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[b][i]Time: Evening, Three Weeks Before Satellite Attack
Location: Undisclosed Location, New York City, New York State[/i][/b]

Sergeant Fred Moonill was on front watch. Watch duty in the middle of a city, on a safe house the location of which was known to only a few. It was, perhaps, the most boring job that one could think of. Sitting on his ass behind a reinforced steel door which was designed to stand up to anything those mutie freaks could throw at them. His assault rifle was on his lap, his monitors scanning the areas outside for any unusual activity by the city's denizens... it was boring, but hell it beat anything else. Fred flicked through the screens - some hobo sitting in an alleyway, some fancy businessmen walking down the road outside, probably plotting the death of the American economy as they always did. A pretty girl with blonde hair standing by a street lamp with a cigarette in her hand... looked smart, but was treated like a hooker from the attention of the fatasses walking by. Fred's stomach turned... to him, the fatcats and the muties were one and the same - vicious pricks who wanted nothing more than to put their own world view in place, and ride roughshod over everyone else, the consequences be damned.

	Fred took out a cigarette and lit it, inhaling deeply on the smoke. He had a propensity to grow agitated easily, and smoking was really the only way he could calm down. Besides, he'd come from a family of smokers - his mom and dad both smoked, his gramps and granny did too. Jeff did, Lisa did... it was just what you did. He held the cigarette between his teeth as he checked over his rifle for any spots or rust - a holdover from his days in the Army - and went back to checking the screens. A couple of them were fuzzy, and the blonde was nowhere to be seen. Frowning, Fred smacked the side of the monitor several times to clear it up, but it was no use. The monitors were fuzzing over, one by one. "God damn it." He'd have to call up the techs in the basement to get this fixed. He reached for his radio and pressed the transmit button. "This is two-one, reporting in. I've got some interference on the cameras, can I get someone from tech up here to clear it up?" No sooner had he finished his report, than two of the cameras went black. No report. Nothing. No input feed. Frowning, Fred checked the back of the monitor to see if any of the cables had come loose, but nothing was out of the ordinary. "Shit, this is the [i]last[/i] thing I need... I'm a soldier, not a god damn technician." He got to his feet and slotted a magazine into the well of his M4, before walking over towards the door. 

	In a split second, Fred's world exploded. A blinding flash of light and an overwhelming surge of pain, followed by darkness.

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	The door had been blown clean from its mounting in the front door, blasting away several chunks of masonry as it had cannoned into the front room of the safe house. The watchman had been standing behind the door as the charges had detonated, from the looks of things, whilst the camera monitor had also been blown from the desk and lay in a pile of wiring and dust shaken loose from the shockwave of the charges' detonation. Cracks had appeared in the surrounding structural walls, and clouds of smoke and plaster dust filled the air. In the doorway was the woman responsible for such an initial onslaught - Rubis. She was dressed head-to-toe in black, with a maroon beret atop her head, sloped to the left as was the custom, and a tactical vest with several grenades, spare RPK magazines and a black assault pack in which contained several large blocks of shaped charge plastic explosive - Semtex, to be precise. A shrill alarm rang, shattering the brief silence following the detonation of the explosives, no doubt alerting the occupants as to what was going on, as if they needed any other information. Rubis unhooked an RGO and cast it into an adjacent room, which looked like a ready room or break room. Inside, two dazed and confused Watchmen were struggling to reorient themselves after having witnessed a rather significant emotional event, and neither of them noticed the small bundle of explosive Soviet joy that had been tossed into the room to accompany them. One had the common sense to run out to check what was going on, only to be met by the repetitive bark of a raised AK-74N firing at fully automatic. The heavy 5.45mm AP rounds punched clean through the body armour - unsurprising at such close range - and sprayed crimson clouds onto the cracking walls behind the Watchman, followed by another deafening explosion as the RGO Rubis had tossed into the break room exploded, shredding the unfortunate sod who was still in the room with shrapnel, and probably concussing him badly to boot. He was alive, but no threat, whimpering and sobbing from the shock and pain of the grenade's explosion - Kseniya unholstered her PPK and put a bullet into the man's brain. She didn't need his whining whilst she was trying to get a job done. The watch room only had one other exit - another reinforced door that no doubt led downstairs into the basement areas of the safe house which would hold the target location.

	Kseniya slung her rifle back over her shoulder and jogged through the still-swirling clouds of dust and smoke to the door, and unzipped her backpack to prepare another two charges. However, as she did so, the door slid open to reveal a nasty-looking chap in a black armoured bodysuit, with an M16 at the ready and aimed directly at her. Snickering, the Watchman pulled the trigger, rounds thumping into Rubis' head with tremendous force and frequency. In response, Kseniya gave a guttural yell of defiance and charged down the Watchman, her shoulder impacting squarely with the man's testicular area. Armoured or not, that would [i]sting[/i]... and sting it did. The Watchman screamed in agony, his grip on his rifle slackening as both he and Rubis flew down the steps to a landing area halfway down the staircase. The Watchman got the worst of the landing, cracking the back of his bereted head on the concrete wall, a splatter of blood erupting from the impact point. Death must have been instantaneous. Further down the stairs, two other militiamen readied their guns and one called into his radio; "[i]All units, this is two-four, we have a confirmed intruder alert, all security to general quarter- argh![/i]" He was cut off in another spray of crimson liquid, as Kseniya had gotten to her feet, unslung her 74N and loosed off a burst in the militiamen's direction. The radioman took several bullets in the chest and left shoulder, dropping him almost instantly - the other had sensibly dove for cover in a nearby doorway, but it wouldn't avail him for long. 

	Kseniya opened fire again at the doorway, peppering it with hot lead to suppress the militiaman behind it as she surveyed the situation. She noted that the hallway in front of her was reinforced concrete, almost like the top levels of a bomb shelter - these guys were [i]serious[/i] when it came to the construction of their hideouts. From the end of the hallway came forth a veritable squad of infantrymen - at least six militia from the Watchmen. They opened fire, several rounds striking Rubis in the torso, but without effect. Grimacing, Kseniya unhooked another grenade from her vest and threw it down the hallway, scattering the militia behind what cover they could find. The man from earlier, however, wasn't done - he had gotten to his feet, and rushed Kseniya as she finished throwing the grenade. Knocking her to the floor, the militiaman straddled her torso and landed several blows to her head - though again, with little effect beyond irritating her. She took hold of the man's head and slammed her own into his face, definitely breaking a nose from the sound of the impact, whilst in the distance, the grenade detonated, showering shards of shrapnel all through the hallway in a steel rain of fragmentation. Several fragments embedded themselves into the Watchman atop Rubis, shortly before she pushed him back and then kicked him in the chest with both legs, shattering ribs. Those four who had survived the grenade earlier were now once more opening fire, forcing Rubis to ignore the critically-injured man in front of her and return her attention to the others. She reached over and took hold of her rifle and fired a long burst down the hallway, which drove the others into cover. 

	The magazine was dry. 

	Quick change, drop the old, take hold of a fresh magazine, slot it in, check the charging handle. Textbook quick reloading under fire. The survivors had retreated behind the door, and sealed it shut. Rubis didn't know how many there were behind it, nor how many rooms lay beyond... she would simply take one problem at a time. The keypad on the side of the door was bright red, with text reading [b][color=ed1c24]SECURITY BREACH: LOCKDOWN IN EFFECT[/color][/b]. Like [i]that[/i] would stop her. She still had plenty of charges... she reached into her backpack and placed down four 500-gram charges on the corners of the door, wiring all four up to a single detonator she held in her hand. She unwound the wires down the hallway, and then looked over at the dying Watchman to check he wouldn't be a problem... he was bleeding out. No issue. [i]Two... one... fire![/i] The blasts blew the door clean off its hinges and shattered the surrounding brickwork. The door itself flew backwards and down some steps into a central room filled with several large computers and screens, and terrified technicians hiding under desks. On one particularly large screen was shown a map of the state and Watchman activity. The door itself had taken out the four men covering behind it in rather... gruesome fashion, but Rubis wasn't finished yet, as another four of them made themselves known at the other end of the room, firing wildly at the doorway in an effort to suppress Kseniya's advance. It would work... if bullets actually had an effect on her. Striding forth through the gunfire, Kseniya raised her rifle and fired controlled bursts at each militiaman in turn, killing or gravely wounding each and every one of them. She looked around at the technicians... they were all staring at her, some with fear, some with hatred in their eyes. Kseniya shrugged and slung her AK over her shoulder, unholstering her PPK once more. They all had to die. They were all responsible for their organisation's actions. One shot. Two shots. Three shots. Four. Five. Five suited bodies, with bloodstained wounds. [i]C'est la vie[/i]. She emptied the last round in her pistol at one of the technicians who she thought had been killed. 

Kseniya walked down the stairs, finally able to catch her breath after the adrenaline and excitement. The map was quite something - she opened an inner pocket on her tactical vest and took out a USB flash drive. This was the purpose of the safe house - and all it took to get there was the deaths of over a dozen militiamen, some technicians, and some Semtex blocks. "[b][color=ED145B]Pathetic, really. You call yourselves an army...[/color][/b]" The alarm still rang in her ears as she downloaded the intelligence maps and databases onto the flash drive - its continued ring was troubling for Kseniya... were there more on the way? Was there an external alarm room that was calling in extra security forces as she stood there, waiting for the download to complete? Evidently not. She finished up the download, and headed out, back the way she came, with the disk drive in one hand, and her AK in the other, a broad smirk on her face.

Nobody fucked with Rubis.