The Facility

[LOCATION: OMNIPOTENCE & RESEARCH CYBERNETIC DEVELOPMENT FACILITY-12, [REDACTED]]

[DATE: 11.4.2226]

Oksana Sokolova walked through the once-sterile halls of what was probably one of O&R's crown jewels; but now, it was reduced to near rubble and was quite overgrown.

Such was the price to be a little over 200 years old and the place where the machine uprising would start- which was, thankfully, resolved long before her birth.

Two HelixCorp ACESPs (Advanced Cybernetically Enhanced Security Personnel; long name, all to explain something with lightning-fast reflexes and pin-point accuracy) walked besides her, breathing steadily in and out of their gas masks as their grip on their guns shifted slightly ever so often.

But by God, it was freezing in here!

She thought the coat HelixCorp gave her was shit early on, but even her own long coat barely kept her from freezing to death; the temperature in here was absolutely abnormal.

Sokolova muttered a few curses under her breath before she told one of the soldiers behind her, "Hand me those blueprints, I'm sick and fucking cold and tired of walking around in fucking circles."

In their general fashion, the soldier- whose name tag read "Belt"...somehow- slowly grabbed the blueprints of the facility from his duffle bag, before leaning over and handing them to Oksana.

She grabbed the blueprints from him, and then he straightened back up and continued walking as usual, surveying the area.

Sokolova never knew what to think of those ACESPs. They seemed slow and lazy-ish in public, but she had seen a couple of the training test recordings for the early models. Those fought like devils, and they were version... 3? Maybe 4. But the ACESPs behind her were Model 8s.

Then something cracked beneath her feet.

Was it ice? Essentially.

But when she looked down...

"Oh, fuck me."

A body of what was presumably an O&R researcher was frozen solid, and she had just stepped on their head.

At least it just kinda cracked and shattered instead of coating her boot in blood and brain matter.

But now she'd have to clean that thing, thoroughly. The thought of it made her want to just throw her boot away; it'd be such a massive waste of her free time.

Oh well. Best to just keep on walking.

"Belt and whatever your name is, you better fucken tell me when there's a corpse where I'm walkin! Don't just stand there and watch me step on a dead person!"

Belt and... Oksana briefly looked at the name of the other one. Leather.

...

Anyway, Belt and Leather just gave her a silent nod and they continued on their less than merry way, with Sokolova glancing down at the blueprints every so often to make sure they were headed to the elevator for Sublevel 9B.

Damn facility was bigger than New Florida- and she should know, she lived in New Florida.

=--=--=--=

The way to the elevator was pretty uneventful. The way down the elevator was also pretty uneventful, save for the time a somehow-alive rat surprised Leather into nearly putting holes into everything.

The way down the elevator also required them to climb down the maintenance ladders whatevers, due to the fact that the damned power had been out for... Oksana wanted to say 159 years, but that might be giving O&R's power systems too much credit.

Now, traversing Sublevel 9B was freaky. Perfectly preserved bodies lay frozen- which Belt kept her from stepping on, good boy points earned- and the air was so thin to the point that she had to put on one of Leather's spare oxygen mask/gas mask things.

It also kept her face from freezing off, so that was a plus.

As they walked, rats- somehow rats were still alive even down here, damn buggers kept on surprising the shit out of Leather and annoying Oksana to no end- would scamper this way and that, and Belt even snatched one up and threw it at the wall with such force that it just splatted.

Ignoring that occurrence because she could, Oksana looked at the blueprints for Sublevel 9B and started what should be a short trek to the place that held O&R's AI, Omnipotence 7...

For some reason, the room was labeled "Cavern". Just plain cavern, no other designations, numbers, details...

Ah, well. It didn't affect her and she just had to get there, get her job done of snatching the AI's core, bringing it back to HelixCorp, and getting it repurposed or studied.

Upon reaching the entrance to the Cavern, two things surprised her.

One, there was an at least 8-foot tall white-hazmat-and-gas-mask wearing dead dude sitting against the wall.

And two, there was another 8-foot tall dead dude on the floor wearing the same thing as dead dude #1.

Oksana had half a brain to just hightail it out of there- those were AHB Model 2-10s, and sure they were ancient but they could soak up any firepower like a sponge and could tear an ACESP in half, not to mention they had stupidly long life spans- but she had a job to do.

It would be a short job. Hopefully. And then she could take her vacation, drink some nice vodka on a nice beach with nice people on the nice island of New Hawaii, have fun, etcetera.

And she's getting paid a ton of money for this, so... incentive.

One teeny problem.

The entrance to the cavern, Oksana just now noticed, was a door that was welded shut.

Good thing one of her ACESP guards brought cutting tools.

"Leather, get over there and open the door for me, would ya? Belt, if you wouldn't mind making sure nothing's going to attack us while our backs are turned."

Slow as ever, both ACESPs did as she asked. It was nice, telling people what to do and them doing it. Of course, that was what someone else would say. Oksana didn't get that joy- it made no sense to her- and she was a tad bit cranky today.

So she stood there for a moment, just watching the cybernetically enhanced humanoids go about their orders- really, HelixCorp needed to come up with a name that's easier on the tongue- before plopping herself down and resting her tired legs.

She was an office worker, not some hardcore hiker.

=--=--=--=

Nothing disturbed them while Leather worked, save for the rats- which Belt would throw into walls- and Oksana froze her ass off sitting there, but when the door was finally wrenched open, all of them immediately hurried inside- because what first exited the door was a blast of warm wind.

Warm. Wind.

=--=--=--=

The inside of the Cavern was so warm. So very warm.

Oksana hadn't been warm in two weeks. That's how long it took her to get from New Florida to the ruins of this facility; one plane ride, two helicopter trips, and then a jeep dropped her off here.

Sweet jesus, her job was nearly done and the place was warm.

In the back of her mind, being the weirdo she was, she guessed that those doors had probably been sealed shut before the nuclear war sealed the temperature fate of the upper part of the States.

For what reason, she didn't need to know! A nice cold vodka on a nice warm beach in New Hawaii was waiting for her after she extracted...

She finally took the chance to look up at the ceiling.

Belt and Leather's gazes were up there as well.

Suspended by an innumerable amount of wires, cables, ducts, and with even more dangling from it, was a massive dark grey metal sphere that glowed orange in several spots.

Why did it glow orange, especially since power had been out for 159 years or something? Oksana didn't care.

Where was the core? That was what she wanted to know.

Looking around a little, she could see a couple dozen desks with long-dead computers set up, some refrigerator units that probably didn't work anymore, and the fact that this place was literally built in an underground cavern. That sphere was probably over 50 feet above the ground.

"Well, fuck me once and fuck me twice, dammit!"

The one thing she had noticed that could even possibly get her up there was the dangling rope things. But that required climbing. She had just climbed down a very long elevator shaft. She had just walked her ass off, and then she had froze her ass off.

Goddammit, this was NOT in the job description!

And she couldn't exactly send the ACESPs up there. They wouldn't know what to look for and she wouldn't know what to look for either until she got up there.

She sighed. A simple action compared to the more complex action that she would be taking soon.

=--=--=--=

Sure, she was a former member of the FSB- the Russian equivalent of the secret police- and dealt with terrorists for a few years, and she had climbed many ropes, but her arms were burning already.

And she was- oh, she was at the very top of the sphere.

...

DAMNIT SHE JUST CLIMBED SOMEWHERE AROUND 100 FEET FOR NO FUCKING REASON.

Oh well. Just gotta get on the sphere, that's what she needed to do now. She could sue HelixCorp later.

A bit of swinging the rope back and forth and then an action-movie-worthy jump later, and she had landed.

Where was a removable panel.

Her eyes scanned the surface, and while it was heavily textured with all kinds of outdated tech shit, there was no panel yet.

This was going to take a while- nope, nevermind, there was a panel right behind her.

Alright, just gotta slide on down a little... yep, right there, now the drill...

Luckily, she had put all the tools she would need on her belt, so she had access to them instantly instead of having to get Belt or Leather up here.

VRRRRRRRRR.

VRRRRRRRRR.

VVRRRRRRRR.

VVVVVRRRRR.

She pocketed all four screws because she was a responsible thief- no, collector, O&R had dissolved years ago and didn't leave anything to anyone, therefore their property was legally for the taking- and slid the panel off.

Thankfully, the area inside was big enough for her to fit. Otherwise she would've been fucked a third time and would have had to find a different potential entrance.

As she crawled in, she saw it.

Right there, maybe a few feet away.

A nice sized sphere, a little bigger than her head, covered in "PATENTED O&R OMNIPOTENCE AI 7 CENTRAL OPERATING CORE".

She thought it would be a whole lot harder to get this thing. Like maybe it would activate out of nowhere or those AHBs would wake up, or something O&R had cooking down here would kill her...

She wasn't going to question it, and she wasn't going to waste any time either, so she quickly snatched the core and crawled out of the big sphere, slid down the rope, and threw aforementioned core at Belt.

"Core. Duffel. Let's go."

Belt dutifully put the core in his duffel bag and started walking a few steps behind Leather, who did the same.

Dhhhink.

Ddd-dhink.

Of course exiting wouldn't be easy. Of course there was a reason why the sphere was glowing orange.

Of course the fucking AHBs would wake up.

"Startup complete. Objective: eliminate the Omnipotence AI 7 Central Operating Core."

Two voices right outside the open door said that in unison, and in an instant, the two ACESPs were ready to fight. Guns raised, perfect stance, etc, all in the blink of an eye.

Oksana took out her own pistol.

It had been a while since she had hostiles to shoot.

=--=--=--=

Gunsmoke filled the air, there were more holes in the AHBs than there were in swiss cheese, but still, those gas-masked freaks kept coming.

Even a grenade had just revealed their reinforced-titanium coated bones.

Yeah, the titanium was reinforced.

And very dented, but nowhere near breaking.

At this rate, they were going to get ripped apart by the things. Leather already had one of his fingers not surgically removed, and his hand literally broke when he tried to punch one of the AHBs in the face.

Belt was the one who kept on moving backwards and focusing fire on the face of an AHB; the gas mask's visor had long since shattered, which just showed wrinkly and thick tan-orange skin and plenty of metal add-ons.

Oh, and two glowing red eyes, that wasn't freaky at all.

Oksana had recently joined in with Belt, but her GSh-18- which fired armor piercing rounds- wasn't doing shit.

Well... now she had an idea.

It was a solid idea. For the most part.

The AHBs were slow- although they hit fast and like a tank- and they were a reasonable distance from the door now. If she could get there, and catch the core if Belt threw it, they could get out.

Possibly.

It wasn't much of a long shot but the fast reflexes of the things made her doubt her plan, but it was better than being torn apart by the cyborgs.

"Belt!"

The ACESP looked towards her for a moment and nodded before fixing his focus back on the AHB.

"I'm going to run towards the door, you'll throw the core at me, and then we get the fuck out of here! Alright!?"

Belt nodded again, starting to shoot his gun one handed as he took out the core from the duffel bag.

Oksana, on the other hand, ran for the door.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the AHB Leather was fighting.

It had turned towards her and reached out to catch her in the blink of an eye.

She couldn't get out of the way enough. She would never be able to.

Well, goodbye Hawaii, goodbye vodka...

"GRRAHH!"

Time had already slowed for her, but now she saw Leather.

He had taken a machete and swung it straight at the AHB's arm with all the force he had, and while it wasn't enough to cut through, it was just enough force to make the arm obey gravity a lot more.

Maybe Leather oughta get good boy points.

Anyway, she was at the door now- the core had arked through the air, and she turned right in time.

That big-ass sphere crashed right into her, and it sent her falling, but she had caught it.

All they needed to do now was leave.

"Let's go! NOW!"

Belt jumped right over the AHB he was fighting- ACESPs were very agile- and Leather dove under his AHB, getting to his feet right after and running right through the door.

Now they were all running.

Sure, the AHBs were slow, but it would be a good idea to put as much space between them as possible.

That... was heart pounding.

Adrenaline-inducing.

She didn't know anymore terms, but what she did know was that she was going to spend her vacation relaxing.

And not doing any exercise, because she had done enough already.

=--=--=--=

As before, the trip to the elevator, up the elevator, and out of the elevator was uneventful. That was nice.

As before, Leather kept on getting surprised by rats, but his gun was out of ammo. Only Belt had any rounds left.

When Oksana finally crawled off those maintenance ladders and into relative safety, she just plopped down.

She didn't even care about the rat that was running around her in circles. She was done. This day was fucked, the rats were fucked, the facility was fucked, and she was tired.

Speaking of which, how were the rats alive? It was literally winter hell out here to the point that bodies had frozen solid.

Oh.

She caught a glimpse of the rat when it ran in front of her face.

There was some metal here and there, and one of the eyes was ringed by metal.

Of course it was a cyborg. Everything just had to be a cyborg.

Well, that's that.

She stood up, dusted herself off of snow, and started walking.

Time to leave.