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Ryu sent 6 guys on a helo to the plant, which didn't stick around as there was no place for him to land, not safely anyway. They were equipped for a long outing and had brought some items with them that I'd wanted to see for a while.

"Skyline", the leader of the soldiers said handing me a box with "50 cartridges .950 Tyrannosaurus Magnum" written on it, "Ryu said you might need these."

"Yes, very much", I said taking the box, "Mike, I want my cannon back."

"Take it" Mike said handing me the High-Power and all it's ammo back, "It's heavy as a bitch anyway."

I checked the chambers to see if it was loaded, which it was. I slung it over my back and then looked over at Ryan.

"Got any idea where these open pumps are?", I asked.

"Sort of", Ryan said holding up a thumb drive, "got a PDA?"

"Always", I said tossing him the one Tyler had built me. He plugged in the flash drive, navigated a few screens and then handed it back to me, "you've got about 30 minutes to get across town. You should end up back at the church if you hurry, but if you don't find some place to hunker down for the night because after dark is when those nasty fucking mutant zombies come out."

"7 feet tall? Chitin armor growths and mandible jaws?", Chy asked.

"You know what I'm talking about?"

"They cost Skyline his arms", Chy said nodding at me, "I'm familiar with them. Easy enough to kill if you get the first shot off."

"Problem is that never happens", the man said, "time's running out. You guys should get going, we're gonna stay here for the night and then head back in the morning, if you get there before us, let a man in a white shirt and green cargo pants know we're bringing his tools back."

"Good", I said, "saves me the trouble of going myself. Let's move guys."

According to the map on my PDA, the hydrants were almost inline, however, there was a lot of crap between us and them. According to the map there was a horde of zombies and lots of abandoned barricades and camps along the route. If we wanted to get this done before night fall, we were gonna need ordinance, and the High-Power wasn't going to cut it.

"Ross", I said getting on my radio, "Ross, it's skyline, do you copy?"

"Yeah I read you Sky", he said, "what's up."

"Get ready to provide support for us", I said, "lots of shit between us and what we have to do to shut down the leaks so the plant can restart."

'Confirmed", Ross said, "Fire Support inbound, stand by."

"Status on fire support?", Jacob asked.

"Whenever Ross is ready", I said, "for now, let's push forward, first hydrant shouldn't be too far from here."

So, moving as quietly as we could through the hordes of zombies that inhabited the street, relying on melee attacks and hope that we wouldn't be overwhelmed and have to go loud, we arrived at the first hydrant, but quickly realized that we didn't have the equipment to turn it off. At this one at least, the top bolt was off and the pressure of the water that was erupting from the hydrant would probably destroy the metal on my arms.

"It's always something", Alcatraz sighed, "let's look around and see if we can find it. Hopefully it wasn't shot off into space."

We must have wasted ten minutes looking for that stupid fucking nut before Alcatraz found it on a picnic table about 40 feet away from the hydrant.

"Found it", he shouted running it over to me.

"How the hell am I supposed to screw this thing back on here? Ryan, we ran into a problem here.", I said getting on the radio.

"What's the problem?", He asked.

"The top nut is missing off this hydrant and we have no way to screw it back on."

"You should be able to screw it back in with the hydraulics in your arms", He said.

"You sure about that?", I asked, "the jet spewing from the tip of this thing looks like it would take my arm off."

"That's what she said", Mike said from the end of the alley way.

"Fuck off and die Mike", Jacob said.

"Hey Jacob", Mike replied back, "your a fuckin' dick."

"You would know pop spice", Jacob sneered, flipping him off.

"Ladies!", I barked, "shut up a little okay?"

"The pressure in these hydrants always looks worse than it is", Ryan said, "I've screwed the things back on with just my hands before."

"If this doesn't work, I'm gonna come back and kill you", I growled as I jammed the screw down on the tip of the hydrant, finding out rather quickly that the pressure wasn't anywhere near as bad as it looked. I locked the screw in as tightly as I could and then shook the water off my now soaked uniform.

"Well at least it's hot out", I said.

Chy laughed, "I'll bet that just got heavy."

"And the worst part is we got four more to go", I said, "Ryan, Skyline, hydrant's sealed off. Confirm?"

"I see it" Ryan said, "pressure's up about 10 percent in the plant, close off those other four and we should be able to restart."

"Rodger that", I said, "by the way, is the map you gave me LiVE Sat?"

"Yeah", Ryan said.

"Do you have a connection to it?", I asked.

"Yes, why?"

"We have artillery in support, can you sync your connection to my DNA chip so I can patch it through to our Abrams?"

"Umm....Maybe, stand by."

I waited several seconds before a "connection request", appeared in front of me, hovering in the upper right left hand corner of my vision, which was rather surprising.

"Alcatraz?", I said looking over at him, "can DNA chips project things onto your vision?"

He nodded, "yeah, that's all chip, nothing in your eyes."

"Good", I said tapping on the Icon, which brought up a dialog box. "Lk332Ew is requesting permission to access HUD" followed by an Allow, Deny icon. I tapped the allow Icon and he box disappeared, replaced by a mini map and a set of white text. "Swipe from upper left corner to bring up wide area mapping"

"Okay", I said playing around with the full scale map. It showed a radius spanning about 4 miles in each direction, in full color and great detail and keyed off movement and heat signature's to display the locations of humans and ghouls in the area, and there were plenty of both. Hell, I could even see myself moving my arms to inspect the map, on the map, "I'm growing fond of this chip, this is pretty cool."

"Isn't it?", Alcatraz said getting on his coms, "Ross, we've managed to get our hands on the feed from a LiVE sat drone via Skyline's DNA chip, is there any way we can route it to the tank's feed?"

"No", Ross said, "the tanks computer's are too outdated for a patched feed directly from your chips, but calling out exact chords for targets would work perfectly."

"Rodger that", I said, "how much ammunition you got for the big gun?"

"For the main gun, 35 rounds, for the artillery piece, 10", Ross said."

"That might complicate things", I sighed, "standby for firing control."

"Rog, Warpig out."

I closed the map, "we've got ten shots of artillery, let's make them count. The horde of ghouls I saw on the map seems to have mostly spread out, but there's still a good bit between us and them following the path of least resistance, let's cut through the alley way up ahead, little longer to travel, but should save us the ammo and headache of chewing through a horde."

"Lead the way", Mike said.

With my Katana in one hand and the Automag in the other, I started down the alley way, which was relatively quiet itself, but the moaning of the horde carried through the building's, which made my heart beat fast.

"There must be hundreds of them", Mike sighed, you could tell he was on edge.

"Just stay quiet", I said, "try not to attract attention."

The alley way ended in a dead end, but according to the satellite map, and the window right next to me, the building adjacent to us let out behind the horde on a down hill street which was very close to the hydrant. The problem was, the Hydrant was in the middle of a Farmer's market that had been turned into a gang barricade with minimal entrances, most of which were guarded.

"Crap", I sighed.

"What?", Jacob asked.

"Murphy's law", I sighed, "we passed the horde up, but the Hydrant is right in the middle of gang territory. I already knew one of the Hydrant's was in the middle of a gang camp, but I had no idea how well guarded it is. Let's cut through this building and get eyes on."

Mike picked the lock on the door and let us in. The building inside was in pretty decent shape, appearing to be a cafe and at first appeared empty, but the broad's creaking above us gave away the presence of looters.

"No wonder the door was locked", Mike whispered.

"Mike, Alcatraz, deal with it", I ordered.

"Rog", Alcatraz said as he and mike started up the stairs. Two minutes were followed by a light scuffle and then Alcatraz coming back downstairs, he gave us a hand motion to come up. Chy and Tyler followed me up to the second story, which was an apartment, belonging to the previous person to run the cafe by my guess.

"There's a fire escape out a window at the end of the hallway that leads out onto the roof with a nice overlook of the bandit camp", Alcatraz said, "Chy, you up for a co sniper?"

"Always", Chy said.

"We'll keep you covered from the roof", Alcatraz said grabbing his 20 off his back and following Chy up to the roof.

"The rest of you are with me", I said, "if you've got suppressors, use them, I want to attract as little attention as possible."

The guys nodded to me and everyone but Allen screwed the long black cans to the ends of their guns. Allen's 240 couldn't be suppressed, so he simply switched to his secondary, an Mp7 with an Acog scope.

"Alcatraz", I asked, "are you and Chy in position?"

"Rodger", Chy said, "you guys have a narrow path of entry. From the house to a back entrance into the gang fort is a 25 meter dash. If you wind around the cars and keep close to the building on the left you'll be okay, there's only one guard at the entrance and his back is turned, for now at least."

"Got ya", I said as I creaked the door open. Chy was pointing the laser on her Barrett at the spot in question. I could see the beam pretty clearly and I had to force myself to remember that humans couldn't see laser light unaided.

"Keep close to me", I said to my friends.

I crouch walked through the stalled cars, keeping myself as low to the ground as I could without going prone. On the other side of the street was about ten feet of open space between us and the alley way where Chy was shining the laser and there were several zombies keeping an eye on it.

"Fuck", I whispered ducking behind the car, "There's 4 zombies out there. To far away to get close, but even a suppressed gunshot will sound the alarm for everyone."

"Options?", Allen asked.

I looked down at my hand and then peered out.

"Don't try it", Alcatraz said, "the Sonic Weapon doesn't work on zombies, I already tried while you were laid up."

"I can't use the Predator without getting one of the Zombies attention, so unless someone's got a Nanotech gun we're fucking out of luck", I said.

"Your Gene Mods", Chy said, "have you tried them since you were augmented?"

"No", I said, "I wanted to test them out in the....actually, Chy, get Sarah on the line."

"Standby", Chy said. Seconds later, Sarah was on the line.

"What's up Skyline?"

"I don't have time for banter so we need to keep it short", I said, "will your hornet stuff work with my cybernetic limbs?"

She paused, I could almost hear her thinking in the background.

"Maybe", she said, "your arms have bone and living tissue inside them for sanitary and compatibility reasons, so it's possible."

"Thanks", I said hanging up.

I looked down at my arm again and thought to myself, "hornets, I need some." The familiar tingle and crawling feeling that I got when I used the hornet's previously returned, though this time it was far more pronounced. I could feel each wasp taking each individual step until out from one vent on my wrist and a few cracks in the metal along the length of my forearm crawled some badass looking Japanese Giant Hornets. They retained the same black and red coloration as the Hornet's I'd had previously, however, they were much larger, looked a whole lot stronger and angrier and their eyes were nothing short of black death pits.

"You guys got an upgrade", I thought to myself, "the four closest Zombies, Eat."

The hornets flew from my cybernetics in the dozens, the ghouls payed them no mind as they crawled into their heads from any hole they were small enough to crawl into. Not something I was willing to use against human attackers, especially after what I did to those three Juggernauts back at the lab. The Hornets dropped the zombies where they stood and returned to me.

"Your clear", Chy said, "go before more show up."

I nodded to my friends and we darted into the alley way as I got back on the line to Sarah.

"Hey Sarah", I said, "your hornets have upgraded."

"What do you mean?", she asked.

"They got all big and shit", Allen said, "looked more like Firefly drones than Hornets."

"It might be your body and the gene mods rewriting themselves to compensate for the augmentations", Sarah said, "it hasn't happened on anyone I knew that was augmented, but there are a few dozen cases I know off, come see me when you guys get back to the hotel, I wanna look you over."

"Rodger", I said, "let's move."

The others followed me as we sprinted into the alley way between the farmers market and the buildings, from where we were, I could peer over the wall and count the gang members inside the makeshift fort, and we were in for a hell of a gunfight.

"Ak-47s, STG44s, Power armor and Mac-11s", I sighed, "shit, the gang war in this town must have been horrific."

"Did you just say STG-44's?", Chy asked quickly.

I ducked back down, "yeah, among other things, look like replica sport rifles, what's the point?"

Chy peered over the wall for about a minute or so, ducking down on occasion to avoid being seen. When she popped back down, I could hear an infinite amount of questions swirling around inside her mind.

"Those are Bespinite Army issue Mp-45's", Chy said, "they would have had to have attacked an infantry team to get them."

I glanced at the others, then back at her, "do you think that your ship might still be in orbit?"

"Probably", Chy said, "let's kick this off, leave one alive, we need to know where they got those guns from."

I nodded and pulled the Hi-power off my back. I peeked above the wall, setting the rifle on the edge and putting the cross hairs on the Torso of the power armor unit at the exact same time he decided to turn around.

"HEY!", he shouted as he drew a laser pistol, "WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU!?"

"Death", I answered in a normal voice as I let the High-Power ring for the first time in quite a while. Just as the first time I fired it back in the lab, I wasn't prepared for the the recoil and it knocked me flat on my back. Chy pulled me up as Mike and the others climbed over the wall and opened up on the gang members.

"That looks like one hell of a rifle", Chy smiled at me.

I grinned as I caught my breath, "if only you knew how many times it's saved our lives."

I stowed the high-power and grabbed my FAL as Chy and I climbed over the wall and joined the others. The Gangsters were still your typical thugs, despite their firepower. They were shooting their Mac-11's sideways and magazine dumping their rifles at us, while we were slowly picking each one off through the thin food stands and overturned metal tables that they were using as cover. Despite bad tactics, they were heavily armed and there were a lot of them, which forced us to keep our heads down.

"I wish I had a grenade", Allen sighed as he ducked behind a pile of cinder blocks, "I can't step out to shoot at them without getting my head blown off, and I can't get a good enough angle on them from my position."

"Here", I shouted tossing him one of my frags, "catch this."

Allen reached out to catch the grenade at about the same time a gangster decided to send a round that way, which hit Allen's hand and turned into a piece of hamburger. Allen seemed too surprised at first to beable to comprehend what was going on, but as his sense returned, I saw his face twist in pain as he rolled onto his back, reaching into his vest for his medical kit.

"Lucky shot bro", he gasped, trying to keep from screaming like a little kid who'd just been told no candy on his birthday.

"Allen got hit!", Mike shouted, "Alcatraz, Tyler cover me!"

"You're covered!", Alcatraz said boost jumping over the market stand he was hiding behind, and taking a pot shot at a few of the gang members in mid air before using his Exo to plant his feet back on the ground. He then used the thruster to slide into cover behind an old car.

"Flash bang going out!", Alcatraz shouted. He threw the small silver canister over the car and into the mass of gangster's continuing to spray us with automatic fire, which decreased to almost nothing once the canister went off. Mike used the opening to bolt for Allen while, Chy, Alcatraz, Tyler and myself used it to assault the gangster's positions.

"Go", I said sliding out from cover and making a dash towards the positions, Chy behind me and Alcatraz and Tyler to my left. They killed four of them hiding behind a scrapped truck and vending machine on that side while Chy and I bumped off three of them that were using a fruit stand as cover. At the end of the market place, reinforcements had now shown up, greeting us with two flying frags. One of them went right over the fence, doing no harm to anyone, but the second landed right beside the pile of cinder blocks where Allen and Mike were hiding.

"GUYS GET OUT OF THERE!", Alcatraz shouted running back towards them, "GRENADE!"

Alcatraz had barely closed half the distance when I saw Allen jump on the grenade, a mere half a second later, the slow motion set in as the frag went off and launched him an easy five feet in the air in a cloud of smoke and a small orange fireball. When Allen landed, he laid there, motionless. Alcatraz stopped dead in his tracks and I swear I heard the computer in his brain click off for a second as his brain overloaded it with anger and grief. I turned around to face the reinforcements who had now come over the wall in Ryu's stolen uniforms with M240 Bravos and a Juggernaut in tow, one hand was full of angry hornets, the other, dripping liquid nitrogen. I gave no consideration for my FAL as I simply dropped it and let the elements fly at my enemies. The hornets targeted the Juggernaut while I sprayed the LN at the grunts with the Bravos. The two guys with bravo's froze up, becoming too clod to move, while the Juggernaut was screaming in pain, trying to get his armor off and swat at the hornets eating him from the inside out. I pulled the sword off my back as the two grunts fought their own freezing blood and tissue to try to pull their sidearms on me on account of having lost their LMG's when they were hit by the LN.

"Do you know who we are?", one of the gang members chattered.

"I don't care", I hissed, "no one fucks with my family."

His neck gave no fight against the sharp edges of the Katana, neither did that of his friends and the Jug was already dead by the time I got around to him. I sheathed my sword and walked back over to Mike and Allen, who was miraculously still breathing and smiling at that, he was clearly in a lot of pain though and was fighting to stay conscious.

"Thank god for cheap ass grenades", Allen said, "nothing even came through my plate." he spit up blood, "think I might have a broken rib though and I'm missing a piece of my tongue."

"Ouch", I said, "you want morphine?"

"Nah", Allen said, "It hurts, but I' can still walk, should beable to use my handgun."

"I'll foot the Bravo then", Alcatraz said, "but what about your hand? The thing looks shot."

Allen looked down at his hand, which was split nearly in half, but still firmly attached to his wrist and it appeared that he still had a little control over his fingers because the twitching going on didn't seem to be a result of the injury.

"On second thought", Allen said gritting his teeth, "that Morphine might be nice."

I grinned and pulled the syringe out of my kit, giving him the shot in his arm so hopefully it would go to his hand first. Mike helped him to his feet while Alcatraz grabbed his 240 and went to close the hydrant as I got on the radio to Sarah.

"Sarah", I said, 'Skyline, you read me?"

"Yeah", she said setting something down in the background, "you sound stressed, something happen?"

"Allen went and got himself fucked up like a dumbass", I said, "caught a bullet in his hand and then jumped on a cheap frag grenade which broke a few ribs when it went off."

"And after that he's still breathing?", Sarah asked, sounding rather surprised.

"For now", I said, "I wanna make sure he stays that way so can you have Ryu sent a Helo to the church to pick him up?"

"No need", Ryu said on another end, "I'll dispatch one immediately. You will have to hurry if you are to make the church before night fall, there isn't time to shut off the remaining hydrant and get back to the church."

I sighed, "Ryu, before I make my decision, what is the situation like there?"

Ryu sighed in return, "not great. Sanitation in the infirmary has taken a hit. Without water to clean, doctors tell me that it is only a matter of time before they are no longer able to treat Agent 41, never mind the fact that things are beginning to stink due to the heat, now having said that, I believe our situation will hold for the night, seek shelter Skyline, we're no good to each other if one of us is dead."

I sighed, "Contact Mother Angelica and tell here we will be returning to the church shortly."

"Understood", Ryu said.

On that note, my team and I, rather reluctantly, retreated from our objectives. Magellan took point, connecting to LiVE sat via some equipment in his head and path found for us, getting us back to the church just before sundown. The helo was there waiting for us. The crew took Allen and handed off the radio gear to us. Chy and the others took it inside to set up while I went down to the tank with Magellan to talk to Steven

"I'd hopped we'd be doing some shooting", Steven said, "oh well, there's always tomorrow."

"You'll get your chance", I grinned, "you guys coming inside for the night?"

"Nah", He said, "we're gonna camp in the tank. It'll be a little cramped, but it's the safest place around. No zombie no matter how strong could scrape, claw, or scratch it's way through Chobam armor."

"Fair enough", I said, "just maintain radio contact."

"Of course", Steven said, "see you in the morning."

I nodded and Magellan and I began walking up the stairs to the church.

Magellan sighed.

"What have you got on your mind?", I asked.

"We have really stepped in it this time Skyline", he said, "undead, gang wars, mutants and any manner of crap that could go wrong has gong wrong."

"Yeah but look who we got to meet", I shrugged, "gotta find the silver lining's I guess."

Magellan breathed an annoyed sigh, "why don't you ever listen to me?"

"I listen to you all the time", I said, "yeah, you warned me the job was dirty, I didn't listen, guilty as charged, but you know as well as I do that this became personal the minute that door at the lab locked, weather we knew it or not. It was personal for you the minute Martin tried to kill you."

Magellan sighed again, maybe you're right."

"I am", I said, "now come on, let's get inside."