[center][h1]Vulpine Space Command Centre, Île de la Tempête, Reunion [/h1][/center] [center][h1]Fireteam Shadow[/h1][/center] [center][h2] High Speed, Low Drag [/h2][/center] [center][h2] 0645 Hours [/h2][/center] Purna and Eloise moved quick, racing out of the port and headed towards the bunker, as well, the dawn chorus broke with the rest of the team arriving. As the fighting went on, the two lights snuck through a cut gap in the fence at the launch pad, bounding from support building to building, using cloaking to make the big gaps and avoiding what felt like the start of WW3 out there. The port had completely been detonated, and no doubt, paved the way for the last fifteen minutes of total anarchy there. Going quiet made sense, and for that time being, compared to the anarchy from earlier, Purna and Eloise had done what they did best- becoming ghosts. Scavenging magazines, and dodging moving APCs, IFVs, jeeps and masses of soldiers moving out to reinforce the barracks and outer perimeter of the launch site. They weren't looking inside anymore. Moving across to an oversight of the command centre, the half-buried bunker-like view looking across to the two launch pads, Purna stayed low with Eloise behind a depression in the ground, watching on at the movement all over. "Queen, we're in position to enter the Command Centre via ducting, how copy?" "Solid copy, Viper. Find the hostages and secure them before anything else. Leave the HVT to me, we're en route to enter from the other side. He'll be well defended." Skye's response was a bit out of time, but was when they were repelling the counter-assault at the checkpoint, and so put Fireteam Shadow a little bit ahead of the other two groups. Purna looked to Eloise, shaking her head. "Boss wants all the credit. Then again, those hostages are critical if we want to even attempt a launch.....what the hell did I sign up to." Purna said the quiet part out loud, still not quite certain he believed in any of this, but well, so be it. They moved again across the concrete, cloaking up and like shadows in the morning light, dodging rays and enemies to get into position to start sneaking in. Pointing out a ventilation grate, Purna latched it with his grapple, and pulled himself in, before leaving the line down for Eloise. It was an uncomfortable crawl, but crawl they did, as the sound of the bunker's internal systems could be heard, the crawl almost like a stress position, but one he was sure that with her smaller size, Eloise was finding easier than his muscular frame. "Sorry that I pushed ahead. Normally I'm more of a gentleman." Purna noted, crawling in this space not exactly a nice prospect, but, it go them where they needed. Moving inside to the end of the shaft, Purna dropped down, the two in phase with the other teams as they entered into a ventilation room, the tiny gaps barely able to fit them both, but making this entry good. More men could be heard on the other side of the door. Artemis troops, given they weren't speaking Chinese, but English and Spanish. "No choice but to move forward, Archer. I'd normally want to avoid a fight, kill the power, sink them with gas, be clever about this. But if we want to save the hostages, we might need to be a bit more direct here." Purna adjusted his pistols, checking each mag, nodding to her. He took out a small device from his tool stash, slipping a wire under the door, adjusting his NVG set to look. "I put five targets immediately outside. Down the corridor, I think there's about another six by our hostages, can't be sure. They're keeping them by the control centre's desks, give or take half a dozen staff. We're outnumbered....but they won't see it coming. Move smooth and clean, let's drag them out and get them looking from the hostages, then we can have an easier time of it." Purna asked, pulling the tool back in, getting a smoke grenade ready from his tactical rig, adjusting his infrared NVGs, and keeping a USP ready to go. [hr] [center][h1]Vulpine Space Launch Pad, Île de la Tempête, Reunion [/h1][/center] [center][h1]Fireteam Hammer/Anvil[/h1][/center] [center][h2] The Titan Fight [/h2][/center] [center][h2] 0645 Hours [/h2][/center] "Chaos, Boomer, keep the Zulu occupied, me, Frigga, JamJam will take Laura on!" Athena yelled back, this fight certainly not an easy one. Her coils weren't having effect, so she switched to the mini missiles, moving fast and trying to pepper missiles into the mech, avoiding gunfire, counter flame and everything else Laura had to give. If there was a health bar for Laura, supposedly so, it was a hell of a big one. "Laura, come on, this is a losing fight!" Athena bellowed through her speaker, as the operative inside the mech tattled. "What, after Raven, and you treated me? Come on, I'm no sucker!" The flames belched, as Athena used her jump pack to leap into another bit of concrete, using a bit of tubing to escape the flames, the heat so intense it almost felt like it could melt the titanium skin she had. "Jesus, Freya, talk some sense into her! Anything, I'm going to keep flanking and try and unhook her tanks, we're gonna get torched like this!" Athena yelled, the fight on the launch pad continuing to rage, like two kaiju bearing down on what already seemed like quite an impressive group of operatives. This was of course, an absolutely stupid fight, but then again, heavies in their prime against two other heavies in their prime, it just seemed far too made for the last bulwark that Rose had put in place at this facility. [hr] [hider=Both Sides of a Smile] [center][h1]Vulpine Space Command Centre, Île de la Tempête, Reunion [/h1][/center] [center][h1][color=lightblue]Skye Rosalind Lyons[/color][/h1][/center] [center][h2] Both Sides of a Smile [/h2][/center] [center][h2] 0645 Hours [/h2][/center] It was relentless inside the command centre. Bullets flew, and Skye improvised fire with the M203 on a HK416 she had scavenged, blasting apart another internal checkpoint with direct fire, creating room for Ebrima to move. And well, with his drones and his capability, she was letting him lead, Adam holding a flank and keeping a group of PLA soldiers at bay within one of the offices within the hardened building. "Adam, hold here and keep our exit clear!" Skye and Ebrima turned the corner, the next room having a few more guards, the PLA soldiers no match for Skye and Ebrima, Skye clattering the trio inside the office with a bloody mess with the rest of the magazine, stomping through as she ran towards the next door. Yanking a flashbang, she nodded to Ebrima to kick it in, before dumping the flashbang through the cracked metal door, and then pushing inside as soon as it slapped, the VHS-02 kept high and pointed. [hr] There was nobody inside bar a 50-year old looking, half Cantonese, half British looking man in a tan cotton dress shirt, sitting calmly at his desk. He seemed rather removed, considering the absolute carnage that had happened outside. "Hands up! Oracle, we have positive ID on George Zhao, say the word!" Skye yelled, rifle raised, knowing she would pull the trigger within fifteen if she heard no response. "Wait, before you put a round through my head...I suppose you want to know where she is." Zhao replied, as Skye smacked the butt of the rifle into him, knocking him to the floor from his chair, rifle to head. "Talk then, dickhead." Zhao pointed up with his finger in response to Skye's comment. "Up there. You missed her. Launched from a pad in South Korea, three hours ago with a satellite. She's already out of play." Zhao started, cackling a little, realising entirely what had happened. "She sent you here to kill me. Baited you into this knowing Oracle would expect her to come to me, and hoped you'd get yourselves killed. Or best case....kill me in the process, drag you away from what mattered. That is the Rose I know. Ruthlessly ambitious, but endlessly selfish. I suppose I'm glad I still have some cards left to play." "We'll sort her out, for now, your usefulness is running out." Skye yelled, as Zhao shook his head, Skye putting barrel to chest. "They won't let you kill me. I cut a deal. Your boss want what I know. Any second now, actually it should come through your...." "Break, Queen, we have an update. Arrest Zhao and once the facility is secure, get a couple of your team to look after him. Repeat, Zhao is to be captured, we need him alive. How copy?" The voice in Skye's headset broke everything, as she didn't respond to Oracle. Not yet. "What the fuck are you doing?" Skye uttered, as Zhao crawled backwards, washing the blood off his face, smirking. "Oh, oh my. Look at how the tables turn. Well, you've won, Miss Lyons. Technically you're almost my daughter....though mine wouldn't hit me like that. You get to save the world after all. But what's inside you is so invaluable even your boss realised it's the only way you, and your team survive this. It's the only way they spare you, you realise? There's no do or die. Even with....the historically noble aims of Artemis, your superior's reports aren't so silly as to let an opportunity like this slide. I suppose it's a little like Von Braun. Allegiances change when there's something worth than money, Skye...they'll overlook certain things when they realise what happened too." Skye looked on, silent, stunned. In this little corner of the command centre, there was a long trail of bodies between them and Adam, who more likely than not, was moving to the hostages that Purna and Eloise were trying to rescue. And likely now just pawns to Zhao's work. The General continued, clearing his throat. "Ian was a brilliant man. I respected him. But he also went postal when I told him when you were twelve that he'd never escape. That there was no corner of the earth he could go, because you'd always return to do what you were made to do, whether he liked it or not. You were conditioned to become this, because as good as he was, there's only so much of a child you can raise when they are made to be what you are now. Perhaps he tried to shape that away, but....he wasn't that good. It got him killed. And they covered it all up, knowing you would always search, always look, but always be too busy to notice it's the same people feeding you. Even Oracle wouldn't have known to check...poor bastard, really." Zhao shrugged, Skye not interrupting him, letting him talk, and well, hoping Ebrima understood. "So you are exactly where you need to be, Skye. Doing their work, unquestioningly, just in case Rose did go rogue, and when she did, here you are, to fix their problems. Leading their teams, undyingly. I followed her believing she had a point. This I didn't expect...so I suppose the deal changes. Pragmatism." Zhao stood up off the table, shaking his head, looking to Ebrima, the sound of the fighting on the launch pad still audible. "The fuck do you mean? I don't have an implant, I've got nothing in me, I'm some fucking defect, and free to beat the fucking daylights out of you! I don't give a shit, arrest or not, my team will pick you apart like gingerbread, and I'll fucking do the same! After killing hundreds of your men, that's seriously how you see it?" Skye barked, as Zhao shook his head. "And yet you did it without worry. Because you had to come to me in order to find out just what you are. They made you a slave and were so good at it, they didn't even make you realise they're pulling the strings. Gave you the freedom to be Skye Rosalind Lyons, knowing you would come back like an obedient dog looks for meaning, and the sun to rise. And make others follow the same way they do it to you. Isn't that right, Ebrima?" Zhao started, as Skye kept a rifle trained at his core, watching him, barely phased. "Come on, follow me. If you would have shot me, you would have done it already. And I strongly recommend you don't. I think you believe me." "Why's that, big man? Some sense of a victory lap, eh?" Skye yelled back, barking closing the distance. She didn't like being ordered. Not by something like this animal. "You'll see." Zhao shrugged, and turned, again, like he'd been here before. [hr] And walking through the facility's interior, a door into what looked like a generator room was opened, Zhao having a gun trained at him at all times, backed by Ebrima. It was a strange room, to say the least, and the last place of the facility where anything would go on. Another body of Rose's, or maybe was it Skye's sat in the vat at the end, nestled next to what was an emergency generator. "The best secret we ever kept, I suppose wasn't Rose. There isn't an implant in your neck because we successfully ported its function into your brain stem itself, subdermally. Made it part of your nervous system. And of course, never activated it....never needed to, not that anyone was alive that knew how to transfer a body. And not even Henry knew. That's why you weren't going to change. What chance did you have?" Zhao started, looking to his side, standing by the lifeless body of Rose, eyes closed looking back at Skye. "But what if....we got to see what happens if we did?" The body to his side spasmed. [b]Soundtrack: [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onRk0sjSgFU]Radiohead- Everything In Its Right Place[/url] [/b] Skye suddenly convulsed. Dead man's switch from earlier. This had started the moment they walked into his office. Same system that Skye had to kill comms in her office when Rose attached, was the same one that tripped the switch in her head. She felt her mind pulse, the other body inside the bag open its eyes, before snapping back into her current one, colour back in. "No! Fuck you, no no no....what are you doing!?" Skye uttered, as Zhao shook his head. "It's already started. If Ebrima shoots me, that process ends. So play along. Helps when the host knows what's coming that you give into it." Zhao added, as Skye looked to him, then Ebrima, the rifle dropping out of her hands, as she leaned on the Cameroonian, exhaling hard, feeling her organs shut down, her mind start failing. "Ebrima....I'm....so sorry, you can't let......you can't....." Skye muttered, suddenly going limp and blacking out, and falling off Ebrima's shoulder entirely into the floor. [hr] [hider=Like The End] Skye screamed in the liquid as her consciousness reappeared, her vision blurry as eyes snapped wide, watching as her own self dropped dead, watching through the fluid filled plastic, Ebrima almost certainly wanting to put a round through him, but the movement in the bag a few seconds later likely stopping him. He wasn't watching death. He was watching the very thing they had been hunting all along, the very person they'd been coming after do what she did best, in his own team leader. He was watching her respawn. Skye convulsed, the neurons twitching and the bag's fragile grasp detecting a heartbeat, and with it, the bag split and let her drop the half a foot into the padded floor. Skye twitched involuntarily, her body free from sores, hurt, but like it had the most insane, pins and needles she'd ever experienced. It felt like she was struggling to breathe, struggling to even render, colour coming back and oxygen filling her lungs as she gasped, looking down, in absolute, ornate horror. She looked on, completely nude, covered in the same fluid. Coughing, spluttering, Skye crawled, coughing out more of the liquid from her lungs, looking up from the floor at Ebrima and Zhao like she was techno-Gollum. Peeling the pad off her neck, she looked at her hands, and was lost. There really weren't words she could use to describe the feeling, but as she sat up, clearing her eyes, none followed as Zhao looked to Ebrima, like he'd seen this before. "Orders are orders, Ebrima. All you have to do is just cuff me. Do what you joined Raven to do, clear your name, go back to whatever you want. Perhaps, even exact the revenge into the world that they did to your sister without your hands tied here. You saw the proof for yourself." Zhao smiled at him, putting his hands in front, knowing full well that in this moment, maybe so was he. And in a way, perhaps it was the ultimate test of his morality. Kill Zhao, there and then, and end the cycle, the last person left who could do this, perpetuate this? Then what, go against Oracle's orders, the only person between them and the wolves? Or spare him? NATO wanted this technology badly, but even within, was there any guarantee there wouldn't be another Rose? Or even another Skye to be specific right now, crawling, who had something to say about this? "Fuck Oracle, Ebrima, kill him! You fucking animal! Fuck all this, this can't ever be allowed to see the light of fucking day!" Skye yelped, her "first words" containing more Scottish slurred swears than perhaps a typical set would sound like. Just if anything clarified that Skye was actually in there, not Rose. She was convulsing, but the water from her eyes were replaced with tears, screaming out gutterally from her core, as Zhao yelled back. "Rose went against orders too. Isn't it strange you get to the same conclusions, Skye? I wonder, maybe there's a part of her inside of you still just like your twin? Maybe that's what we revealed." Zhao chuckled, shrugging, looking to Ebrima, then back at Skye. "Makes you not so different really now. Shame Rose doesn't know, because....if she had, I think she'd have lost her aspirations that Artemis gave her." Skye looked on in horror, not letting Zhao get that final word in. "No, fuck that, there's a difference between omnicide and putting your arse in the ground! You're no better, just taking opportunities to save your hide!" A naked Skye, missing scars, bruises was not one that Ebrima likely had on his "To See" list today, but her yelling back in response was definitely in character, fumbling and crawling, still getting used to the muscles that were as if they were unused. Words were spluttered, almost garbled, but uneqestionably, this was the Skye that Ebrima had known. "Your father outdid himself with you. That was why he was so proud, I think, realised there and then that Rose was always a tool, but you he....gave a chance to. I guess you are lucky enough I showed you this. Out of the kindness of my heart....because I have some respect for Ian's achievement. Enough to realise what happens next, and that without me, all of your friends are all good as dead. And greatness can't die. Not when you've already killed everyone in my army to get here. What does that really make any of you? Better?" Zhao chuckled, looking to Ebrima. "The transfer server is localised. So if you're really going to put that bullet in me, Boaro, I recommend you put one in her. Maybe they'll spare you if you want none of this when it all comes out, you might still get to walk away when it's done. You're a professional, after all. Attachment, feelings, they get you killed in this business. So...stick to the plan, let's not be stupid, take me away, and you can go on your merry way, and sort out Rose, maybe Skye gets to live too." Zhao added. This was a rather complex decision that added to the options. And in that moment, as much as Skye wanted to grab the rifle off her old body, she was barely able to crawl, let alone move while she adjusted to this, she knew Ebrima would either put a bullet in him, or a bullet in them both, or follow Oracle's order. And if the latter happened....Skye wasn't quite sure what that meant. No, she couldn't be like Rose....could she? This couldn't happen. And absolutely nothing made any sense, apart from the fact of the matter, which was she was looking at the exo-wearing soldier of Skye Rosalind Lyons, back from another body. [/hider] [/hider]