Demon Twelve Bravo (XCOM/Warframe)

[Anzer'ke]

Demon Twelve Bravo​

Chapter 1: Of Glass and Steel

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It wasn't moving.

Twelve hours and thirteen minutes since capture, and it still hadn't stirred.

Instead the invader hung limply from the restraints. More marionette than monster, it looked like it should be modelling dresses in a shopping centre. Not...

Moira stopped midway through her checklist, tossing down her clipboard and closing her eyes. The better to focus on her mistake. To banish the thoughts before they could cripple her.

No matter what it looked like, the figure hanging by its wrists wasn't actually a diminutive young woman in form-fitting armour. It was an alien invader, no different from the ridiculous grey things whose blood still stained the autopsy room's floor. Doomed to the exact same fate at her hands.

Hands that she squeezed and squeezed, until they finally stopped shaking, and she realised that she'd forgotten to put down her pen and the cheap plastic had splintered in her fist. It didn't exactly hurt, the material too weak to do more than dimple her skin, but the sensation at the edge of pain still made her hiss.

She never had had much tolerance for discomfort. Neither in herself nor in her experimental participants.

'Fortunately, this is not a participant. This is merely a subject. A thing to be taken apart, with no value beyond what can be learned through its demise'

Yet no matter how she tried to reassure herself, it was impossible to look at the thing and not see a human being. It had none of the grotesque proportions of the humanoid invaders she'd examined either in person or via footage. No twisted additions or uncanny features. It was just a female figure in smooth armour, with little to distinguish it beyond a few meandering lines that might have been joins in the armour but could as well have been mere decoration for all the success they'd had in probing them.

When they began examining it she had recorded the usual information then, for completeness' sake, noted the irregular patch of a different colour that splashed across the left breast, the different textures at the lower arms and legs that put her in mind of leg warmers, and the bizarre hint of a heel at its feet. Then they'd flipped the creature to examine the raised rings on the back of the head and each shoulder blade and her written report had hardly grown by a hundred words in the hours since. Most of them listing all the ways it resisted investigation.

Every attempt at scanning had resulted in instruments stubbornly refusing to recognise the creature was even there. Every probe and tool had failed to find purchase. Eventually they'd noticed that even the security footage of the lab showed it as little more than a blur.

Nothing had worked. By the time they reached the end of the methods that didn't involve having the manipulators tear the figure apart, they'd hardly learned a thing. Which was not helping her to regain her objectivity.

She swept the pieces of her pen into one hand and crossed the room to toss them into the incinerator chute. Too busy trying to remember where the stationary was kept to turn and greet the flicker of movement she caught in the corner of her eye.

Movement on the wrong side of the room.

Dr Moira Vahlen whirled in time to watch the invader slowly pan its 'gaze' across the room, examining its surroundings with whatever sensory apparatus that mask hid. Light bloomed behind it, a gentle blue glow appearing from nothing in all three ring locations, not from the structures themselves but between them, like the air itself had become luminescent.

A harsh beeep broke the silence as she found the intercom. "Attention all Research personnel. Subject One Two is active, all off-duty personnel to the main lab immediately."

It was probably unnecessary. Given the comprehensive surveillance within the base the commander had likely already issued the same order, but Dr Vahlen was nothing if not meticulous.

The figure had definitely noticed the restraints. It looked back and forth between the two manipulators that gripped each of its arms, flexing against them and achieving no more than a slight swaying motion.

It didn't seem panicked, or worried at all. In fact, as she watched the way it tested the strength of one side then the other, she couldn't help but read curiosity into its behaviour. As if the containment cell's construction was far more interesting than the inconvenience of being trapped within.

If the unthreatening behaviour had been intended to illicit sympathy then it was a miserable failure. Nothing could have broken the illusion of an innocent young girl so thoroughly as its total lack of concern. Suddenly reminding her that despite how it looked they didn't even have any real proof that it was intelligent.

As she walked over to the controls that ringed the cell Dr Vahlen pondered the possibility that it might be some kind of drone, ignoring the way it turned to watch her approach in favour of reaching for the clipboard that sat on the table. Its glow brightened and she turned back-

-and tumbled to a floor that was suddenly three inches lower...and a completely different floor. Smooth steel, contoured along a curving wall that she had seen a hundred times just since morning.

But only from the other side.

Terror took control of her muscles without consulting her, ramming her back against the wall in time for her to see a flat plane of light floating in the air behind her. No sooner had she seen it then it blinked out of existence and she had a clear view of the creature, dangling from the manipulators just a few steps away from her, and looking at her over its shoulder.

She was in the cell with the creature.

Outside she could see men and women rushing into the room. Some armed, most not, all of them useless to her beyond the way they drew its attention.

There was no way to open the cell from within, but she could see Dr Khol hovering at the controls and so long as it was still restrained perhaps-

A metallic groan ended her last hope, as the creature flexed against the manipulators again, pulling free with a casual shrug. It didn't drop to the floor, floating at the same height it had been lifted to and turning a slow circle to face her. To look down on her.

If it hadn't been across the room she'd have spat in its face. Strangely it seemed more important to maintain her dignity then to hope for a quick end, she hadn't realised until that moment how much she valued her colleagues' opinions of her, but the knowledge that they were watching kept her from whimpering as it floated closer, bending gracefully and extended a hand that began to glow.

"Òronalom larusàlla zà?"

And spoke.

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[Anzer'ke]

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Corporal Raleigh had no fucking idea what he was meant to do.

The shotgun in his hands was steady, despite the heft of the modifications that the quartermaster had insisted were base standard, but an unwavering aim didn't mean shit if he didn't know where to point and when to pull the trigger. Not to mention whether or not his slug would even penetrate the glass that separated the room from the cell where they tore the aliens to pieces. Fancy ammunition or no, Ralph had seen rooms rated for high explosives before.

Course, the last time there'd been a few of his bomb squad buddies occupying it, instead of…

He wasn't an idiot, and he had ears. Even a lowly grunt like him couldn't avoid hearing the rumours.

He just...he'd never seen…

Weeks of guarding the damn door, and he'd never known what was on the other side of it.

His respect for Doc Vahlen rose from the shallow grave her demeanour had buried it in, then leapt into the stratosphere as he finally processed just who the figure on the other side of...it, was.

The rest of the scientists were banging on the glass or working at control consoles, probably for the hefty mechanical arms that hung limp and sparking from the chamber walls. Their efforts proved about as useful as his gun was likely to be, but he didn't blame them for carrying on anyway.

Not when one of their own was about to be torn apart by the armoured thing reaching down to...to clasp her hand?

His was not the only gun that dipped ever so slightly at the sight of the figure gently pulling Doc Vahlen to her feet.

The Doc herself proved to have ice in her veins, facing it down as though she was still safe on the other side of the glass. Lip curled in disgust as she said something in German just a moment too late for the loudspeakers to broadcast it through the room. One of the scientists' frantic typing finally yielding a result.

Just from hearing the tail end of what she said, Ralph was willing to bet on some variation of 'eat shit and die'.

The alien merely cocked its head, eyeless face staring up at the Doc, who Ralph belatedly realised was taller than the thing.

That thing took a slow step back, raising one hand with the slow movements of someone trying not to spook a wild animal. The hand seemed like it might come to a rest on the creature's chest, only tapping against the material there before it reached towards the Doc, the glow at its back rising in intensity until a low crackle began to sound out through the speakers.

And if the humans in the room had tensed when it reached for the Doc, it was nothing compared to how it reacted to that sound.

Its victim was forgotten in an instant. The figure whirled to look over its shoulder with flexibility that would have snapped a human's neck, and went tense as steel wire at the sight of the rising glow on its back.

It had moved. One heeled foot driven into the Doc's chest in a flicker of impossible speed. Then she was tumbling through the air, passing neatly through a panel of light that appeared in her path. By the time anyone noticed the other such pane Doc Vahlen was already tumbling through it. The portal -because what else could it be- vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.

Just like that, the Doc was saved, and the threat was contained once more. Contained and sinking to its knees at the centre of thick aura of something. Something that glowed brighter and brighter and was making him feel extremely nervous.

It reached for the sky, grasping at nothing. He almost mistook it for prayer, maybe some attempt at begging for life, but then he saw the air rippling at the edge of the blast shield. A massive cylinder of metal that rested in two halves, one above and one below the circular chamber. A cylinder whose upper section was jerking downwards slightly in sync with the movements of the alien.

An alien who was glowing with a light that had somehow begun to appear solid.

He might have found himself reduced to a lowly status by his transfer to the ridiculously elite unit that was his new home, but Ralph had gotten that transfer due to a wide range of training and ample field experience. All of which was drawing one connection between the alien thing and the soldiers he had known in the past.

Asking questions was a waste of time they might not have. So he didn't.

Instead he leapt for the biggest most emergency looking button he could see, and pausing just long enough to read text that probably said the right things before he slammed a fist down on it. The blast shields dropping and rising on cue with his action. Until they met with a solid thunk of enough metal to endure demolition charges without a breech.

Corporal Raleigh turned to face the rest of the room, already composing an explanation that would hopefully keep him out of any serious trouble for violating SOP like he had.

And then the world exploded.

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[Anzer'ke]

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The damage was extensive.

However the Commander still found a sigh of relief fighting against her customary stoicism as she reviewed the report.

There had been no casualties in the destruction of the main lab. A miracle she could place almost entirely upon the shoulders of a Corporal who had hit the emergency trigger for the blast shield on little more than gut instinct.

Since the blast shield had done its job even as it failed, the Commander was inclined to let the fact said soldier had technically broken several rules go without comment. The blast had been channelled into all manner of monstrously expensive equipment instead of the far cheaper members of staff. Given the relative difficulties of replacing fancy machines versus people, she could allow a small lapse in operational discipline.

With a final note concerning the off-duty training schedule for next month, XCOM's Commander, still fresh to the position and determined not to show it, did not sigh or bury her head in her hands or give any other sign of the weight that had settled about her shoulders. Tugging her hands towards the documentation concerning a matter so urgent that she had only allowed herself to put it off with her most absolute priorities. Instead of burying it in a stack of bureaucracy as she was so dearly tempted to.

Taking up the clunky tablet, she took her time with the security measures that would transform it from an encrypted slab of junk into her tap into XCOM's systems and databases. Then she began to review the matter that she could delay no longer.

The report that came first had been depressingly simple when she first read it. A Skyranger dispatched, a team deployed to blunt an alien strike team preying on civilians in Kolkata. The alien ship that had crashed and disappeared in rapid succession had been notable only for its immense size, -despite multiple reports deducing it was merely a piece of a much larger vessel- unfamiliar design, and departure from the field through some manner of portal. None of which had been sufficient enough a revelation to distract from the wounded alien that had tumbled from the departing ship, an easy target for an operative with an Arc Thrower.

Now those details stood out like fireworks in a dark room.

She hadn't been the only one to gloss over them. To assume it was simply one more weapon being brought out of the invaders' arsenal, no different to any other horrifying new discovery.

That was no excuse, but nor was their any use in dwelling on a mistake. She'd learned that a lifetime ago; A fresh recruit watching her first tour tear through the officers who couldn't stop living their failures.

The mistake was impressed upon her memory, then put aside.

In its place she considered what information they had. A few blurred images of the ship: Smooth and silver where it hadn't bled light from jagged edges. Reports that gave her only the broadest details, distracted as the various authors had been in the middle of a firefight. Summaries of the recovered alien and its belongings...though another topic lay in that direction and she did not yet wish to move on. A possibility had to be confirmed first, and even with what little she had, The Commander had enough to do it.

No matter where she looked, or how she put the pieces together, XCOM's Commander could not confirm their captive's allegiance. It had not lifted a finger to harm any human. Of course she had just as little record of it attacking the other aliens, but that was fine. The first step was merely to eliminate an obvious answer to her dilemma. Unfortunately that left her only with hard ones.

Without clear evidence one way or the other…

It had been theorised since the first signs that they faced an alliance of multiple races, rather than a single invading species. Even the most hardened of cynics among the ranks of their analysts had to acknowledge what that implied. Multiple species of aliens, meaning multiple factions, even if all those they had met so far had joined in some common cause and attacked them. That did not eliminate the possibility of other factions yet to make an appearance. Ones not allied with the aliens they had encountered so far.

However, the enemy of an enemy was the enemy of an enemy. No more. No less. The unknown relation of an enemy was even less defined, and even that was no more than an as yet to be disproved possibility.

Except, the creature had done something that could not be ignored. Something more than merely remaining neutral to their conflict. Something so impossible to miss that many of those in the main lab had hardly waited to haul themselves to their feet before turning their attention to digging out the alien, even though it had been the source of the explosion.

Even the Commander, with every effort turned towards scepticism, could not deny what she saw in the security footage. The creature had opened a pair of its portals. The same as those that had brought Doctor Vahlen into the cell in the first place, and most likely based on the same technologies that had taken its ship out of their reach. Then it had propelled her through, to safety.

There was no ambiguity. Where its attempts to interact with the blast shield might mean any number of things, and its explosion could be an attack poorly aimed, there was no doubt that it had saved her Chief Science Officer.

Realistically, the explosion also made little sense as an attack. At least not one the creature itself had been aware of.

Not after what the impromptu salvage team had found beneath the remains of the containment cell. Twisted and burned and missing its left arm alongside so many other chunks of flesh. The creature had been badly enough wounded to grant significant insight into how little sense its inside made.

More importantly, it had been wounded badly enough that it was no longer moving beyond the faintest signs of life, or so they had to assume in the absence of any expertise on the bizarre mishmash of flesh and metal and who knew what else.

Which left a choice to be made. A choice that could have consequence both great and terrible. And therefore a choice that only she could make.

Let the creature live? Perhaps even try to treat it if they could?

Or watch it die?

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