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  “Get to the door. I’ll hold them back,” he ordered as he retrieved two thermals and tossed them to the ground. He sprinted back as the first creature recovered and resumed its attack and the other two stalkers closed in. The thermals went off and billowed a large cloud of smoke as the explosion flung debris all around. Chiyo and Genos were now close to the door. He pushed himself to run faster as he placed his rifle on his back and drew Debonair to fire shots behind him as he closed the distance between him and his teammates.

  Something stopped him in his tracks and dragged him back and he struggled to turn his head. The brown stalker had snatched the back of his coat. It hauled him in and slammed its claws into his chest armor. The tips cut cleanly through the DSC armor plating and scratched against his skin.

  “Kaiden,” Chiyo called, fear in her tone. Genos turned and fired his rifle at the creature. Chiyo added to the volley with her submachine gun. The monster hissed in response and spat acid globs at them in return. The duo was forced to take cover as the area around them began to melt.

  The ace raised Debonair and aimed at the stalker’s eye to fire a direct shot it was distracted. It shrieked in pain and flailed with the arm that was embedded into his chest. He drew his blade and depressed the switch to heat it. After a few seconds, he thrust it into the stalker’s fingers and sliced them off and it uttered a howl of pain. Kaiden dropped to the ground and scrabbled for another thermal as he glanced at the other two beasts, now a few yards away.

  He dropped the thermal at the stalker’s feet and threw himself aside as the creature bared its razor-sharp teeth and hissed.

  “Chief, activate battle suite,” Kaiden ordered.

  “Initiating,” Chief acknowledged.

  The thermal erupted, caught the two running stalker in the blast, and hurled them back. The now one-eyed monster avoided the explosion and bared down on him. It hissed and revealed the acidic saliva along its teeth and tongue before it coated its claws in the liquid and lurched toward him. Time seemed to slow as the suite kicked in. Kaiden readied Sire for a charged shot, rolled back, and held the trigger to power it up.

  He spun into a kneeling position and aimed at his attacker. The suite helped him find the angle to his shot as the stalker closed in. It lunged at him at almost the same second that Sire finished charging and Kaiden let go, The blast crashed into the alien’s chest, which seared and evaporated under the power of the blast. A long shriek issued from the creature and its remaining eye widened before the shot erupted in its chest and almost completely destroyed the upper body.

  “Deactivate suite,” Kaiden ordered.

  “Battle suite deactivated.”

  Kaiden ran over to Chiyo and slid one of her arms around his shoulder to help her up before they made for the door. Genos waited at the edge of the open doorway and fired at the remaining stalkers, who dodged the blasts, now more wary of their prey once they had seen the death of one of their own.

  “Get inside, Genos,” the ace ordered as he and Chiyo made it through. The Tsuna fired one more shot but the stalkers avoided the blast and spat more of the lethal blobs at them. Genos ran through the doorway as Kaiden drew Debonair to fire at the acidic orbs but didn’t manage to hit them. Genos pressed the switch and the doors closed at almost the same moment that the orbs struck them and splattered the liquid. Kaiden and Genos managed to avoid the burning saliva that penetrated the rapidly closing gap. Chiyo covered her head instinctively as the liquid arced overheard and landing away from them. Their attackers shrieked in rage as the doors closed and locked.

  The ace couldn’t help but laugh when he realized that they had survived the sudden attack. He looked at his teammates. “No one the worse for wear, huh?” he asked. “Who’s happy to be alive?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  He was perched on a ledge at the far right of the hanger. The Tessa laboratory wasn’t as breathtaking as some of the other squats he had stayed in. There were few ways to traverse though the building aside from few catwalks and an upper level that mostly seemed to function as storage. The few system ducts were too small for him to crawl through—something he had noticed more and more throughout his adventures. He wondered if it was his gear or his girth and slid a hand down the smooth path of his chest and stomach. Satisfied, he snapped his teeth a couple of times before he left them open in a toothy smile.

  Nah, he was fine. A man had to stay lean when his sport of choice could be so adaptable.

  He watched as the technicians, engineers, guards, and designers walked around the lab and briefed one another on their findings, their latest projects, and theories. It must have been so much fun.

  His attention moved the party of four that had caught his attention when he had first snuck in and specifically to a blonde-haired woman who seemed to hold a special place among them. He could sense something similar among those scientists, something akin to how he felt whenever he and Magellan were in the same room. It was an undertone of barely constrained animosity and amusement, of excitement and hate. He somehow knew that while they joked and amused one another, they all harbored grudges.

  It’s sweet that they think they can hide it. It was doubtful that anyone in that group was really fooled. He certainly wasn’t and he was far away and unable to listen in. For a brief moment, he wondered why he took the time to observe the people below when they wouldn’t be around for much longer. Well, most of them wouldn’t. He had to admit, for all the building rage and wrath he had felt as he made his way there, he had cooled rather quickly.

  Which wasn’t to say that he wouldn’t stain this place with as much blood as possible. That was necessary to leave Zubanz one last reminder who Gin really was. The chairman was so fond of telling him that he was less than he was. He always seemed so proud to have found and played with as if he were a toy.

  He’d therefore break every other toy the man had, not because he was angry, necessarily, but because he needed to set an example for potential future customers.

  No, that wasn’t right either. He probably wouldn’t have any new customers in the near future. Word traveled rather quickly on this planet.

  Gin shook the thoughts from his head for a moment and he studied the apparent comradery below him once again. To some degree, it made him recall moments of his life before—like those bastards in the Star Killers. The generic name for a merc company should have tipped him off but the Red Suns didn’t really align with his interests and the Omega Horde wouldn’t bite. That was ironic considering they were the reason for his old company’s downfall. Nah, it wasn’t fair to put all the blame on them. The SK’s weakness—that pitiful, infuriating weakness—was in all of their blood. That was why he’d had to get it out of them. Even in the ones who weren’t there, it was obviously inherent. Perhaps it was something in the bottled water they drank.

  He watched as the denizens below continued to make the rounds. It seemed that everyone there was in some sort of gathering or party. Not much work was done right now, he could safely say that. But that worked for him just fine.

  The killer activated his cloaking tech and leapt from the ledge to the top of a stack of crates, climbed down quickly, and sprinted to a dangling crane in the middle of the room. He vaulted up to it, balanced the middle of his left foot on the point of the hook, and looked down and around the room. Sentries paced by and cameras literally focused directly at him. The merry little workers continued to talk and drink. This was always a favorite part for him—to take the time to bask in the irony of it all. Humans, himself included, always wanted to live life like they had complete control, that nothing happened without consent.

  A foolish notion, unless there was a load of people determined to get sick, go broke, or have any numbers of miseries befall them. The best you could do was train, prepare, be willing to accept the things that came your way, but also have the courage to defy it. Some, such as himself, were simply better at that than others. There he was in the middle of a crowded room and yet no one knew.

  A
lone man in a black coat sat in a corner by himself and focused on a tablet. Gin felt an odd urge to move closer to see what he was reading and what kind of person he was.

  Perhaps he was one of the broken ones? He sensed a little melancholy begin to swirl within him—one less person to play with—but the apathy left him quickly, replaced by nonchalance. He didn’t enjoy playing with broken toys, and as upsetting as it was to see one that looked so shiny and promising fall apart like this, it meant he could focus on what he had actually come there to do.

  He jumped gently from the crane, landed on the point of a machine’s seemingly superfluous pyramid-looking top icon, and launched off that to land on a beam a few feet ahead. This enabled him to jump up back to the ceiling and hurdle through the bars and beams to the other side of the lab and the private offices.

  Gin smiled and wondered why they would take a device of such potential and hide it away in a drawer. He remembered not believing something like it existed when he first heard of it and to a point, he had been right. It never had an effective test, but even as a so-called defective item, the number of possibilities was astounding. Many scientists and technicians had tried to use the device at its full capacity and many great minds had applied everything they knew to it without success.

  Now, it was his turn.

  A trio of lab techs ran beneath him and the killer instinctively stood as motionless as possible. Without the proper equipment, they shouldn’t be able to see him, but they were three supposedly experienced scientists. That was why he would never remain too long on a crane, for example. A squeak from a lonely hook that swung in a room with no breeze would look rather suspicious, and maybe someone was superstitious, too. Either way, the one with the wavy red hair looked like he wanted some trouble and it would be rather embarrassing for him to be discovered right now because of his own mistakes.

  Gin waited for the men to move away and finally crossed the entire length of the lab. He surveyed the surprisingly simple-minded group of geniuses and took another moment too take it all in. His gaze shifted to his transparent hand. It was almost completely clear and only a slight haze was visible. The stealth generator was fantastic with a long energy span, no notable dip when he moved, and no noticeable emissions. When he’d heard about it at the Kioto Station, he knew he simply had to have it. It wasn’t as hard to acquire an experimental piece from a station far into space as one would think, at least not there. And as his previous outings had proven, it wasn’t that difficult on Earth either. A station that focused on scientific pursuits screened all their employees and all their onboard passengers. He had made his way in on a distressed shuttle—one he was responsible for distressing. He’d planned to simply restock when they brought him in but had found an even greater prize. Things sometimes worked so beautifully in the great abyss.

  Gin lowered his hands and tapped a finger on Macha. What was he doing again?

  Ah, yes, the BREW device. He almost had it and once it was his, he would be free to begin the second part of his night. As he prepared to make his way into the wing with the private offices, he allowed the screen on his visor to change. It displayed the lines of energy that fueled the area, the small orbs of personal equipment humming on the guards, and all people in the area.

  He loaded Vinci’s program. While he wouldn’t begin his spree just yet, it might be all right for him to perhaps start initiate a panic. He thought it over carefully. They could potentially see it as a possible attack—they would be oh, so right—but they would also ruin his evening if they decided to evacuate or simply leave the area. On the other hand, in corporate labs like this, malfunctions certainly happened, more so than they would probably like to admit in their reports. He could have his fun, but he would have to make it seem like an entire generator had been gone offline.

  And with his new toy, that wouldn’t be a problem at all.

  Gin watched as the waves and beams of light in his visor turned black and crept through the trails of energy until they all pooled around their main target. With a snap of his fingers, he killed the power in half the facility.

  Someone shouted and people scrabbled and grunted to force a door open below him. The security guard hustled his four partners out of the doors and moved to meet the scientists in the middle of the lab. The killer waited to see if the doors would close before he hurried after them.

  He flicked the fingers of his bionic hands and small spikes emerged from the ends of his fingers that he used to cling to the side of the wall. Quietly but quickly he made his way down and into the hall. Once there, he climbed the wall once more and made his way along the ceiling. Two men peered at a box farther down and seemingly trying to restore the power or determine out why it had gone offline. The killer found a place above them and observed them for a moment. It would have been no problem to take them here. No one else was around and it would afford him a brief interlude of entertainment. His finger slid across Macha but he calmed himself with the reminder that these weren’t his normal targets. They were simply the unfortunate sheep who had to be sacrificed because the wolf was a rabid, snarling idiot.

  Gin continued to the lead technicians office. He finally found it at the end of the corridor and far from the other staff offices. After a hasty glance confirmed that he was still alone, he dropped from the ceiling, crouched down, and made his way to the door. He remained alert for the traps or devices he was almost positive littered the entrance. Even with the power out, the lead tech would surely still have a few toys that would be effective. He studied the wall and the entrance itself but there were no other devices that he could see. Apparently, the answer was no, which really was disappointing, to be honest.

  He pushed the door open slowly and entered. It was rather sparse and drab for a lead technicians office with only a desk, one chair, a monitor, and two tablets haphazardly strewn on the desktop. He scanned the room for the BREW and found nothing, but he hadn’t expected it to be in plain sight. Once he checked the desk and drawers, he turned his attention to the walls. As he approached one, an oddly darker patch showed a faint flash of light in his screen.

  The killer knocked on the wall a couple times and grinned at the unexpected clang. He pressed his fingers against it and confirmed a metal surface. With his blade, he cut quickly through the thin material that covered the wall to reveal a metal cache behind the canvas wallpaper. The man hadn’t even bother to put a painting up. How boring. He shifted a little closer and pressed a hand against the cache to obtain reading of its materials and nodded. A plasma blade would do. Deftly, he flipped a switch on his omni-blade to change the cutter out for the necessary blade. When he drew and activated it, the blade hummed with a soft red light.

  He dug the blade into the cache to make a small, circular hole, turned it off, and held it in one hand as he reached into the cache for his prize with the other. It looked like nothing more than a cylindrical drive not much bigger than the width of his hand, but he knew what the device was capable of. He wondered if he should pay another visit to Vinci and have him examine it. The man would be most appreciative.

  But that was something to think of later. He had someone else he needed to see first and something else to do.

  As he grabbed the device, he noticed that it was attached to a wire. Gin studied it for a moment and an amused smile formed on his face. It was a simple little alarm system—when the wire snapped, it would send out a silent alarm. How quaint. He wondered if it still worked. Something that small might have been missed by the program.

  Gin ripped the BREW device from the wire and gave it a final glace before he placed it in the compartment on his left leg.

  A beeping from his wrist warned him that his generator needed to recharge. So be it. He wanted to be sporting, anyway, he decided as he deactivated his cloak and walked back to the entrance of the room. His primary purpose accomplished, he wondered how he should begin the second part of his night. Should he be loud and boisterous? He intended to send a message, so perhaps something mo
re subtle—more like an assassin since half the lab was dark already. No. He’d played with stealth far too much and he wanted a change. His gaze drifted back at the wire and he wondered if the silent alarm had indeed gone off. If it had, he hadn’t detected anything, but it would be a nice surprise to have him waiting there. He could enjoy a little of both options in that case.

  The killer shut the door to the room and withdrew into the darkness as he readied Macha and flipped his omni-blade in his hands. At first, only silence and darkness stretched into minutes and as he began to feel rather silly. He pondered if they would come at all. Had he been too deceptive? He felt that perhaps he should have left a trail of corpses—it would probably have been a significant clue.

  He had all but given up his vigil when the silence was broken, though only slightly. A skitter was followed by the pound of boots on metal from the lower floor. They seemed to circle and Gin smiled. They were coming and quickly, too, with such enthusiasm to retrieve their sacred device. He readied both Macha and his Omni-blade and simply waited for them to burst through the doors.

  What a wonderful night this would be.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The trio continued down the hall and Kaiden and Genos ripped open any malfunctioning doors in their path. From what they could tell, however, they had simply moved to another part of the sewage system. All of them groaned almost in unison.

  “On our next mission, my orders are that we simply go through the middle.” Kaiden sighed and took point as they pressed on. “It worked for me in the Division test.”

  “True, but may I make a point that we had multiple lives during that test,” Genos reminded him.

  “And from what you told me, you were down to your last one,” Chiyo added.

  “I also took down a giant war bot,” the ace muttered. “A hell of an accomplishment for one life.”