The sun rose slowly, casting a shadow across the facility. You couldnt call it a picturesque view; the steel and concrete of the sprawling buildings cast ugly, grey on grey shadows as the sun crawled up from the horizon. Sharp light glinted from the heavily tinted windows.
Covering the area of a small town, this facility was one of three that existed across the world, and while this was the largest – by a long margin – it was, in fact, the least important. Which is why it had been chosen to host certain things that were meant to be kept secret.
The soldiers had spent the previous night crawling through the forest that did a strangely good job of protecting the facility. Spread out over a few hundred meters, and so far unseen, they were ready to make their move on the facility and the things it held safe.
They were an elite group. They werent mercenaries, but they werent beholden to any one military. A group of independent contractors had spent many years, and a lot of money, bringing them together all for this moment.
There was a small noise in their earpieces and they were moving. Fast this time; the moment for stealth had passed. Now they were crossing the two hundred meters between the treeline and the row of buildings that began the facility.
They pressed themselves against the building and waited. If the alarm was raised it meant this raid was a failure and they would be left to their own devices to get out. If it stayed silent then they could move to the next stage of the plan. After a tense minute, there was another noise in their headsets. No alarm.
Officially, this facility was identified as a research and development hub. It was, on paper, a subsidiary of a massive global conglomerate which itself had several large government contracts of its own. In reality, it was entirely autonomous. Currently its focus was hardware. For the most part, they were doing research on metals in order to find a better material to use for aircraft fuselages and other vehicles. The research hadnt made any breakthroughs, and certain people high up in management – who did not work at this facility – were beginning to get frustrated.
“I dont get it,” the male scientist said. “We should be seeing an improvement on this puncture resistance by an order of magnitude over the previous generation.”
The female scientist sipped her coffee with one hand and snatched the others tablet with the other. As the two of them walked down the long, high corridors, she read the tablet in silence.
“I think we need to go back to modelling and tell them they fucked up somewhere,” the man said.
“No,” said the woman, “we fucked up. We got the ratios wrong. Look, it says here 2:1, I believe we used 3:1.”
“How did we miss that? The man said. “We triple check. Fuck, Leroy checks these things five times when hes on.”
The woman shrugged and kept drinking her coffee. It was too early to deal with shit like this.
“Ok, well, Ill tell Evan to start the machines, with any luck we can have some new samples by the end of the day and we can start fab-”
He was cut off by the wall the two of them were walking past exploded, sending their bodies flying into the wall opposite behind the debris from the explosion.
The soldier responsible for the breach tapped his two way radio twice, indicating a clean entry. He ran off in the direction the two scientists had come from as several other explosions were heard nearby.
The soldiers werent in charge. In their past lives they had been in command of various squads and battalions, but now they followed the words of the group that had brought them together. They may not have liked it, but they were being paid an awful lot so complaining wasnt something they were going to do too quickly. Besides, as they had said, they had spent their lives following orders. This time it was actually worth it.
Twelve soldiers, twelve explosive entrances, twelve different routes through this facility to the buildings in the middle. That was the goal. Within lay dirty secrets from governments worldwide, hidden here for safekeeping.
As the soldiers made their way through the maze of buildings, quietly shooting or otherwise incapacitating anyone they saw, little beeps and flashes of static through their earpieces let them know they were on the right track. Someone, somewhere else, was watching them, guiding them. Pulling their strings.
The de facto leader of the soldiers, a former Australian SAS officer, put a single bullet through a cowering scientist. The scientist had only just got to work when the soldier had broken in. He had gone to investigate what the noise was and had seen the soldier making his way down the corridor calmly shooting other scientists, even those who had surrendered, those who were running away and those who had been helping others already injured. The soldier turned and levelled his handgun and grinned as he squeezed the trigger.
He shouldnt be wasting time like this. The others would be getting ahead of him and if their information was correct, there would be defences in the centre of the facility that would require all of them. Not to mention they were racing each other.
The facility had not been built with any sort of plan. Whenever a new building was needed, the required space was carved out of the forest and it was built. Was there a building that needed to be built at a strange angle to maximise its exposure to the sun? Then it was built as such. Streets and other infrastructure were less important. Those could be moved, or changed. The buildings of the facility could not.
This meant that the streets zigged and zagged around all sorts of strange, angular buildings. Sometimes ending outright at the wall of a building that just happened to need the space. The soldiers had had access to a map of the facility, but it was out of date and while it was mostly correct, it had been impressed upon them that they should not rely on it. The facility grew quickly and unpredictably. They would have to find their own way into the centre.
The only light in the room came from a wall of monitors that glowed dully as cameras dotted around the facility followed the rampaging soldiers as they plowed through the terrified scientists and other people who made this place their home. The alarms had been silenced and only the sound of screaming was alerting the other residents that something was wrong.
Several of the soldiers were already on the edges of the centre. These were the ones who had only killed when it was necessary. There werent many scientists who would take up arms, but the ones who did didnt last long.
The watcher of these monitors grinned in the darkness. Very soon it would be all over. His hand crept over a single red button. Just have to wait for all of them.
The Englishman breathed hard as he approached the building that they had been told was where they needed to be. They were also told that they all needed to be there to breach this. The people who ran this facility would have soldiers of their own and would sacrifice the scientists and other residents in order to protect whatever was inside the building. Something that had, so far, rung true.
Taking a breath, the Englishman tapped his two way three times. He was the first to make it. After a few minutes, there was another three taps. He looked around slowly. He was hidden well enough, he thought, so he shouldnt have been noticed. He hoped whoever else was here would be as well. He spotted nothing as he scanned the area. Perhaps they could yet make a game of this.
Over the next fifteen minutes, each of the soldiers made it to the middle of the facility and each tapped their two way three times. No words needed to be spoken, at least not over the radio. Not least of all because they were trained not to. They were a secret group, no one outside them and their employers knew they were here and if word got out their previous governments would lock them up. So on the off chance that did happen, they were told to not use their voices over the radio. One less avenue for anyone to find out who they are.
The air around the few central buildings was tense. The soldiers waited for their signal. This time it wasnt coming from their earpieces, it would be the facility who let them know it was time to move. When the main building in this cluster opened, they moved. As one. They would rain hellfire on whatever poor soldiers the facility had hired and then it was done.
The door opened and several things happened at once.
First, the alarms that had been silenced from elsewhere started blaring again. Secondly, the person watching in the darkened room with all the monitors hit the button. Third, each of the soldiers moved, rushing towards the door that beckoned them. Finally, in a room somewhere else again, a slender finger flicked a switch and power to everything in that room, no, in that building was lost. Computers, lights, two way radio receivers. Everything. An hour later, that building was imploded and nothing remained of any of it.
None of the soldiers noticed their two ways going dead. What they did notice was that instead of a small army, like themselves, exiting the building, only a single figure stood there waiting.
The figure was slender and slightly disproportionate. Pale white, with no hair, he did not cut an imposing figure. The Australian was the first to reach him and as he levelled his gun, the figure raised an arm and slapped the soldier, who went flying through a nearby wall.
Immediately everyone stopped. Everyone except the figure who started to walk towards them all.