Regarding the update to the New Phoenix Botanical Discovery Institute power and utility infrastructure, we have decided to freeze the agreed funding for the project. The Institute has had an immaculate history of very few safety issues, even in its early days. This has caused us to re-evaluate our priorities and determine that such updates do not need to be undertaken at this time, as such enhancements would require time and capital that would severely diminish the short-term development of the Institute's profitability.

  Thank you for your understanding.

  - Notice from Sunshine Investments, shortly before the New Phoenix Botanical Discovery Institute's breach and lockdown, 2054

  “Everybody out!”

  All manner of gasps and murmurs erupted from the tour crowd at the sight of the now-awake Model Fourteen, only interrupted by my bullish pushing and shoving of them towards the door. The point finally came across once the Antithesis turned its gaze towards us directly, and people realized they were nothing but a plentiful and vulnerable collection of biomass, ripe for the taking.

  Gasps turned to screams, and the bodyguard was forced to bring order to the quickly-spoiling panic of everyone rushing for the exit. Dr. Winslow didn’t join them, instead smashing open the glass case of an emergency button on the wall. Once pressed, red flashes and screeching alarms filled the room and echoed through the halls of the building. Despite the noise he lingered around the button, still firmly pressing it down and speaking into the adjacent microphone beside it. “The Model Fourteen has breached containment, requesting stage four lockdown protocol immediately! Repeat, the Model–”

  The sound of shattering glass grabbed his attention before he could finish, the last of his message replaced with a gasp. The Fourteen sheared apart the clear walls of the containment unit like tissue paper, and forced itself through the newly made gap. Eyes locked on the three of us still remaining in the observation room, and its body coiled up to lunge at the doctor.

  My legs acted before my mouth could, tackling him to the ground and sliding us clean under the Antithesis that had just threatened to decapitate him. Shards rained down on us as it tore through the room’s own glass with terrifying ease and hurtled all the way into the opposing wall. Oddly, I felt a set of hands hit the back of my own legs, and a quick glance back revealed the bodyguard in much the same pose as I was. He must have lunged for me, just as I had lunged for Dr. Winslow.

  My mind didn’t linger much on this repeated irony, and instead took issue with how easily the Fourteen reached us. “Do you guys not reinforce your glass, what the hell!”

  “It’s only rated up to Sixes and Nines, not this! Wait, you should have evacuated with the rest of the group! What are you still doing here?”

  “My job!”

  The bodyguard chose to ignore our stress-induced squabbling and instead rolled onto his back, shifting his rifle into grip in a clean motion. He pointed straight up towards the underside of the Fourteen, still briefly lodged in the nearby wall in a brief reprieve, and the air was ripped apart by the violent sound of gunfire.

  Unfortunately, the Fourteen was far more durable, and the bullets smacked harmlessly into its reinforced skin. Squashed bullets were now included in our rain of unpleasant materials.

  The giant alien centipede receded back into the outer chamber, gearing itself up for another lunge once seeing that its prey remained living. To say the least, staying in here would be a bad idea. “Out the door!”

  All three of us shimmied out on all fours, as to keep our profile low, and managed to clear the doorway right before the Fourteen struck again, aiming low but getting itself stuck on the walls on each side of the frame before it could reach us. None of us waited for the third attempt and bolted down the hall towards an emergency exit.

  At least, we attempted to. Right at the end of the current hall a shutter had descended, one heavy with thick, steel panels all across the entire length and entirely blocked our way out. I gave it a decently heavy thwap, but aside from a wavering motion it gave us no indication that it would relent. I couldn’t hear much over the sounds of the alarms as it was, but if I could I doubt anyone would have been on the other side to listen with how fast everyone hoofed it out.

  “Lockdown protocol…” Dr. Winslow said with a grimace.

  I clicked my tongue. “Guess we’re stuck with that thing. Everyone got their wills finished?”

  I brought up my fists with my back to the shutter, joined by the bodyguard with his rifle up and ready to throw down with the Fourteen whenever it decided to rear its ugly, insectoid head. I waited, those red flashing lights my only audience. I waited, the doctor trying his best to force the shutter open to little avail. I waited, and– no wait this was taking too long.

  A beat of dead air, and the bodyguard dropped his rifle with a repressed, deep sigh, although stress had hardly left his tense body in the motion. “It stopped pursuing us, Elliot.”

  “Of course it did,” Dr. Winslow replied. “The Model Fourteen is a transport model, and is only so heavily armored to safeguard its payload for delivery to the hive. The moment we stopped being an easy target it changed priorities. It’d rather use its current reserves to work on making a new hive than pursue something that may lead it into danger.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Cal chimed in my head to corroborate:

  Doctor Winslow’s logic is sound. You should be safe for the time being.

  I let out a breath I had unintentionally been holding in. “Okay, we can take a minute. Probably. Now, with all of that out of the way: what the fuck?!”

  The doctor’s hand went to his chin. “The Model Fourteen broke its sedation.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  “Let me finish please. Our facility received it after getting Family approval to examine a live double-digit Model, and we all did weeks of research on containing such a specimen and calculating the right dosage to keep it under for the duration of our study. How could it have possibly escaped?”

  “It got longer,” I replied, paraphrasing what Cal had told me in private earlier. “By unconsciously extending its body, it worked the drugs through more of its system, stretching the dose thinner and thinner until it could wake up.”

  Dr. Winslow gave me a surprised look. “I’m… shocked you could make such a theory with so little time to observe the Model. Have you ever considered interning at the institute?”

  “Doc. Focus.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I don’t mean to bring down the mood,” the bodyguard interjected. Really needed to get his name at some point. “But if that thing was still weakened when it attacked us, I really don’t like our odds against it at full strength.”

  As if to add onto this already shit pie, the main lights chose this exact moment to cut, leaving us completely in the dark aside from the low red flashes of the undeterred sirens.

  “It must have hit the generator.” There was a noticeable twinge of panic in the doctor’s voice at this point. “That’s really not good. The stationary stasis systems for all our live specimens are linked to the main power grid. If we’re on backup power, we have maybe a few minutes before they all wake up and start prowling the facility.”

  An irritated grumble came from the bodyguard, although that did little to explain that grin that showed briefly on his face. “Sure makes the investors look stupid for draggin’ their feet on that infrastructure update, don’t it?”

  “How many of those live Models do you guys have on hand, anyways?” I asked.

  Dr. Winslow gave me a questioning look, but answered regardless. “About two dozen. Half of that is almost exclusively made up of Model Threes, with the rest being select Models for focused research. I was looking to get in a Model Two myself, but those requests always seem to fall through.”

  That…didn’t sound so bad. I’d certainly dealt with worse. …No, the more I thought about it, the harder my face scrunched. “But that’s not accounting for all of the dead Models. That’s all free biomass for the taking, and once the live Models are awake, they’ll get that into something trying to kill us before we know it. We have to move.”

  I strutted forward towards the open door on the other side, but was pulled back by the bodyguard’s broad hand. “That’d be going right towards where all the Antithesis are, missy.”

  “Well, yeah. They aren’t going to kill themselves, and all twiddling our thumbs is going to do is give them more time to rip out our insides. Just give me a minute and I’ll get my st–”

  A beat, one filled by me staring back at the shutter. A shutter that was currently blocking my way out of the facility. The facility that I needed to get out of to reach my bike. The bike that had all of my stuff in it.

  I turned away with a curse.

  “Good time to have some extra points, at least,” I muttered to myself. “Even if it’s a fucking waste of a purchase.”

  Not necessarily. At least with the Newton Mark IIIs, you could equip them to the spare arms of the VAJRA.

  That was a fair point, and a decent investment. I glanced back towards the shutter, which the other two had gathered around. Above it was a camera, one of those dome ones that made it difficult to actually determine where it was pointing. Even if this was an emergency situation, I was still a little hesitant about unveiling myself if it was going to have a bigger audience down the line. “Hey, do you think the cameras are down with the outage?”

  “They would be,” the bodyguard replied. “It’s all connected to the main power. Don’t see how that helps us right now, though.”

  “Just means I can drop the pretense.” The gloves covering my prosthetics came off, and were stuffed into my pockets. “Cal, get me a pair of spare Newtons with JAB Mark IIs, if you’d kindly.”

  Purchased: Newton Mark III Combat Gauntlets x2 - 600 Points

  Purchased: JAB Assault Module (Mark II) x2 - 500 Points

  Point Total: 7388, 1 token

  The pair of gauntlets appeared above my hands, with gravity sliding them into position. Two mouths were agape in the surprise, and neither of them were mine. “Hi, I’m Max. I go by Death Punch. Please just call me Max, though.”

  “So that’s what you meant by ‘your job’ back there…” Dr. Winslow said.

  “Mhm.”

  “Though, to be honest, you don’t look much like any Samurai I know.”

  Well, yeah, I usually try not to, but this exact scenario bit me in the ass. “...I may or may not have left all of my equipment outside in my bike.”

  “You didn’t consider the possibility that there could be a breach?”

  “Hey, that’s your job to ensure, not mine. Can't I get one day off without Samurai nonsense?” My mind jumped back to an earlier conversation. “Actually, hold on, isn't this supposed to be Eye Spy's problem?”

  “Well…” Dr. Winslow let out a hiss and scratched the back of his head. “He's kind of on a siesta right now. Always takes a few days off out of Arizona after the soiree.”

  I opened my mouth to point out how stupid it was, but I closed right after. Complaining about not being able to take a break before chiding another for following through with their own would have been the epitome of hypocrisy.

  “So then it falls to me until Trig comes with the backup,” I said. “The longer we spend just hanging here, the stronger the Fourteen and company are going to get. Hang tight you two. I’ll have this wrapped up real fast.”

  The doctor stepped forward. “I’m coming with you.”

  I raised an eyebrow, one that was maintained as the bodyguard joined. “Uhh, if it was just Mr. Bodyguard volunteering, then I’d consider it. Not some guy in a lab coat.”

  He took another step, a certain determination burning in his eyes. “I insist. I was the one who brought all those people into where the Fourteen was. It’s my mess to clean up.”

  Would the Fourteen have woken up with or without his intervention? Hard to say. Either way he’d probably be blamed for the whole incident and sacked without a chance to explain himself. As I looked into his still adamant gaze, something told me this wasn’t about trying to earn his own job back. And I respected that.

  I let out a sigh. “Cal, give me a gun.”

  Purchased: Hummingbird Mark I-D - 10 Points

  Point Total: 7378

  A blocky pistol fell into my hand, to which I lightly tossed to Dr. Winslow. The motion wasn’t what he expected, as several seconds were spent trying to actually catch it before his butterfingers finally took hold. “Ever shot a gun before?”

  Dr. Winslow blanched for a second, the intent just now reaching his mind. “No.”

  “Figure it out, and don’t fall behind.”