"The Treant Program was the first and last attempt at creating super soldiers using Antithesis DNA. The project was shuttered when the laboratory was transformed into a hive following the degeneration of the test subjects as a result of Antithesis gene insertions."

-Wiki page on the Treant Program

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“Alright Juny, keep an eye on the windows in case anything tries to climb up the walls, and sell me some mines that’ll kill plants and plug the stairwell,” I instructed as I made for the stairs. I had both guns loaded and ready, and I was expecting the Model Threes I knew were out there to be arriving at any moment.

“How about the Pufferfish Bomb-Pumped Spike Trap?”

“Describe it.” As I hit the landing I caught sight of the first Model Three entering from the first floor. It took me a moment more to get into a good position to fire at it, and it managed to get halfway up the stairs before I filled it with bullets.

“It is a hemisphere-shaped mine full of telescoping spikes. When the charge detonates, the blast pressure forces the spikes to extend, skewering anything in range!”

“And the spikes make it hard to get past. Great. Give me three, already primed. Bottom of the stairs, middle of the landing, and top of the stairs.” I continued to butcher Model Threes as I spoke, and it wasn’t long before they stopped appearing. It seemed…pitiful, for the level of coordination displayed so far. Buying time? “Set them to go off from the top down, and only when at least two models is in range of each one.”

New Purchase: Pufferfish Bomb-Pumped Spike Trap x3

Points Reduced to…5,626

With the mines placed, I hurried back up the stairs. I knew Juny wasn’t going to set allow them to detonate with me in range, but I still didn’t want to be anywhere near them. I crested the stairs to find the Model Fives I’d ignored on my way in had leveraged their ursine frames to climb the trees and were almost high enough to start firing into the building.

“…did you not think those were relevant?” I asked Juny, who was literally facing the side of the building the Fives were on.

“They only came into sight moments before you returned. I would only have had time for half a sentence before you saw them yourself!” she explained with a smile in her tone.

“Eh, fair enough.” That said, they were a bit far away for me to hit with any accuracy, and I would be stupid to get closer and place myself in a position to be ambushed from the windows. Juny would have seen anything coming over the edge, but something could easily cling to the walls just below that. I considered whether I should purchase a weapon with a bit more accuracy at range, but it would have been a waste of points. I didn’t have the experience or training to hit anything from this far away, and I was running out of places to attach weapons to anyway.

“Juny, call the hovercar,” I said as I jogged towards the kitchen counter and ducked behind it, providing some cover against the Model Five spines that were starting to embed themselves in the floor.

“It may suffer damage on the way in,” she said in reply, though she’d probably already begun moving it and was just giving the warning to be safe.

“Don’t care, need the HMG.”

Amidst the thumps the signaled falling spines, I heard a peculiar sound- sort of a whumpf accompanied by shattering concrete and plaster. My points went up by 55 points, but I had to stifle my curiosity since the stairs were on the same wall as the counter I was hiding behind, so I couldn’t see from here what the first Pufferfish had caught.

I didn’t have to wait much longer for the droning of a hovercar to appear over the sounds of the incoming spikes. It flew right in through the window, taking several hits in the process, and its hover mechanism died out, sending it screeching across the floor. When it finally came to a stop it nearly flipped over, only for one side to smack into the ceiling, causing it to fall back down on its belly.

A part of me suspected that Juny did that for dramatic effect.

I scurried out of cover and kept the hovercar between myself and the Fives outside. It was surprisingly intact despite the rough landing, and I remembered for the first time in a while that it was an armored hovercar. At the very least I was expecting to see one side with spikes protruding from it, but it seemed they had actually been deflected.

Pulling the HMG from the passenger seat, I sidestepped around the front of the car and planted the heavy weapon on its tripod. Moments later it was loaded, courtesy of Juny, and I aimed at the first Model Five.

In all honesty this was a colossal amount of overkill, but twenty rounds per second was about right for making sure I actually hit anything at over one hundred meters away.

I raked my fire over their uneven line of javelin throwers three times before I finally managed to kill them all. Along with the tops of the trees they were in. And a few trees behind those. I was almost glad the forest was empty of animals, or else a lot of birds and squirrels probably would have lost their homes.

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Even as I’d been annihilating their firing line the second and third Pufferfish mines had gone off, a fact of which I’d only been aware of because of the point gain. I sure couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the HMG. So far nothing had come from the stairs, so the definitely seem to have worked. Letting out a breath, I put the HMG back where I’d gotten it and headed for the stairs.

At the top of the staircase leading down to the first floor was a Model Six that barely even fit on the stairs, and probably wouldn’t have had these been the emergency stairs. The Pufferfish it stepped on had gone off right up against its unarmored belly, and even coming from the inside, the spikes had actually failed to penetrate its thick plating on the top and sides. A number of them were still visible where they’d been too low to strike its body or slipped between its legs, and these lower spikes went on to form a wall jutting out over the stairs, where a Model Three and Model Four had been caught and skewered as well. Others were embedded in the walls, which would have held the whole forest of spears in place if they weren’t already quite secure under the Six’s bulk.

Peering over the Six’s shoulder, I could see a few more of the lower numbered models hanging from the second trap’s spikes. Here I got a look at the sheer number of them, with no living tank to absorb the majority. The staircase was well and truly plugged up. It might not stop another Model Six, but the fact that none was making its presence known suggested I’d gotten the second one with the mine on the first floor.

Now I only needed to worry about what was above me…and maybe anything that could climb the outer walls, but I was pretty sure I’d killed my entire welcoming party by now. The question still remained whether this last-ditch effort had been a real attempt to kill me or a simple distraction while the mastermind prepared another line of defense. Though…if it was in the basement and not the upper floors, I was going to feel really silly.

I turned to ascend the stairs. I hadn’t let my guard down even now; far from it. So many Model Nines and Fours had ambushed me by now that I was always scanning for them.

That still didn’t save me from the curved blade that came whipping in towards my face out of my peripheral vision.

Even having seen it coming, I couldn’t react in time. For all that I was a samurai decked out in cutting-edge gear, I was still a baseline human underneath it all, and human reaction times just weren’t good enough. Pain blossomed across the bridge of my nose, and I had only just begun to register what had happened when my hand finally rose high enough to kill the beast assaulting me.

My reflexive barrage tore the Model Nine’s arm off at one of its many joints before eviscerating its body. I fell to the ground a moment later, panting heavily, my eyes struggling to focus on the blade literally millimeters away. It had gone right through my visor. If it had been straight it would have plugged my nose from the inside instead of making a shallow cut just deep enough to be painful. Blood trailed down the bridge of my nose, pooling at the bottom of my helmet. It didn’t feel like a lot, thankfully.

On the other hand, if it had been curved the other way, or had I merely been a few inches to the left, it would have split my skull open right beneath my eyes instead of catching on the armored edges of my helmet.

It was the closest I’d come to death for a while now- relatively speaking, anyway. I had to force myself to take deep, slow breaths to slow my racing heart. After a I calmed down, I finally reached up with one hand and gripped the blade-arm by the wrist, wincing as I yanked it out. Blood dripped from the blade and my nose stung from the rough extraction.

There was a thin line left in my visor bordered with a spider web of cracks, a symbol of my near-death experience. I could still see well enough, and my HUD was projected on my augs rather than the visor, but it would remain a gruesome reminder until I was able to replace the helmet itself.

“Are you okay?” Juny asked, and I realized suddenly that she had been asking me that question for a while now. I nodded my head in response and stood, tossing the Model Nine’s deadly weapon aside. Never had I considered that a Model Nine might disguise itself as part of the carapace of another Antithesis Model, much less use it to slip through a deadly trap unscathed.

That didn’t make it less frustrating that I’d missed it. Especially given that I’d known it was still around somewhere, and I’d been looking for it.

“Would you like to buy a new helmet? I can propose several options that would resist the same damage!”

“No…” I said after considering for a moment. “No, it’s too dangerous to swap armor in the field. Even with the damage it’s still a smaller target than my entire head would be while I switch them out.” Taking it off for even a fraction of a second could provide enough of an opening, and I’d just been provided a very clear example of how quickly death could come for me.

I gathered myself and returned to the task at hand: killing the local Antithesis model commanding their forces. I made my way up the stairs, weapons at the ready and scanning every shadow for targets. Soon I was on the third floor, and the stairs ended, with no flight of them leading to the next floor. Instead I had to carefully move out onto the third floor proper, where I saw the next stair case on the opposite side of a bank of elevators. A very odd design, considering the placement meant the elevators started only on this floor.

It didn’t matter; I couldn’t use them anyway.

“We have left the interference cast by the Model Nines!” Juny announced. I blink a few times in confusion. Since when had she been able to tell the difference? Sensing my question, she continued. “With each encounter I am better able to identify the particular qualities of this strain. There are no Antithesis on this floor.”

“So, what, you can just detect them now?”

“Of course…not. I can only tell if they are present, based on the interference signature. I would not be able to see inside the affected region!”

“Are you sure? You’ve kind of dropped the ball a few times already.”

“Of course!”

I considered that for a moment before deciding to take her at her word. I didn’t have the time to be searching this building inch by inch anyway. I proceeded up the next set of stairs all the way to the sixth floor before Juny chimed in again, and I stopped before entering.

“I’m detecting tendrils utilized by Model Seventeens to communicate with other Antithesis,” she said, the words just as sudden as her previous announcement.

“That’s a new one.”

“They are typically used to produce Model Sevens, but can also serve as command and control for other models,” she explained. That at least told me what my target was, and we could follow the tendrils to find it.

“Up?” Juny nodded in the affirmative. I stepped onto the sixth floor and looked around for the next staircase, finding it directly above the one connecting the first three floors, and walked towards it, remaining alert just in case Juny missed anything.

“Can’t wait to find out what other surprises it has in store,” I said right as the floor gave out under my feet.