Isolation-#Wattys2015

Excerpt 12- Gameplan

Present Day

Biosphere Labs

Time: 10:58 PM

March 22nd/2166

My friends seem horrified at my stories. Sarah and Tyler were pale in the face and Allen and Jacob were completely speechless. The kid was laying in the bean bag with his hands over his ears.

"I always knew that Glykseians were bad people", Tyler said, "but what they did was just..."

"Pure. Evil", Jacob replied, "how'd you get out anyway?"

"Waited till one night when they came down with the silver", I said, "they made the mistake of not tying me up first. They opened the cage and I went Primal on them. Got the first one with a swipe to the neck and the other two with my tail. Grabbed what I could and I bolted from the house and ran through town, not stopping for anything or any one. I walked for a few days before I found another town. I'd played my share of video games when my owners were feeling "generous" and one of the first things I learned was when you arrive at a new town, look for work, so naturally the bounty board was the first place I hit. I picked out the bounty worth the least, which was for a man who wanted some scrap metal recovered from an old ship, so I took the job and went to the General store. Convincing the owner to sell me the Automag and some ammo wasn't that easy, but I managed and on that same job I managed to find a couple of power cores that I was able to turn for some serious money. That was when my life began to turn around. The scars helped too. People thought I was a hardened bounty hunter and started coming to me directly. Slowly I built up a reputation and a name for myself. I still live in that town. It was my second chance. My "Continue from last check point" if you will."

"That's badass", Jacob said.

I just nodded, "can still find something good here and there. The people had heard about my plight years ago and welcomed me once they knew who I was. They said I should go back to Bespin and take it back from the Glykseians, and in time, I intend to."

"I hate to be the wet blanket here", Allen said as Sarah brought us all bowls of Alfredo and Chicken, "but were all gonna end up as well chewed meat or strapped to one of Ding Dong Denis' experiment tables if we don't come up with some kind of game plan here."

"What do we know?", I asked, "we know he's at the top of the compound, that he can access the Mainframe, but has to rewrite his program everytime."

"We also know that CHDISK will eventually ban his address from the 300", Tyler said, "knowing Dr. Loony Tunes he'll move to a different computer, or get into the code of CAD 21 and change his address."

"If he can access the mainframe then that means he also is the one who initiated the quarantine as it has to be initiated manually", Sarah said.

"And I'm assuming if I were to go back down to the mainframe I could release the quarantine locks?", I asked.

"Not quite", Allen said, "knowing Martin he's going to turn CHDISK against us, if he does that then the only way to disengage the locks is to head up to the Tower and do it manually, assuming he doesn't kill you first."

"What level of weaponry does he have?", I asked.

"Everything", Allen said, "the one advantage we have over him is that we have the only High-Power in the lab, that big double barrel will One-Shot everything but a Skin and you can punch through a foot of steel at point blank range. You could more than bring down anything Martin could hide behind with one blast."

"Well I guess any advantage is better than no advantage", I said, "what else do we have?"

"On the ground floor is where a lot of the Bio-Mods were made", Allen said, "special genetic modification that comes in four flavors. Lightning, Fire, Ice and Telekinesis. Telekinesis was developed with Xenomorph use in mind, so we have the guarantee that it will work. The other three are more geared towards human use, but our 97% similarity in DNA should still be enough to allow the abilities to work, though they may not be 100% efficient."