[center][b][u]Lost Haven
East-Side Tenament Housing[/u][/b][/center]

Galen swore as the entire room rumbled and dust poured down from the ceiling in thick curtains as the tell-tale sonic boom of an alien strike-craft streaking by overhead caused the entire tenament to shudder.

"Fucking aliens..." He muttered, steadying himself against the nearby wall before moving on. The housing complex he was in was somewhat run down, but not unusually so for that area of the city. What really stood out was the silence - where normally such an area would be filled with the ambient sound of children, pets, and occasional shouts or loud thuds of shifting furniture, the entire building was eerily quiet.

Although this was almost to be expected in the midst of the alien invasion with nearly everybody with two working brain cells to rub together evacuating from the city, the reign of silence in the tenament was ordinary here. If not for the cleaners who occasionally dusted and swept the hallways and the frequently changed-out lighting, the place could have been mistaken for being empty.

Galen walked down the main hallway at an unhurried pace, softly muttering to himself as he counted down the doors, approaching the one he was looking for. Reaching it, he raised his hand, hesitated for a moment, and then knocked in an unusual sequence - twice, pause, five times rapidly, pause, once, pause, and finally a solid, louder, solitary thump at the very end.

After a short pause, Galen saw the telltale hint of the peep-hole's slide being pulled back as the occupant peered out at him. A moment later, with a series of rattling chunks and clicks, they undid the door's superfluity of locks and cracked it open, leaving the door still secured with a jam and two chains.

"What's the call?" The occupant said, still standing out of view behind the door itself.

"Shipping just picked up the title to a new warehouse in the French Quarter at 5426 Moore." Galen said steadily. "We sent in two guys earlier to sweep through the place and clear out any indigents, maybe give them another place to stay if you catch my drift. Only they never came back."

"Well shit. Anybody we know?"

"Not sure, I didn't get there names, just a call. Been told to get four more guys down there to check the place out."

"The fuck for? If the last two who went there are MIA isn-"

"Boss says it's been happening all over the place. People going missing and the like, all because of the Martians and the evacuation and it keeps going on. And just in case they did get in trouble, that's why we're sending FOUR of you. So get a crew together, get some heat, and go check the place out."

"Blazing?"

"No! For all we know the other two are just laid up in a hospital or buried under rubble or something. If you find anybody bring them in. If you find the other two's corpses do whatever you like."

"Whatever. I've got a paper and pen, what's the new number today?"

"0074-192-9047."

"Alright. Me and the boys will take an early lunch and then head out. I'll set the message for around three or something."

The door shut then, and the occupant began relatching and securing all the locks as Galen mentally scratched the conversation off of his lengthy to-do list and went on his way.

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[center][b][u]5426 Moore Blvd.
Not Too Much Later...[/u][/b][/center]

Before four of the men sent was what most would call a dilapidated shithole of a warehouse. It stood at four stories and what held together its filth stained windows that barely lit the interior even during the day, were long metal walls of now rusted aluminum. A shorter building with thick steel doors jutted from the huge husk that even from here it could be seen that part of the roof had collapsed inward after years of neglect. Why their boss would bother to buy such a piece of crap was beyond many of them. Having not come into contact with anything particular unusual moving towards the warehouse, they approached with the kind of caution one only gets when one is told that two of their fellow goons somehow lost contact in a spooky abandoned warehouse. That is, pistols raised and quietly.

Various points of red pin prick lights focused on these four very unfortunate men. Sending raw sensory input to Little Lo who for all intents and purpose was command, who bounced back an order to "Kill them." Due to previous orders, this would have to be done without the traditional method of latching onto a mans face and detonating so violently that only the back of the skull remained. So, they were restricted primarily to tranquilizers and sliding their metallic feet over the goons' necks until an artery was finally sliced open, or to using lethal injection of Lo's toxic sweat to cause cardiac arrest and possible brain damage. Combat data gathered from the previous encounter suggested the latter course of action.

One drone clambered down the split rusted remains of a storm drain, before suddenly loosening its grip to  lunge onto the back of one startled goons head. He felt a thin prick and the drone leaped off, scurrying into the lower half of the drain.

"The fuck was that?" he shouted.

"The fuck was what Tommy?"

"Something just latched onto my head and pricked me with somethin'!"

Another felt a prick to their ankles, and saw a small spider drone rapidly moving away. He lifted his pistol, fired, and hit it dead on target, splintering the drone to fragmented shards of sparking steel. This didn't stop the last two from getting multiple injections to the wrist, ankle, and calf. This caused them to, within a minute, scream in agony, because in cases of multiple injections, hosts to the toxin experienced painful waves of nerves firing off like christmas trees far, far earlier. They fell to the ground, slowly losing the ability to move, their twitching and spasming movements soon silenced and mouthed screams witnessed by the two soon to not be survivors.

The first who had been injected pulled a burner phone from his jacket. He unfolded it and creased inside was a slip of paper which had the Galen's number on it, which he crumpled and threw away - he had forgotten to throw it away like he should have.

Elsewhere, Galen's own burner phone rang while he was in the middle of a belated lunch inside one of the tenament apartments. Spitting out a hunk of a half-chewed roast sandwich, he dropped the rest of it on the table in front of him and snapped open the phone hurriedly. He was not supposed to receive calls on it, ever, unless it was a life or death emergency - which this presumably was, or else it was going to become one if somebody had called it for shits and giggles.

"Talk to me." He choked out, still partly clearing his mouth of morsels.

Tommy said with some effort, "There were these spider robot things, I think they injected us with some kinda poison? I don't know how long we got, but after we smashed and shot a few, they scattered off back into the warehouse."

"Shit." Galen subvocalized. "Alright, get out of there, go to the harbor clinic, we basically own the place. Break your phone now before you go, remember to get the card too."

"You sure the clinic can deal with this?" Tommy could hear his heart pounding and it felt like it would nearly go through his chest.

His only answer was the clicking sound of Galen hanging up on the other end of the line - and doubtlessly breaking his own phone immediately thereafter as well.

Tommy cursed tossing his phone to the floor and stomping on it, then kicking one of the small sphere bodies of the spiders against the rusted face of the warehouse. Ricky, having been standing by patiently and losing feeling in his left arm, let him have this one. Besides, the robotic freaks had left.

Of course they hadn't. They'd merely crawled through a skylight and clung there, some going inside to drain jars of Lo's toxic sweat and refill their stocks. They moved silently, until the moment they could pounce, focusing on any exposed artery.

Tommy remembered something. That piece of paper, he'd have to find it and rip it up before he went to that harbor clinic. He saw it, lying on worn planks six feet from where he stood. He took a step forward and was nearly brought to the floor by first the pain of infection in both of his ankles posterior tibial arteries, but also a solid impact to the back of his head. This drone rubbed two of its legs together and a arc of electricity jutted between each. It brought this down on his head, which caused his final twitching, spasming collapse, his skin slowly fading to a sickly yellow as the toxin did it's own work.

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[center][b][u]Not Too Far Away...[/u][/b][/center]

Lo flipped through drone camera streams, over and over and over again, making absolutely, deadly sure, that every single thug who had tried to enter what she was quickly realizing she thought of as her territory, was absolutely, one hundred percent, dead. She didn't even feel safe enough to leave her desk.

Little Lo chimed into comms, "Ok, Lo, look, I think that was all of them. I'm guessing they sent four because if two doesn't work, you just send two times the original number. It's how it works. So they're probably going to send eight or something, or maybe get some guys to sort of scope the building. Point is, we have two options."

Lo interrupted, [color=d9094b]"Yeah, I know, we literally have the same brain. We either leave or we convince them it 100% absolutely isn't worth coming to take this place."[/color]

Little Lo added, "That they own, legally. Because they bought it."

Lo scoffed, [color=d9094b]"Yeah probably with drug and gun trafficking money. They sent armed thugs to check out a low HPI warehouse during an alien invasion. They are absolutely not clean, even if they send cleaners. Can you send more drones over for patrols? Maybe we can catch them and convince them we're something stupid like a mass ai intelligence network."[/color]

Little Lo sighed, "Yes, I think I can do that. Also, you mean skynet right?"

Lo said, [color=d9094b]"Sky what?"[/color]

Little lo added, "Wait, you haven't seen Terminator 2?"

[color=d9094b]"No, definitely not. Saw season 2 episode 13 of the Sarah Connor Chronicles, but only the part where the girl in the white dress is cutting that guys throat open and just keeps going."[/color]

"What...no. Ok find a copy, start watching it, skip to about 26:37, that's the part where Arnold Swarzeneger explains to a young John Connor that skynet or whatever took over the future and are sending robots back in time...anyway don't include the time travel part. Just do a hal 9000 impression, add some distortion in the audio, and really jack up the line level. I know you'll figure it out."

Lo, like god intended, pirated a copy of Terminator 2 and watched it with great interest. Little Lo had sent a powerpoint presentation, illustrating how, exactly, she should enjoy several major scenes in the movie. These included the famous bike chase, conveyer belt scene, and the penultimate scene where The Terminator gives a thumbs up as he dissolves in molten metal. Lo had of course barely read this, as it was fairly exhaustive and written with clinical precision. She was worried Little Lo might be diverging a bit too much.

She skipped to the scene at 26:37. Sarah Connor and what she presumes is called The Terminator are mid conversation.

"Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self aware at 2:14 am eastern time august 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug."

"Skynet fights back."

"Yes. It launches its missiles against the targets in russia."

She rewinds back to scenes where The Terminator is fighting some other Terminator, and thinks that, she's probably got the gist of it. She wanted to watch the rest of the movie later, there was just something about stupid american action movies that she couldn't resist. But, now was not the time. Now all there was to do, was wait.