15 Survival

Britney felt lost in the complex compound. She passed through countless manufacturing stations, all seemingly dedicated to accomplishing different, but related tasks. Hundreds of men and women in grey overalls bustled this way and that, moving parts in between stations, and manning strange, ancient machines. She saw occasional guards in AmpSuits walking about, but the workers seemed to mostly supervise themselves.

Burning hot steam brushed against her face as the workers at one station poured molten metal from an enormous furnace. The sounds of metal clanking against metal rang out from another station, the dozens of machines there bending components into shape. Other stations had what appeared to be tunnels dug deep into the ground, workers presumably mining for minerals underneath.

She frowned. This was no mere manufacturing plant. The cursed place contained the entirety of the supply chain of … whatever it was that they were building. Britney had only ever heard of that being accomplished at Titanus. Admittedly, the technology being used here was centuries behind that of Titanus, but it was still no small feat.

Her legs ached as she attempted to stay out of sight. The adhesive at the bottom of her ModBoots kept her stuck to the ceiling, but it was the walking that had tired her out. Even with an AmpSuit, walking upside down was stupendously difficult, and it put a great deal of strain on her muscles, natural or otherwise. Her body intuitively resisted the strange motions, tensing up at the attempt to defy gravity.

Hermes help me if a guard decides to look up.

Step by dreadful step, she made her way through the seemingly endless open space, passing one manufacturing station after another. It soon became apparent to Britney that the components being produced below belong in weapons. Britney grimaced.

Enough weapons to equip a small army.

After what seemed to be an eternity, and no sign of the Wolf, she finally reached a wall. It had a door-shaped opening cut through the concrete. She waited until no one was looking and slipped through.

She frowned. Somehow this room was just as impossibly large as the last. Perhaps more so. Thousands of laborers in blue overalls poured molten plastic into molds of different shapes and sizes. They worked almost harmonically with the constant hum of the machines and were strikingly efficient. Almost TOO efficient.

A guard gasped as he spotted her, but before he could so much as utter another sound, Britney's elbow was firmly lodged in his face, shattering his jaw with a loud crunch. A legion of terrifying eyes peered down at her as the guard fell.

The workers' expression of pure horror was quickly replaced with that of anger. The hundreds of men and women in her immediate vicinity left their manufacturing stations and pointed at her in unison. And with what seemed to be a single enormous voice they began to shout. "INTRUDER… INTRUDER… INTRUDER!"

She dashed forward with inhumane speed, nearly colliding with dozens of people along the way. The workers began to link arms in an attempt to stop or slow her. Britney, ever the gymnast, leaped over the human chains with graceful arcs, one after the next. Soaring tens of feet into the air each time. Soon, however, workers began to pour into the room in unfathomable numbers, thousands upon thousands of men and women with arms linked. She considered climbing to the ceiling again.

That was not going to work. Too many people pointing and screaming. It would give away her only hiding spot.

The room slowly became so congested that Britney no longer had room to land her feet. Dozens of people tumbled to the ground around her as she landed feet first on a man's chest. She somehow still managed to land on her feet after the fact. The AmpSuit had absorbed most of the damage, but she still felt stunned from the violent impact.

She glanced down to the old man on the ground and grimaced. His chest was completely caved in, and he laid lifelessly on the concrete. Many of the workers that had linked arms with the man lay beside him unconscious, or maybe themselves dead.

She felt so disoriented from the collision that she could barely comprehend the fact that she had killed again. Running through a crowd at three hundred miles per hour in a metal suit was definitely not the best decision she'd ever made, but what else could she have done?

The lucky few who had not been smashed to pieces by Britney's antics stood and began to retreat away from her. The rest of the crowd began to follow, and remarkably, they were all dead silent. It was bizarre, the workers somehow seemed to move and operate with hive-like efficiency, all going back to their respective workstations as if nothing had just happened.

Ahead of her, she could hear the continuous sound of bones snapping, and the sound was slowly getting closer and closer. A guard clad in an Ebony AmpSuit abruptly stopped before her, blowing air. He seemed to appear out of nowhere, the trail of the trampled bodies behind him being the only indication of where he'd come.

With the same speed with which he had appeared, the guard charged forward. Britney, still dizzy from the collision, unsuccessfully attempted to dodge the man's knife thrust. Luckily, it still missed the intended target of her heart, and dug through her left arm instead.

She grunted through the pain, and swung her right fist towards her opponent, picturing a blade.

The man moved to the side effortlessly, her blade completely missing him, whooshing through the air.

He grinned, as he stuck another blade into her thigh.

She gritted her teeth. The cold metal inside of her made her very bones tremble.

"This is NOT how I die!" She bellowed.

Britney swung at the man with renewed vigor. Both ModGloves modulating with each swing. A katana. A short spear. A metal whip. All ripping through the air at impossible speeds.

At first, her opponent deftly dodged her attacks, but slowly, as she got into a battle rhythm she began to gain ground. A little cut on the man's pale cheek. Then another right above his eye. He lost a finger. Then his whole hand.

His attacks completely stopped as he struggled to defend against the flurry of swipes.

Britney faked a swing with her right, and with her left glove modulating into a crescent-shaped scythe she sheared through his legs at the knees. By the time his body had hit the ground, her fist was there to meet him with an Amped punch, leaving him unconscious.

She removed the blades from her arm and thigh, and they fell clattering to the floor.

In an instant, three more guards puffed into view ahead of her.

One of the guards remained behind while the other two roared, rushing towards her, daenarium blades clutched tightly in hand.

The duo attacked with extreme precision and patience. What one lacked in speed, the other made up for in strength.

Metal clanked against metal as she managed to parry an overhanded swing from the first man. The second struck her ModBoots and knocked her feet out from under her. She fell to the ground but managed to get back up in an instant, determined not to perish at the hands of these terrorists.

They overwhelmed her, and all she managed to do was dodge and parry.

There's a pattern to their movements, I just need to find it. She thought, waiting for an opening to present itself, but none did.

The strikes were lightning fast, and within seconds Britney had nearly gotten herself killed half a dozen times. Barely moving out of the way of one swing, and just in time to parry another.

The bald one struck her face with an elbow, breaking her nose, while the one with the eye patch took the top part of her right ear off. She quickly moved back as blood poured down the side and the front of her face.

They quickly began to wear her down, and it became painfully obvious that she had no chance of coming out victorious. At least not on her own.

At first, she had resisted Nina's suggestions as they directly contradicted her own instincts. The damned computer code would suggest she strike when she had no opening and would tell her to parry when she clearly was to dodge. Britney, however, was running out of options, so she allowed Nina to guide her.

The bald man thrust at her chest, and instinctively she wanted to parry the strike away. Nina suggested she jump instead. Britney reluctantly complied and was quickly relieved she did. The first man's sword pierced through the second man's remaining eye and out through the back of his skull.

She landed on her feet and quickly charged towards the guard, his once shiny head now coated with a layer of crimson. By the time she was halfway there she felt a sudden spasm throughout her body and fell to the ground, unable to move.

A pair of drones appeared above her head, electrical currents shooting out of them like lighting and tasing her. She twitched through the shock and turned her hand into a cannon. Black projectiles launched out of her hand cannons with a bang, burning the drones with a brilliant blue flame.

She stood and instantly turned both hands into blades as the bald guard was on her again, swinging his double-handed blade in wide, furious arcs. The third guard - the one most likely responsible for the electric shock drones - pulled a golden automatic revolver from his belt and began to shoot.

Bullets rained down all around her. Luckily for Britney, it was nearly impossible to hit a target moving at hundreds of miles per hour. Especially one equipped with a supercomputer that can predict bullet paths.

She bounced from wall to wall, running this way and that. She ran erratically and with no discernable pattern, knocking a few workers over in the process.

The bald guard stayed on her, always no further than a stride away. He moved with purpose and skill, attacking her ferociously, timing his strikes meticulously, and always going for the kill. Had it been any other day, he would have likely succeeded. Today, however, all of that meant nothing. Britney was not fighting alone.

The guard's movements became incredibly predictable, and even at such high speeds, she was able to cut him off and put him on the defensive for a change. Her gloves modulated through dozens of shapes a second. Spear. Scimitar. Cannon. Whip. Sword.

The man did not stand a chance.

Britney frowned as she drove her blade through his heart. He coughed blood and toppled nimbly over.

She'd done it again. Another life taken by her hand...

Murderer.

A bullet grazed her cheek, almost as if to remind her to keep running. She did so, as another bullet struck a laborer in the head behind her. The portly woman - who had been operating a plastic injection machine - slumped to the side and fell on her co-operator. Curiously, the man did not so much as flinch, and continued to work as if everything was normal, blood seeping through his pants and onto the seat below.

At first, she'd thought the laborers were willing collaborators, Exitur's own labor force. She was now beginning to realize that was not the case.

They're controlling their minds… That's what's making them so efficient and hive-like. They're innocent civilians...

Britney grimaced. Dozens of worker corpses littered the cold ground, and more were falling by the second. She bolted towards the guard responsible and at full speed.

The man seemed to notice, panicked, and unloaded a barrage of bullets in her direction. In seconds hundreds of projectiles were spiraling through the air towards her. Britney did not so much as flinch. Instead, she effortlessly and instinctively moved out of the way, her body seemingly moving on its own accord as she gave further control to Nina.

She could see the solemn look of desperation on his face as he began to realize that his days were numbered. He dropped his weapon and began to run.

Britney gave chase, but before she could reach him, she was intercepted by six more guards in shining black AmpSuits.

Yes… This IS a hive. And here come the hornets.

Suddenly the pain from the gashes in her arm and thigh seemed insurmountable. It was almost as if her body was telling her that she would not be able to get through this on adrenaline alone.

If I almost died fighting three of them, how in Hermes's name can I possibly face six? She thought, grimacing. Maybe if I give Nina more contr-

They all attacked at once. A storm of blades rained down on her as she struggled to find the proper footing. The thrusts came lightning quick, and Britney felt as if she was fighting a hundred enemies instead of a half dozen. Glimmering ebony whips, knives, and swords cut through the air at hundreds of miles per hour.

The thrumming sound of ancient machinery was overshadowed by that of metal banging on metal. Somehow Britney was able to remain on her feet. The relentless attacks seemed to come at her from every possible direction, and to make matters worse, they came all at once.

She ducked out of the way of one guard's attempt at decapitating her, just in time to parry a strike from another aimed at her heart. Her ModGloves and boots were almost in a constantly liquid in-between state as she struggled to keep up with her attackers, modulating constantly. One of the guards - a blonde woman with deep facial scars - buried an elbow deep into Britney's ribs. She screamed, and spit out blood as her bones collapsed.

A strike like that should have killed her. A strike fully amplified by an AmpSuit was the equivalent of getting hit by a moving truck. Luckily, her own AmpSuit had taken most of the damage.

The guards continued to pounce on her, and she had no time to worry about her aching limbs or broken bones. It was quickly becoming clear that she only had one real option. Run.

With a little luck and patience, she was able to find an opening in between the endless slashes and swipes, dashing away. Unfortunately, the guards were just as fast and all of them managed to keep pace, attacking her from the sides and rear.

Her only real advantage was having Nina along, and although it couldn't make her run faster, Nina made her reactions run at light speed. Slowly but surely, Britney was beginning to gain on her attackers, throwing a few slashes of her own instead of just parrying. The attacks came at a much slower pace now as the guards sprinted alongside her.

Britney pictured an anvil as she finally landed a strike on one of her opponents. His head instantly turned to mush on impact, spraying blood all over a laborer in grey overalls behind him. The laborer did not flinch.

She caught the blonde woman with a blade through the neck. That's what you get for breaking my ribs... bitch.