Isolation-#Wattys2015

Excerpt 26-Treetop Labs

That night was spent relatively sleepless. Allen and I were on edge the whole night, listening for the sounds of any more Ghouls or a possible assault from Martin's security forces, which I honestly was surprised hadn't happened yet. The man was playing a game with us, trying to stall us out just long enough for him to reach whatever his goal might be. I'd been throwing around everything I could think of inside my head for at least a week, trying to figure out what hi game was, what he was up to, but the best that I could come up with was either A, a computer more advanced, more powerful and much smaller than the Cluster 300, or b, a new model of Synthetic more advanced than Matt. For now, I was keeping my thoughts locked inside my head and on my PDA. When the next morning finally rolled around, Mike and I geared up.

"Remember", James said, "this is a recon mission, just go, look around, come back and tell me what you saw, bring back anything that presents itself, otherwise keep your heads down. What little bit of processing power our little operation has says that there's no activity, human, modified human or synthetic activity to speak of, that scares me."

"Will do boss man", Mike said, "got your gear Sky?"

I charged the FAL, "hell yes, let's get."

"Here's a map", Allen said handing me a small piece of folded paper, "stay off your PDAs if you can help it, I have a bad feeling about what you might find up there."

I nodded and placed the map into my pants pocket. Allen let us out into the dark hallway and Mike pulled his night vision down while my eyes adjusted to the low light level. Holding my FAL out in front of me, I took the map from my front pocket and unfolded it against my chest. From where we were, we would head down towards the cafeteria, through it and towards a medical wing. We would then head for an elevator that would take us to the upper most level of the labs where they researched cybernetics.

"Back through the cafeteria where all those undead fuckers were", I sighed, "I bet you 50 bullets that their still fighting that steel pipe I tied around the door."

"I don't use .308", Mike said, "if you were running .223 that would be a different story."

"Either way we should get going", I said, "be ready for a fight, even the High-Power had trouble knocking those things down."

Mike and I started down the hall, pretty much tip toeing to avoid detection as best we could. We came on the double doors that led into the stair well and I went in first with my strobe light on while Mike brought up the rear. We slowly climbed the stair case and came on the door that I had barricaded. The steel pipe was still there, seeming to be holding strong. When I tried it, I had to muscle it just to get it to make a sound against the stair well railing.

"Well at least I tied it tightly", I said slinging my rifle over my back and crouching down by the pipe, "see any of those undead flesh addicts out there?"

Mike peered through the small window in the door, "I see one, looks like she's not paying attention though."

Mike pulled a suppressor out of his vest and screwed it onto the end of his rifle, "got a suppressor?"

"Yeah", I said as I untwisted the pipe from the guard railing, "gimme a second."

"Doubt we have a second", Mike said, "that damn thing is coming this way."

I quickly reached into my vest and screwed the can to the barrel of my gun, "let's retreat up stairs aways so we have some aim room", I whispered, "these things won't go down unless we shoot them in the head."

Mike nodded to me and we hiked a few feet up the stair case. Mike crouched behind me as I trained my rifle at the door. Slowly, the Skin pushed it open and stood in the doorway as if a statue. Her clothes were completely torn form her body and it was filled with deep lacerations that were clogged with dry blood. Her fangs were sticking out of her mouth and her skin was the same sick yellow as the male Skin I had killed with the High-Power about a week ago. I raised my rifle up to head level and steadied my breathing, the cross hair of my scope settling right between the creature's eyes. I squeezed off the round and a hollow thunk rolled through the quiet, steel stairwell as the bullet burred itself deep into the Skin's forehead. She fell to her knees, and then to her stomach, motionless.