Shell

Chapter 23: Peek through the Curtain

Having woken up prior to the mission I wasn't tired in the slightest so my mind wandered as the helo rocked my teammates to sleep for the ride to Oregon. At about 0600 the dull light of dawn began to creep across the forest that was outside my window.

"Two minutes." One of our pilots said over the radio and then raising up two fingers.

Arthur's eyes popped open immediately almost as if he wasn't even asleep while everyone else slowly got around to being ready. I put up two fingers to inform them we had two minutes just in case they didn't hear the pilot and they all nodded in confirmation. We came up to the landing zone and one by one we all fast roped into the dimly lit woods and secured our position, the helo then turned around and headed back to base.

"Alright lets move out." Ray said.

We hiked through the woods for about an hour before coming across a river and then proceeded to follow it downstream for another hour as the sun finally rose completely as the forest came alive as we continued to make our way through it until the ground dropped off in front us into a huge valley. The river cascaded off a ledge into a sizable waterfall now dropping off into a basin and from here we could see the base we would be raiding. Most noticeable about it was the amount of hangars there four in total all connected and sitting beside a ridiculously small landing strip.

"How in the hell do they land here?" Duncan said from behind me.

"Couldn't tell ya bro." Arthur said.

"Alright, Artemis and Arthur both of you map out the complex as best you can. We'll camp here until nightfall and begin the raid at 0030 got it?" Ray ordered.

"Got it." We all said before me and Arthur went to the ridge and began to map out the complex as best we could.

It wasn't to difficult tho map out as the nazi's seemed to think the seclusion of the base made it impossible to find and there were little to no defenses in place to keep out enemy attackers which seemed very careless of them. The only thing we'd have to watch out for were the small guard towers well barricades that were at the gates of a chain link fence meant to keep out wildlife. After finishing and comparing maps me and Arthur headed back to the others and gave out our thoughts on how we should proceed.

"Theres not that much security from what we saw, couple guards at the gates, maybe some patrolling the area but thats about it." Arthur informed.

"Man and here I was fixing to get into a good gunfight haha!" Marcus laughed.

"Anyways theres a chain link fence around the complex so we'll use Mitchell's bolt cutters to get in on either side depending if you want to get the hangar or the other building first." I added.

"I say we take the hangars, we don't need any thing surprising us while we try to take the other building." Ray decided.

After that the day progressed with us watching over the area until nightfall had come around. It was about an hour until we began and I was on watch walking the perimeter of the camp, my vision coming in handy as I could see better in the dark than anyone else without NVGs though all was mostly quiet.

"Well lets get down there, thirty mikes till mission go." Mitchell said.

We circled around and traversed down to the complex staying out of view before coming up to the fence. Mitchell pulled out his bolt cutters and cut out a sizeable door in the fence. Ray pulled back the cut fence piece as we all filed into the compound Ray following behind us letting the fence bend back into place. We made our way to the hangars evading the minimal security that was patrolling the compound, before we made it to the hangar we passed by a smaller building and when I peered inside I saw it was the security building. I motioned to the team that I was going to take care of this building to which I got nods of acknowledgement. As the team proceeded to the hangar I got up against the main door and knocked a couple times.

"Damn new guy fucking leaving his key again..." A muffled voice said on the other side.

My ears twitched as I heard him get up from his chair and approach the door.

"Next time he does that leave his ass out man." Another said.

"Haha yeah I'll do that." The first said opening the door.

As he did so I drew one of Jack's knives and tackled him to the ground while stabbing him in the chest putting my free hand on his mouth to silence his scream. I felt something stir within me as I felt the life within him fade away and when I removed my hand from his mouth I saw a red current of electricity trail behind. As I was being puzzled by this the guard's buddy walked in and froze as he saw my hands covered in blood, he tried to hit the alarm button to his left but my knife nailed his hand to the wall. I walked up to him and grabbed him.

"Alright your gonna tell me how all this-" was all I got out before the guard started shrieking in pain.

Red electric currents began to course from his body into my forearms. Now a normal reaction would be to let go and try keep the guy alive, but that feeling from before came back and told me not to let go. I could feel more energized the longer I held on and as his movements began to dull to a stop I noticed out the corner of my eye that my white hair was now glowing. After my glow subsided I yanked my knife out the wall letting the corpse fall to the ground as I walked to the computer terminals, luckily these guys were ridiculously lazy with cyber security so shutting down the security alarms and cameras was fairly easy.

"You guys are good to enter now, I'll meet up with you shortly." I said over our comm channel.

"Roger that." I heard Ray reply over the comms.

I made my way over to the hangars still baffled at the lack of security around here.

"Holy shit." I heard Duncan say as I entered the room with them.

Then I saw what he was looking at. Lined up in the hangar were three mech suits like something out of a video game.

"Dibs." Duncan, Mitchell, and Arthur said in unison.

"You can't just call dibs like that man." Marcus protested.

"Just did." Duncan replied as the three of them headed on over to the Mechs.

They proceeded to climb aboard into the pilot seats ecstatic looks on their faces.

"Now to figure out how to turn this damn thing on..." Arthur said looking within the cockpit.

"Hey Ray, I'm gonna check out the rest of the building." I said walking off to the doorway.

"Aight, radio in if you need us." He replied.

"You too." I said as the door closed behind me.