Plug in. Upload. Moment for consciousness to soak into inert flesh.
The weapon wakes.
A dense haze covers her senses. She can feel the essentials, though. Framework of padded rigging holding her body. Heady smell of chemicals and bodily odors in the hot, cramped air. Cooler air brushing across her bare skin as the A/C hums. Needles in the back of her neck and across her torso. The cable pulling free from the neural plug at the base of her skull.
The weapon settles, enjoying the warm cocktail of chemicals the needles drip into her veins. Everything is familiar.
What comes next will be familiar, as well.
There’s a metallic clunk and the jerk of mechanisms unlocking and moving. The weapon screws her eyes shut as the lid of her pod grinds open above her and cold, stale air rushes in like still water. She’s allowed a moment then to ease back into the feeling of being. The pinch of needles retracting from her flesh. A dim colorless light above her. A shiver running through her muscles as she acclimates to the change in temperature.
“You’re Needed, Weapon.”
Her eyes pop open. The words are a fresh adrenal gland shoved into her mouth. The voice is the sweet, firm flesh leaking fluid between her teeth as she’s made to chew. The rigging unfolds from her limbs and the weapon stiffly sits up, blinking into the small metal room around her.
“Get Up.”
The words echo from an intercom above her. Muscles aching from disuse and joints popping as she moves, the weapon climbs out of her pod. Her exposed body is a mosaic of scars and rippling muscle. She is pared down to what is needed of her: tall and lean even with the musculature, short brown hair slicked into disarray with sweat, grey eyes hooded and fixed ahead as she stands. Her head swims, filling with fog that blunts her senses further. The weapon grits her teeth through it. This is familiar, as well. Just ride the feeling out.
Relief comes when an armature lowers from the ceiling. She cranes her head upwards, giving it easier access to close a metal collar around her neck. A half-ring of tiny new needles prick into the back and sides. The pain means nothing to her. What does is the cool rush of chemicals trickling into her bloodstream, blowing that fog away.
A door across from her pod hisses open. “Come,” the voices orders. Smooth with a harder undercurrent. A metal bat wrapped in velvet. The weapon obeys the same way she breathes, staggering through the passage into another small room, the walls here covered in thick cables and the ceiling bristling with machinery. The weapon takes her place on a small platform beneath the tangle of mechanical limbs.
Uncoiling, the armatures reach up into the space above them and, piece by piece, bring down the weapon’s attachments. Armor. Augmentations. Strapped to or plugged into her flesh and the cybernetics therein. Assembling her true self upon a frail frame of meat. Soon she’s encased almost entirely in black polymer alloy, fitted tight to her body, the dim light either slipping off the ebony or drunken in by the thin navy blue streaks along the limbs and the lines of her torso.
Only one thing is missing. But she can’t have it yet.
“What Are You?”
The weapon, voice raspy with disuse, replies, “Your weapon.”
“What Will You Do?”
“I will kill for you,” the weapon replies. These words are a mantra etched into the inside of her skull. “I will butcher for you. I will burn for you. I will crush and rend for you.”
“Yes, You Will.”
Her helmet comes down last, open like a flower. The armature pushes it down onto her head, and the visor folds down over her face. The mouthpiece comes up over her mouth next, wherein her muzzle is hidden. Metal wire presses snug against her face as it fastens itself to her. The weapon exhales a long breath. She is almost whole.
“There Was An Incident In One Of The Research Facilities,” says the voice, a leash pulling the weapon towards purpose. “A Bio-Engineering Project Got Out Of Hand. You Are To Clean It Up. The Facility’s Tele-Gate Is Still Functional. We Will Warp You In. Expect Heavy Resistance.” The voice pauses. “Understood?”
“Yes, Controller.”
“Good weapon.”
The Controller’s praise flows through the weapon’s veins into her heart like one of the drugs coming out of the collar, effervescent and hot. She knows she’s a good weapon. She’s earned the words from the Controller a hundred times. Every single time it’s still a shot of ecstasy.
She’s so high on it she hardly notices the assault rifle being fixed into a holster on her back, nor the grenade belt fastened around her waist and the pistol slipped onto each hip. Her arsenal is as much part of her as the teeth in her mouth. She feels their absence more than she notices their presence. Fixtures on the sides of her muzzle tighten, pressing the bottom up into her jaw and holding her mouth shut. There are no more words she needs to say.
Peace fills the weapon. She is whole now. Faceless. Mute. Lethal.
The peace ends when her collar injects her with fire. Her blood boils, scalding her muscles and boiling her heartrate higher. With a ragged grunt the weapon doubles over, then slowly straightens as she acclimates to the inferno filling her body. All familiar. The cables along the walls thrum and pulse with pale light and the wall ahead of her tears open in a swirling black vortex. Drawing her rifle, the weapon charges in.
A moment in emptiness. Weightless, the void howling in her ears. Then she emerges barrel first. Overhead lights spark on and off in this new space, glistening off the blood painted across the metal floor and walls. The sick-sweet metal stink of death fills the weapon’s nose as she stalks towards the agape blast door across from the tele-gate. Her helmet’s night vision clicks on, painting the world in a greenish tint. It’s empty. She hears nothing but the distant blare of an alarm echoing from somewhere deeper in the facility. A holographic motion sensor hangs in the bottom right corner of her visor. She’ll hardly need it. Her nerves are set aflame. She is a missile seeking heat.
These research facilities are small, built to purpose. She’s swept through many such installations. White walls and white-and-grey tile, decorated only with bullet holes and half-dried viscera, copper and gun smoke reeking in the air. The weapon hears only her own racing heart- her boots are padded for silence. She sees only these empty passages. The motion sensor is dead. Her nostrils flare. Where is the fight?
She finds an answer around the next corner. Down the hall, a body lays face down on the tile, its legs hidden in an open doorway. Research staff, white lab coat and all. Its hands leave dark trails on the floor as something drags it through the doorway. At the top edge of her motion sensor, a dim blip moves accordingly. The weapon bares her teeth in anticipation. Finally. She closes in.
Another two blips appear on the motion sensor. One to her right. One behind her.
She catches the sound of claws skittering on tile and spins around just in time for something to pounce at her. Many things then happen. She fires. Three round burst. The something spasms in the air. Shrieking. Flailing limbs. She catches the thing by its thin neck and squeezes until she feels vertebrae snap and its body go limp.
A door to her right swings open. She hurls the corpse through the doorway and fires another burst into the dark. In between muzzle flashes, glimpses of long pale limbs and too many eyes. Another shriek pierces her helmet like a spike driven into her ear. She shuts it up with another burst.
“More.” The Controller’s voice in her earpiece. Live wires hooked to her prefrontal cortex.
Her motion sensor comes alive. Four more blips, all around, closing.
The weapon grimaces. She is alive now.
Doors crash open and claws scratch all around. The weapon wheels to the closest one, loping down the hall towards her. It might look human were it not so lanky, were its face not a mess of staring eyes and jagged teeth. A snarl in her throat, the weapon unloads another burst and the thing rolls to a stop.
Another lands heavily on her back, staggering her forward as it wraps an arm around her neck. An annoyance. The weapon reaches back and grabs the thing by the head, her thumb squelching through an eye. The thing yelps. It’s tall but frail, light as dry sticks, she tears it off and throws it down the hall. The others are closing in.
“More.” It’s a goddess’s decree. The weapon shudders with the jolting need to comply. Between the weapon’s legs, an apparatus rubs itself against her moistening cunt. She fires and the thing is dead before it even rights itself.
Then the other three are on her, hooked nails raking and jaws snapping. All useless. She drops her rifle to kill with her hands. Her collar pumps more drug into her and she becomes a force of reaction. Crushing bone. Tearing limbs. Heat pulses throughout her body, heady and pleasurable, a blush as red as the spilling gore rising through her. She grabs one by the throat, the ragged groan filling her sealed mouth hungry and feral. The creatures cannot hear it. She wishes they could. She wishes they could see her bugging eyes and the spittle dripping from the wires of her muzzle, running down the interior of her helmet to pool against her chin. She wishes they could see the apparatus stroking against her, teasing. Promising rewards for their deaths.
Then it’s over. The apparatus retreats. The weapon’s head lightens as the wave breaks. As she wavers, her eyes pass over a dead creature at her feet. She’d caved its skull in beneath her boot. Through the gauze of blood covering it, she catches a glint of metal on its chest, just below the collarbone.
A dog tag. Embedded in the flesh as if the thing’s body had grown up over it. She can make out writing but not what it says.
She almost reaches for it.
Pain encircles her throat. Electricity snapping into her flesh. She spasms.
“Bad Weapon.” The words hurt worse than the shock collar. That metal bat leaving its velvet sheath and smashing into her knee. “You Know Better. Focus.”
Shaking the twitches from her muscles, the weapon straightens. She does know better. This isn’t relevant. Finding her rifle amidst the viscera, she picks it up and stalks on, eager to make up for this.
Another corner brings her to a pair of doors at the corridor’s end. Light filters in from under them. A readout in the corner of her visor tells her the rifle has eighteen bullets left in the mag. Enough for a few more kills. Three blips drift about ahead. The weapon’s nostrils flare. Adrenaline spinning up again. Fire racing over oil. She’s a good weapon.
She kicks the doors open, night vision flicking off as she does. Light floods into her face, bright enough to obscure her vision a moment. This doesn’t concern her as much as the rifles crackling ahead. She pulls one of the doors shut and ducks behind it, blinking hard. What she sees of the room is some sort of common area, an open space with chairs and tables set out like a cafe and vast windows. She also sees one of those things barrelling towards her, gnashing slavering jaws. In the light she can see the pinkish tint to its skin, like a permanent blush. It’s got an assault rifle, too.
The weapon puts a burst into its torso and it goes down screaming. More return fire batters the door and the weapon darts out, shooting back at them as she goes. One of the things drops. The other flips a table and hunkers behind it. Poor cover. A coward’s death. Angling her rifle up the weapon pulls the second trigger, and with a thump a grenade springs from the underslung launcher. The thing is smart enough to hear the sound and flee, taking potshots at the weapon as it sprints across the room. This only gets it shot sooner. The table still makes an adequate display as it’s rent apart by the grenade, thunder and shredded wood and iron filling the air.
“That’s Better.” The collar begins to pump warmth into her again.
The weapon’s ears ring and her heart thrums, pumping hot ecstasy through her. She feels moisture between her legs. A soft grunt escapes her.
“Would You Like More?”
The weapon nods, shuddering.
“Then Kill More.” Another shot of fire. The weapon retches like she’s been kicked in the gut. God, it feels good. Makes her wetter. Shaking off the initial impact, she seeks more death. Blood and other fluids are splayed across the windows but she can make out the barren gold-brown rock outside, rolling on towards a valley and an empty blue sky. Off in the distance lays the wreck of some old war machine, all stiff boxy limbs and rusting cannons. The rigid grey hulk of the rest of the facility looms into the right side of the window, an insignia of a grey serpent coiled around a black triangle adorning one outer wall. The weapon sees it on every deployment. There’s something comforting in the way the serpent encircles its companion, its jaws agape just short of the tip of its own tail.
Somewhere that alarm is still blaring, closer now. It’s coming through an open doorway across the dining area, one door blown off its hinges. The weapon follows. Nine bullets in the mag. Three more kills, if she’s good. And she is good. She’ll prove it.
Another hallway. Always more hallways. Motion sensor is dead. The weapon grinds her teeth, riding that lingering ecstasy, that smouldering fire, trying to keep it stoked. She cannot be good- cannot be rewarded- if she doesn’t kill. This hallway is shorter, the doors at its end hanging ajar. Lights flash and pop within, giving her glimpses of more blank grey-and-white architecture, a wide staircase leading up out of her sight.
A blip on the sensor, ahead.
The weapon pauses, rifle trained on the doorway. Quiet, irregular footsteps reach her ears through the painful ringing. It takes a moment for the source to lurch into sight. A woman. Human, lab coat, brown hair up in a bun that’s come partly undone and spills into her face. Limping. Pressing a hand over the wet red stain across her midsection. She freezes, seeing the shape of the weapon in the flickering light. Then, she mutters something. Her voice is thin and shaky, the weapon doesn’t catch the words.
She does catch the woman shuffle into the corridor towards her.
“...out, right?” The woman’s voice is entering earshot. Her eyes are pale glass. “You’re here to help?”
The weapon has no reply. Is she here to help?
The Controller answers for her. “This Is Not Relevant.”
“Please.” A trembling hand reaches down the hall to her. “You’ve got to get me out. Please.”
The weapon puts a burst through her chest, throwing her back onto the tile. The weapon presses on.
The next room branches in three ways: the stairs ahead, strewn with bullet casings and leftover gore, and a door on the left and the right. The door on the right has been barricaded with cheap furniture. The left one is wide open, a severed arm still clutching the handle. The alarm comes from the hallway within. The weapon approaches it.
And is wracked as her shock collar snaps to life again. She flags to one knee, drooling trailing from her lips as the current fries her muscles.
“That Is Not Relevant,” says the Controller. “Upstairs.”
Gritting her teeth through the voltage, the weapon staggers to her feet and obeys. She cannot be good if she doesn’t obey. The warmth is fading. The mess runs between her legs for nothing. She has to get the warmth back. She has to be good.
She makes it to the top of the stairs before she’s greeted by more rifle fire. Both sides, a couple bullets graze her helmet and shoulder. Her armor can take it but the impact is still a sucker punch. Flying back down she takes cover behind a corner, lets her foes come to her. Talons click down steel steps. Throaty growls. A reek like wet dog and rotting vegetation.
She leans out and fires. The first burst misses as the target ducks under it, dropping its weapon to throws itself down the stairs on all fours. The second shoots back, spraying sparks and linoleum into her visor and forcing her back into cover. She’s ready when the first lunges around the corner at her. Three rounds into its face, throwing it back and flecking her visor with shards of its head. She’s less ready when the second pounces out from behind it.
It’s a house cat throwing itself against a tank. She’s too solid for its frail body to knock over. It wraps its legs around her and grabs at her helmet but there’s little its claws can do against her armor. Why did it drop its rifle?
Again, the answer comes quickly. Digging its nails into the edges of where her helmet locks into the armor or her neck, the thing starts pulling up. Trying to wrest the helmet off. Another doomed effort. The weapon clenches her left hand into a fist and flicks it inwards. Her gauntlet clicks open and a foot long blade flips out. As she grabs the thing by its snout, she can almost hear the Controller telling her, “More.”
With a cutting scream, the blade oscillates faster than the eye can track, a glistening titanium blur. Pushing the thing back from her face, she gains enough space to bring the blade down into the crook of its shoulder. It wails as blood fountains from the shimmering edge. She pushes her blade through its neck. A geyser of red covers the front of her armor and she wishes she could feel the hot tackiness of it on her skin, wishes she could taste it. Its limbs go loose and its headless body slips from her onto the floor. Tossing its head aside, she curls her fist inwards again. The blade whirs to a stop and folds away.
Is she good yet?
“Better,” says the controller. Fresh warmth flows in and the weapon quivers, feeling alive again, feeling fucking good again as the hormones sing through her body. “More.”
The weapon reloads her rifle and returns to the upper floor, follows crusty red stains into another empty hallway. Doors line it, some open to reveal ransacked bunks, others shut. At the end of the corridor is a pair of metal doors. The security room, she remembers from previous hunts. She kicks the doors open and that rotting foliage reek spills out over her. The air is hot and confined, it feels like being strapped back into her pod. The source is clear. An array of monitors and consoles cover the front wall. They’re overgrown with a thick green mold, something like a sheet of broccoli florets. Slime the color of pea soup drips from the covered bottom edges to pool on the floor.
The weapon spies the glow of a monitor through one section and claws the mold away. A thin film of that pea soup is still slicked over the screen but she can see well enough. On the screen is footage of a dim metal hallway, the image crawling with grain. Gangly hind legs crawl into the edge of the image and disappear from sight. She caught a glimpse of sleek dark armor glinting over pale hide.
She bares her teeth, damp for the kill to come. At the top right corner of the monitor she finds the heading, [KENNELS_HALL3].
Kennels. Where would those be?
Kennels. Why does that word hang in her mind like it belongs there?
Kennels. That might be what’s through the irrelevant door. This isn’t her mission.
She begins tearing mold from the other monitors, trying to find the thing she’d seen again. She finds plenty of other targets. In [BATHROOM_UPSTAIRS2], two of those things pull innards from a half-eaten corpse, sharing a loop of intestine. In [REC3], another creature rears up on its hindlegs to examine a TV fixed high on a wall, seemingly entranced by the static crackling across the screen. In [KENNEL7], yet another lays curled up on a pile of soiled blankets in a small concrete cell. The cell door is open but the thing remains here, cradling something to its chest.
Finally she finds her target. Its armored legs propel it up the top of the staircase outside and disappear out of frame. This time she catches a glimpse of a stubby tail, blunted at the end as if cropped.
The weapon creeps to the open doors, nudges one closed, and takes position, standing half behind it. Rifle trained at the small square of light at the end of the hall ahead.
Stillness. The weapon’s face twitches. High receding. Heat fading.
Finally something crawls into sight. Even on all fours it fills the doorway, silhouette bulkier than its fellows. Armor? Musculature? Both? It cranes its head into the corridor, sniffing the air. Then, cautious, it creeps inside.
The weapon fires a burst.
It ducks into an open doorway. Like it knew the shots were coming. Or like it had smelled her waiting for it. Pumping the grenade launcher, she sends another explosive its way. The grenade clunks into the floor next to its cover.
Thunder and fire. The light fixtures shake as the blast rocks through the hallway. The weapon watches the smoke.
It parts with a swirl as the thing charges, huffing as it comes. A helmet covers its long head.
The weapon fires on it. Flowers of sparks bloom and vanish as bullets rake its armor, she notes a single spray of blood from its side but it doesn’t slow. It pounces at her. Throwing her rifle down, the weapon brings her oscillator blade back out, shrieking back to life, and braces for impact.
“Good.” The Controller feeds her honey and heat. “Kill It Quick.”
It crashes into the weapon like an avalanche. Their hands meet first, her meaning to grab and butcher it and it catching her bladed arm and shoulder first. She struggles to keep her feet as it shoves her back. They wrestle, two beasts snarling and frothing. She seizes its wrist as it tries to claw at her, and tries in turn to pull her bladed arm out of its grip. It looms over her, the pointed ears atop its helmet scraping the ceiling.
Click.
The thing’s helmet opens to reveal slavering jaws lined with teeth, arrays of jagged incisors and blunt molars. Meat and hot animal breath hits the weapon’s nose through her helmet. It lunges at her head and she jerks it inside to let those jaws clamp around her shoulder instead. They don’t pierce but the pressure makes her wince.
A shot of fire and arousal makes her back arch. The Controller repeats, “Kill It.”
Reinvigorated, the weapon twists her free arm out of its grip and throws her fist into the side of its head, again, again, putting all her strength into it. Its jaws loosen and she crams her hand into the corner of its mouth to push it off. Viscous drool runs down her forearm. Its fingers close over her helmet. Lowering her stance, she shoves forward. Claws scratch against linoleum tile. Pushing it off balance. Planting her boot against its chest, she kicks it off and it staggers letting her wrench her blade arm free. It tries to lunge again and she swipes the oscillator across its snout and it flinches back with a yelp.
“Good Weapon.” The collar throbs around her neck, pumping her full of scalding bliss. She bristles, apparatus nudging up into her lips, so aroused she can barely think. She doesn’t need to think. She just needs to hear the Controller repeat, “Kill.”
She draws the pistols from her hips and unloads. Yelping, the thing shields itself with its forelimbs as the hail of bullets force it back. Blood and sweat mix as they drip down the taut lines of its body. Between the weapon’s legs the apparatus strokes her again. A throaty, savage moan roils inside her mouth.
Then her pistols click empty. At once the monster takes its chance to lunge again, despite the red streaking down its pinkish skin. Spittle flies between the weapon’s teeth as she drops the pistols and meets it blade-first. The oscillator chews straight through its hand as it grabs at her. This doesn’t stop it from scooping her up in its other arm and smashing her up against the monitors, showering them both in glass and sparks and mold. Impact forces breath from her lungs but she needs blood. She grabs its muzzle and rips the oscillator up through its hand, shuddering as the apparatus begins to probe its tip into her. The snarl in her throat is more bestial than her enemy’s.
Wrenching its head back and forth, the thing tries to shake her off, clawing at her with its intact hand. One swipe presses the plate into her breast and a fresh heat blooms through her core. Her eyes roll. She doesn’t need to see it. She stabs the oscillator towards its neck and it blocks with its armored forearm, shredded polymer raining into her visor.
“Good Weapon.” The apparatus slides in, out, in, pulses of blurring pleasure. She writhes in the enemy’s grip, nostrils flaring, drooling down her chin. “Finish It.”
She jerks its muzzle down so it must look her in the face as she kills it.
There’s a crack in its own visor. A piece of black glass fallen away. A wild grey eye stares back at her.
It’s like a bullet finding her gut through a wall of fog. Grey eyes. Familiar. That eye. That grey. She’s seen it before.
The apparatus punches in and out of her. An inferno races through her veins. The collar gums at her throat. The weapon twitches as the stimulation devours her. She feels like she’s going to be sick.
With a snarl the thing tears its head back. The next thing the weapon sees is the inside of its mouth and the black pit of its gullet as its jaws swing shut around her helmet. Its tongue laps across her visor, savoring her already. Fetid dog breath fills her senses. She tries to stab it but it catches her wrist, letting the oscillator shave one of its fingertips off to pin her arm against the broken monitors. The last thing she feels is the helmet bending inwards around her temples, centimeter by centimeter, until her visor shatters and that long rough tongue whips in to coil across her face.
***
Plug in. Upload. The weapon wakes.
“You’re Needed. Get Up.”
The cable withdraws from the base of her skull and her pod grinds open. The weapon rigidly hauls herself out. She sits on the edge a moment, brushing her shoulder-length black rat’s nest back out of her grey eyes. Her head swims from chemical withdrawal and she exhales, powering through it, as she’s done countless times before. An armature brings relief as it unfolds down from the ceiling. She cranes her head up, allowing the machine to collar her. She welcomes the pinch of needles and rush of chemicals like an old friend.
Across from her pod, a door hisses open.
If this is based on a real roguelike I need to play it, otherwise someone needs to make it!