Wilbur Wright - Corruption Vector

*Thump* *Thump* *Thump* goes my high-powered rifle.

I was already running towards the open door which the patrol had emerged from.

*Thud* *Thud* *Thud* went the three limp guards against the floor panels.

“Three, two, one…” I muttered as I approached the entrance.

The heavy reinforced doors started sliding shut automatically.

“Zero!” I grunted as I landed inside the entrance with a perfectly timed roll. The doors clicked shut behind me a split second later.

I was in, but there was little time to congratulate myself. I sprinted forwards down the corridor,

“Four minutes thirty-three seconds,” I whispered. That was the time I had remaining on the clock before the security systems booted back up.

I had left my rifle outside, no sense in lugging the extra-weight when time is of the essence. As I approached the corner, I drew my silenced handgun.

Another mid-air roll, and *twhack* *twhack*.

The two guards around the corner snapped their head back and crumbled to the floor.

I moved past the bodies and kept going.

“Two minutes,” I muttered when I reached the the door to the elevator.

I slapped the master keycard on the scanner. It was the keycard that I had retrieved earlier in the evening from the facility director’s cold, dead hands as he lay with a hole in his head behind a dumpster in a back-alleyway.

The console chimed agreeably and a green light came on. The elevator doors slid open.

I entered and scanned the card again. Then I hit the button for sub-level 6. The elevator doors promptly slid shut and the elevator hummed and descended.

Suddenly, a facility-wide siren echoed through the walls of the elevator.

“Damn, the systems are back up. The techs must reallllly want to earn their paychecks today,” I said as I promptly shot the surveillance camera in the corner of the elevator without looking.

I holstered my handgun and took out three modified Claymores from my tactical backpack. I placed the Claymores facing outwards at the foot of the elevator doors and proceeded to fire a grappling harpoon at the elevator ceiling. The rope pulled me up and I flattened my back against the ceiling. I had one hand ready on the rope release trigger on my belt and my other was gripping the detonator with my thumb ready on the trigger.

The elevator went *Ding*.

The doors slid open and a storm of gunfire immediately poured into the elevator from outside. I immediately pressed the Claymore trigger.

Three simultaneous *Booms* and several screams later, I hit the grappling harpoon release on my belt.

I landed back on the ground. My hands reached behind my shoulders and gripped the familiar hilts of the double tactical swords behind my back.

And awaaaaayyyy I go.

The Claymores had taken down four guards. My blades took out three more before the remaining guards recovered from the shock of the explosion.

“Open fire! Open fire!” Someone screamed over his cackling radio. He got his windpipe severed in the next second for his trouble.

The corridor exploded in an orchestra of gunfire.

I swerved, spun, and dodged, methodically cutting and slicing my way through the narrow corridor of panicked guards. I then emerged from the corridor onto a main laboratory floor with my tactical suit slick with blood. I swapped out my right sword with my handgun and put a bullet each into the heads of the five remaining guards camping out among the furniture ahead. Meanwhile, I had walked up to the workspaces at the opposite end of the lab.

There were about a dozen nerds in white-labcoats cowering in the corner.

I pointed my gun in their direction. “The thing,” I said. “Where is it?”

One whitecoat stood up cautiously with her hands raised to her sides. She had long, luxurious, mahogany brown hair, and piercing blue eyes. She was very beautiful. So much so that I was awfully tempted to pull the “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a top-secret government black-site like this?” line.

“You’re here for the artifact.” The lady said. There was a distinct lack of fear in her voice. Just a healthy dose of calculated wariness in her eyes.

I smiled behind my mask. “If you say so, doc. I’m just the fetching dog. My client wants the hottest thing that has just been brought here to this charming place. You think it’s this artifact that you’re talking about?”

The lady took a deep breath. “Yes, I believe so,” she said.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Show me this bauble that everyone seems so eager to die over.”

The lady nodded. She marched over to a see-through glass chamber and gestured her head at the window.

I walked up to the glass panel and peered inside. It was a quarantined space of some sort with various robot arms hanging from the ceiling. At the center of the chamber floor was a small grotesque black idol, about the size of a soda can. I couldn’t make out what the figurine was depicting, but the very sight of it infected my stomach with unease.

“That’s one ugly statue,” I said.

The beautiful lady scientist nodded. “We found it at the bottom of a meteor crater on the moon. It survived the impact even when the meteor itself was disintegrated.”

I whistled, “So what I’m hearing is that I don’t have to handle this one with care?”

The lady scientist looked at me with her icy blue eyes. “We tried everything. Diamond drills, lasers, plasma-cutters…” Nothing managed to leave a scratch on that thing.

I chuckled and pointed my handgun at the glass panel. “Mind if I try?” I asked.

“The panel’s bullet-proof,” the scientist said helpfully, “and explosive-proof too.”

I pointed the handgun back at her. “Open it,” I said.

The woman glanced up across the floor. There seems to be a control room of sorts on the upper level of the ceiling looking down on the glass chamber. “I’ll have to use my biometrics and voice to open the chambers from up there,” she said.

I stared at her for a long, tense moment. “You wouldn’t be planning to lock me in there, would you doc?” I asked.

The beautiful woman didn’t flinch. “It crossed my mind,” she replied frankly.

I grinned. I like her.

“Get up there and open the chamber,” I said, “If you try anything, I’m going to start killing your colleagues. After you get it open, they can go in and help me fetch that thing.”

The woman nodded and headed straight for the winding metal staircase that lead up to the upper control room. She disappeared from sight and seconds later, the door to the glass chamber slid open.

I heard a distant cackle of radio static and the thumping of military boots echoing from the entrance hallway at the opposite end of the floor. Reinforcements had arrived.

Before I could order a couple of the other scientists to grab the idol for me, there was a series of mechanical whirring. Inside the chamber, one of the robot arms had picked up the idol and was extending it out of the chamber opening, holding it up in offer for the taking.

I glanced up at the control room and saw the beautiful scientist lady gazing down at me. Her eyes and face were void of emotion, displaying perfect clinical stoicism. My instincts were flaring up. I had the feeling she was looking at me as she would one of those white laboratory mice who had been presented a questionable piece of cheese.

The first of the facility’s reinforcements poured out of the entrance corridor. They weren’t mere guards. They were clad from head to toe in high-end tactical gear, wore black masks with a bunch of optics, and wielded advanced weaponry. They immediately started spraying gunfire across the floor without regard for the other nerds, a couple of whom immediately cried out and went down for their country.

Cursing under my breath, I dashed forwards towards the idol. The last thing I remembered was placing my hand on that sinister looking thing.

Then everything went black.