Storming the Castle

The plan went off without a hitch. At first.

Torrance got us inside with a swipe of his card. The security guards let us pass without question.

The receptionist requested we sign in and record our business. Torrance remarked unfavorably on the OCD-like measures STAB takes with all their paperwork and records. The woman chuckled sympathetically.

Once past the front desk, we got on an elevator that led underground and then made our way down a large corridor. All was going well. We just needed to find someone and make them take us to Lina.

Someone soon came out of an office, but before I could draw my weapon, I noticed that Torrance had tensed up. The man who had come out looked up at us and said to Torrance, "You!"

Torrance tried to tackle him, but before he got him to the ground, the man had pulled what looked like a fire alarm and a loud wailing filled the place, oscillating between loud and soft, like an ambulance alarm.

I covered my ears, but my hearing began to fade anyway. The piercing alarm was stabbing into my skull.

We heard several sets of footsteps approaching from behind, so Torrance shot the man in the leg and we hurried further along.

The men behind us yelled at us to stop, but we ignore them and turned a corner, out of sight, though I carefully peeked around the edge.

As they came closer, something strange began to happen--every time one of the uniformed personnell trained his rifle on our position, it would suddenly swivel around toward one of his colleagues. They would all look surprised and perplexed and the ones now in the weapons' sights called out in surprise.

They all lowered their weapons until they came closer to us, but we were waiting and ready. As the first few came around the corner, we shot at them multiple times and they fell. Others got into position before we could defend ourselves, and squeezed their triggers; the guns turned on one another in the blink of an eye--they were being made to kill each other.

Thankful for the distraction, we reloaded and continued on, the siren blaring incessantly.

Torrance said the holding cells were down a level, so we took a nearby flight of stairs. We could still hear gunfire from above.

Without a guide, we would simply have to check each cell individually.

He swiped his card and a door opened before us, a corridor with many doors on each side, stretching seemingly unto infinity.

Once inside, we closed the door and Torrance pried open the control panel and shot up the controls so it couldn't open again from either side. We carefully looked through the windows into each cell, taking our precious time, but it was all in vain. No sign of Lina.

At the other end of the corridor, Torrance again swiped his card. This time a large room filled with desks and computers and large monitors on the walls, as well as a few doors in some of the walls labelled "Interrogation Room," was revealed to us.

And right there in the middle of it all, waiting for us, was another detachment of security personnel, with automatic rifles and covered head to toe in protective gear.

They shot at us unceasingly, but we were not injured. A wave of black rose up before us and absorbed the impacts. Then the shadows began tearing the men apart and they screamed in agony. I couldn't watch.

As I turned around, however, many of the men from before were there. They must have taken an alternate route. But they didn't attack us; I saw their movements were jerky and they moved past us, helping in the struggle against the others. We took the opportunity and ran.

Once near the back of the room, we found a small man cowered in a corner. He wore a lab coat, but he was the first person I saw, so I pulled him up and stuck my gun in his back.

"Take me to her or you die!" I yelled.

He stammered, "W-who?"

"My sister! Lina Friedman!"

"Sh-she's not here. She's down in the lab."

"What?!" I screamed in his face. "Why the hell would she be there?!"

"For...for the exp-periment..."

I had no idea why they were experimenting on her, but I was going to save her from this hell, from these demons. At the least, they certainly weren't human. Not anymore.

As we descended deeper, the alarm slowly faded to the point it was tolerable; there was still a ringing in my ears.

The doctor or scientist or whoever he was led us to Lina. It was a large room, accessed only by a thick steel door operated by a panel. Our hostage typed in the code and the door slid open.

And my heart broke.

She was there, alright. But...she was hooked up to a bunch of equipment. All sorts of wires and tubes and things I don't know how to even begin to describe were attached to her. Some were pumping oxygen, and I could see fluids coursing through others. It was a mass of machinery, taking up most of the room.

And half her body was gone, the machines in their place. I could see her face, though; she was looking toward us without sight. Her eyes were glazed over.

I called out to her, to let her know I was here to save her. She didn't move, like she hadn't even noticed.

She seemed almost dead.

I broke down crying.

I'm sorry, I have to continue this later, it's hard to write the story. My fingers are trembling.