Chapter 4: By the Gallon

Sarah was on point bringing an index finger to her to her lips as she signalled for them to be quiet, like she knew exactly was in that room and she wanted them to see. Even Max was perplexed by the what looked like the bowling stance she took up before she lined up her shot, using the doorway as her designated “lane” before she took a few steps closer in a running build up and then released the head into the seemingly entry room. Before they watched what looked like a series of slim, mechanical, multi-jointed limbs practically snatched the head out of light of sight in the room in a collective hiss of movement, the main body of what they suspected to be a greater mechanical arachnid threat remaining unseen above by the ceiling, probably attaching itself to it with at least two legs, as the limbs disappeared once more into the eerie quiet of the room, as silent as a shadow slipping back out of view, before Max proceeded turn bodily to the side of the stairway and drive his armoured head into its wall in a series of exasperated, light bashes, at least until he stopped for a moment and quietly asked “male of female”, in no one’s general direction but knowing Sarah would answer.

“Judging by the slenderness of the artificial limbs and the general “quiet” capture and retrieval back into its original hidden position, along with lack of outward aggression ... female”, Sarah said with a cheery tone before Max said “of course it is”, with no small hint of bitterness before he added to the sake of clarification for not just Clara and Walter but anyone even thinking of going close to it “remember the “granddaddy long legs we mentioned before?”, he said hopefully. As Clara nodded understandingly, Max continued “well this one’s the same class, but the problem as you can imagine is...”, he said as he turned towards Sarah for further elaboration he knew she was dying to give them “ ... is that although males normally chosen for the same role tend to be more less outwardly aggressive, doesn’t mean their “bite” isn’t as powerful as their males counterparts, in fact the females tend to be equipped with more powerful “bites” when fought up close”, she said with no small hint of personal pride for another female agents tactical acuity. “But what does that mean for us?”, Walter asked as he took the stairs up after them with caution, before Max unsheathed the grenade launcher from his lower back, checking it’s working status once more before he was satisfied with it and said bluntly “it means this chick is toast, along with all of her hungry “friends” in the next few rooms”, he said icily, noting how this room aswell was broken up by drywall panels but into more than just halves, as Sarah stood by his side as she gestured for him to walk in by himself when he was ready “aren’t you going to go in with him”, Walter asked almost nervously as he noticed she wasn’t following him in, before Max added “I’m gonna need the room to “operate” he said as he retrieved the portable welding torch on his utility belt “if the lady wishes she can join me or even offer to clear the next room after me if she pleases”, he said in an immaturely playful tone, followed by what they believed was him blowing a raspberry at her through his mask which she kindly blew him back in turn behind her own, to the disbelieving stare of the two FBI agents before he walked into the room cautiously, the series of limbs seemingly floating through the air around him, but before they could uncoil completely and spring their loaded trap from above he purposely fell onto his back against the floor and fired the first of the concussive incendiary grenades into “her”, resulting in an enveloping ball of fire that lip up the room that had seemed only moments before covered in thick layer of unnatural darkness, amidst it’s loaded trap-like ambush design before a mechanical squeal replaced the fiery death charges explosive wall of noise, as another rang out without hesitation as he remained lying with his back against the floor, putting as much room as he could between himself and the grenades explosive radius, the limbs and their owner retreating back into the shadows of the room before even these failed to take form, failing as if spread through some passive form of likely camouflage generated from them, for its trap, before a another explosive round hit its target critically, the mechanical squeals never abating, only growing shorter, before he replaced the launcher on his lower back and picked his pistol on the opposite hip, flying to his outstretched hand before he corrected his side-facing gun grip, not wanting the spent casing ejected from the breach to act as distracting projectile as he began firing well placed shots targeting the roots of each limb instead of the limbs themselves, preparing the portable welding torch as the “lady long-legs”, promptly fell to the ground on a metallic carapace acting as its own exo-suit as part of its own anti-personnel weaponry, in the form of armour piercing limbs it could bend at the tip to brace her against the ceiling whilst the other six limbs thrust down and pinned its prey, before suitably impaling it to death and dissecting it into more manageable pieces before she truly came into her moniker as a “daddy long-legs” and secreted a digestive enzyme onto her “food” which started to breaking it down externally. These enzymes liquefied “it” and made it easier for her to harvest and ingest her meals.

He watched out for the acidic spit her knew she carried somewhere on her person, shooting every natural and unnatural limb alike, before she resorted to secreting acidic globules and spitting them from across the room form where she’d landed on a now collapsed section of desks and computer equipment. He dodged her desperate pot-shots at him as he got closer, landing shot after shot into her armoured carapace knowing she felt each round shake her to the bone even if they didn’t penetrate completely, before he holstered the pistol and smashed his armoured fists into her helmets crown, locating the enzyme sacks on either side of her helmets jaw line, roughly ripping them out and facing them away from him. They looked like pressurized industrial grade lines connected to supplies of the homemade acidic enzyme she could secret through triggered responses at differing degrees of pressure and amounts, her equipment was not too far removed from those used to safely fumigate a house or dwelling for insect, but industrial in nature so it could survive the corrosive effects of the contents swishing inside the tanks nestled on her back away from obvious lines of fire, forcing her to always either attack of retreat from her enemy with her front facing them or at least with the use of camouflage or stealth in mind, they looked stable enough to take a few hits from an amour piercing weapon, just not many.

He proceeded to cut her out of her suit, making sure he started with the limbs first just in case she got lucky and managed to land a wholly expected impaling strike through his head, as their remnants fell away with metallic clangs to the floor around her, the fact that the other Spiders weren’t attacking him was a good sign, it meant that they were following their superiority complexes and in turn their true natures, by allowing him to cull them of their weakness with their downed ally now mercilessly being cut out of her own suit, so they could demonstrate themselves to be the true, ultimate threat and apex predator, now that they’d studied his “approach” and took their time to formulate a working tactic. By the time he’d “freed” the spiders pilot form her suit, she’d regained consciousness, the intense heat of the welding torch need to cut through her dense out shell only sufficient enough to reach her suited skin beneath providing a pleasant form of comforting warmth, she had awoken from screaming in the face of what could only be her certain death to her masked former prey, now her executioner before promptly knocked her out again with swift blow to the chin.

Retrieving her bodily after removing several more delicate, interfacing nodules of insulated cabling along her spine, leading along the base of her back to shell itself, he took careful note of her extended, artificial spinal column, he along with Sarah had expected but couldn’t wholly deal with right now, as he tied her hands with flexi-cuffs he kept handy at this point on his person, before he waved the Op-meds in, as they examined the artificial spinal implant practically grafted onto her natural one. The split in her clothing, no more than a mechanics overall worn over here bare skin, that had been spit in the back, and tied up in the front naturally, along with black work boots and nothing else, and for good reason as her entire spine had been integrated with the artificial graft down to her coccyx or tailbone. He said three simple words “micro-surgery, anaesthetic, go”, before he spoke into radio, informing the director that they had a sleeper agent on the way down in needed obvious micro-surgery to fully neutralize her, and told him there was probably a batch of them they’d have to send down, that could be temporarily anesthetized on an ongoing basis but that it was essential if they wanted to eliminate any chance of potential retaliation and that he’d understand the depths of it as soon as he saw how far they’d gone to “enhance” her fighting capacity. Hartwell to his credit understood some things were better left explained in person when he saw this agent, especially after he told him she was another variant of the spider class. Now the third they come into contact with.

Clara and Walter looked on with a mix of awe and horror at the extent of the “Spiders” modifications. As they waited for the medical team, they couldn’t help but feel a pang of pity for the girl in front of them, who despite her monstrous exterior was likely as human as they were underneath it all. Sarah crouched beside him as he practically ached in every bone, the concussive blasts along with the dogged effort to pry her from her suit effectively without paralysing the pilot inside spoke to her. “You really do hate spiders don’t you?” she asked softly in an understanding tone. As he took a moment to catch his breath as he merely sat there, looking up at her before he said “only what they convert them in, the rest is up to people like us, sadly enough”, he said as she offered to help lift him up to his feet but he reneged, needing a moment to catch his breath. He offered to lend her his launcher and the ammunition he’d scrounged to help them through the upper floors, along with his portable welder, but she refused lightly, “it’s okay, I came fully equipped”, she said sombrely as she displayed her dagger held lightly against her chest “I admit, I’m probably not gonna’ have as light a touch as you”, she said with only the barest hint of humour in her tone as he read the underlying sombre tones and didn’t dig any further, knowing just like she did that knowing about these “enhancements” and seeing them on actual people, even sleeper agents who’d grafted it on themselves incredibly were two different animals altogether. Watching him work at dismantling the suit, the girl and the monster there within reminded her of how brutally efficient and cold they could be when they needed to. She found herself feeling the same sense of chilled reservation at approaching him as she knew the FBI agents must feel when approaching them as a whole. Before she stepped into the next room, he wrapped a gloved hand around her ankle slightly, catching her attention as he slowly lifted himself up to his feet, with a series of grunts of pain and popping noises like bones clicking back into place again, as he composed himself for a moment before looking down at her and saying “were not monsters, we just fight them so often people end up believing we’ve become them, that’s all, so don’t worry so much, when the monster costumes come off, fully”, he said gesturing with his open hands held up at his sides, “their gonna’ see the real human beings bleeding for them underneath it, and a least a gallon of my blood I’ll probably end up bleeding into my boots again”, he said with a note of dark humour in his voice, he knew she liked, as he tried to raise her spirits, before she nodded and turned to go, as he watched her.

Clara standing beside him asked with an almost instinctual amount of trepidation in her voice at this point “aren’t you going to...”assist” her”, she said almost lamely, as she looked back at the seemingly gigantic armoured suit of mechanical limbs, that were although now severed formed what looked like a adjustable form of seating as part of its carapace, as he noticed this and said “they sleep in them”, almost casually, “almost like ... hammocks, they rock themselves to sleep, is what I remember slash see. It’s odd to describe like a ... physically memory I know is false and implanted so that I can never forget the most hard-won lessons. They encase themselves this way so they can shut themselves off from the rest of the world, it makes it easier to disconnect that part of their humanity from themselves and delve deeper into something else, something their implanted training says they should be, which they embrace individually to disturbing degrees”, he added. “But no, to answer your question she doesn’t need me slowing her down for now, whilst I catch my breath, each spider class reveals a new facet they all share to some degree. The first who tried to coerce the director was with arrogance and a sense of superiority through planning, both with the traps we saw before and the fact that he hadn’t thought to booby trap the upper floors as effectively because there was no possible way we could come up with something like what we did, without him expecting it. The second was plain ruthlessness, and a predatory patience you can’t mistake for anything else, with those kids, they were being groomed from a young age to be monsters, no doubt the older brother would have eaten his little sister alive if it meant preserving his fighting capacity, as unnerving as that might sound. The fact that they allowed us to feed corpses into a trap and watch as their devices split it apart shows a complete lack of empathy, which has most likely left them emotionally stunted so say the least, due to their re-programming. And now this”, he said indicating to the mechanical cradle of interface technology, a jumble of inactive firing miniature engines, coupled with advanced, practical robotics for the load bearing limbs aswell as the main body which doubled as an armoured suit, and potential medical repository couple with acidic projectile launchers.

“In her case she also had the element of some camouflage technology projecting from several “casters” you can see lining the limbs along the individual segments so they could hide her approach. The muffling sound absorbing material you see on the edges of each limb where you can see it capable of bending back on a double-action hinge is to allow them to switch between their impaling points and soft-footed pads for moving stealthily with an extreme sense of load-bearing grip. I’ll bet you their even magnetized so she can climb up walls with more than just happy thoughts”, he said cheerily for the first time since their encounter with the “lady long-legs”, which Clara noticed as she said “You know a lot about them...” she said, her voice trailing off as she contemplated the implications of his words. Max nodded, his gaze fixed on the immobilized agent. “Too much,” he murmured. “I’ve noticed no one has yet to ask me what “Hornet’s” or even “Beetles” are like”, he said curious if she would take the bait, as he watched Sarah work, crouching as she moved around the sectioned room ahead of them, seeking out any obvious spots for potential ambush before she quickly found “her”.

Clara and Walter exchanged glances, the gravity of their situation weighing heavily upon them. “What are they like?” Clara asked her voice tentative. “Generally hornets are a fast means of death, but not unstoppable, and certainly not as individuals, their what could be classified as the ADHD’s of the group they have to think so fast on their feet, coordinate so much at once it’s like their literally splitting themselves between assault, defence and manoeuvrability all at once, whilst trying to assess target vulnerability and a new tactical stratagem for the quickest form of execution available to them at an ongoing rate, he said as he watched her dodge limbs with side strokes of her blade cutting through the metallic cloister of segments “arms” all trying to stab her at once to end the fight quickly, aggressively, before she leapt in what looked like a controlled explosion of forward momentum, her body as light a leaf as it flipped into a forward roll, tucking her limbs into her body before she braced herself against the main trunk of the spiders carapace, taking a two handed grip on her dagger and slamming the butt of it so hard into the helmeted head of the spider both agents could hear it ringing all the way from where they stood like a tolling iron bell, before she struck her again and again in a quick, successive series of jarring strikes as she held on with a free hand to the pilot, every limb that was initially paralysed by the fearless resort of the brutally efficient if simplistic blows dropped lifeless to the spiders sides as it’s metal carapace crashed to the floor and Sarah leapt back and off its body to stick a landing with her usual and unnatural grace of an Olympic gymnast, several feet away from the body.

“Beetles on the other hand are hopeless romantics after a fashion, we want to keep everyone we care about safe, even at the cost of ourselves, which ironically could cause irrevocable harm”, he said sadly, as they watched her cut through each limb in succession in record time, before disabling her enzyme sacks and dissecting her main chest plate before peeling it back and slowly but carefully removing it each interface bundle along her second artificial spine. The previous one had a brass coloured exoskeleton, maybe trying to mimic the colours of a common house spider or something close, she thought idly, this one was by comparison looked more like a black widow minus the red hourglass marking on its main carapace, as it’s inky black palette covered its entire metallic body reaching all the way down to her spinal implant. Removing everything and securing the young woman, maybe in her mid to late thirties gave her a bold look at what her future could have held in store for her, wondering what kind of position or job the sleeper agent could have held in her normal life that could have reflected the psychological traits needed to qualify her as a spider class, which was normally one of the methods they used to successfully pair new “recruits” alongside available pre-existing psychological profiles, basing selection on early signs of potential psychopathy aswell, although signs of this behaviour she’d read could develop well into early childhood. She wondered not for the first time today although it had been awhile if she were honest with herself, with all the madness going around like a common flu virus, what her kids were up to and if they were being ferried this very minute to the safehouse they’d been promised.

Max’s first words to her were “you ... we forget sometimes we are kinder than we give ourselves credit for and that we strive for something that was almost taken without realizing it, until it was gone and the daily struggle we faced and keep on facing to retain our freedom from this...”, he said indicating with a gloved hand to the unconscious woman she carried effortlessly in her arms for the medical retrieval team.”We are not lifeless machines and not I do not hate them, only what they are forced to carry out with every fibre of their beings seeping down into their souls like a second marrow, but then I remember you, your family and how I helped you regain something you thought you’d lost when we met me and became a duo. I ... I can only hope we can do the same for them”, he finished. To his ears it sounded like a lame attempt to convey what he thought he knew she needed to hear, about herself about them, and about how they were trying to dig themselves out of this conflict regardless how many bodies were being piled on top of them in the process, weighing down their efforts and threatening to help bury them alive in a mass grave of their own doing.

“I know”, she said simply “and knowing that hurts by itself. But I appreciate the sentiment and I’m sure you’ll get an opportunity to see me appreciate it allot more in person when I see my own little “Max” and get to hold him in my arms instead of what is probably an unconscious “lawyer” maybe?”, she said knowing he knew spiders tended to be soulless predators and that their psychological profile tended to overlap in their previous lives “day jobs” before they were selected for reprogramming. Before Max took a tentative sniff and said quickly “divorce lawyer, she smells like broken and burned dreams, but not her own”, he added, although they both knew that last bit was just more of his own attempt at humour showing through, as the lady in fact smelled of voided bowels, when she had effectively been knocked out so hard her nervous system had gone slightly out of whack with the rest of her, which seeing as she’d been hooked up to a external bodysuit of death, tied to her will, by spinal injectors, it carried salt that her control over her lower intestines was just one of the things that should fail soon after her unconscious state was disabled from her external carapace, as Sarah delicately laid her down, trying not to grimace at the emerging smell. “I might just be sick”, she said only half joking as the odour invaded their sense of smell, and “yeah I think she ate before she...” as a resounding fart concluded that she had in fact decided to indulge in her cannibalistic traits before they met up with her. The hint of death carried on the scent of her intestinal gas being released, was unmistakeable, as she Sarah threatened to throw up in her own mask before Max handed over to her the aerosolized anti-acid he knew would do wonders for her stomach muscles contracting all at once now, as they squeezed everything while increasing the pressure, before her stomachs “cover” relaxed and the contents of whatever she’d had for breakfast began to launch themselves out of her in the form of projectiles, as she thankfully took it without question, and took a few deep breaths before the smell washed away, and she felt her stomach calm back down.

“You really do care”, she said with an almost desperate tone before he added “that’s what they keep telling me”, he said his humour light as well as his tone as he offered the aerosol anti-acid to the agents, both the Op-meds who would probably need it to transport her and any other agents currently in the previous room including Walter and Clara, as they both came into contact with the first whiffs of what death smelled like and in some very real cases tasted like when it went down the long way through the intestinal tract and exited in gaseous fashion, as they both took it and used it, offering to anyone within their vicinity with his blessing, that looked like they were about to wretch openly and didn’t know when it would stop. Within a few minutes everyone was safely inoculated to the scent of death, the medical team via an official medical carrier managed to strap in the second “lady long-legs” on her stomach to avoid damage to her spinal implant as Clara and Walter reported in, that a second agent of a similar variant to the first one with an extended spinal implant had been taken into custody with no casualties to the director.

They stepped into the third and final portion of the room, each floor of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building had been outfitted with a large and open floor plan unique to the departments setting. Homeland Security had decided to take advantage of a sectioned off style, in case they had to compartmentalize against potential threats, which spoke volumes about their mentality, as it had ironically now been used against them. In the third room happily all they heard was a crash of glass as something large and unseen had hurled itself through one of the wall height windows and escaped notice entirely. “Okay then”, was all Max could say, obviously thankful to be making progress without any further bloodletting, as he slowly marched forwards aware the long-legs variant obviously liked to obscure itself before it dropped unexpectedly if it could, preferring to avoid an all out frontal attack unless it was levied heavily in their favour from the start, “Spiders” in general being ambush predators, not experts in prolonged, direct engagements. Luckily the last five floors were filled with only a random assortment of agents, all poised behind overturned desks and makeshift barricades ready to unload on the latest unimaginable horror to walk up the stairway. As Max walked into the incoming fire of several pistols all aimed as his blood and viscera choked visage, he understood why they were reacting this way and decided to give them their head as he simply waited, almost comically patient for them to expend their ammunition clips, having walked into the wall of gunfire and was seemingly undeterred by them as they either randomly ricocheted depending on the angle they grazed him at or simply flattened against his armour.

Before he raised an armoured hand simply in the air, so far choosing to remain impossibly neutral as he brushed off the matted blood and sticky gore covering top left-hand side of his chest plate, still showing off the FBI decal, albeit turned form a bright yellow to a dried orange-red at this point, before he said “I’m going to ask that you give our two “liaisons” the ability to update you on the current state of events”, he said calmly in a surreal show of peacefulness, “they have had the “rare privilege” of having been escorted through the “house of horrors” that this facility has become as of late, through no fault of your own, and I commend you on your “precaution”, so if you don’t mind welcoming special agents Clara Ozwynn and Walter Lowe from the FBI, both stationed in this very field office, with your time and patience, I would greatly appreciate it, they’ve come a long way, all forty floors in fact of this building to secure you and those around you from harm, believe it or not”, he said trying to sound as diplomatic as he could as a sidenote he added “also, don’t shoot my partner”, he said indicating to Sarah as she calmly almost aloofly walked in beside him “because she won’t give you a chance to reload if you do, unlike myself, trust me”, he said a hint of humour playing on his tone he knew she would appreciate, as she simply nodded her head silently in return. He knew behind the mask she must have been hiding a Cheshire cats grin, observing each and every one of the agents in turn poised against them, her body armour equally matted in grim human detritus clinging to her as stubbornly as a bad habit. The only thing between them both that had remained seemingly unscathed, with an almost mirror sheen was her oversized daggers blade that seemed almost untouched by the recent conflict, let alone the buildings worth as a whole, which she knew the mixed crowd of agents on the other side of the barricade were eyeing nervously, before they both turned towards the stairwell in sync to gesture Clara and Walter in before them. They weren’t flanked by a SWAT tactical guard, seeing as a large portion of the resistance throughout the building had been formed from compromised agents who had taken up arms in SWAT tactical gear, unexpectedly becoming the catalyst for allot of the violence and resistance they’d met along the way and no doubt up here too as they noted several bodies in similar matching armoured gear that were strewn about, lying motionless on the cleared killing floor before them facing off against the shot through barricade.

As Clara and Walter walked in from the relative shelter of the stairwell into the main floor, their movements slow, but measured, so as not to invite suspicion or trigger fingers with sudden movements to gun them down. Their guns holstered so as not to instigate further violence, their credentials in hand, open for anyone to see plainly, as they began with simple introductions before getting into the meat of the matter as Clara began with “My name if Clara Ozwynn, this is my partner special agent Walter Lowe”, she said as Walter nodded slightly in the general direction of the mixed group of armed agents ahead of them. “Roughly two hours ago, the two “operatives” you see here warned us of a possible incursion directly into this building”, she began gesturing to both Max and Sarah, “and since then they have been aiding us in repelling former agents armed in SWAT tactical gear and weaponry, who along with other operatives were sent here for one reason only, to debilitate the public’s trust in law enforcement, and ergo the government on a nationwide basis. We do not wholly understand their agenda, only that they have “recruited” sleeper agents amidst our friends, and colleagues who have been forced against their will to enact acts of terror in the attempt to gain access to sensitive information we believe at least on the upper floors they have succeeded in achieving. Luckily with the aid of these two operatives in combination with the resolute recovery of FBI and mixed tactical elements along the way we have managed to preserve the working field office on the twenty-third floor with assistant director Hartwell, who he himself was held at gunpoint by one of these “agents” but would not allow the compromisation of the Science and Technology Branches server room to come to pass”, she said firmly, building momentum as she passed the baton on to Walter who took it with an understandable grimness in his tone at what he had to tell them next. “As a result of the “incursion” allot of lives were lost, but allot more were saved. For fear of being trapped, isolated and basically gunned down in a compromised elevator shaft, we’ve had a slow progression through each floor, sped up on through the tireless efforts of these two operatives you see before you, caked in the “remains” of hostile opposition. They’ve literally led the spear tip of our gathering force and for good reason as you’ll see as you navigate the floors below until we can safely secure the elevator system, in case there are any more “traps” hidden or allocated within them, as you’ve no doubt seen the operatives used en force to take over control of this building that are not ... their overkill some would even go as far as saying “highly unconventional”, considering their metholody, weaponry and basic lack of empathy. All we can do for now, is advise you to regroup on the twenty-third floor whilst secured assets such as vetted members of SWAT along with FBI agents secure chokepoints along the building in case of retaliation including Homeland Securities main office, which is currently as you might expect non-operational, until we begin on repairs and recovery as we secure the building, at least whilst were still in a state of high alert for the time being. We have Op-meds available in case anyone is suffering from serious wounds or injuries and with your co-operation we’d like to help you proceed downstairs through the cleared floors, safely in an orderly fashion”, he said trying not to let the horrors of the previous forty floors bleed into his voice, as he knew that fear was a contagious disease that could spread faster than any bullet ever could, as he nodded towards Clara, who was ready to start organizing the group to head back downstairs to safety.