Two Skykiller Dreadnoughts blocked a bridge to the tall gateway of the base. Their cannons on their shoulders aimed at the sky while their minigun arms pointed forward. If anything comes above or below, the mechanical demons won't miss.

"How can we move past them?" Lena asked. "We are so close to the base."

"We can distract them like the other one," John suggested.

"Guards are not easily distracted," said Tiara. "They will stay in their position until they are dead."

John snarled. “Will they at least move apart from their position?”

“Perhaps, but they will stay close.”

John glanced at the zombie girl. “Lena, shoot your smoke grenades at them. While they are distracted, we run and rip out their spines.”

Lena held up her weapon. “Understood.”

She charged from cover and shot two grenades through the air. By the time the Skykillers spotted the projectiles, smoke exploded in their faces.

“Now!” John ran on all four. He dashed between the Dreadnoughts and spun around on the bridge.

As the smoke faded away, he jumped onto the second creature’s exposed back. With his metal claws, he slashed the back open and pulled out the demon’s metal spine. It howled until it fell silent.

Tiara blew flames into the other Dreadnought’s back, torturing the creature before it screamed its last breath. With the guards down, the entrance into the base became clear.

“Let’s bust in and stick to our ground,” said John. “Who knows what kind of fuckers are crawling in there.”

Kara shrugged. “Just more red meat to slaughter.”

The triangular door opened, allowing John and his squad to enter freely. They strolled through a red corridor with glass tubes along the metallic walls. Corpse-like creatures with mechanical limbs hovered inside the tubes like ghosts. Metal plates shielded half of their skeleton faces with red camera lenses pierced through their eye sockets. Skin dried like pale beef jerky, and none of them moved an inche as the squad observed them.

“What the fuck are those?” John asked.

Tiara stared closer at one of the tubes. “I don’t know. New recruits?”

Lena gulped. “Those things looked familiar. Like the ones on Mars.”

Alexia glanced at her. “You mean the cyborg zombies who Dr.Lazarus created?”

Lena nodded.

“Who is Dr.Lazarus?” Tiara asked.

John studied one of the tubes. “Long story short, a mad man. He tried to take over the Martian colony with undead freaks. He is the one who created Lena, and…” He stared at his left metal arm. “He took away my limbs while I was still alive.”

“Thank god he is dead,” said Kara.

Lena glanced back at the zombies. “But why are these things here? Is this what the demons are doing to the captives?”

Tiara stepped back from the tube. “This is new to me. My kind preferred to ameliorate their soldiers into better killing machines. Turning our prey into puppets isn’t known by anyone from my time.”

“Or this is their new way to make their victims suffer,” Alexia suggested.

John snorted. “This is the most fucked up shit I ever-”

A loud siren boomed through the corridor. Red lights flashed across the piped ceiling.

“What the hell?” John spun around in a panic.

Kara looked down and removed her foot off a red pad on the paneled floor. “My bad.”

John glared at her. “Are you for real?”

Tiara held up her fists and lit them on fire. “They now know we are here. Get ready for some-”

The glass tubes shattered around the squad. Then ten cyborg creatures stepped from their hibernated stations. Their eyes gleamed at the squad and grew out sharp blades from their upper arms. Sounds of hissing echoed from their lipless mouths as if they were breathing through oxygen masks.

John’s fur prickled on his back, but he ignored his fear and transformed his left arm into his energy minigun. “Let’s send these mother fuckers back to their graves!”