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I'm not sure how long I spent on that floor, but when I woke up, it was to the sound of gun fire a little ways down the hall. Though my brain felt like it was on fire and moving made me feel like I would throw up, I picked myself up anyway. I had no idea what Martin was planing to do next, nor did I have any idea why he spared me, all I knew was that I'm sure the latter directly related to the former. What I did know was that I needed to stop him as soon as possible. With a right hand full of hornets and my left an icy club, I slunk out of the room, moving as quietly and quickly as I could. I was tempted to move away from the gunfire, but at the same time, even if I used my psychical abilities to their full extent, there were still quite a few things in this lab that would have no problem tearing me to shreds, which was why I needed to find a rifle, soon.

The closer I got to the end of the hallway, the louder the gunfire got and the more audible a few voices became.

"Target is braking form cover", Someone shouted, "shoot him!"

"I can't get a shot he's moving too fast!", Another person shouted.

I leaned up against the wall and peered around the corner. I could see five people in torn clothes armed with M4 assault rifles hiding behind some sand bags. On the other end of the sand bags, was Alcatraz. He was wearing a small plate carrier and some armor pieces that looked like they were designed to fit over his Exo. He had a M16 MWS with an under mounted grenade launcher, Aimpoint X3 sight a Magpul magazine in it. For the time being, he didn't see me, and neither did they. Lowering myself to the ground, I slunk around the corner, hiding behind the sandbag wall close enough that I could reach over and grab at them without them knowing I was there. Slowly, I rose up to my full 7 feet, garnering the attention of the five humans, who I was sure pissed themselves at the sight of me. I quickly reached out and grabbed two of the humans by their heads, sinking my claws into their heads and quickly snapping their necks. The final three raised their weapons to fire at me. Alcatraz shot down two of them as I jumped over the sand bag and pounced on the final man, who began frantically squirming and struggling, but was helpless against my grip. I opened my jaws wide and clamped down on his head, biting through his skull and tearing his brain to pieces with a savage yank, the mans blood spilled out from the crater like water from a geyser as I spit out the bloody meat. I stood up and looked at Alcatraz, whose face was now white. I could also see that he had a duffle bag on his back.

"Holy hell", he said, "that was....needlessly graphic."

"Sorry", I said, "I had to use what I had, so it was either teeth or claws."

'You didn't have to eat the guy", Alcatraz said pulling the duffle off his back and tossing at me. When I caught it, it just about knocked me on my back.

"What you got in this thing?", I asked, "a small planet?"

"I looked through a storage room", Alcatraz said, "all your stuff is in there."

I set the bag down and unzipped it, finding everything I had arrived in the lab with. As I started to get dressed, I looked up at Al.

"How long you been carrying this around?", I asked.

He shrugged, "couple of hours. My clock is telling me 5, but it feels like longer."

"Okay", I said as I pulled my boots on, "how long has it been since we fought the drill?"

"4 weeks five days 21 hours and thirty seconds", Alcatraz said.

I sighed as I slipped my vest on, "wow, was I really out for that long?"

"I guess", Alcatraz said, "I've tried contacting James and the others a few times, but the signal just seems to bounce off the walls in this place."

"Do you know where we are?", I asked checking the magazine in my FAL.

"The...", he paused, "the lab...I think."

"You think?", I asked.

"Yes", he answered, "but if this is the lab, it's no part of the lab I've ever seen, it's not even a part CHDISK knows about. And if this is the lab, where did those guys come from? There certainly not scientists."

"How can CHDISK not know about a part of the lab?", I asked as I inspected the bodies, taking 14 rounds of .50 action, a granola bar and a magazine for my FAL, which was empty. Alcatraz was right, they weren't scientists, but they weren't guards or synthetics either, they had to have come from somewhere else.

Alcatraz shrugged, "maybe it was built later and never programmed into the system, maybe the data got erased, maybe were not even in the lab anymore."

"If were not in the lab", I said, "we need to get back there, quickly."

"I wouldn't know where to start with that", Alcatraz said, "We'd have to find our way out of here first."

"Where did you come to?", I asked.

"A couple floors up", he said.

"Let's go back the way you came and go from there", I said.

Alcatraz nodded and started back up the hallway. I followed him for about what I would guess was 300 feet before he took a right turn and started down another long hallway that was lined with doors, some of them were ajar and others were closed.

"We should search these rooms Al", I said.

"Don't bother", Alcatraz said, "there doors to no where."

"Bullshit", I said throwing one open, finding that it was in fact, not bullshit, they were just doors in the wall that went to no where.

"The fuck?", I asked, "kind of crap is this?"

"Every single door I've tried is like that", Alcatraz said, "except for that one where I found your gear and my Exo."

I sighed, "if every door is like that then I'm willing to bet were in some kind of maze."

"I doubt it", Alcatraz said, "Most of the area seems pretty straight forward, plus, those people were covered in dirt and were sweaty, they had to have come from outside."

"How?", I asked, "and why? The lab is infested with muties, who would risk their life and joining their ranks for a couple hundred dollars of salvage?"

Alcatraz shrugged as we turned another corner and came to a stairwell. He opened the door and I stepped inside, peering up the stairs as far as I could see, I didn't see or smell anyone, wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

"This should take us to the top floor", Alcatraz said.

"Should?", I asked.

"I just woke up a few hours ago", Alcatraz said, "I've been looking for you and the others, I haven't exactly had time to reconnoiter the area."

"Sounds like recon is all you've been doing", I said as he started up the stairs, while I chose to free climb via the railings, not only was it faster, it was actually a bit of a relief.

"Use the stairs like a normal person", Alcatraz said.

"I find two things wrong with that statement", I said.

"Yeah, yeah", he sighed, "not human."

"Neither are you", I said, "at least not anymore, now you got that whole Call of Duty Advanced Warfare meets Fallout 4 thing going on."

"Stop it", Alcatraz said grimly.

"Relax", I sighed, "is joke, why you no laugh at the funnies?"

"Shut up Skyline", Alcatraz said, "I'm not in the mood for your jokes. A crazy man just dragged us off to god knows where, has done god knows what with James, Tyler, Allen, Matt, Sarah and Jacob, killed off the entire solar system with Parasitical Agents and probably intending to kill more people, and your trying to make jokes?"

"Knowing full well what's actually about to happen?", I asked, "yes, I am going to fucking make jokes because I need something to keep my mood light so I don't turn Primal. Deal with it."

"What are you talking about?", Alcatraz asked stopping where he was, "what do you mean, what's actually about to happen? I don't like that word in there."

I came to a stop turning myself around and perching on the railing like a gargoyle.

"Martin told me everything he intends to do", I sighed, "he's not going to kill the solar system off, he's going to control them."

"Say what?", Alcatraz asked.

"The missles Martin launched don't contain Chemical 240 or Red Star", I sighed, "they contain Agent 41 and Strain 2 Red Star."

"I'll just go ahead and repeat myself", Alcatraz said, "what?"

"Strain 2 Red Star weakens it's host", I said, "Doesn't kill. Then along comes Agent 41, rips their DNA apart like a rotten dish rag and mutates them into a Xeno/Human Hybrid that Martin deemed to be "perfect". Once he has all of the Star System under control, he'll move on to the rest of Bogon. And since were on the edge of a massive black hole, only people like me will be stupid enough to respond to distress signals. My guess is that if Martin goes unchecked, by the time the Confederate Government gets hold of what Martin's been doing, the spread of Agent 41 will be so far reaching that there will be nothing anyone can do to stop it....short of using Anti-Matter IPBM's to target infected planets, but even then, how can you stop every ship with an infected passenger?"

Alcatraz sighed, "you can't."

Neither of us spoke for a long time after that.

"What have we gotten ourselves into?", Alcatraz asked.

I sighed, "a pit of boiling lava I'm not sure we can climb out of before it incinerates us."

We started to move forward again as Alcatraz answered, "yeah...no shit."

We stayed silent for the rest of the ascent up the staircase. Once we hit the top, we found a sign pasted to the back of the wall that said, "first floor, exit, reception, janitorial."

"Well were not in the lab", Alcatraz sighed.

"How can you tell?", I asked coming down from the ceiling.

"Look at the sign", he said, "if this were the lab that sign would be electronic."

"Your serious right now?", I asked.

"As a heart attack", he said.

"Wonderful", I answered kicking the unlocked, but stuck metal door open, finding something straight out of a nightmare. The entrance area of the building we were in was littered with dismembered bodies. There was dried blood splattering the walls while spent ammunition cases and empty M4 magazines lined the corners and occupied spaces between the bodies.

"Oh my god", Alcatraz said clutching his stomach.

I stepped into the room and began inspecting the bodies. It didn't take me any time at all to learn Martins abominations were behind it. I could see holes in the skulls of every single body that still had it's head attached to it's shoulders....there were even a few mutated looking Facehuggers around, they were dead, bad news. The only thing I didn't understand was why the hosts for the embryos had been killed off, normally, Xenomorphs needed their hosts alive to breed. My knowledge of Genetics had increased somewhat in my time on this planet, but I still couldn't understand how Martin managed to change the biology of the Primals so much that they could use a dead host in their larval state.

"How quickly did this spread", I asked myself as I reached into my backpack.

"What are you doing?", Alcatraz asked

"We can't allow these bodies to stay here", I said picking up a dead Facehugger, "Martin's abominations are using them to breed....somehow."

"Somehow?", Alcatraz asked.

I tossed the dead Facehugger at his feet, "that's a Xruylith, more commonly referred to as a Facehugger. Primal Xenomorphs use it to implant an embryo into a living host and then the embryo uses the hosts DNA to form into a larva. Normally the host has to be ALIVE, for this to work, now, granted I don't know if the embryos were already implanted when all these people died, and if that's the case, the embryos died with them, but if my hunch is correct, then the embryos have continued to grow despite the death of the host. If that's the case then I can't allow these corpses to exist."

I pulled a chunk of C4 out of my ruck and un wrapped it, sticking a detonator in it and stuck it to one of the bodies. I wired up a few more charges and set up the remote detonator for when we got outside the building. Once I finished wring the bodies, I heaved my ruck back to my back and continued to follow Alcatraz. After about a half hour of searching for the entrance, finding chambers of horror in every small room, and faced with the possibility of using all of my C4 in one spot, we finally found the exit, a heavy, steel built utility door. Since the power was out and we couldn't find manual release controls, Alcatraz, using his Exo to full power, took a swing at the door, barely denting it and letting of a sound like he broke his fingers.

"Holy shit", he wined shaking his hand, "that's a tough ass door. Were definitely not getting this open."

"Then lets go through the wall", I said.

"Good idea", Alcatraz said knocking a hole in the concrete wall, letting in a load of sunlight from the outside. When we stepped outside, we were greeted by a massive jungle. It was about 600 feet up to the top of the shortest tree I could see, and judging by the temperature and the way everything was lit, it was around 7 in the morning. The jungle also had one feature neither of us failed to notice.

Dead. Silence.

Setting aside a light wind, the jungle was completely quiet. No animals, no insects, birds, nothing. I had pretty good hearing and I could just barely hear the rustling of the leaves, though them being so high up might have had something to do with that.

"Umm", Alcatraz said, "do you..."

"Hear anything?", I asked, "no, and that scares me. This is a jungle, we should be hearing all kinds of shit."

"Is it possible that...", Alcatraz paused, "that Agent 41 killed everything?"

"In 4 weeks?", I asked.

"Well something happened Sky cause I don't hear anything."

"I don't care what happened", I said, "I don't care what could happen, I care about joining the others, getting the hell off world and getting this information to the Confederate Army, our little gang of Scientists and Security guards can't stop Martin on our own anymore. Now that were outside, lets nuke this rat hole and find out exactly where we are."

Alcatraz nodded to me. We walked for a few hundred feet before stopping at the base of one of the thickest trees I'd ever seen.

"Ain't nothing short of nuclear detonation gonna hit us behind here", I said, "get down, stay down, cover your ears."

Alcatraz did just that as I pulled out the detonator and armed it.

"Go to hell you mutated pieces of crap", I snarled as I clicked the detonator. There as a sound like a pop rocket from a shotgun as the building puffed out and then collapsed in on itself. I disarmed the detonator and put it away.

"It imploded?", Alcatraz asked, "I never seen C4 do that before."

"My guess is that the building was strong enough to resist exploding, but nothing can really resist caving in", I said, "if it caved in, that means the bodies inside are history, along with Martins abominations. Now comes step two, finding out where the fuck we are."

"I can handle that", Alcatraz said, 'I have a long range GPS and Radio built into my Exo, if I can get up a tree, I can easily find out exactly where we are."

"Can you climb in that thing?", I asked.

"Easily", he nodded.

"Up you go then", I said.

Alcatraz set down his M16 and power jumped about 30 feet before sinking a thick knife into the tree. He then climbed up the trunk and out of my line of sight. I waited at the base of the tree for about five or six minutes before he came back down and landed so hard he threw up a dust cloud and left a small crater in the ground.

"Well?"', I asked.

"Your really not going to like this", he sighed.

"Lay it on me", I said bracing myself.

"The lab is 25 thousand yards", he pointed straight ahead, "that way."

"That's roughly 24-26 miles", I said, "assuming my math is right."

"And who knows how much shit is between us and there", Alcatraz said.

"Okay", I said, "assuming we can maintain a two mile an hour pace, we can get back there tomorrow."

"Even at only a mile an hour we can still swing it in two days", Alcatraz said, "but that is assuming there isn't anything between us and the lab."

"And you know there is", I huffed, "either way, we should get going, it's a long walk."