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Post by Basil on Oct 22, 2010 6:19:13 GMT -5
In the absence of light, darkness prevails, and darkness had prevailed in Balalaika's soul some time ago. How long had it been since her failed attempt at killing the Whore of Freedom? She wasn't sure, as she seemed to have lost all track of time, and the light of day seldom came through the thick, twisted bows of the trees in this accursed forest.
The Red Forest did not scare her, on the contrary. It felt like a refuge sheltered from time and the outside world, a bubble of immobility, safety and obscurity where she could rest and gather her strength anew. Stalkers seldom came through there, so a couple of missing loners every now and then went unnoticed most of the time. Balalaika had ambushed and killed two small groups of stalkers, positioning herself near a clearing where she could easily take aim and shoot her victims before they had time to react. However, she had also run into a group of two loners completely by accident a few hours ago.
The loners had immediately pointed their guns at her, which was when everything had spiralled into strangeness. One of the stalkers had suddenly looked at Balalaika and started screaming in abject terror, while the other one ran away. Balalaika had looked around her for any sign of a mutant or some other terrifying phenomenon, but had seen none.
And then she had sensed their fear.
Balalaika was not sure how she could explain what had happened, but she had somehow been able to feel the terror of the two men. She had not given this strange phenomenon much thought as she slit the throat of the man who lay screaming and huddled on the ground, and had quickly left the area after stealing her victim's belongings and supplies.
Now that she thought of it, what she had sensed during that encounter had been more than just an intuition. She had somehow felt the composition and workings of what the men feared the most, like dirty little mechanisms hidden at the back of their minds with an empty slot waiting for they appropriate key to set it off.
And Balalaika had somehow set their fears off.
How? She had absolutely no idea...but she believed that this called for further experimentation. She smiled at the thought. She liked nothing better than taking the lives of people, and that was what she would do. Evidently, she would have to strike elsewhere so as to not bring the suspicions of Freedom, Duty or the Loner community on the Red Forest.
There was a howl and chorus of snarling off in the undergrowth, which brought Balalaika back to reality. A pack of pseudodogs was probably headed her way, so she quickly gathered her stuff and climbed up the tree under which she had been sitting. She had selected a tall tree, whose summit rose high above the Red Forest's canopy and whose height would protect her from most of the Red Forest's bestial denizens.
As the pseudodog pack passed below, pausing to growl at the tree before running off again, Balalaika whistled quietly to herself. She had a good view over the Red Forest from where she sat and could even see the old factory over at Yantar, mostly obscured by the Zone's twisted plant life. She wouldn't be going back to Yantar for a while as the people there would probably still remember her. Instead, she would go to the Garbage and shoot a few poor bastards there before vanishing again.
She giggled and took Mr Stabby out of his sheath, twirling the cruel blade in her fingers as she looked at the view before her.
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Post by Διμι on Oct 22, 2010 21:32:57 GMT -5
The conversation had been quick, and most interesting and alluring indeed. Minutes later, Victor was already standing on the lab's grounds in full gear given to him by Sasha several hours previously. Flicking the fingers of the mechanical construct he was trapped in, the medic was idly flipping the huge sheet metal gate of the compound back and forth with his mind, giving off earsplitting creaks that echoed across the swamps.
Victor could have sworn he heard a snork roar in rage.
Eventually, three figures, suited in SSP-99 environmental suits and carrying L85 rifles exited the compound. The researchers, he thought. The men seemed slightly wary of the massive man-shaped machine, but then the tallest approached.
"Saitzev & Co., I assume?" Victor asked tentatively, and the man gave a nod of affirmation. The loner stopped fiddling with the compound gate and quickly looked out across the road to the factory ahead, flipping through all filters in less than three seconds. The path appeared deserted, not that there was much that could have stopped him. "Let's make this a quick one." he said "I'll get you through the factory and down to the first site so you can take your measurements and set up camp around there. From there, you're on your own. I've another job from you eggheads that needs completing. We'll be moving quickly and quietly, so keep up if you don't want your head and spine to become a snork's next plaything."
The researchers nodded in assent, and the group set out silently across the valley, Victor leading the way shotgun in hand. The place still seemed no less eerie even when he was safeguarded by his new protective shell. In less than half an hour, they had arrived at the tunnel and made their way inside. The route seemed so often traversed by the stalkers going in and out of Yantar that the mutants seemed to avoid it altogether. Or perhaps that was due to the pile of impaled bloodsuckers heaped within.
Victor stepped over the heaped corpses in the narrow passageway, his night vision filter clearly illuminating the path ahead. The tunnel was completely deserted.
In an hour more, the group emerged at the southwest boundary of the Red Forest. Almost unsurprisingly, a thin trickle of dark black smoke rose in the distance. As usual, the stalkers in the area seemed to have found something to explode. The researchers seemed wary of the twisted depths of the forest that stretched out before them, but Victor stepped forward without hesitation. He pulled out his PDA and checked the marker the scientists had given him. The first site was hardly a kilometer and a half away. He would deliver his charges and then leave to complete his second task, which he received scarcely two hours earlier. The group walked on in silence until it finally reached the site.
It was a large clearing with a massive overgrowth in the center. The thick, barbed vines seemed to form a protective cocoon over something on the ground. Victor's radiation sensors immediately began to tick loudly as the men checked their own. The loner stepped forward, safe in his mechanical shell and approached the viny overgrowth. The plant had grown so thick that it was virtually impossible to see anything within.
With flick of his hand and a tremendous mental effort, Victor pushed at the overgrowth with his telekinesis. The mysterious cocoon was harder to break than the concrete he had smashed nearly without strain earlier. Finally, the vines gave and shattered explosively, sending fragments and chips of wood across the clearing.
Victor took a step back.
A mysterious hole, perfectly circular and about two meters in diameter, had been revealed in the center of the clearing. The edges were smooth, as if melted down with a laser. Looking inside, the loner could not see any bottom, only a murky blue no matter which filter he looked through. The radiation in the area seemed to increase even more as the mysterious formation was exposed.
Hesitantly, Victor took one of the vine fragments on the ground and dropped it into the abyss and began to count. Fifteen seconds later, he could hear a dim splash come up from below. The hole was over a kilometer deep, and led into some sort of watery body that could go even deeper. Finally, he stepped away to face the bewildered scientists. "This place is all yours," he muttered "I don't know what to make of it. Grab your gear and take your measurements, and maybe radio in for more. If I were you, I wouldn't go rappelling down into that thing though. Something about gets on my nerves."
He turned away "I've got something else to do for your superiors now, gentlemen, and time is of the essence. This place has been relatively quiet in the past days, so it shouldn't be much of a problem. I assume you can take care of a couple of wandering snorks on your own."
Taking one last glance at the mysterious hole, the loner turned and walked away into the forest depths.
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Post by Basil on Oct 23, 2010 8:40:52 GMT -5
After leaving the safety of her perch, Balalaika had headed towards another strange place in the Red Forest. A clearing, with a hole that seemed to go down for miles. She found the place easily enough, as she had got to know the forest pretty well during her stint in it.
However, as she arrived at the clearing's edge, she saw that it was occupied by three people. Balalaika recognised the suits used by the Yantar scientists during missions into the great outdoors, and she smiled when she saw that they had no escort whatsoever.
Pretty damn cocky.
From where she was she had a pretty good view on the three scientists, and she dropped down amidst some bushes, bringing her SVD to bear. She got the lead scientists' head in her sights and squeezed the trigger.
The SSP-99's helmet was not designed to stop the bullet of an SVD Dragunov rifle, and the deadly missile punched through it with frightening ease, blasting a large hole at the back and spraying CRIPS, brains and shattered bone out of it. The second scientist cried out in alarm as he reached for his weapon, but Balalaika, who always enjoyed toying with people, shot his hand as it tried to grab the rifle slung over the scientist's back. This was followed with a bullet to the head, killing the scientist and adding another spatter of blood to the clearing's floor.
The last scientist took advantage of Balalaika's shooting of his companion and ran for cover, but instead of reaching safety he got a bullet in his spine, sending him sprawling face first onto the ground. Balalaika laughed as she left cover and walked towards her downed victim, who was slowly dying, paralysed on the forest floor.
"I gotcha, egghead!", she said, kneeling next to him and wrenching his helmet off. The scientist was completely unable to move and could only stare at her in fear as she took her bayonet out, took hold of his upper lip and pressed the blade against it.
A blood curdling scream echoed through the woods.
Balalaika giggled as she tossed the man's bloody lips away.
"You have to smile in life!", she said in a chirpy voice. The scientist now had a permanent rictus on his face, and tears were flowing out of his eyes.
"-...hwy...hwy?"
"-Why? Because when you're smilin', the whole world smiles with yooouuu..."
Balalaika kept on singing as she slit the scientist's throat. She looked back at the opening in the ground, with the blue glow coming out of it, and dumped the scientist's corpse into it. She was disappointed when all she heard was the splash of water a long way down.
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Post by Διμι on Oct 23, 2010 11:37:20 GMT -5
He knew it wouldn't have taken long.
Vasily would no doubt reprimand him for the loss of his men, but the bait plan had worked out even more well than he could have imagined. From what he had heard among the Freedomers, there was no way Balalaika would leave any stalker in the forest save for herself alive.
Conveniently enough, Victor wasn't entirely stalker anymore.
He had been pacing the woods about one hundred yards from the clearing quietly when he heard the first of the shots and screams ring out. The reports were, unmistakably, those of an SVD. Bingo, the loner thought as he broke into a quick sprint towards the clearing.
By the time he had gotten to the tree line, the woman, for of course it had been her, was finishing off the unsavory task of sawing the lips off of her last victim. Victor calmly watched, his green optics glinting, as she finally finished by slitting his throat and dumping the body into the radioactive hole the loner had unearthed earlier.
He calmly holstered all of his weapons, and, with a rustle, walked out into the clearing.
The woman's reflexes were faster than even he could have anticipated. The side round slammed at an angle across the side of his steel facial plate, knocking his head sideways and tearing a deep gouge in it as it spiraled away into the woods behind him instead. Had Victor not knocked off her aim by a tiniest margin with his telekinesis as he emerged, the bullet would have smashed headlong into his optics and through his new brain, turning all of the scientists' efforts into a vain pursuit.
Fortunately it didn't, and with a flick of his wrist, Victor wrenched the rifle from the woman's hands from a distance and nonchalantly clubbed her across the face with it, knocking her back, and sending the gun flying off across the clearing. In less than a second, however, she was up again, an APS automatic in her hand.
Victor wasted no more hand with the formal introduction. As his fist clenched by his side, the woman's arms were pinned to her sides with enough force to squeeze all of the air from her small form. The pistol clattered to the ground as Victor lifted her up into the air directly over the circular opening. As the woman struggled, he felt some dark tendril probing the recesses of his mind. This little girl was nothing to trifle with, he thought. But he had nothing to hide from or fear. In the form that he was, the Zone was his only remaining home where he would be accepted for what he was. And rusting into eternity inside the mechanism containing him was much worse a fate than anything this vicious creature before him could do.
"Naughty," he commented unemotionally "but your singing voice is quite good, I'll say. Pity you choose the wrong sort of career from the start." the instant he loosened the fingers in his hand, he knew, the girl would be sent plummeting down into the abyss. "But you're right of course, why not smile and appreciate the wonderful life we're all entitled to?" the fingers of his other hand traced up the wicked gouge of torn steel that now ran upside his own face, so reminiscent of the grin he would have had as a human at this very moment.
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Post by Basil on Oct 23, 2010 17:57:16 GMT -5
Balalaika stared at the strange stalker with a mixture of anger and hatred. She could not move, imprisoned as she was by an invisible grip around her body, and she was aware that she was literally floating over the glowing hole into which she had dumped one of her victims.
Hissing slightly as she struggled to get air into her lungs, she stared murderously at her gaoler as he talked to her. She felt the strange ability she had recently acquired try to pry the man's mind open and get at his fears, but its grip slipped and fumbled, as if the man did not feel fear. She snarled and struggled against her bonds, but stopped doing so when she felt herself slip downwards.
A nasty bruise would be forming on her face where the man had clubbed her, with her own rifle too. If only she could get at him, his screams would fill the air like so many choirs of agony. Balalaika mustered what little breath she had and spoke back to the strange man, who was now feeling the gouge her bullet had left in his face mask.
"What's all this? Witchcraft? Mind trickery? C'mon, tell me, Iron Head", she wheezed sarcastically. "You mad because I wasted your egghead friends?"
Balalaika chuckled at that, her gaze never leaving the expressionless face of her enemy and captor.
"So...you going to make me croak or what?", she said finally, without even a hint of fear in her voice or demeanour. "I'd be rather disappointed if you did that...I have some unfinished business on this Earth. Oh, and speaking of careers, you ever worked in a brothel? No? Because it sucks pretty bad."
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Post by Διμι on Oct 24, 2010 13:19:28 GMT -5
Victor studied the face of the creature suspended over the hole by his telekinesis, his green optical lens shining evenly. Her visage was twisted by hatred, pain, madness, and some sort of alien malevolence that seemed to exude terror in an aura around her small form. He knew that the best thing to do would be to let go. There was no way any creature on this earth could survive a one kilometer fall into standing water. All of the woman's internal organs would be pulverized into a fine mush the moment she made contact with the surface.
But he had made a deal with the ecologists, and having failed to protect the three men, he could at least carry his promise through and deliver what he had sworn to give to them in return.
Balalaika slowly drifted out from above the hole and fell to the ground of the clearing as Victor relinquished his grip. In an instant, she was up, and, before the loner could react, had buried the entire length of her sawtoothed bayonet through the side of his neck with an earsplitting screech of metal on metal.
The scene seemed to freeze for an instant, with the bewildered woman just staring into the glowing green optics of the massive stalker before her, who simply seemed to refuse to fall despite the length of a wicked blade firmly entrenched in his neck. Then Victor reached back with a single arm and grasped the handle of the bayonet before pulling it out with another screech as it slid between the metal framing, hydraulics, and synthetic muscle within.
"They say the root of beauty lies in symmetry," he noted as if nothing had happened at all, examining Balalaika's face, the side of which was going purple with the bruise inflicted by her rifle earlier. "So I guess I'll be doing you a favor." he finished as he cocked his fist back and slammed her across the other side of her head. The woman crumpled to the ground.
"Time to give those eggheads back their bounty," he muttered as all of the woman's weapons floated across the clearing to him. He slung the unconscious stalker over his back and began to walk, setting his course back towards the lab.
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Post by Basil on Oct 27, 2010 8:41:58 GMT -5
"...ugh."
Balalaika awoke from the inky darkness into which she had been so brutally tossed. Where was that tin-headed bastard?
She blinked a few times and saw that she was not in the Red Forest any more. Judging from the ancient factory buildings around her as well as the vague stench of death that clung to the place, she was in Yantar. The world also seemed to be swinging a lot, and she couldn't feel the ground beneath her feet.
Balalaika glanced around her and saw that the stalker who had trapped her and knocked her out back in the Red Forest was carrying her over his shoulder. Said shoulder was also hard as rock and was digging into her belly, causing some nasty muscular cramps that had lain dormant while she was unconscious to spring back to life like vicious little piranhas.
She sluggishly reconsidered the situation. The stalker was obviously incredibly strong, and possessed inhuman powers as well as a rather terrifying ability to survive Mr Stabby's bite. Attacking him was impossible and out of the question, and insulting him would probably only make him break her neck or crush her into a pulp. She needed to be tactful, for Balalaika, even though she was insane, had a well honed survival instinct.
"So, stranger", she said in a groggy voice. Speaking made her wince from her rather bruised face. "Where're you taking me?"
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Post by Διμι on Oct 31, 2010 10:35:28 GMT -5
"Oh, you're awake?" Victor spoke absentmindedly as the woman he was carrying stirred and groaned, trying to shift her position.
"So, stranger", his unfortunate captive inquired in a rather malcontent voice. "Where're you taking me?"
Victor laughed "Oh I wouldn't worry about that if I were you. You'll be visiting some old friends soon. They'll give you a nice room and bed with white sheets, nothing like what I'm giving you right now. You'll love it." the lab was coming into sight, just over the ridge ahead.
The stalker tensed his mechanical legs and jumped off of the massive incline, his telekinesis keeping him suspended almost fifty feet in the air. He landed lighter than a feather by the lab perimeter, his cargo completely undisturbed. The gate creaked open by itself as he walked through. Vasily was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Sigbrand. Good, he thought. As friendly as they were, the medic doubted they would approve of his latest conquest. Slowly, he went around the lab to a small side hatch in the ground and knocked. Several seconds later, it opened.
A scientist dressed in a lab coat exited, beholding the massive construct and his quarry slung over his shoulder. "Excellent..." he muttered viciously "you can't imagine how long we've looked for this kind of test subject." he explained to the loner "Ah, she's awake?" he noted "Ah well, that can be corrected." Before Balalaika could open her mouth in protest, the scientist extracted a syringe from the pocket of his coat and stuck Balalaika in the neck before injecting the serum within.
Victor handed the limp woman without a word. "She's yours, egghead." he gritted out "even if it doesn't mean I approve of this. If you mention to anyone I was involved in this, I'll turn your skull into interior decorating paint." he turned and quickly walked towards the main lab entrance.
He encountered Vasily within the lab and sat down beside him. "The men are dead," he apologized "along with the rad field, we encountered some sort of emission from the site that fried their brains. I had to dispose of the three - they were reaching aggression. We'll have to issue men with full psy-protection screening from now on down there."
He paused "We discovered some sort of hole, a couple meters wide and about a kilometer deep, liquid at the bottom. That's where the radiation is emanating from. I've no idea how to explore what's at the bottom, but no doubt it's what's causing this strange phenomena. I'm willing to investigate, if you've got a better plan."
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Post by Zeno, Lord Camelith on Nov 1, 2010 0:26:58 GMT -5
Looking up at the metal stalker, Vasily said "Dead, huh? Can't say I'm really all that surprised. As for checking it out, It would take far to long to teach you how to properly use all of our equipment. I'll have a team and a few loner volunteers within a few days if you feel like sticking around."
Vasily stood up, and banged his hand into the corner of a desk. The back of his hand instantly bruised and Vasily causally slid it into a coat pocket, confident nobody had seen the incident.
"Until then, you're a free stalker. You may do as you please about the lab. I have nothing for you, but someone else might. Kruglov is always a little trigger happy when it comes to 'examining' zombies. He might want to get get some rounds down range."
Walking into his quarters, Vasily shut the door behind him and examined his bruised hand. It was bleeding slightly under the skin.
You are weakened, Mortal. You are no longer as strong or young as you once were. We have shelter for you. the voice thundered.
"Leave me!" Vasily said to the empty room.
"Your lies expose you. You are an abomination, a destroyer of men! Your very existence threatens the world!"
FOOL!, boomed the voice, Soon you will be no better than the meanest of my slaves!
Vasily felt a pain in the back of his head, and his vision flickered out.
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Post by Basil on Nov 1, 2010 7:43:43 GMT -5
Vladek did not enjoy his work here in the Zone. When the institute in Kiev had offered him a chance to go work alongside renowned Zone specialists in the Zone itself, he had immediately accepted. The Zone at the time had seemed like the Holy Graal of scientific discoveries, and he, as a student in biology, wanted to be the first to write a paper on the subject of the Zone's mutants.
Now he had been in the mobile lab for three weeks and he was regretting accepting the offer. The scientists who worked here were either strange or difficult to work with, especially Vasily, who never gave his underlings a break. Vladek had already been out with Kruglov to take samples or, worst of all, capture living specimens. When stalkers were not available to kill or capture a few zombies or mutants for study, Vladek and Kruglov would go out and do it. Vladek had never used or even held a gun before he came here.
And now he was being assigned to the study of a young woman some the lab's latest freak had brought back from the Red Forest. He remembered the freak leaving with three scientists, but according to the former, they had all died in a freak emission. This all seemed very fishy to Vladek and he suspected that Victor had withheld information about what had really happened.
Vladek sighed as he unlocked a door and entered a small, stark white room with a bed and a bedside table as its only furnishings. Vladek started slightly as he saw the young woman was awake and looking right at him with the most intense gaze he had seen in a while. Her face was badly bruised, but the biology student could see that she was rather pretty. He smiled at her, delighted to be working on such a good-looking subject for once, but something about her unsettled him.
"Hi, I'm Vladek. I've been assigned to your case."
"-Hello Vladek", said the young woman with a pleasant smile. "I'm Balalaika."
Vladek went over to her bed and took some medical instruments out of the satchel he was carrying.
"-I'm just going to check on your health...now if you could just undo your suit a little."
The young woman, or Balalaika as she called herself, did as Vladek asked and he took a stethoscope from his medical equipment. As he pressed it against her chest he couldn't help but notice that she had some ugly burns on her skin.
"-Whoa, it's pretty high in here isn't it?", said the girl conversationally. Vladek looked up, puzzled.
"-What do you mean."
His heart rate was inexplicably accelerating as he saw that the young woman was smiling and looking down at the floor. Vladek followed her gaze and screamed in terror at what he saw.
The floor was gone, replaced by a sheer drop to the ground several hundreds of metres below. Vladek grabbed hold of the bed, his vision swimming sickeningly as his acrophobia took over his mind and plunged him into boundless panic. As he stumbled to grab hold of a solid surface, he lost his footing and plummeted into the void, and his vocal cords graced him with another blood-curdling scream.
But instead of the sickening fall through emptiness followed by the sickening and terrible shock of his body hitting the ground, he merely hit the floor of the room. Blinking and gasping, he looked around him, his hands feeling the reassuring presence of terra firma.
His breath was almost immediately knocked out of him as Balalaika landed on his back, driving her knees into his spine and pinning his arms to the ground.
"-Afraid of heights eh? Fascinating", she said in a voice so frighteningly different from her pleasant tone from earlier that it sent shivers down Vladek's spine. "You screamed like a little girl."
"-What is WRONG with you?", said Vladek in a voice made strident by fear. As he finished his sentence he saw the floor twist and sink while he hung suspended in mid-air. "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GET US OUT OF HERE!!"
The only answer he got was a mocking, cruel laugh. "Get up", snarled Balalaika, grabbing his hair and pulling him up. Vladek obeyed, too scared to struggle. "Now kindly open that fucking door."
Vladek immediately went for the door, unlocked it and wrenched it open. A dark stain was appearing on his trousers and his legs were shaking. Balalaika smirked.
"Pissed yourself eh? Pathetic."
She delivered a swift and violent kick to Vladek's crotch, making him whimper in pain.
"Get out."
The young man did as he was told and stumbled out of the room. Balalaika could have used her new-found ability to escape, but the prospect of spending a few days in a heated room with a warm and comfortable bed was more appealing. Besides, she knew that the armoured fiend was still lurking around in the vicinity. This little display was a message to the eggheads who had apparently decided to turn her into a lab rat: she would make their task exceptionally hard.
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Post by Διμι on Nov 1, 2010 23:35:56 GMT -5
"She's been... difficult." said the scientist nervously.
"I expected about as much." Victor muttered, standing in the control room and looking at the display panel. The monitor was replaying the escapade the prisoner had engineered half an hour previously. Now the door was locked shut by the panicked scientists, each and every one unwilling to continue the experimentation.
"We're detecting a strange psy-aura emanating from within the room. She has a wondrous mutation that she can take advantage of at will at little ill effect aside, of course, from complete loss of judgment." the scientist beside him noted. "But there's no way we can control her. I would have sent men in protective psy-screened gear, but I distrust letting the little thing even near a syringe."
"They'd be dead before they could get anything done," Victor remarked gravely "your men are rather... ill-equipped for the task." the loner's fist clenched and a heavy tremor ran through the foundations of the mobile lab. The lights in the white room flickered and the paint on the walls cracked and chipped in several places, prompting the woman to look around for the source of the disturbance. "What was it you had in mind for this lady, anyway." he asked finally, relaxing his digits. The underground portion of the lab settled back into position with a heavy groan.
The researcher, who had been holding back his breath through the entire ordeal, seemed to shudder back to life. "Well... uhh..." he paused, shakingly "In recent months, we've been working heavily with psychokinetics, much the same principle that your suit is founded upon - the influence of psy-waves upon matter. So far, these waves have been confined to afflicting neural cell function like those of the controller or create localized gravity wells like the burer and poltergeist mutants."
"We've been looking into the genomic changes that stimulate this brain activity in mutants, specifically the kinetic portion of it. We've managed to create a psychotropic drug that alters both the chemical makeup of the brain and the genes encoding its maintenance and development. The drug greatly amplifies the qualities of the psy-wave both in terms of amplitude and structuring. In the case of our little subject, it would literally allow her to twist and distort matter in accordance to her ability, depending on the effect it has on the victim." he concluded with a hopeful smile.
Victor sighed and buried his face in his hands "I've delivered an extremely dangerous stalker to you eggheads, and the first thing you do is figure out ways how to make her even more dangerous?" he asked in disbelief "I should have known better." he groaned. "Do whatever you want, sedate her if you will, work out your experiments. But know that I won't be rescuing your ass once you've done your agenda good." The stalker turned and exited the room before walking up the stairs and out of the lab. He entered through the main doors, and spoke briefly to the scientist beside the counter.
"Tell Vasily and Sasha I'm off to Rostok for an extended while. I'll be back to pay off all your services however I can. Thank you for everything you've done for me." with that, Victor turned around, picked up his gear from his locker, and set out across the lab grounds.
He would be at Rostok by evening, he thought.
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Post by Basil on Nov 2, 2010 5:56:13 GMT -5
The scientists were right to be frightened of Balalaika. Not only was there the fully taped incident that had happened with the biology student but there was also the student himself. He was now a terrified, broken wreck hiding in one of the rooms. If he wasn't sedated regularly he would start screaming about the floor giving way beneath his feet. He would also engage in continuous and nonsensical mutterings about the "Queen of Fear" and her unspeakable powers.
Balalaika on the other hand was growing bored of captivity. The prospect of sleeping in a proper bed and being fed had quickly paled and she had grown tired of having only white walls to stare at. She wanted to be back out in the Zone with Mr Stabby and her guns, killing, killing and killing again. However, she had felt the ground vibrate earlier on, and only one person could have caused this: the metal stalker. Balalaika knew she couldn't harm him physically or mentally, so she was not keen on encountering him again.
Her thoughts were cut short however by the sudden entrance of four suited scientists. One of them was holding a box with syringes.
"What do you clowns want?", she asked, staring right at them from her side of the room. Their suits prevented her from feeling their fear, but she could tell they were not enjoying what they were doing as two of them tensed slightly when she spoke. After gathering their courage, the four scientists advanced towards the bed and grabbed hold of her.
"Get off me!", yelled Balalaika as she struggled furiously. She saw the syringe-wielding scientist approach her with the needle in his hand and she struggled even more violently against her captors, eventually managing to break free and kick one them in the face.
"-Hold her down, damn it!", said the scientist with the needle. The others did their best to keep control of Balalaika, but the little woman had managed to free one foot and one arm and she proceeded to kick another one of her captors in the face. As they struggled to grab hold of her again, Balalaika broke free and snatched the syringe from the terrified scientist's hand before driving it through the fabric of his suit and into his neck
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It was only after handcuffing Balalaika, fitting her with a mask to prevent her from biting and taking the injured and unconscious scientist to the infirmary that the other eggheads decided to sedate Balalaika again. Her eyes wide and angry, she stared at the scientists as they approached her and insulted them through her mask.
"Fuck you! Fuck you you worthless pieces of crawling slime!", she snarled, her voice muffled by the Hannibal Lecter style mask the eggheads had clamped over her face. "I'll see you scream and crawl before me!"
The lead scientist grabbed hold of her arm and Balalaika struggled to stop him from driving his syringe through her skin.
"Cowards!", she yelled as the scientist finally managed to inject the sedative into her body. "Fucking gutless sons of bitches you...you..."
Balalaika fell into the inky depths of a drug induced torpor, and the scientists seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief.
"-I'm not sure giving her this drug is a good idea", said one of the scientists as yet another syringe was taken out and filled with a bluish liquid. "She's incredibly dangerous."
"-Yes. But our suits should protect us from any of her tricks. Besides, we'll dispose of her properly once we're done with her."
And with that, the lead scientist injected the drug into Balalaika's organism.
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A few hours later, Balalaika woke up. She looked down at her hands and saw that they had been strapped to the arms of a chair, and her feet were in a similar situation. She felt some odd object compressing her head, and there were suited scientists all around her.
"She's awake."
"-Sedate her. I don't want her to interfere with our measurements of her cerebral activity."
"-What the fuck are you doing to me, you fucking scum?", said Balalaika, her eyes staring darkly at the people around her.
"-Get the bloody sedatives!", said a scientist standing straight in front of Balalaika. He was about to put two more tabs on her head when she spat in his face and swore.
"-You keep your god damn stinking fingers away from my fucking head you rodent-fucking runt!"
A scientist holding an electronic instrument similar to a Geiger counter spoke up in a worried voice from one end of the room.
"-Erm, professor? I'm getting readings."
And this was when Balalaika suddenly realised that she could sense something she hadn't sensed since the biology student had entered her room: fear. She smiled.
"-Looks like you'll have to start running", she remarked, her smile growing wider and more predatory.
"-Oh God! She's inside my head!", screamed one of the scientists before collapsing to the floor, screaming incoherently about spiders running under his skin.
"-Everyone out of the room!"
The scientists scrambled for the door and as soon as they were all out slammed it behind them. Balalaika, still strapped to the chair, turned to the whimpering scientist on the floor.
"-You, get up and kindly undo these straps."
The scientist struggled to his feet and stumbled over to where Balalaika was seated.
"-You...you promise not to let them c...come back?" he stuttered in a frightened voice. Balalaika smiled in a motherly way and nodded.
"-Don't worry."
The scientist smiled abjectly before undoing Balalaika's straps. The small woman sighed contentedly as she stood up, free from the horrible chair and its nasty scientific gadgets.
"And now for your reward...", said Balalaika, turning to the scientist. She raised one hand and the poor man immediately fell to the ground again, screaming and clawing at his skin. "I'm no good at keeping promises", giggled Balalaika as she went to the door. Unsurprisingly, it was locked, but Balalaika was undeterred by this. She gave the door a good kick and sent it flying outwards.
"It was a delightful stay here", she called out in the corridor, "but I'm afraid I must go now."
An alarm started ringing as soon as Balalaika got out of the room. She heard the sound of running feet, followed by the arrival of a scientist with a pistol in one hand.
"-Don't move!", cried the scientist in a shaky voice. Balalaika took one step forward and the egghead tossed the gun away, screamed and ran away down the opposite end of the corridor.
"-Now where did you put my babies?", said Balalaika, referring to her weapons which had been so rudely confiscated by the metal stalker. She picked the scientist's gun up and set off down the corridor, reaching a flight of small metallic steps leading upwards. Another scientist was at the top, pointing an AR-15 at her. His bravado did not last long however as Balalaika's nightmarish abilities tore into his psyche and brought his deepest fears to life. He screamed and stumbled away, still holding his weapon. Balalaika laughed and ran up the stairs, arriving in the upper and more familiar section of the lab. This section seemed pretty empty of human life, and Balalaika moved freely to the front part, where the exit and Sakharov's counter were. It was in the latter area that she saw what she was looking for: her SVD, her AW50 her Stechkin and of course Mr Stabby.
Balalaika laughed manically as she grabbed her weapons. She barely noticed the loud gunshot in the room beyond the counter as the AR-15 wielding scientist she had terrified earlier shot his brains out.
"YA KNOW", she called out before grabbing her Stechkin, "I CHANGED MY MIND. I'M NOT LEAVING JUST YET, BECAUSE I THINK I MIGHT JUST KILL YA ALL."
Two scientists wearing suits she did not recognise arrived in the room beyond the counter. They too were armed with AR-15 rifles, but the psy protection screening on their suits was a lot higher and more effective, preventing Balalaika from getting at them.
Nevertheless, Balalaika was a faster shooter than her two opponents, and she fired two bursts from her APS Stechkin. The bullets flew through the room, smashing scientific equipment and smacking through the scientists' visors, killing them.
One of the bullets reached a small gas canister at the back of the room and ripped its valve off, causing gas to escape into the small space. As another scientist stumbled into the room and opened fire with his AR-15, he ignited the gas and caused a fiery explosion that set fire to most of the room's interior. Balalaika avoided a scorching by dropping to the floor, while her scientist enemy was physically unaffected but disorientated by the flames. Grabbing Mr Stabby, Balalaika leaped out at him and slammed the saw-toothed blade through his helmet and into his skull.
"This is so much fun!" she said as the scientist's body dropped limply to the floor. However, her glee was cut short by a sudden thumping noise coming from outside.
Helicopters, she thought. Had the eggheads called the military? She didn't want to stay and find out, for she doubted she'd be able to handle such an enemy. Balalaika ran from the burning room and went out through the automatic doors.
Sure enough there were three mi-24 helicopters flying towards the lab. Balalaika dashed away from the squat bunker, which was now leaking black smoke, and left the lab's enclosure. She quickly took cover behind a truck as a hail of chain-gun fire thundered after her, sending small sprays of dirt flying up from the ground.
This was probably the end of her. She'd never be able to make it to safety, for she could not outrun a helicopter. Balalaika ran from behind the truck, grabbing her AW50 as she did so. In doing so she barely avoided getting blown up as one of the helicopters fired a rocket into the truck, blowing it sky high and sending twisted bits of metal flying through the air.
Balalaika dropped to one knee and took aim with her rifle. This was undoubtedly the end, but she might as well try to take a shot at the aircraft pursuing her.
What happened next surprised Balalaika beyond all words. She had a brief glimpse of herself standing on the ground, as if seen from above, and then one of the choppers hovering in front of her seemed to veer out of control. The aircraft veered off sideways and slammed into another helicopter flying nearby, the rotors slamming into each other and bringing the two aircraft to the ground.
Blinking, Balalaika got up and ran. What on earth had happened? Had she managed to get at the pilot? She didn't stay to find out, but sprinted towards the factory, climbing up the rise and avoiding yet another burst of deadly fire from the last mi-24. She saw a hole at the base of one of the factory's walls and she threw herself to the ground and crawled through it, disappearing from the helicopter's sight.
Having lost sight of its dangerous quarry, the helicopter began patrolling the sky above the factory, keeping an eye out for the stalker it had been chasing.
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Post by Διμι on Nov 2, 2010 11:22:36 GMT -5
Victor's progress through the Wild Territories had been largely uneventful, until it was interrupted by the sight of two helicopters crashing together soundly in the distance, right above the position of the scientists' bunker.
"Oh for fuck's sake..." he muttered before turning back in the direction of the Bar and continuing his course.
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