As we prepared to descend the stairs leading to a door, I got a notice.

[ Challenge 2 complete - 1 Reward token ]

[ Lose no units - 1 Hero Upgrade token ]

[ Destroy all turrets before AVs reach 50% armor loss - 2 Unit Upgrade tokens ]

The hits just kept on coming. Nice.

I lead the way down, but the tiny netrunner squeezed by to get to the door. She started to jack in.

My rifle stayed focused on the doorway, just in case they are waiting.

Let's be honest, they were waiting.

But there is no way they are ready for us.

The little woman kept chanting her little poems about spiders and webs while her fingers danced across a very interesting non standard keyboard. "Ah, there it is. Another fly caught in my web."

The door slid open and the shooting started immediately.

My SOR answered tearing through three guards in short order.

"Clear." I called back.

Spider girl had shied to the side when the shots whizzed by and stayed there as the rest of us rushed the stairway.

Nothing else greeting us.

The sign on the wall was simply labeled Rooftops.

Raynor had lined up behind me and Rogue behind him then John followed by Eager and Borfen. The nomads and then Rogue's mercs running the tail.

I started the show.

I tried to cut the pie, just peeking around the corners of each descending stair. Safer but tedious, and in this case taking too much time.

By the third floor, I just said fuck it, and fast marched boldly downward.

Right into a hail of bullets. None of which did a damn thing. At least to me. A few bounced back doing some damage. Ha!

Watching me just stride through their attack had them pissing their pants. Thankfully for them, they didn't have to live with the shame for long.

Raynor and I mopped them up with a few bursts. It was almost an afterthought.

It felt like a chore rather than a fight.

Despite being on a short clock, we had a long night ahead.

A few floors later.

More rounds were caught by my shields. So far nothing the Arasaka forces had thrown at us was enough to even pop our shields never mind our armor.

This squad, at least, had the good sense to try to take cover.

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Their lack of proper tactics made sense, if you thought about it. Arasaka's goons were used to having the best armor in any conflict. Probably the best gear all around.

Jim's and my return fire blew through their cover and slaughtered the lot. Two volleys and it was a done deal. We loaded up fresh mags.

We had reached the right floor, 120, and once through the door the space opened up drastically. In fact, the floor seemed to be an open concept deal with pillars. So far everything was concrete and steel, black and red, very minimalistic. This floor was no exception. The labs themselves were self contained modules in red and black.

Separating the lab spaces like that was not a bad idea. Kept cross contamination of results down. Gotta respect proper lab procedure.

Now that we had more room, Raynor, Eager, Borfen and I were side by side serving as a shield to the folks behind, as we scanned the area.

Nothing, silent as the grave.

"Clear!" We called.

I was still running on excitement. Though honestly, I was both ecstatic and mortified at how easily we cut through the enemy. My mood might be a tad less manic then before.

"Feels a bit like we are the bullies here, huh?" I gave voice to my thoughts.

That got a round of chuckles.

"Better this way, Hoss. Doubt they'd be as nice about finishing us quick." Raynor cut in.

He got laughs. Touché, Jim.

"Where did you get that armor?" Rogue asked. All her people had been eyeballing us from a while now. All wondering the same.

"Experimental. We Merc ourselves out to help pay for it." They didn't look surprised.

Lying was getting easier. That wasn't a good thing, but I've always been bad at it. However, no one was calling out my bullshit now. Maybe because they weren't real, and were like a dream. They seemed pretty real though. I'd bet we'd die all the same to the Arasaka scum.

Given the size of the floor, and the fact that the plans Rogue had didn't show the mainframe, We split up into smaller search squads.

John, Rogue, Spider lady, one of the nomads named Raul and myself when straight through the middle of the floor. The mainframe itself was likely to be a larger unit than the ones for the labs or a series of containers clustered together. Should be easy to spot.

For the next few minutes, we heard nothing unusual. No roaming guards to cause trouble. Which helped make finding the Mainframe a breeze.

Dead center of the floor, of course. It was one container the size of about ten of the the others.

The only problem was the ten foot tall fully automated war bot. It reminded me of something out of Robocop.

Right now, it seemed passive, but I had a sneaking suspicion that if we got any closer it would get hostile, fast.

"Maybe it wants to be friends." The spider girl chimed in. Her eyes had sparkles in them as she gazed at the bot.

"Unauthorized access is not allowed, come no closer," replied the death machine in a soulless voice.

We signaled the other groups and surrounded the bot.

My squad changed their mags to the armor piercing rounds.

We all aimed for what looked like vital spots.

And go!

I would like to tell you it was a hard fought battle and that many feats of valor were performed.

That's not what happened.

It went down like a sack of potatoes. One burst of armor piercing rounds from each of my team tore through it like tissue paper. We must have hit something important, because the bot never got to respond, despite not looking that damaged. A few sparks and some smoke were the only signs of activity from it.

I hoped we hadn't damaged the servers.

[ Challenge 3 complete - 1 Reward token ]

[ Lose no units - 1 Hero Upgrade token ]

[ No damage to the servers - 2 Unit Upgrade tokens ]

Answered that question. Good.

I was really enjoying this trip. We were dominating everything. I felt like I was actually helping this time. I liked it. Plus, lots of tokens!

Rogue took the Spider girl and marched into the mainframe.

"Guard the area, until we return." She called over her shoulder, hair flashing blue in the lights. "Spider we have to get her out as fast as you can... "

Heh. Spider it was then. Nice to have a name for the crazy girl.

They were back in less than five minutes. We were pushing the time she had set. No one had bothered us, my guess was that the other teams had caught all the attention.

[ Challenge 4 complete - 1 Reward token ]

[ Lose no units - 1 Hero Upgrade token ]

[ No damage to the target - 2 Unit Upgrade tokens ]

Well, I sure happy to see that, even if it felt a bit undeserved.

We were hit by a massive shockwave. The sound arrive just a split second after. The building itself shook.

It took a moment for us to pick ourselves up from off the ground. No one seemed hurt, but I could clearly sense the fear of Rogue's people.

Something had just gone very wrong.

What could it have been?