The elevator music was rather enjoyable as Chimera made her way down to the basement level.

She couldn’t really place it, but as the door opened to the place below, she found herself wishing she had some way to record it.

Something to bug Meghan about later.

Chimera took stock of her surroundings as she stepped out of the box,

And was met with a bunch of dead eyed people as they moved around the area with crates and boxes, some even standing guard with guns.

It was a laboratory, almost just as similar to the one she found underneath the New Terra Zoo.

…This couldn’t really be connected to the children, could it?”

Two guards who previously were staring at nothing turned to her as they seemed to finally notice.

“Intruder.”

“Execute order, kill and destroy evidence.”

Shit!

Chimera shot herself in front of a few zombie people as the guards started unloading assault rifles into the crowd of workers.

Shooting a few tendrils in front of her, she made a small wall of superhero enforced rhino skin, which deflected the bullets off to the side.

She heard a few people scream out as the shooting stopped for a moment.

Moving the walls apart so she could see, Chimera closed them as quickly as she saw the two guards now filled with more holes than swiss cheese.

Chimera walked over to see if she might be able to help heal them, but she could tell from the holes in their head that it was too late.

I should have taken that monster’s other arm, who puts in a kill code like that?

Someone who doesn’t see people as people, thats who.

Chimera put her shield away save for one of them, holding it off to the side so she could see what was happening.

…This place is filled with people, and some of them look like they were homeless at one point. That bastard didn’t even bother trying to clean them up when he took them in.

Guess I found out what happened to them.

She took out a few of her tendrils as she went through the crowd.

Enough pain should wake them up… maybe?

Chimera jabbed one of the zombies with a tendril filled with bee toxin, and yelped as the person in front of her screamed

“OUCH! What the… hey, where am I?”

She stared at the woman in a lab coat as she looked around in a daze that she started to wake up from.

“Long story short, an asshole name Crown mindjacked you and all these people for some reason, do you remember anything?”

She shifted back into Huntress without the animal enhancements.

Chimera didn’t want to scare the poor person out of her wits.

“Wha? But I was just at a lunch meeting with a round fat man by the name of Carmichael. We were going to tell him that we weren’t interested in a merger, but… that’s where it ended. Why can’t I remember anything?”

“Probably because of the mind control nonsense.”

“Motherfucker! I’m going to wring that lard ass’ neck!”

“Hey! Hey, wait a second, let's help these people out first eh? This place, can you tell me anything about it?”

She looked around, “this is our off-site lab.”

Chimera felt a bit exasperated, “anything else you can tell me?”

The lab coat woman turned to her with suspicion, “not without the company's approval. You’ll have to talk to my boss about it.”

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“...You know we’re in a situation where I can just find that information myself, right?”

“It won’t be from me then, and I can say I tried to keep it secret.”

Chimera sighed as she started to treat the others in a similar fashion, and with one of the guys who was also in a lab coat, she found out what this place was supposed to be.

It was what she feared too.

This place was a black-site, a place where companies go to do things that ethical businesses have no reason to do.

And it was a ChemTech site.

Why here?

She stalked around the area while she started freeing the homeless people next, making sure she was out of sight of the guards who were staring ahead with lifeless eyes.

In her head, Chimera was trying to make sense of this place, and why someone like Carmichael Crown was interested in it.

She almost wished that she just dived in and grabbed the bastard’s thoughts from his skull.

That feeling though, that maddening voice that tried to convince her to take that wretched power from him.

It wasn’t something she wanted any part of.

“Intruder found.”

“Execute order, kill and destroy evidence!”

Chimera formed a mass of tendrils to launch at the guards, some creating shields while the other’s sought the guards to inject them with the pain toxin.

With these guys, she decided to include a numbing agent to make them less trigger happy.

She had no clue if these men were loyal, unlike the homeless, who were showing to be completely unaware of their situations.

“What, where are we?”

“That fat man told me we would get paid, why am I here?”

“Stupid! Never should have listened!”

Chimera had finally handled the last of the guards by the time she got back to the scientist.

This man was more cooperative, because it turned out he was from Pharmasol.

“Oh thank god you came, miss hero, I’m worried about what those loons at ChemTech might have been doing here.”

“Just tell me what you know, we gotta get these people out before a riot starts.”

He smiled, “no problem, I have just the thing.”

The scientist man moved towards a section of the lab that Chimera had overlooked in lieu of everything that was happening.

It was a double door that led out to a small port, complete with a sizable boat.

“I can get these fine men and women out, but I worry for the two inside the lab, miss hero. Those two came with me when we went to investigate this place for our employer. Miguel and Clara were their names.”

Chimera froze, “those were the people that the rats said were Carmichael’s prized fighters…”

That made the scientist scream, “that monster! Him and ChemTech both! They must have been experimenting on them when we got captured… and Clara was…”

The scientist seemed to steel himself as he turned to Chimera, “we have to help them!”

Chimera nodded, “I’ll look for them, you get as many people on this boat as we can hold.”

He nodded back, “please find them Miss hero.”

“My name’s Huntress, by the way.”

“Thank you Huntress! Please, they should be somewhere inside the inner lab area.”

Chimera turned to the inner complex of the area, moving her body as she shifted back into her bestial form.

It was time to see what ChemTech was working on.

…

The lab corridors zoomed past her as Chimera made her way inside.

Gun emplacements and traps sprung on her as she raced by them, but with the enhanced physic she just received from the pit fighter, the bullets and the flames brushed off of her without injury.

After a few hallways like that, she started running into freeze traps that were using nitrogen.

Those she had to be careful of, as the liquid nitrogen spread over an area of the hallway that she couldn’t just brush past.

Still, that only mattered if she couldn’t break through the walls to get past the freezing traps.

This place wasn’t so shoddly built that she could do that forever though, and the last hallway she hadn’t checked appeared to be reinforced.

There wasn’t time, if something happened, and the place had some sort of kill switch to end the experiments, she would be too late to save them.

With the last of the hallway covered in frost traps, Chimera knew that she was going to be hurting after this.

She launched herself forward, spinning as she did to try and mitigate the coverage.

She could feel herself beginning to slow, the temperature inside her starting to frost over as she smashed through the door into the inner lab.

Chimera stumbled into the room, her freezing limbs and body slowing her movements to a crawl as she pulled herself up.

“Not doing that again…”

“Oh, a guest?”

Chimera shot her head up as she saw a young woman in a lab coat, a checkerd swimsuit, and long black and white hair, with a wide smile and razor sharp teeth.

And the darkest eyes she ever saw on a person.

“It truly is a wonder. Not many could get by that liquid nitrogen trap. Still, it is rather fascinating to see someone try to shake off literally freezing in an instant.”

Chimera smiled, even as she felt a pit grow in her stomach.

Why me? What is my luck with these damn death children?!

Before her stood Aura, or as she was better known as, Killer Whale.