Project Zactomorph: an alien and predator story

Part 8: Target Practice

It's been about four days since the examination room, the scientists and lock basically told us all the science and inner workings of Zarra and her abilities, and they were right, she is a biological wonder. Like I had assumed, she has incredible strength like a xeno, but she can also apparently walk on all surfaces. And then there's the fact that her blood is slightly acidic, not near as much as normal Xeno's, but enough to burn through thin metal walls and windows. Somebody had asked if she had a second mouth, but apparently she doesn't. Another person had asked about her tail, apparently it can cut through steel beams and if it were cut can leak acidic blood as well. A lot of this is just 'apparently' we have seen none of this in action, at least, not yet, lock says that they will show her abilities to us soon, but like I said, it's been four days, and it seems they took Zarra to some other part of the examination wing because after a day or so of her being there, all the scientist and experiments disappeared, lock stayed though with us to "keep an eye on us" but has been doing nothing but monitoring the security feeds and checking in on some other, lesser, experiments in other parts of the wing. While every body else has been assigned duties and jobs to prepare for this "mission" a mission that I'm apparently apart of, and I've asked many people what the mission is, even Emma, but they all say the same thing "you'll be debriefed on the mission soon deputy" and that's it, it honestly frustrates me so much, but I have no choice but to live with it. But there is one thing I've noticed, nobody's assigned me to a job or duty, I mean people ask me for help and I do it, but once that's done I'm left to my own business, and so for past few days I've just been helping around the facility and doing what I can to keep busy, but I still find myself with nothing to do ninety-five percent of the time, I've even gone to Blackwoods asking for a job or duty and he just says "you will be given one eventually Jason just be patient" and leaves with that. And so today I have literally had nothing to do, I've gotten out of bed went to the showers and washed up, got dressed, I didn't put my vest on today but I did manage to remember to grab my point three-fifty seven revolver and put on my holster, took me second to figure out how to put it on by myself but I got it.
I walked around for a while, seeing many rooms and doors, most of the rooms were empty though, and a lot of them were also bedrooms for more people, I wondered why this facility needed so many people, but I just shrugged it off. Eventually I found Emma walking through the hall, I quickly caught up to her and said "Emma" to let her know I was there, she looked back at me and said "oh hi Jason, how've you been?" She asked me, I quickly returned with "I've been fine, a little bored though, think you can help?" I ask nervously, I don't know why but when ever I'm around Emma I get real nervous to ask her anything, thankfully she says "oh yeah I heard you hadn't been assigned a job yet" I nod and say "yea yeah, you think you can give me one?" I ask and scratch my head "sorry Jason, I'm under strict orders" I look at her confused "strict orders, from who?" I ask, she says nothing but continuing on her way "where ya headin?" I ask, she says nothing again "well sorry for being such pain" I say and back off, letting her go on her way, but before she turns a nearby corner she says "you do know the shooting range is open right? How about you do some target practice to keep ya busy?" I smile and nod "ok yea sure sounds like fun" she smiles and says "good, the armory and shooting range is in the right hand corner of this wing" I nod "thanks Emma" I see her disappear behind the corner and hear her say "don't mention it" I look around and see a hall heading towards the right hand section of the wing and head down it.
I see that there are many more bunks and rooms open here, but eventually I see what looks like a large pair of metal doors, I walk up to them and see a sign above saying "Amory/Range" in bold text. I press the button on the right side of the door, I hear a hissing sound and the doors begin to open to the sides, I'm greeted by the sound of a rifle going off, of course the sound surprises me so I jump but calm down as I see that it's a dude just practicing his aim at the range, I see that the range and armory are connected by a doorway the opposite side of the range, walk over into the armory and see rows upon rows of multiple types of weapons, I see on one part of the room there's even M-five six smartguns, this causes my eyes to widen, I had never fired an assault rifle let alone a smartgun, I begin to walk over to it but stop as I hear what sounds like metal clanking behind me.
I slowly turn around and see that the guy that was shooting is putting away his M-four one-A pulse rifle, he looks at me and smile and walks over to me, he's quite tall, six foot five by the looks of if, and quite buff, by the looks of it almost as buff and big as Blackwoods, but still not quite, he has blonde hair that is spiked in the front and a really strong jaw with blonde stubble, blue eyes, and a tattoo of an ankor on his right arm, he walks up to me and holds out his hand "hey, I'm Michael" he says in a rough and hard voice, obviously a smoker, I shake his hand, which nearly breaks mine, but don't let him see the pain and say "I'm Jason" he smiles and says "ah, so your the guy I've been hearing about" I shrug and say "I guess" he laughs and walks by me "don't worry, I'm in the same boat as you" I look at him questioningly and ask "what do you mean?" He walks up to the smartguns and says "I mean these weyland bastards dropped me here for some mission and that's it, they didn't tell me what the mission was or when it starts" I nod "yea its very weird" i say as he suddenly grabs the smart gun. Due to his size and stature the smart gun fits perfectly with him. He looks at me and then his gun and back at me "ever fired one of these bad boys?" I shake my head and look at the gun, he laughs and says "don't worry, the recoil isn't that bad" i look at him and ask "really?" He nods and says "oh yea, think of it as having a woman riding your Johnson and going crazy" my eyes widen a little as he says this "oh uhm...ok" he looks at me and asks "ever had a girl do that to ya son?" I feel my cheeks blush and slowly shake my head, I see him smile and say "don't worry, I'm sure some day a woman will want to, but right now, you have business with one of those girls over there" I see him nod towards the pulse rifles, I gulp and say "I have my revolver" he shakes his head no and says "you gotta learn eventually, don't worry, I won't judge your aim, I'll even help if you want" I look at him and then back to the guns and gulp, I walk up to them and grab one, I lift it and look at it all over. Michael then takes me into the shooting range and shows me a lot of the controls, although I notice him avoiding what looks like a pump action under another wider barrel, curiosity eventually kills me and I end up asking "what does this do?" He smiles and says "that's the grenade launcher, it's for more experienced marines so don't use unless you think your ready" I gulp and nod "now how about you take aim and shoot at one of those targets. I nod and ready my stance, I bring the butt of my gun to my right should and look down the holographic sight. I slowly bring it to the targets chest, I decide to go for something easy since I'm just starting. I slow my breathing to steady myself and put my finger on the trigger and pull. My ears ring as the rifle suddenly fires a barrage of bullets at the target, it quickly stops though, stops as fast as it started, I'm a little stunned afterwards but quickly come out of it and look at the target, my eyes widen as I see that there are multiple bullet holes all around the center of the targets head. "Well I'll be damned, your a natural" I hear Michael say and hit me on the back. Rather hard in fact.
"What'd ya say we continue having some fun, take a few more shots, let's see just how good you are" I nod and smile. We then begin to have a sort of competition, I take shots at targets and count the score, most of my shots consist of headshots and neck and shoulders, while Michael's consist of heart and shoulder and neck shots, none on the head unfortunately, eventually I came out with fifty six points and Michael came out with forty nine. "Aaahh it's just the tobacco that's messing me up" he says and walks over to the trash can and spits out a large black blob of tobacco, he sighs and walk back over to me " you chew Jason?" He asks me, a shake my head "ah that's unfortunate, chewing tobacco will turn you into sexually tyrannosaurus" my eyes widen a bit as he says this "no thank you" he laughs and says "alright, we better put these up" I nod and walk with him to put up our guns up, after we do he says "your pretty good Jason, you sure you never shot a rifle before?" I shake my head say "no mike, never, only pistols and revolvers, they're kinda my thing" he nods and says "I guess we all have our things, you know I-" he's suddenly cut off as an alarm suddenly starts to sound and red lights flicker "what's going on?!" I have to yell so he can hear me "that's the breach alarm!" "You mean an experiment got out?!" I ask a little scared "no, a hull breach! We're leaking air! Come on!" He says and takes off through the doors, I think for a second frantically about what to do but decide to follow him, I quickly take off after him.

To be continued...