The Virus

Chapter 4: The Mission Part 2

He saw a light up ahead. Thinking his luck was finally changing, he sprinted forward only to have a mutant jump out of the darkness and pin him. Try as he might, he could not shove the mutant off him. Then suddenly the mutant went flying off. Getting up he went to where the mutant lay, and shot it. It's head instantly exploded, showering Lotus with gore. Luckily, no other mutants jumped him. When he turned around, he got hit in the head. The last words he heard were: "Take him to the place we talked about; and tell Control that he is dead." Lotus blacked out...

When Lotus came to, he was on a bed. Immediately, he jumped up and went to his hips. His hands came up empty, his weapons were gone. Fortunately, shadow daggers required punching, and after all those hours using them, Lotus reckoned he knew how to punch. He went over to the door and pushed it. It swung open easily, giving Lotus a sense of hope. Maybe he wasn't captured and awaiting death. That all changed the moment two men turned the corner and opened fire. As if electrocuted, he jumped back into the room and opened a drawer, looking for anything he could use as a weapon. 

Surprisingly, he found his shadow daggers and his AK-47 lying there, as if it had just appeared. Just as he slung the AK over his back, and readied his shadow daggers; a man came bursting through. But this time, Lotus was prepared. Batting the barrel away, he punched the man in the face. He went down without a sound. Sheathing his daggers, he drew his AK and peeked around the corner. He saw the man, aimed and pulled the trigger. The gun didn't go off; he forgot to turn off the safety. The man saw Lotus frantically trying to find the safety and started to fire at him. Lotus fell back and unloaded his AK and took the dead man's AK. This time the safety was off, and the man went down in a spurt of blood. He went over to the two dead men, one of them had a silenced USP in the holster with four full clips and one full clip in the gun. He slung the man's AK over his back and picked up the USP. 

He crept down the hallway and luckily, there was a mirror in the corner so he could see without risking his stealth. Well, what little stealth he had left. He counted three men in the cafeteria, the TV blaring its noise. He aimed around the corner and shot the guy near the fridge. The other two didn't react. He shot at the guy lounging on the chair, having a smoke, but he missed. The guy spat out his cigarette and yelled at the guy on the couch, watching TV. The man didn't reply, so the other guy walked over to him and yelled in his face. Suddenly, the man mutated, but it wasn't like other mutants, or even the Frenzied. He swelled to a giant size and looked at the man. The other man took one step back and wet his pants. The giant mutant squished the man and looked around. It saw Lotus and let out a roar. Lotus took off running.

The mutant smashed into the wall at the end of the hall Lotus was watching. Shaking its head in confusion, it started to wander down the hall, looking for that human it just saw. Lotus was hiding in a locker, near where the mutant smashed into. He crept out silently and ran as silently as he could, back down the way the mutant came. He vaulted the table, turned off the TV and looked for a way out. How convenient, there was a door labelled EXIT. He walked through the door and saw the outside world. He was miles away from the target. How far away did they take him? Just as he was calculating where to jump, he heard a roar from behind him. Panic taking control, he jumped and landed on a pile of garbage. Hearing the mutant behind him, he immediately ran to the building closest and got up on the roof. He jumped to the next building, just as the first one got demolished. He ran and ran, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, each time the rooftop he was on before crumbling to dust. He finally found himself at the safe zone where his sister was. He found a note on a barrel outside. It said: 'We have relocated our position, we are camped out north of here. Forgot to give this to you.' Lotus picked up a flashlight, that was modified to project neon lighting. 'It'll keep them at bay, but don't think it'll kill them.' Lotus took the flashlight and attached it to his right shoulder with a piece of duct tape he found lying around. When he looked back, the mutant was looking at him. Then, it wandered off. He activated his earpiece and sent a message to the scientist.

"Oh god I thought you were dead," the scientist said, "I saw them wheeling out your body."

"Yeah, but I'm fine now," Lotus replied, "I've just encountered a giant mutant, what is that?"

"Well I-I don't know, what did it look like?"

"It looked like a giant version of the regular mutants."

"Oh, those." He said that with disgust in his voice. "We call those, 'Juggernauts,' they like to charge you, but unlike others, if you get out of reach, they just leave, I don't know why,"

"Thank you for the info, now I'm making my way to the original objective, they've probably cleared out, because they think I'm dead."

"Good idea, if you have any questions just ask me anytime."

"Got it."

Lotus took the same route he did last time and reached the building. The mutants were still clustered around the noisemaker, even though the sound had been dead for a while. He made it inside easily, but this time, there was no barrel in his face. He made it down the hall, activating the neon light. It revealed a doorway that had stairs sloping down. He walked down the stairs, and found himself in a high tech laboratory. He looked towards the centre and saw two men. It looked like they were disabling the bomb. Lotus flung one shadow dagger at one, and shot the other. Both of them went down in spurts of blood. He retrieved his shadow dagger, and poured the chemical in the warhead. He ran through the activation protocols, and was about to press the big red button when a barrel was pressed to his head. 

"Don't move."