>> Into The Den Of The Devil

Demon flips the ratman, and slams it into the wall. Claw-striking it right in the throat, and hooking the jaw. Ripping it clear off the skull.

This does not inconvenience the rat, which slams a mechanised arm into Demon's horns. Slithering its way free of his grip, as blood huffs out in panting gasps from the gaping hole in its face. Bubbling and dripping, even as I swing in from pipes on the ceiling. Kicking my own claws into its neck, and twisting.

The ratman slaps, weakly, at my foot as I rip it away. Stumbling into a wall and sinking as its body loses pressure. I dangle for a moment, rivulets of its blood dripping off toes. Dropping with a wet slap of skin on tile.

"That's it. Just mooks." I growl as Kami leavers her knife out of the skull of a second. It blinks at her, sadly, as electronics fry what's left of its brain. Slumping, gently, into a corner.

"They're people." Tufty whispers, earning himself a sharp look from Kami.

"They were. Long time ago." I butt in, before she can. "I'm gonna find out what the Hell got done to them. Promise."

He twiddles with his tail, and nods. Quietly.

Earning himself an attempted hug from Badger.

"Cat has sympathy for rats." Kami mutters, dragging the kid away. "I don't buy it."

"They're COMING!!!" I roar as Demon jump-kicks his way through a door the rats were guarding. Bursting us through into a long abandoned fabrication lab. Our steps quick as we blur in around it.

Hearts pulsing with fury, and mayhem. Guns flickering from corner to corner.

"There, mate!" Zip yells, and Demon roars like a beast. Leaping to tear down a holo-projector with bare claws alone. Hurling it, directly, into another as our drone-tek's pistol takes out a third. Illusions dying on the air, even as they form.

"Shit. I don't like this. Big windows." Our [Sniper] warns, one hand gripping the huge Antimaterials Rifle locked to her back.

"Drone!" I scream as a long-abandoned worker tries to weld my freaking face. Stabbing me with tools lit literal beads of white-hot plasma. The first strike I slap aside, and it sparks a table. The second, I duck and skitter away from.

The bot lunges at me from its fixed base, but I leap back. Launching a heavy quad-shot into its headless torso. And then another.

LMG ‘Red Glory’ SMG :: 156/220

"We need to go!" Kami yells, still focused on the huge box of milky white glass surrounding us. My sharp ears tuned to the scrabble and snap of ratty claws in the halls around us.

Some metal. Some not.

I scratch at my implant as the world fuzzes, gently. Gunfire blaring as the team is hit by a spidery thing made of pin-thin arms and stabby little tools. The sounds weirdly muted, and robotic. As if filtered through a broken synth.

We make it to the opposite door, and ram our way through. Slamming it shut as glass bursts behind us. A hideous head, like a human Gone Wrong, slithering through it on a serpentine neck.

"Got a Print Lab!" Zip yells as Tufty panic-scrambles his way up the glossy shell of a massive 3D printer. Skidding pawprints in thick dust as he huddles into the thick green cables.

"More windows! More doors!" Kami warns, dragging Badger back by the nape. "They'll be in here in a second."

Behind us hinges crack as something impacts our entrance.

"This is rampin' bloody up." I warn. "We gotta get done and get out!"

"Where's Polybius??" Kami shouts. But there is only silence.

"Polybius!" I yell, too, and Badger joins in as the thing at the door rams it again. "Shit! Zipper, are they still down?"

"Like, yeah! Signal's dead, mate!" He yelps back, one jittering hand clenched to a sleeping Guardian Orb pinned to his back. Glitching fragments of helmet flickering through his augmented reality face.

"Shit!! It's those bloody big metal doors! They're blocking it!" I snarl as Gremlin drops from the ceiling. Inverting, in mid-air, to slam hind paws into a mutated head sticking through a vent.

Dismantling the sneaky ratkin in a whirl of tiny, hissy, vengeance.

"MORE! GOT MORE!" Kami screams and whirls around the printer in a glitching blur. Pistols roaring flame and thunder as she perforates a thing crawling in through a drone hole.

I stare up at the pale white glass as shadows move behind it. Strange things. Unholy, and unnatural.

And an idea flickers in my mind.

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"TIME TO GO!!" I roar as cyber-claws crack toughened glass. Our team piling, rapidly, on the fire-exit as Kami cuts the alarm - just in case it's a bomb.

Half a second of panic, and we slam our way through - into a blessedly blank concrete hallway. Wedging the door shut behind us, best we can. "WHICH WAY!?" Ksmi screams.

"FOLLOW ME!" I yell, and rough-painted floor flies beneath us. Worn arrows flashing past, as I skid the final corner. Confronted by what I was really looking for.

A staircase.

Kami blocks me, and starts scanning all around the stairwell door. Tufty hopping on the spot with nerves, and Bader copying, as Demon's head snapping this way and that.

Ceiling-tiles shuddering as things begin to crawl. Zipper popping one with a pistol. Me taking the other with mine.

Far behind us, the fire-door shudders and booms. My one ear twisted toward it, as the other twitches and twists from sound to sound. Tail a slow-coiling snake of nerves as her scanner circles the frame of the door.

"Come on, Kami!" I roar, extending the mag in my gun with another.

LMG ‘Red Glory’ SMG :: 376/440

Spare Mags :: 2/4

"Shurrup! Shurrup!" She grumbles as her many metal hands move smoothly, and without hurry. Threading nanoTek pliers and tools through the closed edge of the door. Each as thin as foil, and guided by tiny internal adjusters.

"KAMI!"

"SHUT IT! I got a tripwire!" She screams back "Thread thin! Right across the bloody latch!"

"Cut it!"

"It's a bomb! What if that-"

"Kami!" I scream again as the formerly wedged door explodes behind us.

"SHUT UP, YOU IDIOT!!!! I GOTTA FOCUS!"

"IF IT'S A PULL-PIN, JUST CUT IT!"

"NO! NO WAY!!! IT'S OUR EVIL STEPMOTHER! NOT A BLOODY PIRATE!!!" She screams through teeth and tools. "SHE'S KILLED KIDS LIKE THIS BEFORE!!! I CUT IT, IT'LL BLOW IN OUR FACE!!"

"SHIT! SHIT!" I curse, because she's bloody right. There's nothing Our hated Stepmother loves more than a trick within a trick within a trick. With a nice, neat, little bow on top. An 'easy' looking trap is just her style.

And so is piling on the panic.

You don't think. You fumble a tool. You cut the wire.

You die.

So we flip to [Full Auto], and I slam an armoured knee into concrete. Opening up with a roar of rocketry that takes out their entire front line.

Blasting them in turns to save our ammo, and hoping like Hell it will drive em back.

Bu it doesn't work.

They're not really living things anymore. They're mindless, cyberTek, zombies with no sense of fear. Or pain. Or mercy. A wall of hairy arms, and wires, and metal, and teeth - shoving us back. Filling the hallway, edge to edge. Grabbing the bodies we make, and using them as shields.

Zipper hurls a Flasher grenade. Then one that bursts in a roar of thunderous lighting, frying an entire group of the creatures. Burning out implants, and cooking brains in skulls.

But nothing seems to stop them.

There's always more. And more. And more.

Demon steps up behind us. Spreading his legs. Waiting his turn.

Ready to go down fighting while we escape.

But my eyes sharpen. "Demon! On Kami!" I snarl. "Get ready to clear the stairs!"

Hesitation. A flicker of doubt as the massive press of monstrous bodies claws its way through spiralling streams of rocket-smoke, and white-hot trails of fire. Our bullets puncturing lungs. Hearts. Eyes. And reaching hands.

Blood soaking them, and the floor, as even the almost-corpses claw their way closer.

Closer!

CLOSER!!

"DEMON! THAT IS AN ORDER!!!" I roar as my extended mag auto-ejects with a savage ping. A sound that punches me right in the guts with panic, even through the mayhem and screaming. "DO IT! DO IT NOW!!! NOW!! GET READY!!!"

I feel him turn, and the weight lifts of me.

"GOT IT! CUTTING THE WIRE!!" Kami crows as the trap's thread snaps. A moment of explosive tension rising up within me as she pushes the door wide. Trailing the new, longer, wire she carefully welded to bridge the gap between two broken strands.

"FIGHTING RETREAT!!" I scream back as Badger whoops, swinging Tufty about. Demon grabbing one under each arm, and forcing them in through the doorway. Me and Zip turning tail through the heavy slow-close door while Kami shoulder-barges it shut.

"THE CABLE!!" She shrieks, as it starts to fold in the closing gap. Frantic and scrabbling, she launches at it - realising everything is lost if they-

A monstrous long head ripping open in a multi-mouthed snarl as rat-paws snatch at the line and try to yank it. To cut it. To detonate the charge, right in our faces.

But Kami is quicker.

She fences her body with metal arms, and flicks the detonation cable behind her - into the stairwell. Almost yanking it herself, as she does.

The rats go insane. Dozens of them charging the door. Stumbling on corpses as they hammers their whole bodies into its surface, forcing it back as Demon leaps to brace it. Skidding claws on concrete.

I fumble out a wedge with one hand, and slap it to the ground. Kicking it into the thin gap as things like hands latch onto the edge of the door. Not just monsters, but human faces with dull dead eyes, and ratlike features.

Pushing us. Fighting us.

Pressing at the door as we ratchet it shut, with a mix of shoving and sheer bloody violence.

Kick. Stab a hand. Stab another. Fire through the gap.

One reaches in deep, snatching for the wire - and Demon freaking headbutts it. Turning his horns to slam and impale the arms. Hammering them back, again and again. Punching his hand out, into the flurry, to rake at the monsters.

Knocking them back.

His fingers return - clawed and bloodied - as we force the slab into its frame. Its surface bucking beneath the weight of things that once were GMOs as we hammer in wedges. And curse. And pray. And gasp. And swat. Eyes meeting eyes in wild jerks as we fight to finally secure it.

There is no lock.

Kami starts trying to weld the seam, but I slap her off and point to the bomb. Barely noting the happy, zany, cheerful little lunchbox it's in. My fingers fumbling to un-extend the trailing wire with a knot. Resetting the trap behind us.

"Let em come." I mouth, with a grin.

And the door goes suddenly, breathlessly, silent.

Demon steps back. Zipper spinning to check the stairwell as the rest of us jolt in confusion, looking around us. "How did they.....?" Kami starts, right as we all notice the dinky turret hanging above us.

"RUN!!" I scream, but the thing isn't aiming at us. It's aimed at the bomb. The muzzle twitching, very slightly, as if someone was manually lining it up with a joystick.

Demon leaps at it, right as it fires. Tanking a spray of pistol-calibre slugs as he unfurls clawed fingers to rip it from the ceiling. His golden mane a snarling mess of static as he slam-dunks it directly into the stairwell, sending it crashing down into the floors bellow.

We all stare at it, then at the sparking mess above.

Then at the gauss slugs embedded in Demon's chestplate.

He snarls, and shakes out his horns - jabbing a clawed fist full of turret to the sky. The universal, unambiguous, sign for 'try harder, assholes'.

And then he hurls that down too.

One hand gripping the banister, as his breath rips free a noise too sharp to call a laugh.

His eyes fixated on the smoking hollow of the turret.

And then they snap to me. "Kah! We must move! Zair will be more! More!"

Something about his look, scares me.

But I nod. "Let's do it."

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