Jessica was already floating to the 82nd floor, skipping past Monarch and his as they scrounged the divided blocks. They were searching—so far as she could tell—every nook and cranny of Goliath Headquarters. Beelz and her team had to be above the rest.
Past the sensations of weightlessness and wind, she entered the 82nd floor through a gaping hole in the wall, to land on scattered chunks of more wall. She was welcomed by muzzles, again, Gemini Squad's assault rifles. Clad in dark greens and their weight's worth of gear, they lowered their weapons as soon as a black figure stepped at their behest.
She wore slick plates on long legs leading up a utility belt of magazines and other gadgets; then black on a bulletproof vest, all the way up the headphones. Eyes below red hair harbored a burning evergreen. Beelz, stoic, pensively ticked her handgun against forehead goggles.
"Let me guess; 'You're lucky we didn't shoot you'?" Jessica mocked. "That's what you were going to say, right?" She stood up and faced down Beelz's entourage. Meanwhile, Shannon and Valerie tumbled inward, pedaling frantically to control their gravity boots until they unceremoniously hit the floor on either side of her. The fall failed to stop either of their gripes.
"Do that again, Jess, and I will murder you!" Shannon said.
"You crazy ass Puerto Rican!" Valerie jeered.
Neither could muffle the sound of encroaching airships.
"Step away from the windows," Beelz ordered.
Eyeing the redhead, Jessica and her friends stepped further into the damaged room and watched as two gunmen set down a mysterious box. One button-press later, the box sprouted a tripod with a mounted turret.
Beelz held her earphone. "We're transmitting the data." She was likely contacting Amon and Boros on a separate line. It may have had something to do with the man on the terminal behind her, stealing data. She was still thinking ahead, about the long war.
"Ships will be in range soon," somebody warned.
"Engage noise dampeners." Beelz clicked her headphones. Her squadmates pressed hidden buttons underneath their helmets, spawning blue LED lights on their visors. Their commander then gestured with a two-finger point, as soon as she made eye contact with Jessica. "There's an Asgard squad above us" she warned. Two squadmates took cover by the turret, the rest scattering throughout the room as she lowered her goggles.
A series of loud bursts carved holes in the ceiling, from which multiple grenades dropped. Jessica dived with Shannon and Valerie behind the nearest desk, evading the rumble and thunder. The grenades started spewing smoke when lines of rope unraveled from the ceiling and windows.
"Asgar—"
Beelz thrust Jessica to the ground and tossed a grenade with the other hand. "Cover your ears!"
Jessica punched her own earlobes when the sphere bounced from the ground to the ceiling to the wall, around the room, at high velocity. It fiercely echoed and stirred the eardrums so terribly that, when Asgard descended via cables, their surroundings devolved into a chaotic quagmire. The enemy covered their ears, yelping, one after another blasted off their cables by Gemini gunfire. The action was so automatic, Jessica almost scrunched her shoulders into fracturing. Beelz's team gunned down every Azarean despite the smokescreen.
The gunfire eventually stopped, and Beelz's voice reentered comms. "Our units on the ground are going to have trouble."
From all around, airships descended and hitched beside the occupied floors to retrieve anyone who would not or could not stay. Their proximal engines stirred mild tremors along the tower beams.
"We'll be sure to assemble a warm welcome party for Asgard's arrival," Monarch relayed.
Jessica poked her head out of cover and discovered all the rebels alive and well. Valerie did the same, scowling through her rifle sights. Shannon shivered while peeking more carefully.
"Is it over?" she asked.
"Worst comes to worst, we'll disable the elevators and access points, but don't expect that to stop them," Monarch continued. "Godspeed, Lynx, Beelz."
He said that like he's not coming back.
When the smoke finally cleared, Asgard corpses littered the 82nd level in a variety of awkward positions. Some were sprawled over the furniture; others swayed back and forth on their cables. Everywhere else, nothing but bullet holes and seared remnants.
"Data extraction complete," said Beelz's hacker.
Beelz turned to Jessica. "Lynx."
"Beelz"
"Tell me you used that scanner."
Jessica scowled. "Yes, I scanned Malvis's eye like you were hoping."
"Then you just made our lives easier. Which doesn't negate as many variables as I would like... but we've wasted enough time." Backpack swung over her shoulder, Beelz crouched and rummaged through the contents. She retrieved an item and raised it in the palm of her hand like a newborn. It was cubic, small, and portable. "Your ideal 3-D printer," she said.
Jessica delivered the rod; Beelz extracted a microchip from the bottom slit then placed it in the printer slot. They watched an eyeball manifest on-screen. Several ticks and a beep later, Beelz opened the cube and retrieved what looked impeccably like the real thing. She examined the eye between her fingers as if it were a flawless diamond.
"There's nothing like using your enemy against your enemy" she mused.
"So long as it works," said Jess, wincing at the eye's lifelikeness.
"Too bad it's not the real thing."
Over her shoulder, Jessica caught a mirror of nausea in her friends' faces. Either from battle fatigue or Beelz's coldness, it was hard to tell. Above glass shards, hoping for clues, she decided to fasten her goggles and check the ceiling. Unfortunately, X-ray vision revealed nothing.
"I can't see through the top."
"Y por que no?" asked Valerie.
"If you're utilizing X-Ray vision, which I presume you are, then it's a good and bad sign," Beelz droned. "High chance a lead surface shields whatever's up there."
"Then the laws of mass distribution say there's very little storage," said Jessica.
"Good to know." Beelz gyrated her gun arm.
The tripod turret began firing through the window then, almost muffling Monarch's voice when he shouted through comms.
"Asgard is landing in force! Back to the chokepoint!"
A flick to the eardrums, loud crashes resounded from the bottom of the superstructure, while a muffled cacophony of engines, projectiles, and explosions formed the faintest tremors.
"Jess, let's go!" exclaimed Valerie, pointing to the bodies trudging up the stairs.
At the next door, Beelz cracked the security lock then let the grenade loose through a slit in the door. It briefly thumped across the walls before magnetizing directly back into her glove. "Clear!" she said.
In a world where Azareans go deaf and Beelz wears weird-ass earphones, I'm guessing that's an echolocation grenade... with bounceability.
Past more sliding doors, Gemini Squad found yet more dark rooms sealed behind glass screens. Beelz advanced in the middle of it all, in the middle of fire teams, as they cross-checked their surroundings. Then came to a halt. Several started reaching inside their hardshell backpacks.
"Are those what I think they are?" asked Shannon.
Beelz, like the rest of her team, was lifting armed charges. "They're parting gifts," she said, offering up the brick. "We don't have time to secure more intel, but we can make sure this place and its experiments die."
"The enemy's numbers are growing, Beelz" Monarch's voice interrupted. "You have a limited window while we hold Asgard—watch the flank and give it everything you got!" The turret on the floor below them wouldn't stop firing. And through the windows, loud volleys left streaks of deadly light in the dark.
Time to expedite this chaos.
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