Stumbling in stutters, the lab coat used his keycard to access the safe room. True to his word, the black walls slid above a transparent screen surface, to reveal a pair of large canisters shrouded in vapor. While Raptor examined the refrigerated environment, Jessica tapped the scientist's shoulder.
"What did you mean when you said these are meant for Azareans?"
"W-Once they graduate final testing, the strains will be mass-produced," he answered. "Th-that's what they told us."
"Who's 'they'?"
"Guys," Shannon called, rising up the stairs with the pilot around her shoulder, "are we there yet?"
"Medic, give that man first aid," said Raptor.
The closest squaddie untucked the pilot from Shannon's arms. "Don't worry, I have him," she said softly, then laid him aside and retrieved a medical kit from her hardpack. The pilot gave Shannon a bitter-sweet thumbs up in parting. That's when Raptor grabbed the scientist.
"Do you keep records of your experiments?"
"Without an interface, all I have are my hand-written rambles in my desk." Unfortunately, a brief survey begot nothing but broken terminals and scattered debris.
"We don't have time for this," Jessica drawled.
Sweating, the scientist reached under a charred cubicle and retrieved an oblong case, which he hand-delivered to Jessica. Inside, she found nothing but a chip and scribbled sheets. "Equations," she said, handing the papers to Raptor but keeping the chip. "Kudos if you can solve them. But later." She started toward the next set of stairs. Raptor pushed the notes into the arms of his nearest subordinate.
"Lynx, wait, you don't know what's up there!"
Ignoring any and all protest, her feet took her to the top, where at long last she found a floor not utterly wrecked by the fighting. It even had that new room smell.
When Raptor caught up to her, he let low the rifle and tapped his commlink. "Beelz, come in."
"Now's your window to extract any wounded," the woman replied.
"Where are you?"
No answer.
Jessica, meanwhile, explored the uninhabited room of carbon fiber racks and sleek, streak-free tables. None of the low seats had legs. The silicon rows held no screens, just dark pads, and touched a pathway that split the area in two. Running parallel to the terminals, a glass screen delineated dimly lit storage lockers on the other side.
When Shannon and the other operatives arrived, Raptor gave the signal to investigate. Pisces began a vigilant search, scanning every nook through their weapons' sights. Stung by curiosity, too, Jessica reached the round panel planed on the cusp of the glass.
"Scan anything hanky, Babel?"
"A standard fingerprint algorithm," he replied.
"Looks like an armory. Maybe, we can just break the glass," Raptor said.
"And risk triggering some kind of payload?" Jess scowled. "Nuh-uh."
" If you can crack it, by all means."
"If you'd like," started Valerie, "I can cut off one of the hands below us and see if that works."
Ignoring Valerie's suggestion, Jessica powered the Vambrace. "Accessing all previous entries," said Babel, preceding violet doodles on the interface. Jessica manipulated them with simple strokes, sifting through a sea of alphanumeric.
"I realize now, Azareans are either amazingly ignorant or arrogant," Jessica hummed. "They write their administrative functions with their own language, and think the grace of its complexity alone would stop a human from accessing their TPUs." Everyone gaped within a snapshot of cluelessness. Contradictorily, Jessica hummed whimsically. With sequence after sequence that she swiped, the Vambrace incised and constructed a set of neon fingerprints on the pad.
"Access granted."
"I really need to get one of those," Raptor and Shannon said together.
Jessica was the first to step inside. With proximity the closest locker door turned transparent, revealing the contents of an Asgard uniform. A weapons rack jutted from the wall; pistols on the bottom, rifles on top. They were in an armory. A second rack extended. Empty. Perhaps because the weapons were downstairs. She wasn't interested in weapons, however. Further down, the last set of lockers revealed metallic slippers. "Take a look at this," she said. Curiosity placed a pair in her hands, and so she promptly sat down to remover her shoes
"Girl, you sure you want to do that?" said Shannon.
"I have a healthy curiosity, Shannon. If these are what I think they are, they're worth taking."
"Slippers?"
The cryptic footwear slipped over Jessica's socks with ease. As soon as she stood up, she triggered the metal's folding. Seamlessly, several layers adjusted around the girth of her feet and ankles. Once the boots had attached themselves, she softly kicked the floor.
Nothing happened.
"Tag it and bag it," said Raptor. Everyone else grabbed one of everything from the armory.
"No need to let it go to waste, right?" Jessica chaffed.
"The resistance we've seen so far means Goliath's got plenty more to defend. You gotta get up there as soon as possible."
"And we're wasting time."
"We're waiting for the all-clear sign."
"Which won't come until Beelz, Monarch, and the rest of your friends have their run of the—WUW!" Jessica was levitating. Awestruck, she pedaled her feet mid-air, trying to balance on an imaginary surface. The boots' propulsion worked well enough, proven just as Monarch's voice blasted through the comm channel.
"We have incoming!"
Jess floated over to the windows beyond, in anticipation of the next nightmare. She could almost hear them in the distance, like before.
Asgard.
There were enough wings on the horizon to swarm the upper superstructure with troops. Rather than panic, renewed vigor carried Jessica back to the armory, where she procured two additional pairs of slippers. These she handed to Shannon and Valerie before strapping her goggles and stealing a weapon from the rack.
"Where you at, Beelz?"
"Where are you going?"Raptor interjected.
Beelz replied first, curtly. "Investigating 82nd. Standby."
"I'm coming up," said Jessica. She aimed and fired at the window. Unfortunately, she couldn't shoot for shit; the gun recoiled out of her grasp, leaving her sheepish before and after the glass shattered. But she was glad to be rid of it. "Goddamn, that's very different from SIRE."
"I hope you're thinking this through, Lynx!" exclaimed Raptor.
On the edge of broken glass, Jessica stuck her head out into the open air and set sights on the dark curtain of upper Goliath. She pulled back and, with a single hand jive, beckoned her friends forward.
"Are you asking us to do what I think you're asking us to do?" Shannon said nervously. "I hope you're not asking us to do that."
"Same anti-gravity principle as the McFly Mark II," Jessica said, pointing at her boots. "If so, the soles should stop us from falling."
"That's a pretty big 'if.'
"She is correct," said Babel. "Propulsion will respond to leg, foot, and phalange articulation."
"Perfect. You get all that?"
"Nope," said Valerie.
"Cool." Jessica hopped out the window.
"Wait, you crazy bitch!"
ns 15.158.61.54da2
