“Okay, people, look sharp,” I ordered. “Goggles on. Check your rifles. Check your ammo. Gessh, you’re on the left. Luna, right. I lead, Reign in the middle. Hobbs, you’re ass-end Charlie.”

“Ready,” Reign said, echoed quickly by the others.

“Got it,” Hobbs agreed.

“Aye, sir.”

“Aye, sir.” The sisters replied almost as one.

As soon as the lift hit the first floor, the sealed barriers shuddered for a second, before sliding back in a slow release of chilled gasses.

We were off.

The lower floors of the bio-farm were massively different. Up above, the air had been sweltering, like the height of summer. But down here? We were surrounded by clouds of vapor. Our own breathing fogged up the air and made it hard to see.

The passage ahead of us led between massive storage tanks, making it narrow, but high. Coolant pipes covered in frost ran down either side, and the lights overhead here were spaced farther out. A low, blue light tinted the air and made the passages seem even colder.

There was metal everywhere, and frost, but inside my helmet, I grinned, thankful for the temperature regulation capability. I’d not expected to need it, certainly not this soon, but damn.

I led the way down the corridor, the five of us as silent as we could be. We came to an end and followed the indicator my RI flashed on my vision, taking a left at the end of the T junction. We continued down, then a second left, looping around coolant towers. We passed between old vats that were out of commission and undergoing repairs, or flavors that had been long since decommissioned. Fifty minutes later, we were approaching the lift from the right-hand side fork, having done a full loop of this level, and Reign spoke into her recorder.

“Full loop of level one complete. Assessment: solid run.” With that, she clearly clicked it off as we approached the lift, speaking more normally. “Okay, guys, good one. Yeah, we didn’t see anything, and that’s totally fine. No, we don’t get more than the basic rate for this mission if we don’t actually kill any specters, but honestly, as a training and evaluation run, I’m fine with limited danger.”

“Anything we missed?” I asked.

“Look up more,” she said after a second, clearly considering whether she should say it. “Remember these aren’t sane enemies. They don’t feel pain, so they climb across areas that would be no-go areas to us.”

“Shit, do we…”

She shook her head. “Don’t worry. I kept checking. It’s something loads of teams forget until the first time one falls on them.”

“Okay, thanks.” I sighed as we all piled into the lift, selecting the next floor and heading down.

Two more floors passed like this, before the fourth and final floor, the one that led to the tunnels, opened in a fresh cloud of vapor.

Instantly, we all knew the game had changed. For a start, the floors above had been covered in frost, with the floor covered in pristine whorls and ice crystals before we scuffed them, passing over.

The floor here was covered in meandering, overlapping footprints—dozens at least—and the walls were scraped and scuffed much the same.

The icy pipes that ran here and there had frozen bits clinging to them, and I uneasily suspected they were remnants of flesh.

I spoke quickly.

“Okay, people, game faces on. We’ve got roaming ones here.”

I led the way out, the same layout as the floors above here, with a T junction ahead. I paused at the edge, looking left and right, then examining the floor.

This was the first realistic problem we had. If we move left, and they come along from behind us to the right? We might stroll around and miss each other all the way.

Alternately, if we split the team, we’d cover more ground, but massively up the risk.

My first instinct was to leave a drone here, to watch, or to set up overlapping fields of fire and make some noise, draw them to me. Neither was available, as we were required to patrol, and had no fucking drones.

“Keep on me. If we see lone stragglers? I’ll direct Luna and Gessh to take them in melee. We do this as quiet as we can, for the first loop,” I ordered.

“First loop?” Reign asked, and I smiled in my helmet, knowing this was being recorded.

“We do a full loop, eliminate anything we find, then set up here again, make some noise and wait. Anything that’s here but that we’ve missed while wandering the corridors is drawn to us. We eliminate it and move on. If there’s too many? A nest or whatever? We can fall back to the lift, rather than draw them deeper in.”

“Logical. I like it,” she admitted.

We were off then, taking the left as we had been. I moved with my rifle up, the others behind me with theirs down, apart from Hobbs, on the rear, rifle up and walking backward.

Two lefts, and we were passing a cooling tower, a mass of interconnected pipes that flooded in and out of a specialized super-cooler. The temperature dropped massively as we approached, and based on the levels above, we were used to passing through this section quickly.

As we closed on it, though? There were definite metallic clunks echoing ahead.

I took the corner slowly, edging around a set of outward-jutting pipes attached to the wall. And there she was, our first customer.

She’d been tall in life, clearly a party girl, judging from the remains of her outfit. It was too classy and expensive to be a hooker, yet showing about the same amount of flesh in clear advertising.

That she was tugging herself free of the pipes ahead, a ripping and cracking sound coming from the skin of her upper arm, and yet she wasn’t making a sound beyond that?

Yeah, she was gone.

I moved closer, then stepped to the left, pressing myself against the wall, and gestured Luna closer, making an “off with her head” gesture, and getting a nod from the half-orc.

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She slid the rifle over her shoulder and drew the sword from her back, the gentle hiss of steel leaving its sheath lost in the constant thrummm of the machinery all around us.

Stepping up, she hesitated, before looking back to me.

I cursed, seeing the look in her eyes. Uncertainty. Was this definitely a specter, and not a woman lost, and somehow here, drugged up to the eyeballs?

I paused and gave her a “wait” gesture. I slid around her again, moving up to the woman, then tapped her hard on the right shoulder, before darting to the left.

She turned slowly, staggering as she ripped herself free. The flesh and material left behind exposed blackened wiring and slowly moving pistons in her upper arm.

It wasn’t the arm that got our attention, though, nor that set Luna swinging.

I’d guessed party girl—I didn’t know what the others had guessed—but clearly something had happened when she was getting a facial reconstruction, or the faceplate had been ripped away since.

Her head had skin and hair from an inch below the hairline and running back, from just before the ears, and from below the chin. But the actual face? The eyes? All of it?

Totally gone.

In its place was a robotic visage. The plates of chrome that should have had the cheeks and muscles attached to individual sensors and hooks were bare. The eyes darted around, filmed in death with flickering, clearly damaged artificial eyelids still in place. And the mouth?

Damn.

Gleaming porcelain teeth gripped by steel reinforcement clacked and reflected the light.

Luna slammed her sword into her neck, the blade clearly a lot more advanced than simple shining steel, judging by the way it sheared through the composite plastic of her neck brace.

The body collapsed, falling sideways and clattering off the pipes. The head bounced, a fleshy bump-bump as it landed…before a loud clang as the faceplate connected with a pipe.

I moved quickly, leading the others forward, as Luna deactivated then wiped the blade, sliding it away and taking up position behind her sister in the line.

The path looped around the outside of a circular tower. All the pipes flew into the center, and as I led the way around it, feet crunching in the ice and general “bits” that were suddenly everywhere, cold-welded to the floor, the rest came into view as the room opened up into the central chamber.

At least a dozen of them were all gathered around a small section of a defunct tower, trying to open it. They’d been working at the metal, pawing and scratching. But now? The clang had alerted one or two at the back, and as soon as they saw us, they started to move.

Something about their movement alerted more and more, as they ran at us.

“Spread out, rifles up,” I ordered, my voice adding to the draw.

“Remember, minimum collateral damage,” Reign barked out, and I winced, remembering that from the contracts.

“Single-shot headshots,” I called out. “If you’re not confident, take them down with legs, then headshot when they’re on the floor. Open fire in three…two…”

We all fired on one, a solid single roar as all five guns opened up. Reign took her targets down with military perfection: single shot, single kill.

I was less so, the rifle new to me, and although the distance wasn’t huge, it was still thirty meters. And their staggering, swaying motion as they ran at us meant I missed as many as I got.

Hobbs was good—damn, he was good—single shots ringing out steadily, as more and more came from the sides where they’d been apparently swarmed around the tower, trying to get in.

As they closed on us, we switched from single shot to triple. The four of us did, anyway. Reign continued in single fire, and I moved steadily from one to another as more and more appeared.

“Okay, people!” I called into comms, my training keeping my voice steady as I spoke. “We’ve got more swinging in from the sides. Luna and Gessh, slide out to the left and right. I’ve got the center, Reign on my immediate right, Hobbs on the left. On two, rifles dip; three, you move. Got that?”

“Aye!” Four lots of agreement rang out, and I nodded, before speaking. “One, two…” I paused, giving time and lowering my rifle as the others did. “Three…” Luna and Gessh had previously been in the middle of the group, and as the melee experts they were, they were much more valuable on the outside when the numbers picked up like this.

“Okay, rifles up. Cut them down!” I barked, doing it myself as I opened fire.

More came from around the tower, but as the shots flew, they lessened, and I moved slowly, flicking back to single shot, aware I’d be running low on ammo. I lined up and fired, taking another in the head.

“I’m out!” Luna called, jerking her empty mag out and dumping it, reaching for another, swiftly echoed by her sister.

The specters were uniformly filthy and low level, battered and hungry, arms and teeth reaching as they sensed our nanites and mods, desperate for them. We fucking mowed them down, one after another. I sent a thought to the RI: Track kills.

In the corner of my vision, a number flashed up: fourteen. I fired and it shifted, blurring to fifteen, then sixteen. Over and over, we fired, and I cursed as my mag clicked, the gun ejecting it as I thumbed the release, catching the mag as it fell.

“Reloading!” I called, echoed a second later by Hobbs. Luna and Gessh were already back up and firing.

I rammed it down into the mag-grip on my back, designed for literally this: it’d hold the magazine, provided there wasn’t a serious blow there or anything, until I had the time to grab it, reload, and put it away properly.

Almost as soon as I released it, I slid another from my chest rig, slapping it into place with a solid click as the latches engaged. I yanked the charging handle.

They were close, much closer than I liked. Raising the rifle, I opened fire, taking down the nearest.

Nineteen kills. Twenty, twenty-one, and…I switched aim, zeroing in on the last one, only to have it fall before I could fire.

“Mine,” Reign said smugly.

“Good shot.” I approved. “Okay, everyone, reload, check the area. Luna, Gessh, clear the bodies.”

Agreement rang out, and then we were all moving. Those with low ammo replaced their magazine with a full one, just in case, and the sisters moved out.

“What’s the rules on the bodies?” I said to Reign, and she paused, shifting to look at me.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the salvage.”

“Julius said sixty—” she started to say.

I nodded, cutting her off.

“I know for the normal stuff…I mean the mods.”

“What about the mods?”

“Are we salvaging the mods?” I said clearly. “Like, do we get a portion of that? Who do they get sold to?”

“AH!” She grinned as she understood. “Sorry, totally confused me there. No. I mean, who’d use a mod from a specter? Sounds like a fast way to the grave to me. We have a team that comes along behind us. They clean up when it’s in unowned areas and so on. In places like this? We take what we want and the owner of the building either contracts a cleanup crew, or they pay the extra and we dispose using our team.”

“And today?”

“Best just to leave it. We check them and loot anything that’s valuable, then we hand it in on return to the guild. It gets split up and paid out, less fees.”

“Fees?”

“Cleaning, repairs, and guild membership.” She sighed. “It’s not that bad really, you know. There are days I’d rather not pay it, but…” She tapped a hand under her eye, or where her eyes were, considering her helmet.

I took the hint.

We’d all allowed access for recording and evaluation, and if there was a way around the taxes and so on, she wasn’t going to say anything right now.

“No worries, just wanted to be sure.” I forced a smile as I looked around, mentally cursing at the mods that were going to be lost.

I had no doubt that whoever the cleanup crew was, they’d be making a killing off this.

As soon as the sisters had confirmed the bodies were just that, and definitely dead, we fell to with a will, searching them and piling the loot in the middle of the room.

Everything from credit-chips and precious metals in the shape of rings, necklaces, and more were collected, along with a handful of tech items, busted datadecks and more.

I asked Reign to go over it, her having a lot more experience than the rest of us. She quickly sorted it all out, discarding a bunch of the crap before moving to the ammo and weapons.

Three knives, a small pistol, laser—which was nice, and clearly designed to be concealed, considering where Hobbs had found it on the first body.

He didn’t elaborate, but the ladies looked at him a bit weirdly after that, and I chose not to ask.

There were also some shock knuckles—discharged—and a single high-power “assault alarm” that one of the bodies had on him. It was a semi-legal “defense tool.”

Basically, you point it at the issue, and you press the button. At your end, it shook a little, and that was pretty much it. In the very specific cone of effect, you got hit with a sonic-based attack that although silent to the rest of the world, hit you with debilitating nausea, making the target lose all control of their balance and experiencing both explosive diarrhea and nausea.

Apparently, they were effective. No rapist was going to be up to doing the deed while crawling around on the floor, unable to stop shitting themselves and vomiting everywhere.

We bundled them all into a bag, Hobbs volunteering to carry it, and started off, heading back on patrol.

Or at least that was the intention.