2518, UNPC universal Calendar.
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"I guess what I don't understand is how did no one think this was a bad idea?" Kugler said, an obvious air of annoyance to his tone. He stood in the office, along with Dr.Raine and two other doctors or scientists or whatever the fuck. He didn't care.
"The nuances of the seventh series of augments we can go over later." One of the scientists snapped, looking at Kugler with a twitch in their eye. "Right now we need to deal with the issue." They told him.
"We?" Kugler scoffed, looking at Dr. Raine who just shrugged, sitting in an office chair in the meeting room they'd skirted into when it all went down. "You better be speaking french, because I seem to be the only one here able to do jack or shit about it." He said rather casually, getting in their face, his scarred face twitching as one side of his mouth was drawn into a grin. The scientist recoiled back, their hips hitting the table and their hands going out to catch themselves.
He wordlessly took his flamethrower ejector off of his tank frame as he stepped back, and clicked the ignitor trigger. A dry hiss filled the air, and the propane flame was plain in the silence of the meeting room, heat shimmers roiling off of it in the harsh LED light.
"Don't kill it, please." Dr. Raine said. "Only if absolutely necessary." She added, looking him in the eye. He met her gaze, and looked into it for the length of two heartbeats.
He nodded slowly, "I understand." He said.
The overly loud blared warning interrupted them. "Chemical and biological hazard detected! All personnel into protective suits immediately! CBRN NCO report to station!" The harsh voice of a female sounded over the facility loudspeakers.
"You heard her." Kugler said. "I'm not opening that door until the three of you are in bubble suits." Kugler gestured to the wall locker. 'Bubble suit' was the nickname for the reinforced CBRN positive pressure suits used in facilities like this one coalition wide. The umbrellas of responsibility meant that the situation was out of the hands of Dr. Raine and her scientists, and now in the hands of the facility commander.
Dr. Raine was familiar with the process, as she'd drilled it 100's of times before. She simply opened the wall locker and donned one of the suits not having any clothing to remove. After less than a minute, they were all suited up, and Kugler looked at one of the cameras, situated in the upper corner of the room.
He stabbed two fingers at his eyes, then at the door. He had to repeat the gesture twice before they gave him what he wanted. "Multi-POV Thermal pass through sources found." scrolled across his HUD.
He made an "okay" gesture at the camera, and connected. Thermal blooms and water piping could be seen in the walls. The entire facility became a skeleton. He set the range to 100 meters, then went left eye only, leaving his right with unaugmented vision.
Outside the door was clear, and he looked to Dr. Raine and the other two before leaving, then stepped through the door, closing it behind him. He turned to a camera and made a phone gesture. It took two seconds before operations had a comm link opened with him.
"It's in the lower contaminated training areas." The operations NCO told him. Certain levels of the site were contaminated on purpose with things like VX nerve agent, or mustard gas, or biological hazards so trainees could build confidence in the environments.
"Try and keep it there. I'll come and bag it." Kugler said, stomping down the hallway. His ECA boots were corked, little spikes biting into the tile as he moved, his massive weight behind them, making scratching noises on the waxed tile.
"Understood. I'll keep this channel open." The NCO said.
"Keep an eye on me, close every door behind me and open every door as I meet it." Kugler said. He didn't want to be throwing levers with his life potentially depending on them opening.
"I'll do what I can." The NCO said. Kugler had his doubts.
He continued moving carefully through every corridor and door, always scanning for thermal signatures or any sign of movement.
"The augment is still in the hazardous training area. It's trying to find a way out, but we've still got it locked in." The NCO said to Kugler.
"Are there any ventilation shafts connecting that part of the facility to the rest?" Kugler asked.
"No, not in the contaminated training areas." The NCO said. That made sense at least. With the doors closed, it had nowhere to go. That was good.
Kugler came around a bend and up to a massive airlock, with a sliding door rather than a guillotine style one, probably 6'' thick and wedged, with four massive hydraulic cylinders to drive it home, and secondary and tertiary closure if the systems failed. There was even a hand crank behind a panel on the wall that Kugler could slot a bar into and turn, raising a counterweight that would close the door in case the power failed.
He could see it now. The Augment was pacing in a medically induced rage, body unable to process the onslaught of changes, and the mind suffering with it. Augmentation induced psychosis, they called it, common among coalition volunteers. Usually relatively easy to handle. But when your body is your weapon....
The silhouette alone was terrifying, awakening every evolutionary response and hard wired fear instinct, telling him to backpedal and run away. He stood steady. He'd faced worse, horrors unimaginable, creatures that were thought to exist only in myth, and he'd come out on top. Every. Time.
"When I cycle this airlock, you fucking seal it behind me. Understand?" Kugler said to the NCO sternly.
"Will do." The NCO said. "Good luck, Kugler."
Kugler looked up to a camera, and nodded, and the door started to open.
His CBRN alarms wailed at him, and were automatically silenced. There was VX nerve agent, along with a shitmix of biological hazards listed on his HUD. He chose to ignore them, and trudged forward, his ejector at high ready.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
He flipped open his medical menu, and dosed himself for extended combat in a contaminated environment. A mixture, containing [DATA EXPUNGED]
REFERENCE #: 2295.
KEYWORDS: OBSIDIAN, BLUE RABBIT BURROW, NOTES, KLERGY.
He could see its ears perk up , and it dropped down low, ears twitching as it stalked him, moving along the ground like a lion about to pounce.
The training area, roughly four football fields square, was a mock forest, with large trees and low brush covering nearly all of it. It looked like someone copy+pasted a forest underground. The area was designed to train personnel how to clear an area, and move under fire without contaminating themselves.
Kugler knew the section of the facility like the back of his hand. There were no roads, just artificial rolling terrain and low underbrush. Highly flammable. The only sound was artificial forest noise, like it was at the height of summer.
"Kill the artificial noise." Kugler said, and within a second it disappeared like it was never there. His tinnitus was the only thing he heard, keeping his eyes on the figure that was stalking him. He moved closer, and without preamble hosed a section of forest with liquid flame. The augment leapt across twelve meters with terrifying speed after seeing the blaze, knowing it was being herded into a corner.
Kugler washed more forest with flame, aiming at the middle section of the trees. If it climbed into a tree, and came at him high, he'd be fucked.
The flare mitigation system of the thermal overlay automatically dulled the signature of the flames. It was constantly learning, and adapting to the tactical environment. He quickly designated the biological signatures to blue hot, so they'd stand out against the white hot of the flames.
It was still stalking him, and Kugler idly wondered how it was still on its feet and unaffected by the nerve agent. Health effects usually came between 1-10 minutes depending on exposure level.
The G series suddenly closed the distance, and lunged at him. [REDACTED] claws grafted onto bone, and tungsten carbide teeth in a blur.
Now or never bitch, let's see what you got.
Kugler caught it with a streak of fire as it leapt through the air at him. The animal howl of pain was deafening as they crashed together, one bathed in flame. It raked him with the long hind claws on its massive feet. Kugler sprayed his flamethrower straight up in the air he laid on his back, the bar of fire umbrellaing above the augment and coming back down.
Burning thermite enriched fuel enveloped them both. His right hand still clamped on the triggers of the ejector, he brought it between them. It screamed long and loud, making Kugler's ears ring even through the sound deadening of his helmet. It was still ripping at his armor, finding purchase on his left arm. Kugler felt the bite of sharp claws at his arm, and along his left side, but ignored it.
Kugler brought his head up and smacked the thing in its butt ugly rottweiler face, splintering the upper left edge of his faceplate. Dazzled for half a second, the beast was immoble as Kugler scrambled out from under it, and onto his feet.
As soon as Kugler was up, he drew his pistol and unloaded an entire double stack magazine of .45 hollow points into it. Dropping the spent mag from his 1911, he took two steps forward and kicked the thing in the side of the head like he was going for a field goal. The corks on his ECA boot ripped flesh from bone, and it started to whine high and loud.
He loaded his pistol again with his mangled left hand, shreds of his glove still adhering to it, slicked with blood, tapped the side release casually, and double tapped it in the chest for good measure.
Unbelievably it was still very much living, and whining.
Kugler played his hand over the touchpad mounted on his right forearm quickly, covering it with the pistol held in the same hand. He checked his suit's integrity. "Suit 40% - helmet 100%, overpressure."
He swallowed hard as his stomach clenched, seeing the side effect of the meds he'd dosed himself with. The G series stirred, and it got another kick to the head, keeping its dick in the dirt. "Stay down bitch." Kugler rasped as he prepped a med applicator from a pouch on his chestplate.
The epi-pen-like device used interchangeable cartridges, and he cranked one of the sedative ones all the way up, triple that of the Alpha series augment doses, and stuck it into the thing's hairy ass. The spring loaded cartridge dumped the meds into it, and the cartridge ejected, thumping into the dirt.
He hung his ejector from his tank frame, where it had previously been dangling and dragging along the ground. It'd been bent somehow, and he'd have to get a new one.
"Open the fucking door to the airlock." Kugler snarled. Without a moment's hesitation, the door to the airlock started to slide open with a hydraulic hiss, and Kugler started dragging the mangled G series towards the airlock by a leg. It was almost completely open when he reached it.
"Decon and medical team are waiting outside." The NCO said flatly.
"Thanks." Kugler said, dropping the thing on the grated floor and punching the button on the wall with a placard that said "decon" above it. He stood in the middle of the airlock, his arms outward in a T-pose. He could feel the pressure of water on bare skin along his left side as the jets from the ceiling and along the floor and walls assaulted him from every angle. That's not good.
The high pressure hot water and iodine jets stopped, and he dropped his arms as the door opened. Beyond it was a suited team of coalition personnel, two augments, and a devil among them. Kugler had to resist the urge to douse the small female agent with his flamethrower then and there.
Dr. Raine was among them, and stepped forward into the airlock to meet him, looking him up and down. "You look like shit." She told him.
"How bad?" Kugler asked.
"Nothing I cannot fix."
"I'm infected." Kugler said. "I dosed myself with the CBRN extended combat package." His voice sounded detached and distant to Dr. Raine, which was off putting no matter how many times she heard it. No matter what, when he, or Terror, or Anton were like this, it made her feel uneasy.
"You will be aboard the wolf soon." Dr. Raine said as the G series augment was whisked onto a stretcher and carried away. "Walk to the south egress helipad with me." She told him, and he did, finding it difficult to match her pace, dragging his left foot slightly. Damage to the musculature of my left leg.
He was also distantly aware he was missing the pinky finger of his left hand. No matter, they can replace it with my big toe.
"I want to tell you that I am sorry." Dr. Riane said.
"For what?" Kugler asked. "I did my job." He told her, stepping into an elevator with her. His tattered glove revealing skinned fingers as he hit the button for the south egress point helipad.
"You look worried." Kugler said to Dr. Raine.
"I... uhm." She struggled to find the right words, a stark contrast to her usual prim and proper aura. "I sometimes find it difficult to deal with the outcomes of my work and studies." Dr. Raine told him. "I hope that makes sense." She followed up, looking the old man in the eyes.
He met them, and grinned with a hole in his cheek, exposing his teeth through his partially staved in faceplate. "Just doing my job." He told her. "I'll be okay."
A trickling sound, and a splash against his left calf made him look down. Somewhere along the way his fuel tank had gained a hole, and thermite enriched napalm was leaking onto the floor of the elevator. Kugler said nothing, just closed a valve with his mangled left hand, and let the tank fall to the floor after releasing it from a quick connect. He'd get a new one.
"Ma'am." Kugler said.
"Yes?" Dr, Raine asked, sounding surprised, usually Kugler only spoke to her when spoken to.
"The day you try to assign one of those things to me, or a squad I'm with, is the day I retire." He said to the wall, spraying blood against his tinted faceplate as he spoke, streaked by the blowers providing overpressure to his helmet.
She took a long time to reply. "I understand." She said finally, the elevator doors opening.
—
The massive Eurocopter EC725 flew away, Kugler aboard it, and Dr. Raine stood in the quiet darkness of the helipad, the lit egress point behind her, thinking.
Monsters, of human creation.