soldiers for?” I asked with a cocked eyebrow.
Tracey just sighed. “If you haven’t noticed by now, Deltacorp is much, much more than a tech company. How do you think it got so powerful? Through its technical innovations?”
“That’s what I assumed, yeah,” I confessed.
“This makes things way more complicated,” Natalie added. “How are we supposed to get out of here now? This was our quickest exit.”
“We have to go out on the ground level…” I trailed off as my face drained of its color.
But what other choice did we have?
“So, now we have to go down fifty floors while also trying to fight off trained soldiers?” Natalie asked with a devilish smile.
“Trained soldiers with exoskeleton suits and high-tech weaponry,” Tracey confirmed.
That only seemed to make Natalie more excited. “Now, that’s what I call a challenge!”
“Let’s go, then,” I grumbled. “Keep low, and stay away from any windows.”
The three of us army-crawled through the room until we were back out in the hallway. The second we thought we were clear of the shooter, all of us sprung up to our feet and took off down the hall. Eventually, we came to the western staircase, where we promptly dashed down the stairs.
It took us nearly twenty minutes to get down to the twenty-seventh level of the building, though our descent was fairly uneventful. When we arrived at the landing, Tracey leaned up against the wall and tried to catch her breath.
“I am so outta shape,” the slender brunette panted.
“What are you talking about?” I joked. “You’re built like a twig.”
The brunette shot me a dirty look. “Yeah. That means I don’t have the same muscle mass and stamina as you guys. And what did Dr. Merrick say? Something about how you were ‘enhanced’ or something?”
“Look,” I mused, “we clearly still have a lot of explaining to do, but it’s going to have to wait until we’re out of here and safe, okay?”
Tracey didn’t seem satisfied with my answer, but she understood my sentiments. So, she sighed, took a deep breath, and then began to wander down the stairs.
Just then, a large projectile shot up from the open square between the staircases. It exploded with a blinding flash of light, and I fell back against the wall as the world went white before me.
“Go, go, go!” I heard a gruff voice command from below.
It was the Deltacorp Strike Force.
“Now the party’s really getting started!” Natalie cackled, and then I heard her fire off a few shots of her pistol.
How the hell did she know where she was shooting?
Almost immediately afterwards, our enemies down below returned fire, and I threw myself against the wall. Slowly, the outlines of my teammates manifested themselves in my vision. However, there were now a few more outlines headed up the stairs, and all of them were holding guns.
“Don’t damage the asset,” one of them commanded, “kill the others.”
Oh, hell no.
I raised my Sig Sauer and fired a few more shots into the crowd of Deltacorp soldiers. Two of them stumbled backward from the impact of my bullets, but they didn’t seem to go down.
Whatever these guys were wearing, it was much more bulletproof than what the security guards had on.
Suddenly, I heard Natalie let out a cry of frustration. Her figure swooped past me and then planted her foot in place, spun around, and roundhouse kicked the first soldier in the face. He fell back into his squad, many of whom promptly tumbled down the staircase.
As my vision faded back in, I watched Natalie snap the neck of the next soldier and then throw him against the wall. The other standing soldier raised his assault rifle, but the Scavenger was too fast. She grabbed the muzzle, shoved it away, and then pressed her pistol up against the bottom of his jaw. She squeezed the trigger, watched his brains paint the underside of the above staircase, and shoved his body off to the side.
Now that I could see the soldiers clearly, I could tell why Tracey seemed so afraid of them.
They were all wearing navy blue fatigues and vests adorned with every size of pocket known to man. In their hands were giant assault rifles, and I could clearly see a Deltacorp-registered sidearm on one of their thighs and a combat knife holstered on the others.
However, the most terrifying thing was the exoskeleton. Each soldier had what appeared to be a black metal backpack attached to the back of their vest. The device then stretched out with a long, thin piece of metal along their arms and legs, which themselves branched out. The thin metal “vertebrae” wrapped around the soldier’s arms and legs at intervals of about three inches, and it honestly looked like these guys had their spines on the outside. It appeared to be powered by some sort of hydraulic fluid, as there were small rubber tubes connected to the top of each appendage.
Before Natalie could get down to the six fallen soldiers, they were back up on their feet with the help of their exoskeletons. I fired off a few more rounds of cover down on their position, but they were able to dodge with superhuman speed.
Natalie lashed out with her fist at one of the soldiers, but he dispelled her with his arm. He then proceeded to uppercut her in the face, which sent the Scavenger flying back like she was a marionette who had just been pulled up by her puppet master.
One of the guards raised his rifle to take her out, but I quickly raised my pistol’s sight, squinted, and squeezed the trigger. There was a spray of blood as his head whipped back, and his body went limp.
Natalie landed on the stairs with a hard crash and then was up on her feet almost instantly. The Scavenger raised her gun to shoot, but one of the men in the exoskeleton grabbed her pistol with his bare hands. The air was filled with a mechanical whirring sound, and then he proceeded to yank the Sig Sauer out of Natalie’s hand like it was made of plastic. He threw it off to the side, where it clattered down the stairs and out of our reach.
Holy crap. These guys definitely weren’t playing around.
I charged down the stairs as I fired off a few more shots and forced the bastards to dodge.
The soldier who had disarmed Natalie grinned when he saw me approaching, and he jerked his arm backward and pulled Natalie into his body. Then he wrapped his exoskeleton-enhanced arms around her in a reverse bear hug.
“One more step, and she dies,” he threatened. “Come with us peacefully, and we will consider letting your friends live.”
“I’ll do you one better.” I shrugged, and then I held my pistol up to my temple.
Fear filled the soldiers’ eyes as they watched the situation unfold.
“Hunter, don’t!” Natalie called out.
“I’d listen to your lover,” the soldier mocked. “If you kill yourself, then we’ll just kill both of them anyway.”
“Maybe,” I bluffed. “But you’ll also be short one AI even your greatest scientific minds can’t recreate.”
“We’ll just make a copy from the military’s copy,” the soldier hissed. “And then all of your deaths will be for naught.”
“Fat chance, fuck face,” Tracey growled from up above. “The military isn’t going to let anyone touch that program once it gets uploaded into their system. If Hunter dies, Deltacorp loses its most advanced piece of intellectual property. That’s why the drone operator didn’t fire on us, and that’s why you’re not gonna let him kill himself.”
Come on, Tracey… Just keep them distracted. I’d improvised this whole thing, so I was still trying to come up with a plan in real time.
“Face it,” Natalie mocked over her shoulder as she struggled in the man’s grasp, “you’re backed into a corner.”
“Watch it, girl,” the soldier hissed. “I’m already going to enjoy popping your head off your body like a dandelion.”
“Whooooooaaaaa,” I growled as I pressed the cold steel of my gun harder against my temple. “Don’t you even think about it.”
“I don’t know what exactly you’re trying to accomplish,” the Deltacorp Strike Force soldier continued. “We’re not letting you past, one way or another.”
Maybe if I could get a shot off in time…
No, that was too risky. The soldier’s head was only a few inches away from Natalie’s, so if I was even partially off with my aim, she was screwed.
That’s when it hit me.
They weren’t going to kill me, no matter what I did. My one goal here was to keep Natalie and Tracey safe, even if this meant getting super reckless myself.
And that meant walking straight into the storm.
“You let her go, and I’ll come with you,” I lied.
“Put the gun down first, and then I’ll let her go,” the soldier bargained.
“Oh, like hell I will.” I clicked my tongue. “Do I look like I was born yesterday? Let Natalie go, and then I’ll lower my gun.”
“Just do it, Frank,” one of the other soldiers groaned. “We can’t stand around here all day.”
The soldier who had Natalie scowled for a moment.
“Look,” I offered as I took two steps forward. “I’m coming closer.”
Little did he know, I had no intention of coming with the Deltacorp Strike Force. What I was interested in, however, was the hose attached to his exoskeleton.
“We’ll do the exchange on three.” The soldier’s eyes narrowed. “One… Two… Three.”
He threw Natalie forward with a massive heave, and at the same time I lowered my weapon. Then, in one swift motion, I lurched forward, grabbed the hose at the base of his spine, and ripped it free of its connector. Next, I aimed the hose down at the four remaining guards and sprayed them with the fluid inside.
It must have been boiling hot, because the soldiers screamed as the liquid sizzled against their skin. Then they dropped their rifles and flailed around in agony as the superheated oil turned their epidermis into a blistered, bubbling landscape.
Well, that was lucky. I was just hoping the spray of liquid would distract them, not sear off their flesh.
“You mother fucker!” the soldier named Frank hissed, and he tried to reach out and grab me, but without the hydraulic pressure in his suit, it was like he was moving in slow motion.
“Asshole!” Natalie snarled as she jumped back into the fray.
The Scavenger slugged the soldier in the face before she flipped over him acrobatically, landed in the mess of burnt soldiers below, and picked up one of their rifles. She unleashed a hailstorm of bullets at the man’s legs, which were blown off his body with a wet crack and a spray of gore.
The soldier screamed as he fell down onto his bloody stumps, and then I grabbed him by the vest, hauled him up off the ground, and tossed him over the side of the staircase. We heard his cries of agony get further away as his body plummeted down twenty-seven stories, only to be silenced when he exploded against the ground at the bottom.
“I’d hate to be the one who has to clean that up.” Natalie whistled, and then she raised her hand for a high-five. “We just took down six elite soldiers, Hunter. Karla would be so fucking proud.”
“Teamwork makes the dream work,” I joked as I high-fived my partner and then glanced back at Tracey. “Do you think there will be any more?”
“There certainly will be.” She nodded grimly. “They probably sent a strike team up each staircase, so I’d imagine they’ll figure out what happened here pretty quick. And when they do--”
“We’ll have a bunch more of these guys to deal with,” I finished. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”
The three of us continued down the stairwell for another ten minutes until finally, we arrived at the first floor. Natalie ran over to retrieve her discarded pistol while I inspected the mess we’d made.
When I saw what remained of the slain soldier, though, I nearly threw up all over the place.
His body had just about exploded on impact. Blood, guts, and brains were all over the floor, and the man’s head was split open like a ripe watermelon. His face was bloated and purple, and one of his eyes had popped out of its socket and now hung off to the side.
“Talk about a case of lazy eye.” Natalie whistled as she checked her weapon for damage.
“Holy shit, girl!” Tracey gasped, and her hazel eyes widened as she turned to the blonde.
“What?” The Scavenger shrugged. “Back where I come from, seeing this sorta stuff is totally normal.”
“I-I’m not even sure I want to know,” the brunette muttered as she tried to hold down her lunch.
We passed over the dead body, pushed open the door, and then stepped out into the main lobby of the building.
However, it only took one step out into the area to realize we’d made a bad call.
Blinding white lights shone through the giant wall of glass on the far end of the Deltacorp lobby. The sky was dark, but the mix of spotlights and flashing red police lights lit up the lobby like it was the middle of the day. My heart sank when I realized what we were looking at.
Outside of the Deltacorp building was a massive line of police cruisers, all marked with the company logo.
“Are those all part of the strike force?” I gasped.
“They are,” Tracey admitted as her face paled. “I told you we were fucked.”
“There’s got to be another way out of here…” Natalie sighed. “Is there some sort of back door? An underground tunnel? Something?”
“Not that I’m aware of.” Tracey hung her head in defeat.
“Well, hey,” Natalie half-joked, “maybe we can hide out in the trash incinerator until morning. I doubt they’d look for us in there.”
Suddenly, the lightbulb went off in my head.
The trash. That was our ticket out of here. Just like Natalie had thought.
“What time is it right now?” I pondered aloud. “Didn’t Rick say the trucks come by at midnight to pick up the burned trash?”
Natalie’s lightbulb must have gone off, too, because she perked up.
“That’s right!” she gasped. “It’s eleven-thirty, so it should be coming by soon! Tracey, do you know how to get into the bowels of this building?”
“There’s a service door back on the south side of the building,” the slender brunette noted. “I think it’s just back there.”
The three of us dashed across the pristine laminate floor of the lobby like ninjas. We didn’t dare make any noise, or else we’d bring the entire Deltacorp Strike Force down on our heads.
Eventually, we arrived at the set of double doors with a sign that proclaimed “Janitorial Staff Only.”
We made it just in time, too.
Behind us, we heard the sound of a fire door being kicked open.
“Where the fuck are they?” one of the soldiers growled from across the room.
Tracey hurriedly opened the door, and then we ran through.
The “backstage” of the Deltacorp building was a sharp contrast to the rest of the structure. Here, there was no fancy decor or rooms, just a bunch of concrete walls that looked like they were sticky to the touch. The whole place smelled putrid, like old food mixed in with rat urine and garbage.
You’d have thought a multibillion-dollar company would have had put a little bit of effort into their behind the scenes work. Then again, I supposed companies like this only gave a damn about their public image.
