Zombie was Adam’s first impression. The creature stumbled closer and he reconsidered. Its outer layer was reddish-orange, closer to raw muscle than rotting flesh. The upper half of its skull had been caved open. Strands of flesh wriggled from the top, reminiscent of a cluster of weeds.
The creature opened its gaping mouth and shrieked like screeching metal. It swiped at him with a sinewy arm.
Crap!
Adam flung himself off the wall as the creature’s arm slammed towards him. The appendage struck the reinforced plastic, carving a dent into it.
Adam picked himself up, glanced around, and slammed his foot into a nearby table. One loud screech later, the monster was bowled over, the table rolling towards the doorway and crashing into the outside wall.
Adam ran towards the beds. He rummaged through the loose piles of clothes with all his might, hurling them behind him as if they could stop the monster. The monster screeched, then was muffled as a shirt batted it in the head.
That’s when Adam saw it—a tomahawk resting in dusty casual garb. Half a dozen questions ran through his mind in an instant. He grabbed the tomahawk by the handle and swung it as he turned around. The blade sank straight into the arm of the creature.
A shriek burst out from the creature’s mouth. Adam pulled his new weapon back. Rancid-smelling flesh burst out in chunks and brown liquid poured out of the creature’s arm like sewer runoff. Adam swung again, this time severing the creature’s hand clean off.
It screamed again. Tendons flailed from the wound like branches in the wind. Adam backed away from the pool of filth. He leaped on one of the beds as the creature charged toward him. He hissed as one of its claws slashed against his trousers, tearing the fabric, and retaliated with a two-handed blow towards the head.
The blade cleaved through the creature’s forehead. A reddish gas poured out of the hole. The flesh tendrils whipped around and around in tune to the creature’s loudest scream yet. Adam roared, charging with one final smash. The head popped like a balloon and the creature collapsed, unmoving.
"Want some more?" Adam snarled. Sweat trickled down the side of his face. He counted down seconds. One, two, five, ten. The creature did not get up.
ADOSCH flashed another screen.
Experience (Combat) acknowledged: +20%.
"The hostile signature has vanished. Wow, did you kill it? Well done." Miriam said.
"Why was there a monster here? I thought this was a military base." Adam said.
"Military bases are full of monsters, just not the ones Astraea wants this time." Miriam said. "You’re in MOB Tifereth-56, by the way. The creature on the floor is called a wraith."
She paused there as if expecting him to say something. Adam instead looked back at his slain foe. Nope, didn’t look like a ghost to time. His first judgment of zombies was closer. He retreated back, pinching his nose. The corpse smelled worse than a dumpster left open in the rain.
"And the ADO is doing nothing about it?" Adam said.
"We’re all indisposed at the moment. Technically, I’m online, but there’s not much I can do."
"Yeah, apart from somehow knowing what I did the entire time."
Miriam raised an eyebrow. "Quick thinking for a civilian. I can indeed track the signals of the MOB’s occupant. That means I could help you, except…"
She swiveled her chair around so that her front no longer faced the viewport. She gave her arms a stretch and yawned. "I don’t really wanna."
Adam blinked, then stomped on the ground. "Are you fucking with me?"
"Nope. Totally serious."
"The hell’s your problem? The ‘Defense’ part of the ADO mean nothing to you?"
"It actually doesn’t anymore." Miriam shot back. She swiped to her left, bringing up a display in front of her. A pie graph lay in the center. "I’ve run the calcs. Civilians have an over eighty percent chance of dying when faced with wraiths. Sixty percent if they’ve survived a previous encounter."
Adam clenched his new tomahawk tight. "So what, you expect me to roll over and die after I killed this bastard? How about I keep on fighting, surviving until I shove that stick further up your ass?"
Miriam yawned again. "If you say so, big boy. But then you’ll face the second, the third, the tenth, and so on…maybe you’ll kill all the wraiths in the medbay. Maybe you’ll meet up with the intruders outside. It doesn’t matter. You’ll die when you get outside anyway."
"Wait, what—"
"So I might as well save my energy." Miriam continued. She took another sip of her drink. The gurgling sound bounced around the connection. "But hey, I can only observe. If you want to live out your monster-slaying fantasies, be my guest. I’ll even give you a hint, since you’re only a civvie. Find a gun first. There should be about a hundred spare ones lying around."
"You know, you are the worst comms-man I have ever met in my entire life," Adam said.
"Considering the MOB’s state, you’re probably right. See you on the other side." With that, Miriam terminated the call.
"You too, you callous bitch." Adam wiped a chunk of wraith goo from his new jumpsuit and kicked the corpse aside. It left a skid across the floor, stopping at a bed.
So, he was in a deserted, futuristic facility full of not-zombies. A should-be-friendly voice on the comms had told him to go off himself. It was another world, if the girl in the dream was right. Christ, this was like movie night back at the barracks, except he was the unlucky sod trapped in the middle of it!
He squeezed his pendant again. It hadn’t been dirtied in the fight. His heart beat beneath it, pumping blood and heat through his veins. It wasn’t raining. He wasn’t cold. He was alone, but with a weighty, sturdy weapon his hands, backed up by a physique broken down and reforged in one of the most powerful militaries on Earth.
Fine. Fate wanted to shove him in a dumpster? It better not complain once he clawed his way out. As for Her…she better have a damn good explanation when he caught up.
The ground rumbled as he pushed open the medbay’s door. Chairs rattled, equipment clattered and Adam clung to the doorframe to keep his legs from buckling. A swarm of gunfire went pop. Someone, or something, shrieked. Several more somethings then exploded.
There was no time to speculate. The noise triggered a silent alarm, drawing another wraith from five paces. It whacked him in the shoulder, then wrapped a spindly arm around his neck. Adam smashed his new tomahawk into its jaw, then wrenched himself out with a sharp exhale—any further and his ribs would’ve cracked.
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Several more bashes silenced it. Rick, you bastard. Adam thought, as he stepped over the body. Jinxed me with all that alien zombie movie crap. This ain’t as fun as it looks.
A little meter at the bottom right of his vision filled up with the kill.
Experience (combat) acknowledged: +20%.
The hallway outside was a stretch of white chrome pockmarked with mold patches and ancient bullet holes. Faint crimson light shone through gaps in the ceiling. Muggy moisture floated in the air, part of it seeping through his jumpsuit. He took the left at a brisk pace, his new boots thumping against the steel floor and splashing on the occasional murky puddle.
No military organization would leave its interior in this state. He added ‘post-apocalypse’ to the movie list.
More of the wraiths blocked the path. They shambled down the corridor, lost in their own little worlds until Adam came into proximity. Then, they raised hell. With a grim face and a knot in his gut, Adam rose headfirst to the challenge. Marine Corps Martial Arts Program might’ve not taught him how to fight monsters, but at least he could throw a decent swing.
As the wraith goo splattered about and his tomahawk gained more kills to its name, Adam noticed a meter filling up in the right of his HUD. It had started at 20% when he left the medbay and was now at a solid 80%. Level 0 was also displayed at its bottom. He knew he had to fill it up. He just did, somehow.
The corridor ended in a square room. The gate lay broken, one half stuck in the closed position, while the other emitted sparks. Adam pushed aside a clump of ivy and crawled through. It was a dead end. He turned to leave, then noticed four doors, parallel in pairs. Metal panels were attached to the walls, and three of them were burnt back. He checked the last undamaged one. Maybe there were supplies behind them.
An interface popped up, hovering without a screen. He peered closer. Were these holograms? He raised an experimental finger and a ripple spread out across the panel like a stone thrown onto a lake.
"Access Denied." Adam read. He rolled his eyes. "Credentials not detected."
This was a dead end. He wasn’t about to double back for the codes.
Experience (Exploratory) acknowledged: +20%.
So finding new places counted. Good to know.
User Adam Westfield’s Competency Level has progressed from 0 to 1-1!
Acquired 1 Biometric Key!
The Augmentation Foci is ready for extension!
Proceed with the Augmentation Tutorial?
"Hold on." Adam muttered. The HUD message vanished and the diagram of the human body reappeared.
The augmentations of ADOSCH are categorized by the major anatomical regions and divided into Ranks based on potency. They can enhance physical prowess, alter perception, enhance combat-type skills, and more.
To prevent overloading of the body and psyche, all augmentations are secured behind suppression locks. They must be unlocked via Biometric Keys, which the User can acquire by increasing their ADOSCH Competency Level. Alternatively, higher authorization can bypass these locks, but should only be done in special circumstances.
Higher Competency Levels must be achieved to unlock higher Ranks of augmentations.
A neon-blue sheen overlapped the diagram. Several of the accompanying diagram squares unlocked with sharp clicking sounds.
A cursor appeared, moving according to Adam’s thoughts. It was a simple matter to hover on the unlocked augmentations and ‘select’ them for their descriptions.
[Hacking]: Activates encryption cyber-modules in the brain, allowing the user to break or reinforce computer systems at a basic level.
[Arm-Shoulder Booster]: Bolsters the shoulder and arm muscles, allowing for greater physical feats such as lifting, throwing or hand-to-hand combat.
[Regeneration]: Activates regeneration biotechnology in the bloodstream. Self-healing abilities are greatly increased.
There were a few others at the same rank, such as the [Lower-Limb Booster] or the [Aim Stabilizer], but those three caught Adam’s eye the most. He checked the descriptions of the other locked squares at higher ranks. Each one categorized according to a facet of the human body. Strength and agility, resilience and hearing, sound and sight and so on. The brain got its own special category, with the [Hacking] and whatnot.
He went through the list of military positions in his head. A frontline soldier would need strength, agility and resilience augs. A sniper wanted stealth and sight. A bomb defuser required precision and neural prowess, perhaps with sensory augs backing him up. There were a myriad of ways he could ‘build’ himself with this system.
The more powerful augmentations threw him for a loop.
[Reinforced Physique IV]: Reinforces the user’s skin and exoskeleton to extreme levels, allowing them to withstand explosives and high-speed ballistics.
[Power Fist]: Unlocks mechanical thrusters in the fist. Throw punches capable of breaking stone.
[Stealth Steps III]: Further amplify the dampeners on the user’s feet, reducing their noise to almost nil.
Who the hell were these augmentations designed for, Robocop? He couldn’t activate any of them, regardless. All of the powerful ones were locked behind higher-tiers of the Augmentation Foci, each one requiring at least 2 Biometric Keys. He’d have to start from Rank 1 first.
How long does it take for these augmentations to activate?
Augmentations are installed almost immediately, due to their blueprints already existing in ADOSCH’s database (Level 5 Credentials are required to access raw blueprint data). There may be slight amounts of overhead or discomfort. It is recommended that the User install their augmentations in a safe place.
Adam grabbed the door and gave it a good pull. It felt like two super-magnets stuck together. Give me the Hacking augmentation.
Installing [Hacking]…
The pain bled all over his cranial nerves, then vanished as quickly as it popped up. His palms vibrated, a sensation not unlike metallic sandpaper. Tiny white text scrolled across the augmentations menu ending on a large green tick.
[Hacking] augmentation has been successfully installed! To activate it, make physical contact with the appropriate computing device.
Adam placed his hand on the door panel. Faint blue lines lit up beneath the connecting fingers, trailing down to a central, heated point in his palm.
The security encryption of [Medbay A Storage Sub-Door 4] is weak enough to allow forceful decryption and/or exploitation. Initialize hacking procedure?
Adam glanced around. No-one was around. He squeezed his eyes shut.
A tremor ran through his arm, up his shoulder, and pierced through his brain. His consciousness flew down a tunnel constructed out of shimmering yellow lines amidst a vivid blue background. He neither heard nor touched nor saw, for it was all of his senses combined into a single, continuous stream.
A thread hung, thin and white, dangling loose like the rope of a theatre curtain. He grabbed it and pulled it. Immediately, the world flashed red. Something pixelated and jet black on the other end pulled back.
They engaged in a tug of war, with Adam digging in his metaphysical heels in and dragging with all his might. He gave one final grunt of exertion, pulled the string over his shoulder, and tore it to pieces.
Hacking of [Medbay A Storage Sub-Door 4] was a success!
A flash of neon green and Adam returned to reality, head fizzing in a way like the time he ate an entire bag of stolen candies in one go. He giggled. His cheeks flushed with heat. The lines on his palm receded and the door slid open with a creak.
Yes!
Experience (Hacking) acknowledged: +20%
Transmission detected. Source: Miriam Pereia. Would User Adam Westfield like to receive?
"The hell you calling me for?"
"Hey, you answered," Miriam said. "So, tell me civvie, how did you open that door?"