Chương 85: Wanderer - Part 1

Incursion Detected Remain Calm, Proceed to the nearest shelter. As soon as the notification came in Helen Kwon tapped the side of her glasses to dismiss the message. She then slid one of her polished metal fingers across the touch display in front of her causing the holographic display across the room to switch from alerts to a real-time 3d map of the city.

Her jade colored eyes flicked between several areas marked in red, several incursion sites had already been identified despite the alert only going out seconds earlier. A smile graced her lips.

"You know, most people run and hide when they're told killer alien plants from outer space are attacking the city. You're about the only person I've ever heard of that'll break out into a smile at the idea of running directly into incursion areas." Her long time partner Angela Parker said from a chair across the massive wooden desk, looking as professional as always in her expensive pantsuit and blond hair cut short with a deep undercut.

"If you hated it so much you shouldn't have been enabling me for all these years, you know Kwon Private Security Services wouldn't exist without you." Angela blushed slightly, and turned away in embarrassment.

"Heimdall are any of the impact sites near Kwon facilities, or other VIPs?" [None at this time, but I'm reading significantly more incursion events than usual. I will let you know if the situation changes.] A deep robotic voice replied directly into Angela's Augs and Helen's earpiece.

"Wonderful." Helen quickly shed her uncomfortable high heels and slipped into a pair of combat boots she kept hidden under her desk. Angela sighed,"Why haven't you moved those to your closet yet? I keep telling you it looks completely unprofessional to clients""We're a security company, not an accounting firm. People should expect to see combat gear while they're here." A grin crossed Helen's face, she really did it to get a rise out of Angela, not that she'd admit it.

"What's everyone's status?" Angela pulled up some information on her tablet.

"Ops Team Three was on deck, they're boarding HAV One as we speak and will be heading out to pick up our priority clients in a few minutes. Team One was on stand-by, and is currently suiting up in case of emergencies. Team Two was on leave, we're currently waiting for them to report in. The main core is still on contract with the city, they're currently headed towards the nearest incursion site" Helen nodded, finished tying up her boots, then stood.

Most people would look ridiculous wearing an expensive sleeveless blouse, which showed off her immaculate matte white prosthetic arms, a pair of tailored black pants, and combat boots, but she made it work. The boots echoed off the solid wood floors as she made her way across the office toward her personal armory hidden on the left side of her office. As she approached the door slid open automatically, revealing a selection of different weapons and armor.

Most of it was cutting edge conventional weaponry, one step down from Samurai grade equipment, with several utility and explosive options mixed in. The first thing Helen reached for was her favorite pistol, the Cudgel. It was the same matte white color as her prosthetics, and it fit into her hand like they were designed for each other. She was just about to grab her Antithesis resistant vest with her other hand when everything went… wrong.

There was a momentary flash outside the window, which caused both women to experience a moment of nausea and disorientation, then the sensation of freefall. The building seemed to rotate around them, turning sideways and throwing all the furniture around, before gravity re-asserted itself and they were slammed into the ground. Everything went black. Helen managed to rouse herself first, she wasn't sure how much time had passed, but hopefully it wasn't much.

She was lucky to be alive, the armory which she had been standing at a few moments before was now part of the ceiling. It had been a long fall, a foot to the left she would have landed on her bookcase and probably broke something, three feet to the right and she would have been crushed by her desk. That fucker was solid hardwood and even with all her prosthetics there was a chance an impact like that could have killed her.

Thankfully the only casualty seemed to be her hair-tie, causing her long black hair to spill out everywhere. Angela was even luckier, one of the plush couches set around the office had flipped around and landed directly above her. It had protected her from falling debris, and somehow missed landing on one of her limbs. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

"Angela, you ok?" Helen called.

"Fine, just a little stuck at the moment," came the muffled response.

"Heimdall, what the fuck was that? Did the building get hit? Heimdall?" Helen felt the side of her head, only to find both her glasses and comm system gone, thrown somewhere in the chaos.

"Fuck," she swore to herself quietly as she made her way across the room toward the couch. She used one hand to lift the couch up, while using the other hand to help Angela out.

"I lost my connection, can you use your authorization to have Heimdall speak through the building comms until I find it?" Angela nodded, sending a quick command through her Augs. A few seconds later the robotic voice echoed through the office area. [Unknown error has occurred. I have lost connection with everything below the Seventy third floor. I've switched power and network to the local backups, and I cannot connect to the wireless network] Angela frowned, "That's impossible, we have multiple redundancies for everything. What the fuck." She sent a quick ping, there was a response from the building network, but nothing else. No city network, no secure comms to the other facilities, not even a reply from the global emergency network. That emergency network was Samurai built and supposedly unjammable.

Struggling through the debris Angela made her way towards the window to check outside. Across the room Helen managed to find her glasses, thankfully still in one piece, just as Angela gasped.

"What?" Helen asked, carefully placing her glasses back on.

"Look outside! We're not in Seattle anymore, I don't know where the fuck we are."

"Beg your pardon?" The panic in Angela's voice was unnerving, but not as much as the view Helen saw outside the window. Helen's penthouse office was on the seventy fifth floor of their building; it normally looked out on the other skyscrapers and mega blocks in the city. Right now they were at ground level, and the surrounding area was barren, the soil looked practically scorched.

A thick mist filled the area swirling around creating strange shadows, and in the distance there were a handful of colossal root-like structures, covered in black bark and pulsing red veins, that reached far into the atmosphere. Angela shrank away from the window, "Please tell me that's not what I think it is."

"I don't know what that is, I've never even heard of anything like…" The sound of gunfire erupted from somewhere deeper into the building, causing both women to turn. Helen's eyes narrowed, "That's a K-340," she paused "and a T-49. Something big is going down if they need that much firepower."

"Now is not the time to show off your knowledge of firearms, we need to know what's going on!" Angela hissed, "Heimdall what's the situation?" [Unknown entities have entered the building from below the seventy third floor, Daniels and McMullen have engaged while Jacobs has begun the process of setting up automated defenses.]"They came from outside? Shit." Helen paused for a moment, thinking.

"Heimdall can you still lockdown the exterior of the building? At least, of the parts of it you can still reach?" [Affirmative] Outside the window the heavy security shutters began to close. They were capable of absorbing a rocket, or direct attack from one of those huge, flying, model Elevens. It was Helen's hope that they'd at least slow down whatever attackers were out there. Unfortunately it had the opposite effect. The unprotected part of the window cracked as something enormous smashed into it.

Angela yelped in surprise, stepped on some loose debris in panic, and fell to the ground. Across the room Helen brought her gun up, dropped into a shooting stance and aimed at the now empty window. She strained her eyes, trying to make out any shapes in the swirling mist while Angela struggled to get back to her feet. The security shutter clanked as it closed, agonizingly slow, as the seconds ticked by. Angela managed to make it a couple steps towards the back of the room when the window exploded.

A behemoth, black with pulsing red veins, burst into the room at full charge. It caught Angela in the back and threw her across the room before either woman could react. Time seemed to slow for Helen as she appraised the creature. It LOOKED like a model three, but it was well over twice as large at the shoulder as the traditional model and much faster. The creature's eyes shot open, looking for targets after the initial charge, and Helen took advantage.

She fired a three round burst, destroying one of the creature's eyes and digging deep into the skull, stunning the creature but not killing it. So she fired again, and again, emptying the entire clip before it lay still. System Initialized. Congratulations. Through your actions you have proven yourself worthy of blah de blah… look I'm just going to skip the regular intro. I'm Loky and YOU, my friend, are in deep shit.