He felt the hard butt of the rifle against his shoulder, even against the padding and protection that his armour encased him with. While most would consider it a pain, in these circumstances it was a reassuring touch like that of a mother to a crying babe they were comforted to sleep, it comforted him to calm. Even those [i]things[/i], those [i]monsters[/i] that they’d come into contact with had been torn apart by the double-core bullets that the Interdictor rifles his squad carried. They were a fearsome foe, seemingly born of darkness and fear, with their talons tearing people asunder, yet the first bunch they’d run into had been blown apart by a well-placed ambush and a good squeeze of the trigger. Yet as he rose from the ground, his head ringing and his vision swimming, he wondered just how it’d gone so far wrong.

[hr]

As they’d pushed through thirty minutes earlier, it’d been like a hot knife through butter and they’d clove their way into the sector. Yet the creatures seemed to learn and adapt, moulding to his tactics as if he were trying to punch a puddle of oil. They’d made great progress into the target building, taking down only a few stray foes with remorseless precision, their bodies thudding to the floor with a wet [i]smack[/i]; the otherworldly teal goo draining from the charred holes in the creatures. They reached the data terminal with a surprising ease, securing the room the room with a mechanical precision and started the data transfer; a contract he’d taken a considerable fee from a very desperate corporation. The entire operation had been entirely uneventful, that is until they’d returned to the lobby. Konrad and Albert had stepped out of the elevator first, followed by Raen, Isabella and finally Maximus, into the lobby which was reminiscent of a warzone after the medical teams had swept through, there were scorch marks and bullet holes, blood sprays and a few spots of goo but no bodies to be seen anywhere. The whole scene was intermittently lit with a ghostly aura, a mix of continuous low light and flickering bright light from the array of industrial grade lights damaged by the firefight which had torn the façade of the lobby asunder. 

Konrad, an absolute mountain of a man, made it to the centre of the room, near a large reception desk when  one of those [i]things[/i] had launched itself over the desk and plunged one of it’s claws into the man’s shoulder. He rocked back on his feet with a pained howl but managed to jam his finger on the trigger of his rifle pummelling the creature with a number of rounds. The barrage of double-cored rounds had a shocking effect as it exploded in a torrent of teal fluid, showering the squad. Raen had managed to shield his eyes with arm yet as his head snapped back he felt chilled to the bone by the sight of 30 sets of glowing teal stripes between them and the exit. In that instance the light above them flicked on, revealing a huddled mass of the creatures who let out a chorus of bloodcurdling shrieks.

“Contact front!” he yelled over the comm link, his voice barely holding flat even despite his considerable training and experience. All that he’d seen, all he’d done and all who he’d killed he had never been prepared for this horrific situation and that knowledge that he knew nothing chilled him to the core. His mind, ever the sharp weapon, snapped into action and within a millisecond his voice was calm and rang with authority “One clip burst, aim low, firing retreat to the stairs. Double time, now!”

With a tremendous speed the squad reacted to his command, squeezing the triggers of their Interdictors blazing out a tremendous stream of bullets which thudded into a variety of lower limbs, the secondary detonation shunting the creatures to the ground. Konrad and Albert as the two furthest forward dropped behind first five metres behind the second row until the second row leapfrogged them back, repeating the cycle until they reached the stairs. The horde chasing them down were largely slowed by the toppling bodies allowing them to hit the stairs and start climbing up. Two grenades were rolled down the stairs after they’d turned the first corner, coming to rest at the foot of the first creature before it detonated in a pillar of white hot flames vaporizing all that it touched in its expansion outwards. Raen and his squad crossed the first floor, the flames licking their heels by the time they leapt out of the window, seconds before they were detonated outwards in a shower of glass. The concussive waved knocked Raen into the ground hard, nearly cracking a few ribs, but the protection from his armour saved him from any major injury. 

[hr]

He involuntary clutched his side, his head ringing from the concussive force of the blast before he became aware of an alarm bleeping inside his helmet. Groggily, his eyes refocused, washing back the oceans of murkiness that flooded over his vision, until his registered the life monitor alarm that signalled that suit four had no life signs; they’d lost Konrad. His head rose slowly from the bunched ball it’d voluntarily become as he saw Konrad impaled against a building by a large steel girder; it punctured straight through his chest leaving no chance of survival. 

“Shit!” he exclaimed to no-one in particular, “Alpha 4 is down, retreat to the Hunchback, I repeat run to the goddamn Hunchback!” His squad rose with a groggy speed, many clutching various body parts that had become inflamed from their ill-fated escaped from the office building. A quick glance towards the building revealed a twisted, burning that collapsed on itself with a devastating ferocity. The goo still stuck to them as they reached their armoured vehicle, a bastion of safety in the vicious scene they found themselves implanted in. Raen plugged the memory stick into the uplink terminal of the vehicle as his squad divested themselves of the signs of battle, replacing empty clips and wiping goo off with an obvious disgust. 

“What about Konrad sir? We can’t just leave him there” came the voice of Isabella, ever as melodic and enchanting as Raen found it; his heartbeat involuntarily rose and he found himself thinking of [i]that time[/i] on the beach when they’d discovered so much about each other. 

Raen’s head snapped up, “there’s nothing we can do now, we need to exfill the hell out of here. These things are just mindless creatures, they left a damned ambush for us with that exit. Once the uplink finishes, we’re free to take up the government defence contract and we can rendezvous with beta squad. Trust me, the credits they’re paying fixes the company. As for his body, well we’ll give him a viking funeral” he said as he pulled a high explosive grenade from the bandolier set onto his power armour. Albert started the Hunchback with a throaty [i]hrummm [/i], powering the monstrous engine away from the wreckage that’d once been a corporate facility before a small sphere flew out of the open hatch of the vehicle, nestling itself at the feet of the impaled body. 

No-one looked as the column of flame engulfed his body as they were all entranced by the maintenance of their gear besides Raen who instead was focused incoming connection screen which engulfed the previously uploading display. It was Elliot, that hacker that had done so much for Raen in the past, saved his bacon even in a situation where Watchmen had come a little close to a slightly illicit operation they’d been forced to undertake. “What the hell do you need right now Elliot? We’re in goddamn bedlam out here?” he answered the call with, barely containing his anger at the interruption.

“What the hell do you need right now Elliot? We’re in goddamn bedlam out here!” he answered the call with, his anger barely contained at the unexpected interruption.

A bitter laugh resounded over the comms link, "You're telling me man," Elliot started gravely, "I need a favor."

"A favour? I'm stuck here with some kind of freakish blue monsters, pushing the containment lines back and you want me to do a favour for you? I'm making my way back to the containment lines now, what the hell can be so important that you call in [i]that[/i] favour from me?" The trepidation was almost clear is his voice, no-one on a voice channel had seen what he'd seen; none of them knew just what was lurking in the darkness. 

"I know," Elliot affirmed, the visuals from Anne's feed were still playing on a loop in his mind, "I have a mutual friend stuck on the wrong side of the line.. I'm sending you a picture through the private server, you know the one right?"

"You and your friends, if I didn't owe you for that job then I'd be hanging up right now. Just how close am I? My squad is already down one, these things out here aren't playing around."

Elliot sighed, looking at his phone once more—Still no messages from Anne. "Somewhere up in the north east quadrant, last I saw she was blacked out in a police van. Here, I'm sending you her last known location, and her address, just in case."

An address buzzed through, it was less than a hundred miles from them; an easy enough trip in the Hunchback but at the rate the containment lines were failing, the Slums were not a place to be anymore. "I'm sorry you lost your girl, but it's not my problem. Look my tactical feed is saying that the containment lines are failing, there just aren't enough men to hold them. I'm not getting stuck behind just because you thought you could ask me nicely."

"Nicely?" Elliot's shrug could almost be heard over the comms, "Can't blame a guy for trying to stay pleasant, bringing up dirty memories always leaves a bad taste on the tongue, doesn't it Raen?" 

"Damn it Elliot, we had to blow up the damn building we were in to escape those hellspawn. Just what do you think you have on me that'll make me want to save your friend? You don't even have anywhere close to the amount of credits it'd take."

"Curious thing that, it's not what I have, it's what I took off of a certain corporation's servers. Turns out a prototype when missing that they want back real bad, Sound familiar?" Elliot asked, the frustration palpable in his voice with every second wasted.

"Besides Raen," Elliot continued, "Would you really leave an unarmed woman to defend herself out there? You'd practically just have to pick her up, and drive her to safety, or is that beyond your abilities?"

Raen's heart sank as he remembered that cursed job he had to contact Elliot over, it'd been a contract to steal some Reaper level tech from Syndustries, only once they'd pulled it a tracking chip had been activated. He'd contacted Elliot, as a highly recommended hacker, to fix the issue but he'd never imagined that the guy would keep it up his sleeve. "Damn it man, I paid for that job to be private, we're going to have some words about this when I'm back. But we'll save your woman, don't you ever dare doubt what I can do. I hope you remember that when this is over because I will fucking come for you, with the Core as my witness."

Raen was almost shaking with rage as he finished, that little computer punk had wound him right up until he noticed that the voice bar was stuck in a transmission loop. "FUCK!" he cursed loudly, causing his squad to peer up at him. The damned rat hadn't even got all of his message, but Raen had bigger issues to worry about. There was a girl out there that needed saving, else all he'd built would come crashing to the ground. "We've got a new mission, VIP recovery. It's a girl, a friend of an associate. We ride in hard, grab the girl then run like hell for the containment lines. We're down one, but it'll be like babysitting; strap in, we're punching it."

The autopilot snapped the new coordinate in place, instantly shifting the armoured vehicle into the optimal route to reach the last known coordinate. The vehicle shot off, relying on the inbuilt navigation system to navigate the maze that lay before them. His squad were readying the weapons they had assembled ahead of them; they’d not brought spare clips in the Hunchback, a decision Raen felt he might just live to regret.