Chapter 38: Chapter 38: Into the Jaws of Death
Guardian
A Worm/Destiny Crossover
Chapter 38: Into the Jaws of Death
This was how it started.
Eighteen people stood at the edges of a football field, dressed in ways ranging from the practical to the provocative to the profoundly absurd. In groups of three they milled about, quiet conversation and a thick tension combining to lend a near-vibrato to the air. Above them circled transports, a similar breed of unmanned vehicle to the ones that had brought them all to Vegas. Where those had been large, square arrangements, these were sleek and slender, quick like darting birds.
They would land soon, gathering the strike teams and ferrying them into the city. To be dropped deep into infested territory in a do-or-die attempt at destroying the hives before they could spread any further.
She was on one of these teams. Hell, she was leading one of these teams. There was a part of her that was stuck on that. It was...she couldn't think of a word to describe how out of her depth she felt, standing on the edge of that field. It was one thing to have her life at stake. She'd gotten used to that by now. Having their lives at stake, and under her control was another thing entirely.
The transports began to descend. The wind of their descent pushed her cloak out behind her in a dramatic flare. One by one the teams stepped forward, boarded, and lifted off. From her tablet she knew that her team would be among the last to leave. Something about their target being closer.
To one side, Foil was a mess of knotted tension and anxiety. Whatever she had seen, combined with knowing that worse was to come had done the normally calm girl no favors. The muscles in her jaw were flexing, and she had a white-knuckle grip on her new weapon: an automatic crossbow. A sleek, angular thing in blue and gray, the canister of bolts was slotted just below the end of the weapon. A half dozen more canisters were looped around her waist on a belt. Her sword was still visible, and doubtless there was an assortment of knives somewhere on her person.
To the other, Grace was an expression of controlled fear. Here was someone who had just escaped the city, plagued by monsters at every turn, and then turned around to go back in. She was doing an admirable job holding herself still and steady, and it was only the clenched tremble in her fists that her internal battle could be seen. She didn't carry any weapons, and had found a stab vest somewhere and painted something in Chinese on it.
Their transport landed and, after a moment of hesitation, Taylor started towards it. After a moment, she realized that they weren't following her. She stopped and turned back. Her cloak wrapped around her legs. This was the time she said something inspiring, yet comforting. To reassure them that they could do this. But her mouth was dry and her voice had abandoned her. All she could do was meet their eyes and try to communicate that.
What they saw must have been enough, because they started forward. First Grace, then Foil. The three of them boarded the transport, settling into the hard, carbon fiber seats, and were lifted into the sky.
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They flew in silence for a few seconds before a calm, slightly digitized woman's voice filled the air. "Guardian, Foil, Grace, are you receiving?"
She had to consciously relax the muscles in her jaw enough to reply. "We are."
"Good. Your time to arrival is two minutes and counting. Please open the case that is appearing now." Sure enough, part of the floor rose into a square case roughly the size of her palm. She plucked it off the ground and ran a searching finger around for a latch or seam so she could open it. Eventually, she found a depression with her thumb and levered open the case. Inside, nestled in gray foam, were what looked like three earplugs.
"Are those radios?" Grace asked.
"They are. Each is tuned to your team frequency, which has been designated Vanguard-1. If you need to change frequencies, simply press your finger to the side of the device and say the frequency you wish to tune to. The other teams are Vanguard-2 through Vanguard-6, and the command frequency is Vanguard-Prime. One minute to landing."
While that explanation had been delivered, Taylor had handed out the other two radios and fitted the remaining one to her ear. It fit perfectly and, to her surprise, she could still hear at her usual level.
"Should we test them?" Foil wondered aloud.
Taylor was about to respond when the woman did it for her. "You needn't, but feel welcome to. I can confirm that each radio is receiving and transmitting without fault."
"Testing, testing. The baby squirrel is a sexy motherfucker." Grace's lips moved, and her mumbled words came to Taylor's, and presumably Foil's, ear with perfect clarity. Then, at a speaking volume. "Did you guys hear that?"
After affirmative nods from everyone, silence returned. Forty seconds later, the transport touched down and the doors slid open. Foil went out first, crossbow leading the way, checking for anything to shoot. Taylor followed, brand new rifle in hand. Grace brought up the rear.
A moment later, the transport lifted off, leaving behind only a, "Good luck, Vanguard-1."
Foil probably didn't intend anyone to hear it, but her radio picked up her voice as she whispered, "We're definitely going to need it."
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One of the first things that became clear in the seconds after stepping onto the roof of the Bellagio was that someone had tried to make this a safe place. Two doors led into the building, and both were barred and barricaded. A meager pile of supplies had been gathered in the shade of one of the giant air conditioning units: a few bottles of water, a half-empty first aid kid, what looked like a radio, and a few cans of spray paint. Beside the supplies, laid on the asphalt-and-gravel ground, was a makeshift spear. Nothing more than a pair of kitchen knives secured to a broomstick with electrical tape, it had seen clear and heavy use. Whoever this person was, they had made a clean escape and had a plan to signal for help. But there was no one here. She couldn't smell or hear or find any trace of movement or life. It was as empty and silent as the tunnel beneath Brockton. "Any signs of life?" She kept her voice low. Just in case.
Grace, who had gone towards the rightmost of the two doors, responded first. "No. Someone was here, though. Where the hell did they go?"
Foil's voice was terse. Tense. She had moved towards the left door and circled around it. "I think I have an idea. Get over here."
"On my way." Taylor worked the lever on her new rifle and clicked in the safety stud. A few moments later and she saw what had put the tension in her teammate's voice. A gaping, jagged hole in the wall. Dust and fragments of cinder-block formed a sort of comet's tail, leading to the edge of the roof. Mixed in with that dust was the muddy, rust-brown taffy of congealed, drying blood. Then, on the raised lip of the roof, a hand print and two torn fingernails.
It didn't make sense. What was the survivor doing over here, away from their weapon and their supplies? What had made the enemy burst through here? Why had they thrown the survivor off the roof? Had they?
It wasn't exactly why she was here, but...she wanted to know. The tenacity of this mysterious person had impressed her.
"So...they threw him off?" Grace asked. Foil shook her head.
"No. Look." She stepped up to but a foot on the raised lip of the roof and pointed down over the edge. Taylor looked, and understood. Fifty feet down, more or less, was a patio covered in expensive looking deck furniture and glass-top tables. Nestled in the shattered remains of one of those tables was a pair of screamer corpses, the body of a middle-aged woman, her arms tangled around the necks of the screamers, and most of a young boy. A thick trail of blood led from under the awning, framed on either side by the vague imprints of hands, clawed from the effort of moving. The trail ended at the boy's body.
"Fuck." Grace's lip curled in a snarl. "Fucking...fuck."
"That's why we're here." Taylor's own voice came to her, as if from a distance. She could barely hear it over the roaring in her blood. "To keep this shit like this from happening."
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It was Grace who led them into the Bellagio. Grace who moved with absolute, utter silence through blood-soaked carpets and through shredded rooms. It was Grace who found the places where people tried to make their last stand; barricades of furniture and mattresses, hiding places tucked into corners. She found the places where they tried to fight back, turning conference rooms and gyms into battlefields. All were empty. All had failed. Each sight put another facet in the cold, clear diamond of hate and grief in Taylor's gut. She ached to race ahead, blade and gun alight, and kill every last one of them. Then go find more, and kill them. She wanted to kill and kill and kill until there wasn't a single enemy left. That way they couldn't hurt anyone else.
Eighteen floors, of the building's total thirty-six, went by like that. If the next eighteen were like that, Taylor was going to go insane. She was going to snap and release that murderous impulse crawling up the back of her throat. Luckily for her sanity and not for anything else, Grace – who'd slipped easily into the role of scout – found the enemy. She came back around the corner, shadows clinging to her and her feet making not a sound, and pointed the way she had come. "There's about twenty of them." She spoke under her breath, so quietly as to be impossible to enunciate, and yet her words were clear.
Taylor whispered, "Show me." and gestured for Grace to do so. A minute of careful steps and controlled breathing led her to getting a clear view of their opponents. Or prey.
There were twenty-one of them, in fact. Five shooters, fifteen screamers, and one of the big blades. They were across the hallway from her, in one of the conference-room-turned-battlefields, and they were...sleeping? They weren't moving, whatever they were doing. The screamers were crouched, curled into fetal balls on the ground. The shooters were gathered around something on the floor, beneath Taylor's field of view. They were swaying slightly, but otherwise still. In contrast, the big blade was doing a slow orbit around its smaller comrades. Almost like it was watching over them. Beside her, Grace breathed, "How do you want to kill them?"
Taylor wanted to kill them. Oh, did she. But, even if they didn't use any of their guns, the screamers would earn their name and alert every enemy in the building. Unless. "Grace, can you do what you did with your feet on a bigger scale?"
Grace hummed yes.
Foil said, "Good. I'm with you, Guardian. Whatever you decide."
Taylor's eyes darted around the room while her mind raced. Yes...yes, that could work. She touched Grace's shoulder and they retreated around the corner. "Okay, here's the plan: Grace, do your thing and make sure no sound gets out. Foil, your priority is the shooters. There's only five of them, take 'em out. Leave the big one to me and then, mop up. Sound good?"
Her team nodded. Taylor breathed in. Breathed out. "Let's do it."
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The entire thing would play out in complete silence. That would the part she found weirdest, looking back. She couldn't hear the lightning flicker around and infuse her knife or the sound of her pounding feet or the snarl she felt rumbling up her throat and out through her twisted lips. She saw, rather than heard, the bolts from Foil's crossbow hiss past her. There were a half-dozen shots, and each of them sank home, snapping heads back and sending sprays of black ichor flying through the air.
As they began to fall, Taylor jumped. She curled her feet beneath her and hit the upper torso of the big blade like a cannonball. It staggered back, not as off-balance as she'd have liked, and began to swipe at her with its blade arm. She buried her knife between its burning green eyes to the hilt, then dragged it up over the pyramid of its skull and down to the back of its neck. The skull, carved in two, began to burn. The shooter corpses hit the ground. The screamers, now roused from their strange possible-slumber, rose as one. A quartet of crossbow bolts stitched across three of them. Two went down.
As the big blade began to fall, she jumped off of it and up. She felt the scrape of the ceiling on her back as she flung herself to the far side of the knot of screamers. Another two went down as she passed over them, twisting in the air to land lightly on her feet. Then she dove into the crowd, knife leading. Reverse-grip, it went up, taking out five. She spun the knife in her palm as it came across her body, killing two, and then brought it back down. Four went down, the bright edge carving through screamers like lights through fog.
Two left. One of them had a crossbow bolt protruding from its forehead. She snarled soundlessly and cut the top of its head off while Foil killed the other by riddling it with bolts.
Audio logs would later reveal a five second stretch of utter silence. Maintenance would be performed and would show the radios were functioning perfectly during this time, there was simply no sound to pick up. The conclusion meshed nicely with the powers and skill of the team in question. Twenty enemy casualties in five seconds.
Foil came to join Taylor, changing bolt canisters on her crossbow as she did. She slotted the new one in with halfway confident motions, like she'd practiced it but wasn't sure she'd practiced correctly, and discarded the empty one on the ground. She gave Taylor a thumbs up, which was returned. Grace followed a moment later, making a gathering gesture with her left hand. Sound returned to the world, every noise briefly deafening before settling back into the quiet mausoleum the Bellagio had become.
"Holy hell," Grace sounded surprised. "and I thought I was badass." She looked around, taking in the aftermath of their skirmish. "They always this easy?"
"No." Taylor figured that, as leader and the one with more experience fighting the enemy, she should answer. "We surprised them. All things being equal, they're more than a match for a human being."
"Which is why," Foil took over. "we never, ever, ever let things be equal." Her voice damn near hummed with the hatred she seemed to be learning for the enemy. Taylor could understand.
"Ambushes, tricks, misdirection." Grace flashed a thumbs up. "Three of my favorite words."
"Let's get to it." Taylor said, and gestured for Grace to lead the way. And they descended towards the mouth of hell. Or the lobby. Whichever.
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