Two turned and saw me, both of them felt my shotgun blast. I jumped to my right, hitting the wall of the elevator shaft, feeling as a bullet grazed my side, leaving my heart in my mouth.

My body shifted, as I felt my spine tingle from the strain of my cybernetic mass. A new feature, with no Nova to compensate, I mused bitterly.

I bit my lip, re-orientated myself and hugged the wall tightly, watching as the sound waves from the bullets rumbled behind me.

Luckily though, they didn’t penetrate the elevator shaft, which made me happy, thank you engineer for choosing cinder blocks! I thought. I let in my happiness dissipated in a half-second, then slipped my pistol out, firing with my cybernetic arm in the general vicinity from which the bullets came from, waving it side to side for good measure.

Each shot wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough to startle the gun-totting pieces of shit. After my clip run ran dry, I re-upped, waited a few seconds then allowed my bravery to kick in. I peeped around the corner, two assailants dead on the ground.

“Stelyne…do you copy?” I asked for the one-hundredth time. “Damn it!” I stalked the downed assailants, noticing their haggard faces, dirt beneath their fingernails.

They both wore brown overalls with black combat boots. Their skin was palish brown, but I surmised that was due to the lack of sunlight for however long they stayed holed up here, which was evident by their stench.

I pulled a few shotgun cartridges from one of their pockets and nestled them into my vest cut pocket. Then sprung down the craggy corridor, reloading as fast as I could.

The metallic scent of blood left my nose the further I deeper I went down the corridor. Each step made me feel as though I stepping into a black hole, as the light from within the corridor was none existent.

I stimulated my SMB to switch from standard vision to Night-Vision, turning the corridor into an emerald world of light. I cracked a few pieces of glass, noticing that the light was smashed on the way down. Smart, I thought.

I had no idea where this led, nothing of the sort was in the schematics, but with a floating gurney and a woman disappearing from the med bay. It was my job to get her back, back up or no back.

I dashed down the corridor, feeling it curve into a gentle slope. Eventually, it took me to a hard right with a room that had a sign marked at the top of the door ‘Maintenance Room.’

The maintenance room was lit with small lanterns scattered around the room. Scaffolding, jackhammers, nail guns, nails anything that would improve the integral structure of the building was here. However, there was a discrepancy with the integral structure of the room.

A light appeared on the ground, coming from afar. I hugged the wall, creeping alongside it, only to realise a hole had been made.

I crept through the hole and it led me to another opening, bigger this time, but had a concrete slab blocking my way, but not the hole itself. I skipped over, landing on a shattered tile and began cursing myself, hoping no one heard me as hugged the wall.

Conduit piping and braided wires were snaking from the hole in the wall, with a few whispers coming from it. “You said this plan was trouble-proof Rikor!” A man snarled in the short distance.

I hugged the concrete slab, and tried to listen in as keenly possible, then zoomed in on the woman who lay on the hover-gurney. I couldn’t see her, because one of her kidnappers blocked her.

The urge to charge in, pistol waving was there no doubt, but with these dirtbags holding hostage, my chances of not hitting her were completely low.

So I kept my wits about me and cuddled the shotgun I picked up resting on my shoulder. If I knew who she was, I could surmise why she was kidnapped, but until then I couldn’t decipher the situation as best as I hoped to. Plus, it didn’t help that I lost contact with Stelyne…either.

“Menoth knew the risk when he came, now pipe down,” Rikor said, I couldn’t see his face, but the way he moved, he seemed like their leader. “Are we gonna have a problem?

“No Sir.” The man said.

I immediately zoomed in on him with my cybernetic eye and verified something I already knew. A scar that ran down the left side of this Rikor’s lip. Yep…that’s him. The man that started the diversion. I thought.

Riker’s face was smooth, but lightly tattered around his cheekbones and jawline, as if he’d gone through malnutrition as a youth. His left canine was missing, just like Hannah-Lee, but unlike her charming smile, his was menacing and filled with ferocity.

“Don’t. Move.” Someone said behind me, resting a pistol in my back. I released a huff of a laugh and I could hear the man’s teeth grind from behind me. “What’s so funny?” He asked. “Your question,” I answered. “What about it…smart ass.”

“Don’t move.”

I tilted my shotgun to the right, squeezing its trigger. The bark howled groaned throughout the maintenance whilst it shook my head. I felt my SMB clench my brain for a moment, then released it.

The body dropped to the ground behind me with a loud thud. I leapt over a concrete slab, watching as the three men spun around, guns trained on me. I skid across the surface, tumbling behind a wooden crate as a wave of bullets shattered the wood.

I stumbled across the ground, ducking behind a metal pipe and concrete slab. Flakes of concrete and metal flew past me as the bullets tried to penetrate the slab and pipe. As I hugged the concrete slab, I stimulated my SMB to switch my Night-Vision to Echo-Sight.

The sound waves rippled behind me, but so did footsteps to my right, I made myself small again, checked my pistol and waited for the assailant to flank. I fired a bullet in his eye then throat. “JUNA’S DOWN!” A man to the right shouted.

“AND SO ARE YOU,” I shouted. I spun left, then dove across to a pillar on my left, firing two shots at the man on the right. The bullet hit his chest and stomach and before I could hit the ground, I watched as the life left him.

“YOU’RE A GOOD SHOT!” Rikor shouted, WHY DON’T WE HOLD A TRUCE…NO REASON FOR US TO KILL EACH OTHER. I LIKE MEN WITH SKILL!”

“SORRY. I’M NOT IN LEAGUE WITH KIDNAPPERS, BUT I CAN GIVE YOU A GIFT!”

“THE ONLY GIFT I HAVE FOR YOU IS DEATH!” Rikor roared.

I didn’t respond because I didn’t have an answer. I barely passed my negotiation course from my AFA days, what a time to barely remember your training.

Waves of fluttering footsteps charged towards me from both my left and right. The ripple waves pounded through my Echosight. I sprung to my right, emptying my clip into the man on the right.

I spun, absorbing bullets into my tuxedo, feeling them strike my thigh, chest, stomach and left side. I pivoted behind a metal beam, slid in my last shotgun shell and fired at the other assailant in the open. He flew back two meters crashing into the scaffolding behind him.

Rikor though, banked left, ducking right next to the gurney and used the woman as a shield, but then I saw him knelt, picking up an Assault Rifle and began firing an array of bullets at me.

As I ducked behind the concrete slab, bullets rattled the slab till one finally penetrated and hit me right in my shoulder, making me bite my bottom lip from the pain.

Whoever it was that decided that these Tuxedoes be made of bulletproof, should be given a god damn raise!

I hunkered down, feeling like all the bullets that tried to penetrate my tuxedo swarm me in pain. My blood pumped violently, as I slipped my last clip into my pistol and puffed steam from my lips as I tried to lie there.

A long vacuuming spooling noise hissed into the room behind me, startling the shit out of me. I fired a round, making Rikor hunker back in cover, but the bastard called my bluff, twisted a crown too, then lobbed it at me, perfectly and ushered the gurney into a hole.

That’s not a hole! Shit, that’s active camouflage! I thought, “they’ve been planning this for MONTHS!”

Not having time to think, I ran to the side feeling bullets rattle at me as the grenade finally ding after hitting the wall. As I ran, the strain on my legs made my body cry out with each step I took.

A deaf ensuing explosion groan throughout the room as the grenade went off after my third step, sending me seven meters across the room, crashing into an empty wooden crate.

I rolled to stop, feeling as nails, flaked concrete and splintered wood try to penetrate my tuxedo. They did, as I felt scratches on the right side of my body.

My body ached from the bullet stints. Now would be a good time for a painstim, but CSS doesn’t allow those on duty, off duty.

“CYPHER!” Stelyne shouted through the comms.

“I see you’ve returned to the party.” I quipped.

“What the hell happened?” Stelyne said, frantically.

“I don’t know,” I growled, feeling my chest ache. “The comms went dead when I entered the medical bay. I tried to reach you, but after seeing Doctor Weithin and his team dead. I had no choice but to find who done it before their trail disappeared.”

“…and did you find them?” Colonel Levisay interjected.

“Affirmative Colonel, lost them in a firefight in the maintenance room, the eastern side of the building.”

“Colonel, Rynord and Tryzer are finally back in communication.”

“Rynord…Tryzer report.” Stelyne said.

“Not too long passed Cypher’s handy work.

“Stelig…Tryzer, double back. The Thundrum is being prepped as we speak!” Stelyne snapped.”

“Aye Ma’am” Stelig said.

“Rynord and Naedon, Cypher found and lost the girl.”

“Who is she?” I finally asked.

“We haven’t confirmed who she is yet.”

“I see…We need to follow them they just left!” I snapped.

“What are you talking about Cypher?”

“They just left through a hole in the wall.”

“There’s no hole in the wall. We combed through this place with a fine-tooth comb.”

I sent a direct link to Stelyne, feeding her the optics from the cybernetic eye. “Shit.” She whispered. “Whispering Weave.”

“What?” Rynord asked.

“Camouflaging Cloth” Colonel Levisay answered. “It’s a camouflage cloth used to camouflage inanimate objects for buildings,” I answered.

“Part of the fucking building is camouflaged?” Rynord snapped.

“It would seem that way.” Colonel Levisay said.

The Colonel gave a dry laugh, then cleared his throat “Gentlemen, we have a Translucent Requisition in progress.”

“Did you find out anything about these kidnaper's Cypher?” Stelyne asked.

“Relaying all data to you,” I answered. “I don’t know what type of van it was they left in, but more than likely it looks as normal as anything, if they wanna lose us, they’d probably head for the skylanes. I can’t tell where I am, but this whispering weave should be off by now!”