Experiment VII

Chapter Twenty-Seven: We Have A Winner

   Rychner told me the storage room was on the bottom floor, but he conveniently forgot to tell me where exactly on the bottom floor this room is. Rychner doing this on purpose definitely would not surprise me. Am I honestly expected to have mapped this massive building out already?

I eventually manage to stumble upon what I can only assume is my destination. A winged figure sits at a large desk with a metal barred wall behind him, blocking off what appears to be a considerably large room. I take note of the high security compared to the rest of the building. The only entrance to the barred off room is an electrically-run door that seems to be pretty high tech. What could require so much security in a place like this?

The winged-man catches eye of me as he peers up from the desk and glances over my in my direction.

"Something I can help you with?" he half mumbles, lacking enthusiasm.

I shuffle over as I respond, "Uh, yeah, Rychner sent me to get Status Idenficaction Cards or something."

Some form of recognition vaguely registers of his face as I step into the light, "Axel? Oh, yeah, I remember you from back at Umbra."

"Well, I should think so, we shared the same cell for months," I remark with slight sarcasm.

Dan stands up from the desk, scoffing as he does so, "Oh, don't remind me."

Snatching up a clipboard, he makes his way over to the door. He swipes a keycard over some kind of scanner. The scanner emits a small beep as the door clicks open. Shoving it open Dan waves me over as he steps through.

"Cards, cards, cards," Dan murmurs peering down at the clipboard.

My eyes linger on the enormous shelves with seemingly identical crates stacked on each of them up to the ceiling.

"Should be down here," he says glancing up from his clipboard and pointing at one the countless aisles.

After rummaging around in a few of the crates for a couple of minutes, Dan finally picks out two somewhat small boxes.

"So, you know where you're going?" he questions, handing me one of the boxes.

"No, not really." I shrug grabbing one of the boxes.

Dan sighs, "Yeah, figures. I guess I'll show you."

"Thanks," I mumble. "Hey, what is all this stuff anyway?"

"Eh, just about everything. After one of the Combat Unit squads clears a location they send in a salvaging squad to bring back anything that might be useful. I'm the one who gets to keep inventory." Dan explains in voice boarding of sarcasm as he locks the door behind him. "Not like I got anything better to do though.

"I don't like this one." the voice in my head suddenly remarks.

"Oh, shut up would you?" I snap back. My eyes gradually widen in realization when Dan shoots me a puzzled look. Of course, I said it out loud.

"Sorry, I wasn't talking to you." I give a slight grimace as he gets an even more skeptical expression.

"At this rate, you're going to get us thrown in an asylum." the voice nags once again, only adding to my frustrations.

I give no further explanation to Dan and keep on walking in hopes that he will merely brush it off and forget about it though it is most doubtful that he will.

"You look terrible by the way." Dan randomly comments after a brief silence.

My eyebrows furrow together as I mumble, "Uh, thanks?"

He lets out a snort in return, "Well, aren't you just a ray of sunshine?"

"Could say the same to you..." I mumble

After fumbling around the building cluelessly in awkward silence, we finally arrive at the training room. Not unlike Umbra's facility, there appears to be endless corridors and seemingly identical rooms making the building near impossible to navigate. Unfortunately for me, Dan was not that helpful either.

Dan shoves open one of the double doors with his free hand, revealing a large crowd standing forming a half-circle.

My eyes scan the crowd until they land on Rychner, who stands at the edge of the sea of mutants. Dan follows as I head over in Rychner's direction.

"Took you long enough," Rychner remarks, snatching up the packages from us both.

I slowly raise my eyebrows at Rychern's audacity. "Well, you could have told me where to go." I retort.

"Time for me to leave..." Dan mumbles somewhere in the background.

"You could have asked," Rychner counters, giving a big fake smile as if to rub it in.

"Don't." the voice interjects.

I open my mouth to speak, then promptly close it, deciding to take Charthrax's advice for once. I suppose I should at least try to avoid getting into trouble.

"Everybody listen up!" Rychner suddenly shouts, "If you want to make the team your gonna have ta fight for it. I'll call your names in sets of two. When your name gets called you'll step onto the matt and fight until you can't anymore or give up. The loser gets cut."

A single question runs through my mind, What have I gotten myself into?

"This is going to be fun." Charthrax chuckles.

"Chester!" Rychner yells.

A winged figure peels away from the crowd, calmly walks over to the matt. I instantly recognize him to be the creepy guy I saw earlier. It is quite hard to forget a giant pair of bat wings.

The next name suddenly gets announced, "George!"

My eyes slowly widen in the realization of what is about to happen. George is going to get beat up...again.

I reluctantly peel my attention away from Chester, George's opponent, and onto George himself. He maneuvers his way around a few people and hesitantly stumbles over to the matt.

"From the look of his face, he must really be regretting this." The voice remarks and he is not wrong. George looks absolutely petrified. He even looks to be shaking a little. What even made him think doing Combat Unit training would be a good idea?

Chester gives a rather unsettling smirk at his significantly smaller and scrawny opponent.

George pulls himself into some form of defensive position if you can even call it that, yet Chester remains completely still, and unmoving.

"...And...Fight!" Rychner's voice rings through my ears.

George hesitates for a moment, presumably to muster some amount of courage.

I grimace slightly in anticipation as George lurches forward hurling a right hook towards his opponent's face. Before the fist connects with his face, Chester smoothly sidesteps easily evading George's attack. Chester speedily sends a jab at George's gut, successfully causing him to clutch his torso in pain. Taking advantage of his adversary's vulnerability Chester wastes no time in slamming an uppercut to George's chin. The devasting blow sends George to the floor immediately, knocking him out cold.

"I believe we have a winner."

A/N: Thank you for reading and apologizes for this update being a few days late! Feel free to leave a comment of your thoughts below. (: Until next time!

-ѕиιρєявαιт