Isolation-#Wattys2015

Excerpt 32- Area 7

The next morning, everyone was up at around 6 in the morning. James and the other starting packing up everything we had made regular use of for these past few weeks while Magellan and I got ready for the trip to Area Seven. After some talk, Mike had opted to sit this one out so he could help the others move the base of operations. Alcatraz was still in pretty lousy shape, plus, he still said he didn't feel like getting dressed at the moment, Matt wanted to come and help, but Sarah said hell no. Jacob showed me to the shop where the chemical suits were. The suits were made of tight fitting rubber that was jet black with a grey hex pattern in it, my guess was for looks. Once I was in the suit, my gear fit over it quite easily and the air filtration equipment fit rather nicely into the pack on the back of my vest. Since Magellan was an AI with a fully synthetic body, unlike Alcatraz, who simply had computers running enhanced biological systems, he didn't need a suit and opted to travel quite lightly, only the AK I kept in my pack with a few mags and his Sig. I on the other hand, had decided to conserve the ammunition for the high power, so I switched it out with the Bow that James had given me.

"Tyler said to radio him once you hit level six", Jacob said as I finished getting the arrows for the bow into my vest, "you should beable to reach level six from the same stairwell that accesses the cafeteria."

"Okay", I said, "where do I need to go after I get done at Area 7?"

"James will send you the map", Jacob said, "as for getting to Area 7 in the first place, you just need to follow the stairwell until you hit level six, after that you follow the signs that are on the ceiling, the door to Area Seven will have Red Tape on it."

"Alright", I said putting the bow in a holster on my leg, "guess I'll see you guys in a few hours."

Magellan and I left the machine shop and walked down the hall to the stair well. I opened the door and he went inside first, gun drawn. At the top of the first set of stairs, I checked the pipe that was barricading the door, it was still solid as a rock, which was good because I could see quite a few Skins on the other side.

"The fuck are those?", Magellan asked.

"Skins", I said, "mutated humans that are damn near impossible to kill. The High-Power can't even one shot them."

"Wonderful ", He said as we continued to climb the stairs. The door for level six was at the top of the stair well and past it I could see more of the same, twisted pieces of metal, flashing red lights and broken glass. There was blood everywhere. As if that wasn't enough by itself, I could tell by the way it smelled it was fresh....very fresh, no more than 10-20 minutes.

"Aw fuck", I sighed as I pulled open the door. The room we came out in was about 20 feet back and 20 feet across with four, ten by ten labs, met to be run by two or three people by my guess. In the room itself, at the way back, there were about 10 corpses, seven humans and Three K-Class Xenomorph. The humans were dressed in lab coats, and the Xenomorphs were security workers because they still had their body armor on. They had been lined up against the wall and machine gunned. It didn't take a genius to figure that out, never mind the fact that there were spent links and 5.56 cases everywhere. The air stunk of gun powder, burnt metal and fear.

"How did we not hear this?", I asked as I turned my radio on.

"500 feet of concrete and steel will absorb a lot of sound", Magellan sighed, "if there weapons were suppressed, we could have been right above or underneath them and still never would have known."

'James", I called, ", you there?"

'Yeah I'm here", James answered, 'were just about to move, what ya got?"

"An execution", I sighed, "I've got seven scientists and three security guards, lined up against the wall and shot. The air here still stinks of blood and fear, I'm thinking we missed it by about ten minutes."