Lambda-03 tale version 02

At the strum of Tom Anderson's guitar, a body hit the floor with wet cracks and blood splashes, decorating the wall with a diagonal spray of crimson liquid. He walked across the disinfected corridor of Provisional Site-56/81, blue eyes darting from left to right in alert for any security personnel that might be lying in wait. He strummed his guitar once more; the shadow beneath him grew large and dispensed a six-foot tall entity with sharp pointed hands. Its featureless face "sniffed" the air and moved with hound-like motions, moving forward and disappearing at the corner that leads to the left.

A scream and a gunfire was heard.

His mouth widened with a bloodthirsty grin as he followed his servant to the next identical corridor. Another man in black vest fell dead, gutted. His servant was nowhere to be found. He moved across, the door to the Anomalous Item-09 was just ahead. It was a large diamond that poses no anomalous properties but due to its attachment to a larger anomalous object, it was stored there for safekeeping and experimentation.

However, the puny Foundation didn't know its significance to the Initiative.

He pressed the access button; the steel door slid open with a hiss, revealing a red ruby encased in a display slightly larger than its size. He approached the display and strummed his guitar to summon three identical entities with hammer-shaped fists. The trio moved without question, obeying their master's wordless order and smashed the encasement into smithereens, sending shards of glass fragments across the floor.

"Halt! Put your hands in the air!" A voice yelled at him.

Turning, Tom Anderson lowered his cap and grinned. The lone security officer approaches with a pistol raised. By the looks of it, this one was new in his job. Despite his obvious fear, the officer didn't show it. His stance remained tense, finger inside the trigger guard. He was about to repeat the order when he suddenly burst into suds and bubbles.

"What took you so long?" Tom asked as Beanie came forward, toy bubble pistol in her left hand.

"I've ran into some security a minute ago. We better move now, I heard them talking about a 'Tactical Response Team' arriving to this Site to contain the situation."

Tom nodded as he unzipped his backpack and fitted the diamond inside it. He slung it again and followed Beanie outside. He raised his radio near his mouth and spoke.

"Bruteforce, can you provide us a shorter way out? We're on a tight schedule right now. They're sending backups to this Site."

//"What?"// The former GAW hacker grunted in response. //"You should have said so! The Site was upgrading their network security measures!"//

"Do it now, I don't care if you have to blow up the goddamn facility. We have the diamond now and we cannot fail. Where is Father Jackson anyway?"

//"He's just around the corner."//

They navigated through the maze of corridors around them. The signals were blaring and the announcement speakers fixed on the corner of each hallways keep transmitting warning and safety protocol instructions in a looped state. Tom was slightly sickened at the sight of the chaos they perpetrated. Red blood on white walls reminded him of a slaughterhouse or one of those scary hospitals he sees on movies. However, he felt no pity for the men from where the blood flows. He watched one of them in death throes as Father Jackson ended his life with a Black Latin chant. The security officer's head exploded in crimson plume.

"Have you got what we came for?" Father Jackson inquired with an angry glare from his eyes. He was stressed at the battle taking place around him. He was perspiring heavily.

"Yes, and Bruteforce was providing us a way out." His sentence was punctuated by a secret door sliding open to their left.

//"You can thank me later."// Bruteforce spoke over the radio.

Stepping inside the newly discovered passage, the trio descended what appears to be a staircase. The walls were unpainted but the shoe prints on the steps suggest that the passage was used on more than one occasion.

"So, where does this lead?" Tom Anderson asked.

//"To the parking lot, back to me."//

They descended the last of the steps before being engulfed with the lights of the parking lot located behind of the Provisional Site. Bruteforce appeared from one of the bushes, carrying a laptop tucked under his armpit. He approached the trio and nodded.

"Where's Driver?" Tom Anderson asked when a white van suddenly emerged in front of them.

"Get in, now!" The stereo spoke to them.

"Dammit, Driver. Do you really have to do that?" Beanie asked while recovering from her palpitation.

When they were about to board Driver, the anomalous vehicle suddenly flipped to the side, its tires were smoking. Three Armored Personnel Carriers with mounted machine guns came into view, halting as soon as they got to their desired distance and began dispensing troops. Tactical Response Team Alpha Unit from Site-56 has arrived to stop their progress.

"Driver, are you alright?!" Tom asked as everyone began to fight their assailants.

"I'm fine!" The L-300 van shifted into a Volkswagen Golf with two pair of oversized muscular arms protruding out of its underside. It crawled towards the nearest APC, bullets splashing against its paint and skin but done nothing to literally harm the anomalous vehicle. It sent one of its arms at the APC, crushing it with all might.

Beanie fired at her target, disintegrating him into bubbles. She hid behind a Foundation vehicle to take cover. Father Jackson assisted by chanting a phrase in Latin.

"Ex lux, tenebrae!"

Darkness soon appeared from beneath the nearest group of Tactical Response Troops and engulfed them in a blink of an eye. All that was left were their bloodied remains.

"Sanguin corpus, anima!"

Blood from the dead Response Troopers rose in the shape of a humanoid entity. They posed in a battle stance before moving in to attack the other Response Troopers, giving them something to worry about. Bruteforce grinned as he flipped the monitor of his laptop open and began typing on the keyboard. He successfully hacked through the Response Troops' SCRAMBLE visor through his anomalous programs and began feeding them with cognitohazard memes of the late Michael Jackson. He heard screaming and gunfire as the men committed suicide to stop the effects from overtaking them.

Tom Anderson strummed his guitar, playing the riff of Metallica's No Remorse. Six entities with chaingun hands appeared behind him. They moved with lumbering motions, raising their weapons and locking it onto moving targets. When the weapons began spinning and firing, bodies after another fall in rapid succession.

"Shit, we better contact Site-56 for additional reinforcements!" One of them said as they hide behind the APC.

"We never expected the intruders to be this strong." Another one replied as he began transmitting an SOS call to Site-56.

*****

"What happened?" Agent Stamatiadis asked as Agent Gonzales followed after him.

"Provisional Site-56/81 was attacked by Horizon Initiative mercenaries hired from various Groups of Interest. They were trying to steal something inside."

"How are you certain that they belong from other GOIs?"

"You'll find out once we get to the Briefing Room." Agent Narvaez replied. "You've missed out a lot of things in your absence."

"I know." Stamatiadis replied as they walked past researchers in white lab coats and entered a door marked with the word: "Briefing Room".

"Good morning, Agents." Mobile Task Force Commander Alexander Bolvik greeted as the six-man team entered.

The Commander was standing in front of a large projector. In front of him were tables and chairs that the group immediately occupied.

"And welcome back, Stamatiadis."

"Good to be here." Stamatiadis replied.

"As you can see, we received a distress call from Provisional Site-56/81 when it came under attack from a group of Initiative Operatives of their Project Malleus. Our Surveillance showed that the group were hellbent on stealing an object previously attached on one of the anomalies contained there. Its purpose were still widely unknown." Bolvik paused for his words to sink in.

He continued. "The Initiative Operatives were comprised of Persons of Interests under Site-56's watch list for the past few months. This may be new to you, Stamatiadis, but your teammates already know who they were. Let me reiterate to refresh your memories about our hostiles." An image of a man appeared on the projector. Caucasian, blue eyes, strong jawed and blonde. The name 'Tom Anderson' appeared beneath his picture.

"Tom Anderson was involved with the GOI Are We Cool Yet? For numerous occasions and was sighted in their anomalous exhibitions. However, the POI disappeared for unknown reasons until now when he and his team invaded Provisional Site-56/81."

Another image appeared which displayed the angelic face of an Asian girl in her early twenties. She was wearing a beanie that covered her entire head. The designation, "POI-3322", appeared beneath.

"Just like Anderson, the Person-of-Interest was also involved with the AWCY for more than one occasion. She mysteriously disappeared with Tom for unknown reasons and their anomalous capabilities were still unknown at this point. Maybe the After-Action reports would allow us to know more about them."

An image of a balding man in his fifties appeared. He was wearing a black minister's garment with a pronged crucifix at hand.

"Unlike the first two, we know who Father Jackson was. Well versed in Dark Thaumaturgy, Jackson was an ordained priest turned renegade when he joined the Initiative for some 'higher purpose', whatever that is."

Finally an image of Hispanic man with spiked hair appeared with the name, "Bruteforce", below his image.

"And finally, a GAW operative that caused the March 21 Blackout and uploaded cognitohazardous memes throughout the city. It took a while to clean that up but we managed to contain the situation back then." He cleared his throat as the image of the Provisional Site appeared afterwards.

"Your mission was to ensure the termination of the POIs involved with the invasion of Provisional Site-56/81. Your assets were fully repaired and charged." He glanced at Stamatiadis, "I hope you still now how to use the Particle."

"Of course." Stamatiadis grinned.

-------

The back of the truck was dark. Stamatiadis was alone, inside his shell of green armor. It was quiet, with only the sound of the speeding highway and the bubbling hydraulics of his armor could be heard. The limbs of his shelled body were attached through the roof of the cargo container's roof and walls. The container was converted into a makeshift mobile deployment station for Lambda-03 for easy transport. Stamatiadis felt the truck bucked and shook as it dodge the incoming traffic.

When the truck stopped, his pulse beat twice faster. The sound of battle and screams could be heard outside. It seems like the Tactical Response Team has held longer than expected. Stamatiadis was relieved. The steel crane that held his armored limbs in place began releasing him with a hiss and the ramp in front of him slowly descends.

He walked down the ramp, followed by the rest of Lambda-03 as the crane after the crane released them. He hefted his Automatic Rifle and began sprinting forwards to aid the Tactical Response Team.

"Oh shit, it's Lambda-03!"

"Thank God!"

Stamatiadis ignored them as he took cover behind one of the flipped APCs. Gonzales and Narvaes stopped behind him. He saw a white car with four muscular limbs punching Response Officers, a man with a guitar, a priest with a pronged crucifix, a girl with a beanie and a bubble pistol and another man with a laptop.

"Lambda-03, Delta Attack Maneuver." Stamatiadis ordered as he revealed himself from cover. Agents Revilla, Bailey and Koustikos began moving elsewhere while Narvaes and Gonzales followed him.

They moved towards the 'armed' vehicle and began firing at it. Driver caught their attention, let out a diabolical laugh from its stereo speakers before reaching for them.

"Now!" Stamatiadis ordered as he pressed a button on his left arm. In an instant, the trio shrunk into small size that person could even barely see. When one of Driver's fist landed a few feet beside them, they began to climb upwards in silence. Their destination, Driver's fuel tank.

Jumping over bulging nerves and thick muscles, the trio successfully reached the arm's shoulder socket connected to one of the vehicle's gears. Stamatiadis climbed on the top of a sway bar and began his navigation from there.

Meanwhile, Driver laughed as he raised his fist. The green guys were surely dead. Whoever they were, they have got the nerve to go against The Driver. Its stereo speaker let out another harsh laugh before swinging at the next Response Trooper. It watched the Trooper fell to the side, clutching for his fallen weapon. It raised one of its muscular arms when its fuel tank suddenly erupted in flames. It was falling, crashing straight to the ground without control. What the hell happened?

When its body hit the ground, darkness overtook it.

Koustikos moved past flipped vehicles after another as he take cover from Beanie's potshots; Revilla and Bailey was tailing behind him. He took a peek but immediately withdraw when a stream of bubbles raced towards his face.

"What's the plan?" Bailey asked as she pointed at a group of red humanoid liquids mauling Response Troops to death. "We still have to deal with those, right?"

"We don't have to. We just need to kill whoever cast that thing." He pressed the button on his left arm and shrank. The others did the same.

Their enemies were hiding behind a single vehicle. However, they were three cars away from them and in order to get to them, they need the power of stealth. Moving with haste, the tiny Mobile Task Force Operators ran across the huge parking lot. Their armors enabled them to be fast despite their small sizes.

Finally, they reached their destination with ease. Koustikos stopped below Father Jackson, who kept on chanting in Latin. He raised his right fist upward before pressing the button again to return back to his normal size. His fist connected with Father Jackson's nuts as he reverted back to his normal size. It flipped Father Jackson that made him land to the ground back first.

"Fuck!" Bruteforce was about to drew his pistol when Bailey appeared from the roof of the car with her Automatic Rifle aimed at the temple of the hacker. She did not hesitated to fire four shots, spraying blood and brain matter everywhere. Koustikos did not hesitated to put a bullet on Father Jackson's head and chest.

Beanie took a step back, whirling to aim at Koustikos and Bailey when Revilla emerged from below and seized her legs while tackling her to the ground. He drew his combat knife as Beanie's toy gun slid from her hand. He raised the knife and landed the pointed tip on the soft spot of her neck. Air escapes like the sound of a flattened tire.

Tom Anderson didn't realize that he was fighting the battle alone now. Only when he saw Driver's burning chassis and his team's bloodied corpses made him froze.

"Goddamn you all!" Tom Anderson strummed harder, forcing his entities to open fire in rapid successions.

"We can't kill the entities he summoned." Stamatiadis said over the radio. "But we can kill the guy that pulls the string to his puppets." He raised his rifle, Gonzales and Narvaez prepared themselves for the worse. "We'll distract him, Koustikos, you and your team finish him!"

//"Yes, sir!"// Came Koustikos' reply.

Stamatiadis revealed himself, with him his subordinates. He opened fire at the crazed Tom, catching his attention. Tom diverted his entities aim towards his assailants, who abruptly withdraw to their cover. He turned at them and began perforating the vehicle that acted as their refuge.

Koustikos shrank into tiny size and sprinted towards Tom before he completely destroy Stamatiadis and his friends. As soon as he got within range, he reappeared in normal size with a knife at hand and drilled it on Tom's neck thrice before slitting his throat.

Soon, the entities disappeared with a blood curdling scream and the sound of battle disappeared. Stamatiadis appeared from the perforated vehicle along with Gonzales and Narvaez. The remaining Response Troopers emerged victorious, cheering as Lambda-03 surrounded Tom's corpse.

"Everything has a price." Stamatiadis said as he retrieved Tom's backpack.