"Contact!" she calls out to Pete, Ash and Jess and aims her M16 at him.
With no word Pete runs to the hatch with intent to slide down after them.
Jack runs up to the turret with his reloaded shotgun and fires on full auto:
BS= 37+30-10=57
Jack growls, he is starting to get angry.
Mark ducks back as Jack sprints past him and unloads a burst of shotgun fire at what seems to be an automated turret. "Beowulf, see if you can get behind it to disable it!" he calls down the corridor after Jack.
Anna doesn't recognize the man climbing out. He is dressed similarly to the two men you killed by the vans. The man drops back down the hole. Pete reaches the hole in this round.
Jack rushes forward but doesn't hit the turret. It appears to basically be a LMG with a motion sensor.
Anna runs after Pete but not before:
"Beo, Spectre we've got contact with another, fled into tunnels under the floor, we're in pursuit will update."
"Understood Valkyrie. Keep us informed." Mark replies. He then calls down the corridor. "Beowulf, what's happening?"
Jack tries a tech-use test to disable the device from behind it's range:
Int 31:
Jack's arm is still hampering his abilities, he is absolutely furious.
Spectre! My f***ing arm is f***ing causing me s***!!! Having trouble aiming or disabling this ************ thing, I may need to get this ********* thing looked at.
" Goin' Down the hole. Spitfire and Diehard in pursuit. Valkyrie and Hush supporting. "
Pete then dives down after the man, Spitfire covering his back.
"Roger Diehard," Mark responds, though anything else he was going to say is cut off by Jack's shout from the end of the corridor. Mark turns to look past Jack and the autoturret.
Jack continues to be confounded by the turret, which fires at mark trying to hurt him behind cover. But Jack's efforts are at least keeping the turret from doing any damage.
Pete rushes down the hatch, to see his target retreating into a storeroom.
Pete slams down on the ground and has his M16 level to take down the little mouse running away.
Anna and Jess keep running after Pete and Ashley. Not having Hip Shot, she can't even shoot if she could...yet.
Strength: 38
Jack, clearly pissed off at this point in time, grabs the turret with both hands and rips it off of its mount.
Spectre, this is Beowulf, the turret is no longer a problem.
"Understood Beowulf," Mark responds as he rolls out of cover. He runs down the corridor towards Jack. "Right, let's RV with Diehard and Valkyrie. Sounds like they've got something going on." He switches back to the squad channel.
"Diehard, Valkyrie, sitrep."
"Tunnels underneath Parking Floor, Storeroom at the end, target just ran in, pursuing. Will advise." Anna hastily replies as she runs after Pete who's further down the tunnel than she is.
Pete will shoot the man once with his M16 when he hit the same level.
"Understood Valkyrie. We are making our way down."
Mark holsters his pistol, the time for a suppressed weapon very much past, pulls his M4 up from it's three-point sling, and looks over to check that Jack is ready to go.
Jack reloads his shotgun, and swaps out for his electric pistol. After giving the turret a swift kick, he turns back to Mark and gives him a thumbs up.
"Let's move then," Mark says. He leads off towards Pete and Anna's last reported position in the parking bay, watching carefully for any sign of hostile activity or any more automated weapons.
Mark and Jack head towards the stairs that go to the basement from the north end of the office side of the building. Mark reaches the bottom of the stairs, Jack the top.
Pete wings the hostile, but he keeps moving into the room.
Anna drops down the hatch to land a few meters behind Pete.
you hear a voice call out from the room.
"We have your friend alive in here. He won't be if you don't let us go."
"Get one of those new grenades ready in case"
Moving cautiously down the stairs, Mark looks for any further booby-traps or hostiles lying in wait.
Hearing this, Anna immediately slows down and attempts to reduce the noise she's producing and, M16 at the ready, joins up with Pete but not before whispering the following over comms "Heads up, we've got a hostage situation on our hands - possible presence of xenotech."
Reaching Pete, she takes position behind him (or Ash if she's directly behind him) and whispers, audible to Jack and Mark over comms "I'll follow your lead, DH, I've got a few FB's on me."
Pete responds to Anna lowly over comms
" Flashbang. I'm going in there for better or for worse and blasting whoever can see or has the Grenade. "
Spitfire looks concerned, knowing Pete was serious about it but likely knew it was what he thought would be best.
As soon as the Flashbang went off Pete would rush in and Switch tho his Shotgun, Blasting anyone who was not affected OR whoever had the grenade, the Grenade first.
Jack would hate it if he missed the main event - he races down to the room and attempts to taze the first goon he sees:
BS= 37
Beowulf here, swooping in to support as fast as I can.
As Anna pulls the pin to her Flashbang, ready to throw it in, she doesn't here the characteristic click of a primed grenade.
" F+#%, it's a dud. No FB, go go go!" And, if possible, will put the Flashbang in a secure pouch and ready her M16 for Pete's charge.
"With Beowulf, moving in," Mark responds, M4 in his shoulder and scanning for targets as he moves.
The team rushes in when Anna's Flashbang is a dud.
Pete wastes the first with a blast from his shotgun.
Jack catches the second before he can shot the prisoner with a taser hit. The target spasms on the ground, a round discharging into the floor from his weapon as he falls.
Once the shooting is over, you see that this room has been set up as a crude surgical suite. Your comrade is strapped to a table, barely conscious with a IV bag attached. Several tables have various medical tools and testing equipment and there are several laptops set up. A small refrigerator has several vials in it.
Once the cordite smoke starts to clear, Mark organises a quick evidence gathering operation.
"Valkyrie, patch that guy up as best you can and see if he knows where everyone else is. Diehard, see if there are any other tunnels round here that the others may have used. Beowulf, give me a hand grabbing these laptops and whatever is in that fridge. This looks like an intelligence goldmine, let's not waste the opportunity."
Mark moves towards the laptops, closing the lids and looking for a backpack or duffel bag to stuff them in.
Jack looks in disgust as he walks into the "Frankenstein Room". He quickly cuffs their live subject with manacles and quickly checks inside the person's mouth to make sure there's no cyanide pill or equivalent before they regain their senses:
Be right with you boss, ensuring our bonus prize isn't packing any hidden surprises.
[i] After Jack ensures their live capture remains live, he gives their capture a shake-down for any weapons/tech/tracking devices. Presumably making the prisoner safe for transport, Jack helps stuff relevant goodies in a duffel bag.
"Roger that." And Anna moves to patch the guy on the operating table up and quickly get to work making sure the patient is in as good health as she can manage before they have to move them for exfiltration.
Pete twitches at the scene and its clear his trigger finger gave some pause, but as commands went out his posture resumed its battle-ready stance.
" Roger Commander. If there is a snake, I'll find it. I advise being careful with the Intel right now, they may have countermeasures to ensure information is ruined. We should check the status of our comrade. "
With that Pete searched around the area to secure it.
Mark finds a duffle bag that already has 4-5 loaded clips of ammo, it looks like tracer rounds.
something feels off about his teeth but Jack doesn't find any suicide pills.
Anna is able to stabilize the patient, he should be good to travel.
Pete notices that the room is rigged to blow, but it seems like someone started taking things apart for transit.
It looks like all the computers are password and retinal/ fingerprint scan protected. Taking a closer look in the fridge shows that there are also some bio-hazard bags, 4 of them in total. 3 are labeled subject #B00017 and one is labeled subject #C00009.
"Valkyrie, is he in a condition to talk? We need to know where the rest of our guys are," Mark asks as he starts checking over the contents of the fridge. The biohazard bags are intriguing, but they give no clues as to the contents.
"He's stable and should be good to go to get out of here." And she turns to the patient "Tell me do you know if any of the others are in the building? Anything at all, we're here to get you all out so anything you can remember would help us."
As she's talking to him, she beckons Jess over to help her get the patient on their feet and puts one arm over her shoulders to support his weight.
" Everyone be wary, the room is rigged to blow. I'm not sure if this is a red herring or if there is a timer system installed but regardless, we can gather up any confidential and essentials NOW. Then leave. "
Jack finishes grabbing what he can and grabs hold of his prisoner
Rigged to blow you say? So long, and thanks for all the fish.
"Then lets not wait for it to blow while we're still inside."
"Let's get out of here," Mark suggests, carefully pulling out the biohazard bags from the fridge and adding them to the rest of the collected evidence. "Pete, lead us out. Anna, you and Jess grab our guy."
The target secure, you evacuate the site and are quickly on your way back to HQ.
when you get back the duty staff inform you that your debriefing with the company commander is at 0700 tomorrow.
--------
At the meeting the company commander informs you that the techs have a testable therapy using the genes from the autopsied creatures. They do warn that there could be side effects .
As usual the company commander wants to hear your version of events.
At the debrief, Mark delivers a concise but comprehensive review of the action covering their human opponents and the automated turret they encountered. "We only found one of our missing men, sir. No evidence of where the others might have been taken. We recovered as much as we could from a rudimentary surgical set-up in the warehouse's basement. We have biological samples as well as a number of encrypted laptops. Our guys are still missing sir. We have to get them back." he says solemnly.
At the mention of an experimental alien-derived gene product, Mark asks a number of questions. "What do the tech team think this product will do sir? And what do they mean by side effects?"
Sir, you'll notice the prisoner we brought back with us, who is currently in our holding cell. He didn't say much, but one look at him and you'll notice they've been playing around with gene therapies of their own..... whoever they are. Hopefully our interrogators can get more out of him.
In terms of gene therapies of our own, I volunteer to take part. I'm tough enough to handle whatever the geek squad can throw my way, and I can give you research data that has been battle-tested.
"Sir, as Agent Mark has already mentioned, we've only been able to recover the one. Now, on-site medical assistance was done quickly so I was unable to discern any thing amiss with them. Otherwise, we encountered some light resistance and they were clearly readying themselves to depart to another location."
"Given more time and resources we might have been able to follow them to their next destination but that would have possibly put our survivor's life at risk. That said, we were also able to recover what, in their words, appears to be an Experimental Grenade of some kind."
"do none of you listen to my briefings? Only one of your comrades was captured. Regardless, in successful experiments on rats and monkeys they gained the ability to consciously change skin colour to better match their surroundings. It only really works if they don't move. Side effects varied but it seems that if the treatment fails it causes the subject to slightly mutate in some way. We haven't tested it on humans yet.
The second test subject you brought back is quite interesting, and dangerous. We keep it sedated most of the time. It seems go have a massively over developed brain that is somehow able to use that brainpower to effect the world around it. The geeks are still investigating."
Stealth? Sorry boss, ain't my style. If we ever find something related to door-kicking, I'll be interested.
Has our intel cell found any recent activities related to the xenos or this group?
Mark muses over the commander's words before responding. "I'll volunteer sir, if the tech guys are confident that it'll do what they say it will."
"Until we can lower the side effect chances to a minimal level, sir, I'll have to bow out of volunteering for this. Good luck, Mark and see ya on the other side."
"A UFO was spotted over New York last night, several city workers have gone missing in the sewers. We are also getting reports that hikers are missing from Algonquin Park, since hikers seem to be a frequent target of our foe, our analysts believe it is a likely target. Lastly, we have picked up radio traffic or lack thereof indicating that a logging camp in Alaska has gone dark."
Mark readies himself as the techs and medics start to set up their gear. He sits upright in the chair as the lead medic sets up an IV line and connects it to a bag of slightly cloudy looking white fluid. The medic says nothing to Mark as he opens the tap and the milky fluid streams down the line into Mark's arm.
A cold numbness spreads up Mark's arm, leaching out across his chest and the rest of his body. A prickling sensation develops in his skin, but there is, surprisingly, no pain. As the infusion finishes, Mark waits to see what happens. The lead medic, in his ongoing stony silence, disconnects the line, pulls the cannula, and tapes up the cannula site with a gauze dressing.
The briefing continues throughout Mark's treatment, and he listens to the end when the CO presents their next choice of missions.
"Those all sound potentially significant, sir. My feeling is that the loss of the logging camp is most important. A site like that would provide an unobtrusive staging area for further incursions, and we should deal with it ASAP."
"True, but imagine the widespread chaos that would occur in New York if they decided that they no longer needed to hide? Lets do the Logging camp first, but this business in a metropolitan area is of great concern."