Depth Of Sacrifice

Part 6

He turns toward the door, walking out the way he came with her in tow. Rachael resists but he outweighs her by several factors. He knows his hand feels like a solid bar of steel locking her bicep, but he cannot risk her slipping free. As he steps out into the lab and pull her toward the hallway, she screams, "Let me go!"

The protest doesn't register, it's not relevant to the mission. Continuing forward, he registers a target in the hallway outside the lab doorway. Racheal starts coughing in the black smoke; he keeps walking, the sooner they get clear of it, the better. He is aware of the progress of his Others and the mission countdown, and does not slow his advance.

As he enters the hallway with Rachael behind him, he can see the man from the office waiting, a fire axe gripped tight in both hands. The man suddenly yells at the top of his lungs and swings the axe overhead toward his right shoulder. As the axe head comes within a hair's breadth of his body, his right hand captures the handle of the axe, bringing it to an instant stop. He snaps the axe handle in his hand and as the pieces hit the floor, readies to deliver an open-palm strike. The man's eyes widen in shock, realizing too late he's not facing a human in armor.

Rachael hammers his other arm, screaming, "Don't hurt him!"

He turns his head to look at her. She stares back at his mirrored visor and whispers, her voice trembling, "I'll go with you if you don't hurt him. Don't kill him for trying to help me... Please."

Returning to the man, he delivers a Tazer discharge from his palm, then steps over the unconscious body, pulling Rachael along by the arm.

Just before reaching the security desk at the Tee in the hallway, four soldiers come around the corner. They see him within the smoke and dive behind the desk, pointing their guns at him. He makes reassessments of mission parameters. The soldiers have begun penetrating the building.

He doesn't slow his stride as he fires another flash-bang from the hallway, angling Rachael behind him to protect her from any bullets. His targeting system locks onto the wall behind the soldiers, his laser fires, ionizing the air in a straight line between him and them.

Inside his body, his generator runs up to 100 percent. Circuits close, linking his power plant to the node in his now-open, upright palm. Electrical potential builds, then discharges along the path of ions made by the laser.

Lighting strikes outward from his palm, reaching for the far wall. Then, seeking a more conductive path, the lightning discharge finds the machine guns the soldiers are holding and writhes like living rope, splitting to enter each soldier. He observes their thermal images through the smoke as they drop.

Racheal screams and tries pull free of his grip, but he never slows his stride. They arrive at the office where he first entered the building, a square beam of sunlight streaming through the square hole in the wall and the drifting smoke. He scans for hostiles, overlaying that with the ship's data. Three more vehicles, six guards, one large personnel van. Fifteen soldiers with weapons.

He raises his arm and fires four smoke bombs through the opening. Linking to the fighter jet, he issues commands. It immediately swings towards his location in what anyone can recognize as an attack run. But he limits the ship to normal explosives, the radiation from antimatter would risk his mission objective.

A single burst from the 9mm guns causes the ground behind the soldiers to erupt in a large explosion. The shockwave sends men and Jeeps rolling. Before they can recover, he turns to the target of his mission. Grabbing the woman, he throws her into a fireman's carry and runs through the opening, looking up.

The ship comes into view overhead, floating above the building as he fires a spread of his last smoke grenades. From the hole in the bottom, a telescoping pole slides down. He stops scanning for hostiles and grabs it with one hand. The woman screams and fights to get free, but he holds her firmly over his shoulder. Her legs kick wildly in front of him. Then she goes from resisting to holding on for dear life as the pole retracts, lifting them up into the ship.

Once inside, the hole closes and becomes solid floor. Stepping down, he lets go of the pole, and the telescoping lift retracts into the ceiling. He sets Rachael into a chair. She stares at him, eyes wide, uncertain, breathing rapid gulps of air.

He turns to the back wall. The door opens, and he steps into the storage locker, his black armor gleaming despite all the dust on it. His Combat Droid body turns to face out, the feeling of acceleration already making itself known. As he issues commands, his consciousness retracts as the door closes, then expands into the ship again.

He looks out over the sky for threats as he gently but continuously thrusts towards the heavens, then he checks on his Others. They report success at loading the passengers. Inside via the ship's internal cameras, he observes Rachael trying to stand up, hindered by the increasing force of acceleration.

She looks at the front screen as he breaks into the clouds, steadily making her way forward. Then, approaching the command chair, she starts to walk around it. He observes her puzzlement via the cameras. Recognition flashes across her face as she sees the silver scorpions.

When she finally circles to see his face, she cries out and touches his cold cheek. Rotating his view to different sensors, he looks down upon what she is looking at. His body sits there restrained to the chair, eyes closed, his color deathly pale in contrast to the blood running down either side of his face.

But it isn't blood loss that's killing him, it's the two different varieties of nanos that have run neural nets through his nerves and brain, warring with one another. It's the chemicals that have forced his brain synapses to process data at a rate that is not sustainable.

Her gaze darts all over the machinery coming out of his body, desperation clear upon her face.

The mission.

He issues commands, and a side screen lights up. The recording begins to play. On it his face, healthy but with deep pain in his eyes, looks out at her...