FSE

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Location: Old Arpeggio Ruins.

Time: 22:15pm.

Year: 2180, March 10th.

The Cradle had stopped right next to where we needed to go. It was clear to see that a building had actually fallen over, not collapsed. The roof had broken through the large, flooded tunnel, and provided as an entrance into the ruins of Old Arpeggio. Elise stepped off first, checking that the area was all clear. I followed behind her as she scanned the area; she was in charge of keeping the area clear, whilst I was in charge of handling proper equipment. We were both equipped with a crowbar as well incase we needed to climb or get some stable footing.

We took Epitaph with us of course; he was tucked inside my clothes, where it would least get damaged. We left The Cradle where it was, tying it to the side of the tunnel and dropping a heavy anchor into the flooded part of the tunnel; we even threw the ladder back up for extra measures so no one would be able to get onto it; at least, not without it being extremely hard for them.

Elise made a quick sprint up to the sideways building, climbing through a large window but stumbling once she landed. I wasn't surprised; it would be hard for anyone to be able to move through a building that was turned on its side. Elise finally got her footing and waved me inside. I did so obediently and made a quick jog over to the window, tossing my right leg over, then my left, then the rest of my body. I didn't lose my footing like Elise, but I was still able to stumble a little around the room.

I turned my head and looked all around the room. It looked like an average apartment with a few pieces of shoddy furniture, torn up green wallpaper, and simple walls composed of wood and concrete. I also saw that the door frames were missing the actual doors, but still looked rather stable; in fact, most of the building looked as if it was stable, which was surprising considering what it had been through. For all we new, there could be one or two more buildings piled on top of this one, which motivated me to keep moving. The last thing I needed was a building to collapse on top of me.

"We should keep moving." I said worryingly, darting my eyes around the room; "We'll be sitting ducks in here for Rosie; or worse..."

"Sure thing." Elise replied bluntly, lifting her gun up. "I've heard rumors that there are mutants in the wastelands; so keep your gun loaded."

"What could they live off?" I asked, pulling out my small pistol. "You don't think they eat...each other...do you?"

"I don't know." Elise said, advancing to the door that was turned sideways; she lifted her left side up, then her right side, and crouched to get through the door; "But I'm not going to stand around and find out."

I had to agree with her; some questions were best left unanswered, if only to keep one from panicking. I followed a rough meter behind her, stepping through the turned over door and looking back repeatedly to make sure that we weren't going to get ambushed by anyone; or anything. We had come out at a staircase; to make matters worse, the stairs were turned sideways; this made it hard to tell what way we would actually be going.

"If we entered on the top floors." I began, staring at the steps; "That means we need to go downstairs, right?"

"Right." Elise said quickly, looking down the stairwells that were flooded with pieces of broken concrete. "Follow me."

I did as I was told, and followed rather close behind Elise, constantly turning around and looking back to check for ambushes; I even lost my footing a few times in the process. I kept hearing a few crumbling noises behind me, which I eventually figured were just a few pieces of concrete falling off. Even so, it just forced me to hold my pistol tighter, and start to rub the trigger slowly. It was one thing to fight something, but when that 'something' messed with your head, everything goes to hell.

I immediately stopped thinking when I bumped into Elise's back; she had stopped for some reason. I stepped to the side to get a better look at what she stopped for. It was a body! It looked like a small Wolf, just curled up on the ground; it had no fur, and revealed the light grey flesh underneath. It wasn't facing us, so we couldn't tell if it was actually alive or dead; but by the color of its flesh, it was clear enough to see the Wolf's situation. Elise sighed and backed up against the wall, avoiding the body; I copied her, but looked back at the body.

I could swear I saw its fingers start to twitch and move slowly...

I pushed the thought out of my head; situations like this were bound to mess with someone's head. I just figured that it was shock that caused me to see things. I carried on with Elise and eventually came out in a place that I never expected to see. It seemed like a dream, or more of a nightmare.

We had come out at the base of the building, which revealed an extremely large opening; it actually looked like we had come out in the city. I looked up and saw that the place was layered around the edges with rocks piled up to form a low wall; like the city had fallen and made a dent in the ground. The sky was dim and dark green, showing almost no light at all. We both had to pull out a floodlight and flashlight each to illuminate the way; not that there was much to see other than torn up vehicles, large, cracked pieces of concrete, embers and skeletons all over the place.

"So where do we start?" Elise asked sadly. "There are too many buildings around. We'd better consult Epitaph."

I sighed and unzipped my jumpsuit, revealing a light grey shirt underneath. I plucked the small cube and screwdriver from my inside pocket and handed them over to Elise, who quickly cracked it open, revealing the red marble and grey screen again.

"Epitaph, can you find Rosie?" Elise asked, placing the cube down carefully on a large block of concrete and raising her rifle. It was clear that she wanted me to look at the map while she covered us. The map started to fade in as I stared at it hard, trying to find out where we were, and what was where.

After looking at the map for a few minutes, I finally found out where we were, but not where Rosie was. There were no indications or marks anywhere. Though I did find hundreds of blue dots around the whole map; I wondered what they were; maybe there was more than just Rosie in this place.

"Epitaph; what are those blue dots?" I asked, turning to Elise and noticing that she wasn't actually watching our backs. She had walked up to listen in.

"These blue dots represent living organics." Epitaph explained, rotating the map slightly. "There are currently two-hundred-and-six organics in this building, including you two."

"That's of no use if Rosie isn't organic." Elise growled, tapping her rifle with her right hand. "Can you find anything mechanical; possibly still functioning?"

Epitaph didn't reply, but instead started to alter the map, making multiple red dots appear on the map. There must have been at least six of them, separated across the whole city and in separate buildings.

I thought to myself; 'This would take a while'.

"We'll head to that one." Elise said sternly, pointing at the dot closest to where we were. "We'll try and figure out what to do from-."

Elise instantly stopped, letting out a quiet gasp. I started to tense up and feel a cold sensation run through my body. We had both obviously heard something. It sounded like a mixture of noises that could only be made by something living. It was a kind of low growling sound, mixed in with low screeching and squelching footsteps. We both raise our weapons and backed up against the concrete block. I closed the black cube containing Epitaph and put it back in my inside pocket, constantly staring into the darkness. A figure started to come out of the shadows.

The figure looked exactly like the Wolf that we had saw before. It had solid grey skin, and its chest had a few tangled patches of fur still attached to it. Its eyes were worse; they were wide open and bulging in fear, and were completely red. It didn't look like a Wolf anymore. It looked like something out of a nightmare. My pistol was shaking in my hands, but Elise's hands stayed firm and tough.

"Hold it!" Elise called out to the figure, which instantly stopped. "Can you understand me? Who are you? Are there others around here?"

As Elise asked the questions, the figure started to walk towards us again in a sluggish pace. Elise was about to tell her to stop again, but before she could, the little Wolf had let out a shriek of anguish and torture, making my ears ring and start to hurt my head. Elise shouted a curse which I couldn't really hear, and unleashed a hail of bullets in the direction of the other Wolf.

The Wolf had taken a whole spray of bullets, and was thrown to the floor, bleeding out a kind of dark green ooze that started to bubble slightly and stick to the floor like glue. Everything went silent for five seconds, then more shrieking, growling, screeching and squelching footsteps had steeled in. I started to whimper a little, and breathed as quietly as I could. Elise started to scowl and run back to the building we had come out of. I quickly followed her and jumped over the Wolf's body, being careful not to touch the blood. From what I could tell, it acted like some kind of glue.

We both took cover behind a large section of rubble, and pointed our guns out into the open, watching the figures slowly come out of the darkness; they almost looked completely the same, only varying in size. Some were almost half my size, whilst others were almost towering above me; but they all shared the same grey flesh and red eyes. I also noticed that their hands looked as if their claws had been sharpened to cut through almost anything, which was the real threat.

"So this is what happens when you get irradiated." I muttered to Elise, turning to her at the same time that she turned to me; "These mutants must have deteriorated over the years. I heard that they were at least two times the size of a Dragon."

"That just makes it easier for us, then." Elise growled, twisting out of cover and unleashing more shots from her large rifle, sending more mutated figures to the ground, and covering the floor with more dark green blood.

I followed her lead and twisted out of cover with her, holding my pistol up to my face to get an accurate shot. For every three mutants that Elise took down, I took down one with a single shot to the kneecaps or head if I was lucky; but no matter how many we took down, more had been replaced. At least sixty shots could fit into my magazine, though, so I was fine for ammunition; Elise, on the other hand, was down to just three more clips out of six that she carried. She slung her rifle back and pulled out a bulky pistol from her leg-strap to conserve her ammunition. I almost forgot that we still had Rosie to deal with.

"Elise, let's go!" I shouted to her, tugging on her left arm slightly. The mutants were starting to run lazily with their arms either slouching or arced in the air.

I kept firing back as we both ran out of cover, but not back into the building. Instead, we ran to the side of the swarms and continued over to an upright but shorter building. It was a long stretch, and we ended up being ambushed more than a few times, slowing down our progress as we cleared out a path again and again. Eventually, we arrived at the double doors and forced them open, slamming them behind us and jamming it with my crowbar.

"That should hole them for a few minutes." Elise panted, leaning back against the door and dropping to the floor. I ignored her for a few seconds and had a look around the room. It looked like we had arrived in an office building, and we were at the reception desk.

I walked up to the desk and looked around for any kind of security devices like camera monitors that could be of any use; but the only monitors that I could see were pitch black, broken or not working at all. There weren't even any security weapons or alarms behind the desk. Though I did notice something; I immediately stopped and walked up to one end of the desk, staring into a small glass ashtray, and at what looked like a dog-tag.

"What have you found?" I heard Elise ask as she got up. I stayed silent and picked up the tag, taking a long hard look at it. I muttered what the tag had written into it:

"Kobalt Kaiken; Hellfire 172..."