32 Plans May Crumble

Althea frowned before sending a message,

Althea Tolstoy(3:23 pm 3/4/00) - They'll hear you digging.

Harbinger of Cataclysm(3:24 pm 3/4/00) - Not if we get a little distance and dig a little deep.

She shrugged before we went further back until we were out of earshot of them. With a few quick swipes, my shovel hands clawed through the dirt in large chunks. What would’ve been hours of work for a normal man passed by in seconds before we were both underground.

While I dug, Althea would place supports made from rebar to prevent a collapse of the tunnel. She would go back up to the surface, get them, run back, and place them as I moved forward. With a little spit of acid, Althea melted the dirt as we traveled as well, letting us move forward fast. We made decent progress over the next hour, getting within fifty feet or so of Michael and Kelsey.

Of course, we still didn't know anything about what was inside. From what we could guesstimate, they would both be in cells or something like that. Althea and I would have to beat the shit out of a guard or two before busting them out then running back towards the creek. If necessary, I would act as a decoy since I would be far more difficult to take down than Althea.

With our plan set, I dug upwards. I slowed down my pace until I reached concrete. By then, we had dug for two hours. Planning anymore was risky, considering someone might find the hole. I tapped the wall, noticing it was reinforced concrete. Breaking through it would be tremendously difficult for me. For Althea on the other hand, it would be a simple task.

She reformed her left arm, turning it into a biotic rifle over five minutes. Extra adjustments were made, along with an eye along the edge of the barrel. I whispered,

"Can you see out of that eye?"

The eye closed as she mumbled, "Uh, yeah. It makes aiming easier."

I cupped my chin, "Weird, but yeah, probably."

From her right palm, she grew a riveted rod of bone. She placed it into the ammo compartment before placing it against the wall, "I'm going to spit acid onto the wall before firing. That should give you enough space to get inside. We get your friends and then run. You ready?"

I nodded before getting behind her. Even at a time like this, I noticed how lithe she was. For a moment, she distracted me with her figure. I mentally whipped myself before gritting my teeth. It wasn't the time to be thinking about dumb bullshit. From the pit of her stomach, a bulge formed before traveling up her chest and out of her mouth. Any attraction I felt died right there.

The acid steamed and hissed on the concrete before she fired. The sound of the shell was deafening in the cavern, leaving my ears ringing. The concrete gave as a cloud of dust exploded into the room above us. With a firm leap of my legs, I crashed through the leftover splinters of the concrete. As I came up and out, I glanced around and found us inside a garage.

At the center of the room, several people worked on cars and machines, sets of tools beside them. Groups of armored soldiers spoke with technicians and scientists hunched over tables lining the walls. Two large, open doors let light into the room. Above me were holes lining all the way up and through the roof. Althea's bolt had pierced through the ceiling, allowing a beam of light to shine into the room, right onto my face.

Along the edge of one of the vehicles was a set of clear, human sized capsules. Inside two of them were Kelsey and Michael, floating in a vacuum. I sprinted towards them. I got a few feet forward before all hell broke loose. Compacted rifles expanded as soldiers readied their aim towards me. Dozens of laser pointers lined up with my head before a deep, full voice shouted,

"Don't fire. Run and kill him. I repeat, do not fire. We cannot afford to bust the containment pods."

Their numbers worked against them since they would no doubt blow this place apart. A soldier sliced a shining dagger of red towards my throat. Without a thought, I pushed on his wrist while pulling his elbow back. His arm bent backwards, cracking his ligaments like breaking a chicken's neck.

He shouted in pain, his electronic voice blaring out of the speaker beside his helmet’s camera. Another soldier tried a stylish swoop kick towards my feet. I adjusted my run so that my heel slammed right into his armored knee. His joint and the armor’s metal crunched and bent underfoot. Another roar of agony shouted out before I jumped on top of the vehicle parked with Michael and Kelsey on it. I grabbed the edges of the containers before bending my hips down.

I deadlifted with all my strength, my legs exploding with force. The metal under my feet bent as the metal bars holding the tubes in place warped. I kept pulling before a harpoon smashed straight through the bent bars. I jerked upwards at the release of pressure. The bottom bars snapped,and my strength flung me off the vehicle. I flew backwards before landing on my back.

The polished concrete caved as I hugged the two containers to me. As we landed, the glass didn't break. It was more like a really hard plastic. I glanced around on the ground, seeing faceless suits of power armor closing in from every side. I pulled my legs up into the air before forcing them downwards. My upper body whipped up off the ground before I landed onto my feet.

This time they took a more cautious approach as they closed in on me. Of course they would. I just crippled two of their less cautious members. Meanwhile, Althea stormed through a group of the soldiers, sending them flying backwards with her unbelievable strength. Her legs looked like a goat's hind legs while her arms and hands had grown into massive clubs. With a few quick swings, she'd sent a group of soldiers rolling across the floor.

Using the opening she made, I picked up the glass tubes before sprinting back towards our hole. Their commander roared with anger.

"You maggots. There will be hell to pay if you don't stop those eldritch. I mean Hell."

The soldiers redoubled their efforts to stop us. A group of them lined up, blocking our way back. I stopped in my tracks with the stomp of a heel. The concrete burst underfoot, sending a hail of rocks at their helmeted faces. Althea leapt passed me, latching one of her massive hands onto my shoulder. I dug my feet into the ground as she pulled on my shoulder to swing her around.

Her leftover arm acted like swinging a tree trunk. The soldiers were sent flying before Althea dove into the hole. I tossed one of the containers towards her before leaping into the hole with Kelsey's tube held overhead. Althea slid the capsule through the hole before I followed her with the other. As we slid down, a rain of bullets slammed into the walls of the tunnel entrance above us, a hail of crumbling rock splattering down.

As I landed on the ground, my legs bent as the containment tube landed against my back. The plastic bent but held, a surprise considering how solid my armor is. Tube in tow, I sprinted towards Althea. We dashed through our tunnel before jumping out of the entrance. With my legs slamming the ground beneath me, I ran as fast as they could carry me.

We sprinted down the railroad tracks, the gravel flinging back at our steps before we started hearing the sound of revving engines in the background. Althea glanced at me,

"Decoy?"

"Fuck. Alright."

I tossed the tube towards her. She caught the tube with one of her arms before she set them down. Her arms shrank as her muscles tore and snapped into place. Looking like a fleshy, disgusting centaur, she grabbed the two tubes under her arms before sprinting towards the creek.

I winced a little at the disgusting reformation before I turned back around. Several vehicles rolled out of the garage before I sprinted right down the train tracks. My feet thunked against the ground with each step like hammers against the gravel. The boards between the tracks snapped under the weight of my steps. The air rushed past my ears as I enjoyed the speed of my own run.

After two minutes of running, a bullet whistled straight past my head. I didn't turn around. I kept pushing forward. Then another bullet landed straight into the ground were one of my feet were about to land. With the precognition, I twisted my ankle, stopping myself from getting stuck. More and more bullets came in before I beelined straight towards the city.

If I was right, they wouldn't just murder a bunch of civilians. They were contracted with Schema after all. I would use the people as cover before escaping with the multi-tiered sewer dungeon from earlier. It was a sound plan, in my head at least.

I reached a set of warehouses before a slight clink rang out below me. A ball of metal shot upward before a set of blades exploded in every direction. The force of the blades shot me sideways, several of the daggers lodged inches into my armor out of sheer force. I got back up, noticing most of my health was still there. I couldn't help but wonder why the fuck mines were spread out at random. Seemed really dangerous. Like, kill home planet citizens and pick up a bounty level of dangerous.

I didn't have time for thinking it over, so I shook off the impact. I pressed my heels back into the ground before leaping through a warehouse window. Once I picked back up some speed, I kept my eyes peeled for anymore mines. While they couldn't hurt me, they sure as hell could stop me. That was distance I couldn't afford to lose.

The windows leaking in sunlight passed by me as I snapped the edges of the blades off me. The steel snapped before I dived through another window. As I landed, another mine detonated, releasing another blade ball. With the slight foresight I had, I'd readied my heels. As the ball was at eye level, I let loose a monstrous hit. My fist slammed into the ball, launching it into another warehouse.

The windows shattered as blades shot outward in every direction. They had put those death balls everywhere. I'd just have to hit them hard before they hit me. That was how I solved most problems up till that point. Why would I stop then?

With that handled, I shot forward as the sound of helicopter blades ebbed overhead. Three helicopters passed by, the wind of their wings blowing trash up around me. They had thick bracers around their wings, with pointed corners. They kept the whole thing stable as it flew towards me. With a quick sprint, I shot down another alleyway. They circled overhead before one started firing a minigun at me.

The barrels turned into a ball of light and the bullets into a stream of fire. It was more like the mouth of a dragon than a gun. The bullets dug inches into the gravel ground before slapping into my back. The lead imbedded into my armor, but it held firm against the onslaught. The sheer force of the stream nearly knocked me down.

But I kept running. They couldn't stop me with stuff like this anymore. I was a harbinger after all.

The helicopters took turns gunning me down. Stripes of embedded lead traced up and down my body, but I kept moving. They hissed against me as the metal cooled from molten red to cool gray. They hovered lower and lower towards the ground before I leapt up onto a wall. My knees bent before I kicked off the wall and landed onto the roof. I stumbled forward before keeping my balance by pushing myself up with my arms.

With a burst of effort, I stomped my feet into the metal roof. My heels left imprints in the tin before I jumped up towards one of the passing helicopters. I missed my landing, diving straight into the helicopter blades instead of the helicopter's window.

The metal blades gyrated into me, the steel bands bending before breaking. A few more of the blades slung me around the edges of the bracers for the blades, denting my armor but not breaking it. Within seconds, the helicopter lost any way of staying afloat as the blades shattered against my skin.

The engine that turned the blades broke, smoke exploding upwards with a plume of fire. The helicoptor and I tumbled towards a building before skidding over a roof. A hail of red sparks shot off the tin before the helicopter flew straight into the wall of another warehouse.

The front crumbled against the wall, the glass crumpling before the plane exploded. The warehouse became a fiery inferno, heating my armor and cooking me inside it. Everything was a blinding red and orange as I pulled myself onto my feet. With a quick charge, I dashed forward before crashing through a nearby wall.

As I walked out, the flames followed behind me. I shook off the debris before glancing around. The two other helicopters were floating nearby. There was a parachute above me, the man wearing a set of power armor. He had no doubt ejected himself from the plane before it had exploded.

As he floated downwards, I slammed my fists together and grinned. My armor contorted into a twisted smile of its own. The man in power armor began scrambling for a switch near him. As he came closer, his scrambling turned to panic before he tapped a keypad on the side of his arm.

A jet of plasma erupted from behind him, shooting him away from me. I couldn't help but laugh a little. I guess I was a little more intimidating than I thought.

Regardless, I ran back towards town. The other helicopters gave up their chase after I took down the first. The vehicles hadn't though. After another minute or two of running, I neared the edges of the suburbs. In other words, my ticket out of that mess.

All along the road was a barricade though. Lines of caution tape, safety cones, and gunmen surrounded the town. There were flames in the distance over the houses, along with gunfire and plumes of black smoke. The air was heavy with ash and the smell of burning flesh. The guards looked ready for something coming out at any point, none of them slacking off. There was even plastic covering several buildings and tents behind the blockade. Screams echoed from inside the plastic lining.

There were several thoughts flying through my head at that point. First off, I reasoned that there was no goddamn way they set up this blockade so quickly for me. Second off, it was almost like a quarantined zone I saw in the movies. Still, I could hear several vehicles coming in from behind me. Glancing back, jeeps with weird looking rifles on top of them rolled out from between several of the industrial buildings.

I didn't have much of a choice. With a jolt of effort, I darted towards the blockade lining the town. They turned around and aimed their rifles, several of them confused. By the time I neared the road, they fired at me with a wild abandon.

I was tanky as hell, but I taking thirty rifles worth of fully automatic fire was still risky. By the time I neared the road, the bullets burned through an eight of my health, and my armor was turning heavy from so many bullets. I thanked whoever gave them normal rifles instead of some plasma bullshit. Ignoring the bits of pain, I kept charging forward till I reached the pavement.

I jumped up before landing dead center in the road. Stomping my heels, the ground underneath me caved inward while giant chunks of pavement and earth rose around me. Stabbing my fingers into the walls of rock, I pulled upwards before charging forward with a piece of the road as a shield.

Thousands of bullets lodged into the earth and pavement before I slammed the pavement into the ground at the front of the barricade. The ground quaked beneath my feet, I pulled down with my arms while kicking off with my back feet. That sent my flying up, and around. I front flipped over them, twenty feet into the air.

As I flew up, several nearby guards glanced at me in utter confusion. My arms and legs flailed in the air before I landed with a controlled roll. I tumbled a bit before pulling myself back into a smooth sprint. Bullets clipped into the nearby nearby houses before I disappeared into the sea of homes. I hurdled over several fences before finally stopping once I was sure no one was there.

In Between two closely knit houses, I sat and leaned against a wall. At first I wondered why the steel legion was using normal weaponry. That was before the sounds of screaming radiated all around me. There was gunfire and breaking windows off in the distance. I wheezed for air, exhausted from running for miles while getting shot. There were quite a few smells lingering in the air. As I glanced around, I discovered why.

The town was a bloodbath. There was blood inside car windows, spread across patches of pavement, and dried onto grass. There was blood spread out onto doors and fences. There was blood that filled bird fountains. There was so much blood in every direction, and where there is blood, bodies will follow.

And how there were bodies. Children, women, the elderly, nothing had survived here. Bodies were torn in half and draped over rock walls with their intestines swinging in the wind. Dead eyes in the corpses, empty as a bottomless well, stared off into different directions. Limbs were torn and ripped apart, freshly flayed fingernails missing off of a severed hand. Doors were snapped open, torn in half with windows broken in every house. I hadn't noticed while sprinting. I was too engrossed with my escape. Now it was sinking in.

This was hell.

I stood up before glancing into a nearby house. A man in black armor with metal jutting out of his armor stared back at me. Scared shitless, I put myself into a stance as he did. It was at that point that I realized just how scared I was. I was staring at a mirror.

It was shocking how much metal had lodged itself into my armor. I looked like I'd walked straight through an army and come out the other side. I sighed before I pulled out a jagged blade from one of the grenades. Over the next few minutes, I tore out bullets, bits of metal from the helicopter, and the blades from the grenade near the warehouse. As I finished pulling out the last unwanted decoration, I thought for a moment.

The blockade made perfect sense now. I guessed that whatever caused this was being quarantined by the steel legion. As I tapped my chin, I couldn't help but wonder what the fuck had happened. Why hadn't Kelsey and Michael mentioned this horrific massacre? How long has this been going on? How did it happen? That's when it hit me. I realized what had caused this unbelievable devastation. There was only one thing that I knew of that could have or would have done it.

Yawm of Flesh.