The mutated zombies waited, like guard dogs who fulfilled their jobs by trapping the intruders inside the house, forcing them to await their master’s return and punishment.

Caliber Change

Modify the bullet diameter without modifying the ammunition of a firearm. Requires individual attunement to each new weapon.

Trained >>> Expert

Cost: 1P per 5 mm of bore diameter increase. No maximum.

Domain benefit

Two additional levels of mastery.

Cartridge change

Modify the bullet type without modifying the base ammunition of a firearm. Requires individual attunement to each new weapon.

Trained >>> Expert

Cost: 1P for cartridge body change. 1P for bullet head change. 2P for propellant type change. 2P for primer change. 1P for rim change.

Domain benefit

Two additional levels of mastery.

An anti-tank missile hit the mech that silently took it before lounging at Farrah. That thing had only maintained the proportions of its former human self. It barely fit through the broken blast door, and the nests of nerves and flesh that were once the admins of this place pulsated in discontent as its metal feet trampled over them.

Two more missiles hit it, and it fell in its tracks, collapsing mere centimetres away from Dan’s blue shield.

Vega had long since run past it. With two piles of metal at her feet, she punched clean through the chest of another, before moving further down.

“Seven more incoming!” She yelled and fully vanished down the corridor.

Farrah silently ran past the heavy, leaping over its outstretched meter-thick arm.

Dan followed, choosing to go around it.

He shot ahead, into the hallway. The bolt fizzled and burned before hitting the ground, creating a fluorescent yellow trail in its wake. It illuminated a small pile of metal moving along the walls. As soon as the light hit them, they dropped down, forming into their humanoid shapes.

Farrah shot down two, and Dan hit one that was still moving down the wall.

“Vega!” Farrah called out, “Where are they coming from? Block the vents!”

An explosion came as her sole reply.

Dan glanced at her, and she nodded, as he ran forwards, and she yanked his crossbow bolt out of the wall before catching up.

“Don’t waste them on light-”

They took a turn and found themselves in a blocked hallway. The mingled carcass of a mech blocked the hallway. Its metal-plated face, still recognisable as human, looked at them with empty camera lenses. Blood, thinned by the translucent oil that pumped through the creature alongside it, dripped down its head, filling up one of its bulbous eyes.

“Amazing,” Farrah allowed herself a touch of sarcasm, before tossing her rucksack through a small gap between the heavy’s shoulder and the ceiling, and gesturing for Dan to go.

He didn’t complain, and by the look in his eyes, seemed to have started to disassociate from the situation. He struggled to get a good foothold over the slippery corpse but eventually made his way through. Farrah shot down two more of the mutated walkers and quickly followed. She shot a fire grenade in the direction of the hallway for good measure. Something between a weep and a screech came from further down the hallway, as the pellicle of stretch-out organs caught fire.

The contact of flesh and metal felt familiar and alarmingly comforting, yet the first thing Farrah did when she made it to the other side was to pull her facemask over her mouth and nose. The stench of burning organs, somehow distinct from the smell of burning flesh, was too pungent for her.

Dan coughed into his sleeve and they continued down the hallway. It took them less than a minute of following metal corpses to finally catch up to Vega.

“What do I do with them?” Vega asked, nodding towards the stairway shaft.

The walls were covered with shifting metal and flesh parts. It was impossible to say where any single zombie ended, and another began. The small balls of electricity were drifting down like benthic snow, and the only thing that prevented them from fully covering the trio was Dan’s shied, which he moved above the group.

“Nothing,” Farrah shook her head. Killing this many was a waste of bullets, even by her quadruple digit Power standards.

Path Prediction

Predict the path(s) that all selected enemies in a 100m range will take. Visualise the paths for up to 10 minutes.

Novice >>> Mastered

Cost: 3P to activate. 10P for range extension by 20m. 10P for duration extension of 1min. 25P to create visual non-tangible manifestation of predicted paths.

Domain benefit

Two additional levels of mastery.

This was a bit of a waste of Power, in Farrah’s opinion, but she preferred to air on the safer side. Blue strips appeared in the air, showing that none of the humanoid zombies intended to come all the way down, into Vega’s reach. It seemed more than half of them were also using corpses from the upper levels as makeshift shields against gunfire. They had no way of assessing how futile that was, but the sole fact that they were capable of such organisation alarmed the Collector.

“So we wait them out?” Dan asked.

“No,” Farrah decisively stated. That was what likely happened to those bundles of nerves and organs in the central command. Not only was that not a desired outcome for any situation, Farrah was also unsure about the duration and effects of the skills that were still blocking her scan.

She raised her Steyr AUG and nodded at Dan.

“What?” he asked, too stressed to grasp her meaning.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Open the shield.”

“Umm, with the, umm, glowing-”

“Now, Dan,” Farrah firmly ordered.

The blue glass-like ceiling above them vanished, and dozens of balls of energy collapsed down. Vega yanked Dan backwards, into the hallway, as a gunshot echoed through the stairway, and the balls above Farrah caught fire. She shielded her face with one hand, before taking a step back, and fired a volley of Martlet’s upwards.

Too much whining and screeching came down, partially drowned out by the deafening sound of metal-on-metal explosions. Or maybe Farrah imagined all of it, as she suddenly realised, she couldn’t hear whatever it was Vega was yelling at her.

Droplets of blood and metal shavings rained from the ceiling. The stairway began to swirl around, as it regained its blue hue.

Vega grabbed Farrah by the sleeve, asking something.

Farrah tapped her ear, yelling that she couldn’t hear, before pointing upwards and telling the duo to move it.

The stairway was the one to move under them.

Farrah hadn’t made it past the first landing, as it started collapsing under her feet, and the weight of the dead zombies above. She yelled at Vega to go, before grabbing Dan by the shoulders and activating her run and jump skills.

Her vision went blurry from the sudden accelerated movement, and before she knew it, she was laying on the floor, over Dan, freshly-dried blood under them, and blue shield over their heads. Her hearing returned just in time to hear his racing heartbeat.

“Move away from the door!” She shouted at Vega, before rolling to the side and shooting a missile at the ceiling some few meters in front of them.

The next few seconds were filled with nothing but uneven panting, and the equally uneven blinking of Farrah’s camping flashlight.

“We made it…” Vega whispered.

She was leaning against a wall, facing away from the group.

“Made it? We just walled ourselves in!” Dan exclaimed, pushing himself up on his elbows. “We’re as good as dead now, the access codes – the intel – what are we-” Vega extended a hand, and he finally got up. “Tell me you’ve got a plan,” He turned towards Farrah. His tone was firm and cold. He didn’t sound the least bit remorseful for the part he played in triggering this onslaught.

Farrah glanced up, at the ceiling. Then, she turned towards Vega and gave her a knowing smile.

“More explosives? Seriously?” Dan picked up on the silent exchange. “What happened to your whole calculated persona? I thought you were the one who always took a step back and thought about safety or some shit…”

Farrah didn’t have it her to chuckle, but she felt like she should in this moment.

“We are stranded, blind, with a small hoard blocking our exit. I think this is exactly the kind of problem,” She raised her Steyr AUG to the ceiling ahead of them, “That a rocket or anything over a .60 would solve.”

“Wait!” Vega called out, grabbing Farrah’s shooting arm.

Dan was just as surprised at the interruption as Farrah herself. He seemed almost relieved, and his shield flickered before he decided to keep it above him. Farrah nodded at Vega to continue.

“I heard, umm,” Vega let go of Farrah’s sleeve, “Someone call out from, umm, the medical labs,” she nodded up ahead.

The trio went silent for a moment.

“I don’t hear anything,” Dan spoke up, and Farrah nodded in agreement.

“The exit was in that direction anyway,” Farrah gestured forward with the tip of her gun, “This floor seems emptier than the other ones, so the more distance we cover here, the less we’ll have to cover up there.”

“You really didn’t have a plan, huh,” Dan made a small movement with his head, before realising that he should probably conceal his mixture of disgust, annoyance, and fear.

“We’ll be fine. I’ve seen worse on the surface,” Farrah patted Dan’s shoulder. She herself could not decide if that was a lie or not. But the next words she said were sincere. “The hallways funnel them and force them to spread out. Those heavies won’t fit here either. We have a tactical advantage.”

“Umm,”

As if in response to her words, a loud groan came from the collapsed hallway. A shiver ran down Farrah’s spine, as she heard a Tech heavy’s cry for the first time in her life.

She nodded for the other two to follow her, as she confidently strode through the hallway.

----------------------------------------

“This is the future we deserve, we are unworthy of the light above, un-evolved-”

“Dan, could you please stop?” Vega pleaded after he read out yet another set of graffiti written on the walls in multicoloured whiteboard marker.

There were equations and a mixture of code and its plain-language equivalent scribbled on the walls among the ominous messages. Farrah could tell apart three sets of handwriting, but for all she knew there could have been more.

She tried her best to ignore the smell of blood that came from most of the closed doors lining these hallways. Sometimes chlorine did a good job of masking it, other times she hastened her pace, hoping that Dan wouldn’t pick up on it, or Vega wouldn’t get the bright idea of trying to look inside.

Charters were pinned to some of the doors, filled with typed-out medical jargon. Farrah didn’t want to read it, but she did glance at Vega every so often to check if the noise the woman had heard had come from any of these doors.

“We are the - we make,” Dan read another graffiti, omitting the word ‘gods’.

Vega made a discontent noise and shivered, with arms wrapped around her shoulders. A metal screech came from above, too close for Farrah’s liking. She felt as if these tech zombies were smarter than the wild lot, but she didn’t have enough mastery of this domain to back up this gut feeling.

“What?” Dan gave Vega a glance. “They weren’t wrong. With access to the mensphere, they would have been superhumans.”

“And where are your superhumans now?” Vega muttered. “You can’t claim those things in the CC are the next step in human evolution – or that the monsters outside - ”

The screeching came again, and Farrah hushed the duo with a hand gesture. Then, she told gestured with her palm for them to get behind her.

The noise came again, and rebar was pushed through the ceiling. Thin cables, pulsing with stale blood pushed it through, causing the surrounding concrete to crumble. Before the hole could get wide enough for a zombie to crawl through, Farrah shot a rocket at it.

She gestured for the group to keep moving, and quickly checked her stats. She had over 2500 power, but if they had 4 floors to go, that was cutting it tight.

“Keep moving,” She hissed at the two.

“Help-” A muffled plea came from deeper within the facility.

Everyone froze, as if unsure of what they’d just heard, or in Vega’s case waiting for orders.

A screeching noise from above snapped them out of that shared trance.

“Come on!” Farrah sprinted on ahead, activating her run skill.

The distance was very short, and she was running fast, but she’d had the time to make out several more writings on the wall that became more and more unhinged and shaky with each subsequent door. ‘Our hands are those of god and our blood he will rise’ and ‘the sun is for those who cannot touch infinity’ were among the top contenders.

“Is anyone – please-” The voice came again from behind one of the medical doors.

“What – are you waiting for?” Dan asked, catching his breath, as he joined Farrah.

“Vega,” Farrah nodded towards the door, as she stepped forward, her back against the opposing wall of the hallway.

She travelled her gaze along its concrete walls, still dimly lit buy red emergency lights. The multi-coloured writings gave the walls an uncanny texture. In this light, it almost looked as if someone had tried to wipe blood off their skin, but gave out hallway through, after smearing it into a thin layer.

The door got broken down more gracefully than Farrah had expected.

She caught a glimpse of shadows swaying from the ceiling, but her gaze did not linger, and the shocked string of swears with a Mainlander accent told her that Vega had dealt with whatever zombies were inside.

The conversation that ensued was muffled and incohesive. The test subject was confused at best, concussed at worst, and Dan eventually concluded with:

“Do you mind if we take you with us?”

“Where?”

“Outside – then, I don’t know,” He dwelled on those words for a few seconds, the realisation that this had all been for nought weighing on him. Or maybe the man they were talking to replied something Farrah couldn’t make out over the noise of another of the armoured zombies breaking through the ceiling.

“Come on, let’s go,” She entered the room after blocking off yet another hallway.

The man strapped into a medial chair snapped in her direction, looking through her, and clearly struggling to focus on her. He had black, iris-less eyes, and long hair, several shades whiter than Vega’s. It ran down his shoulders, down to his waist, and did nothing to cover the state of undress he was in. His skin was an unnatural pale white. Farrah could swear she could see his heart and his lungs moving in irregular bursts under his ribcage.

A combination of skin and cables ran from his back and was perhaps the reason why neither Dan, who’d pulled out his crowbar, nor Vega had tried to get him out of the chair yet. It was unclear if those extensions, not dissimilar to the pellicle the high-ups from the CC had become were part of him, had been grafted onto him, or if they were the thing keeping him alive.

“What are those?” Farrah gestured to the uneven almost wing-like flesh.

The man’s eyes flashed blue.

“The emergency stairway is free,” He replied instead.

“Right, Vega can you break those?” Farrah mimicked his restraints on her own wrist. She approached the man, whose eyes flashed blue again.

“You didn’t – find it?” He asked, looking up at Farrah.

Farrah tilted his head up trying to ignore how cold his skin felt under the ungloved parts of her fingers.

Vitals Check

Allows to examine all mental and physical unresolved conditions affecting the target.

Expert

Cost: 1P per use per target. 5P per day of previous conditions access.

Domain benefit

Two additional levels of mastery. 75% chance to change category of skill to the most mastered one.

Conditions:

None

That didn’t mean he wasn’t freshly recovered from a drug-induced condition, a concussion, or dehydration, but it meant that the tubing plugged into his spine was not doing anything either.

“I’m going to cut this, okay?” Farrah swung her Steyr AUG over her shoulder and unsoldered a hatchet.

She moved aside to give Vega enough space to break the restraints with the side of her palm. She waited a few more seconds for the man to give any form of consent or even acknowledgement that he heard her. Dan had moved towards the door, crossbow at the ready, when a reply finally came:

“Yes, do it. There are no dimensions where pain and flesh are not -”

He got taken over by a coughing fit, and as he leaned forward, bringing his hand over his mouth, Farrah brought down the hatchet.

“Hurry up, damn it!” Dan nervously called out.

The five newly formed thin incisions perpendicular to his ribs let out a surprising amount of blood. Vega quickly intervened, pulling a t-shirt out of the top of Farrah’s rucksack and pressing it over them. When Farrah yanked on the tubing, it did not give out.

“Cut it,” The man muttered, slowly regaining his breath.

She did as she was told.

Vega had already pulled him over her shoulder and was halfway out the door by the time Farrah holstered her hatchet. She gave the tubing, that now limply hung from the ceiling, along the unidentifiable stretches of flesh, one last glance. Translucent blue-ish liquid was starting to puddle at the floor, no doubt a mixture of whatever they put in IVs and some non-detectable drugs.

She gave the four corpses, all taken down from their noose-shaped perches a quick glance, and activated her run skill to follow the other two down the non-collapsed hallway.