Chereads / Respawn: Last Man Standing / Chapter 25 - Chapter XXIV: Game Changer

Chapter 25 - Chapter XXIV: Game Changer

The team starts slowly walking towards the center of the floor. The wide open space providing an echo of each of their footsteps. "This... is Floor 1?" Drake asks.

"This can't be right..." Chris says.

"No doors..." Gerald says. "No traps, no turrets, no stairs... someone has to be fucking with us right about now".

"I'm afraid... this really is the end of the game" Judy says. "Either they didn't expect anyone to make it this far... or they purposely left it empty. But why?".

"Who knows?" Ziya asks. "Maybe its to taunt anyone who did make it this far. Leave them with nothing... Just this empty feeling and an empty room to leave them to starve to death... all down to the last man".

"Or woman..." Chris says.

"Shut up, Chris" Ziya says. "Man in this context is referring to humans... as a species, not a gender... stupid fuc-".

"I get it!" Chris interrupts. "It was a joke... shit".

Ziya pulls out a pistol and aims it straight up. "Well, it was a bad joke..." Ziya says, then pulls the trigger. When Ziya shoots, she hits the camera on the ceiling and destroys it. "Obviously, there isn't a whole lot about this room to take it". Ziya puts away her pistol and takes out her sledgehammer. "So let's just go ahead and get to work".

"You plan on breaking down the walls?" Gerald asks. "Just... tunneling straight through?".

"That sounds about right" Ziya says as she starts walking forward.

"It's better than nothing" Drake says as he starts walking too. The rest of the team follows Ziya, as she walks to the empty wall on the opposite side of the floor from the stairs. When there, Ziya winds up her arms, then strikes at the wall with her sledgehammer. A few small chunks of concrete fall off of the wall, and some small cracks form. Then Ziya strikes again and again. Alone, Ziya kept striking the walls over and over, slowly digging into the concrete wall. After making a dent in the wall, large enough to fit a full sized human body in, but not deep enough to call a hole, Ziya grew tired as her fingers began to bleed. Her strikes against the wall grew weaker and weaker. Finally, as she tried to strike the wall with a weak swing, Drake grabs the sledgehammer from her hands and stops her.

"Ziya, please..." Drake says.

"But if we don't do something-" Ziya begins to panic.

"We are doing something" Drake says. "You don't have to do this yourself". Drake yanks the sledgehammer out of her hands, lightly pushes her out of the way, then Drake starts swinging the hammer in her stead.

Chris walls up to Ziya, and gently forces her to sit down and rest. "This is a group effort" Chris says. "If you want to get out of here faster, let everyone pull their weight".

"Right..." Ziya says.

"Why are you so hellbent on trying to handle this with your own efforts?" Chris asks.

"I'm not!" Ziya yells. "I just... I made a promise to get Drake out of here. I'm not going back on my word, but I'm also not going to force him to do the work when I'm the one who made that promise!... that, and I'm sure as hell not going to just trust a bunch of lunatics I've met in Pyramid to handle this".

"I thought we were friends" Chris says with a laugh.

"You think a lot of dumb things, Chris" Ziya says.

"Well... at least you're honest" Chris says.

Over and over, Drake strikes the wall with the sledgehammer, digging deeper into the wall. Eventually, their efforts were stopped when they came across rebar reinforcement inside of the walls. Drake strikes at the rebar over and over, slowly bending it, but it was taking too long to get past it. Eventually, Chris stands up with his sniper rifle in hand. He loads his next shot, and aims for the rebar at a close distance. "Stand back, Drake" Chris says. "This should help get this obstacle out of the way". Chris pulls the trigger, and the bullet bounces off of the rebar. The rebar bent slightly, but the bullet also managed to destroy a small portion of the rebar, making a soft spot in the rebar.

Drake starts hitting the rebar more with the hammer, bending it the opposite direction of where the bullet hit it, right in its weak spot. After several more minutes of hammering away, the rebar broke. "It worked!" Drake says. However, the rebar itself was still in the way, since the bar only snapped in two. Drake started hammering the rebar more, slowly bending each piece of the rebar in opposite directions. Eventually, Drake began to wear out, and he handed the hammer over to Chris. "Your turn" he says as he catches his breath.

"Alright, let's give this a go!" Chris says as he spins the hammer in his hands, as he walks up to the wall. Chris continues striking the rebar, bending it more and more. Eventually, the rebar was moved enough for anyone to easily fit through it. After that, Chris began hammering away at the wall again, digging deeper into the wall. Eventually, the dent in the wall became an actual hole that one could crawl inside of. With no exit in sight yet, the team kept digging.

For hours on end, each person would take a turn trying to dig further into the wall. After a few hours, they would hand the hammer over to someone else, and they would take a turn digging through the wall. After a while, the team started taking turns with both sleeping and hammering. After several days, they managed to make a tunnel that half of the team could fit inside of. The walls were thick, and they still couldn't see an end in sight. There was still never ending concrete, which meant that they haven't begun digging into the earth yet. This gave them hope to keep going, as they hoped there would be something on the other side of this concrete wall. Day in and day out, there was always someone there, hammering deeper into the wall. After a few days, they came across more rebar. All of them were tired, and none of them felt the motivation to hammer through another set of rebar. "There's more rebar!" Drake yells from inside of the tunnel.

Chris looks into the magazine of his sniper rifle and sees only one more shot left. He then checks all of his pockets, and remembers he has something. "Hang on!" Chris yells. "I've got another idea!". Chris pulls out several grenades from on of his large pockets, and holds them in his hands as he approaches the tunnel. "Get out of there!" Chris yells.

Drake walks out of the large tunnel, then Chris walks inside. Chris grabs the sledgehammer from Drake, then walks into the tunnel. When he gets there, he can see the rebar partially buried inside of the wall. Chris takes the sledgehammer, and digs a small hold in the concrete behind the rebar. When the hole was complete, he sticks two grenades in the hole. He grabs the handles of the grenades, pulls the pins out, then runs, leaving the grenades in the small crevice he made behind the rebar. Chris didn't make it out in time, and his body was sent flying out of the tunnel as the grenades went off with a loud boom. As Chris revives, Ziya and Drake were standing over his body. Chris simply smiles and raises his thumb up at them.

"Did it work?" Ziya asks.

"No idea!" Chris cheers.

Gerald walks up to Chris, then snatches the hammer from out of his hands. "Only one way to find out if it worked" he says as he walks towards the tunnel. Shortly after Gerald walks into the tunnel, he shouts from inside of the tunnel "Hey, guys? You might wanna come look at this".

Ziya, Drake and Judy all try to fit at the same time into the tunnel. When they get to the back, they see some broken parts of rebar and concrete. Behind the rebar that was still standing, was several cracks in the wall, and some light leaking through the other side. "Is that... the outside world!?" Drake asks.

"Sure looks like it" Gerald says.

"We've done it!" Judy says.

"All we have to do now is move this rebar, and finish tunneling through the rest of the wall" Ziya says.

"Alright, clear some space" Gerald says. "Go get the rest ready to leave. I'll start working on this rebar". After a while of hammering, Gerald comes back out, exhausted. "I'm worn out..." he says. Gerald tosses the sledgehammer at Gregory and says "You're up".

Gregory walks into the tunnel and begins hammering away. After several more hours, Gregory comes back. "It's ready... but-".

Everyone began to rush into the tunnel at the same time, not listening to Gregory. They rush through the tunnel, and one by one, get outside of Pyramid. One by one, they were met with something of a surprise, yet a disappointment. As everyone climbs out of the tunnel, they jump down to a floor that was lower than the top floor of Pyramid. They look around, inside of this giant room with a giant dome in the center. The giant dome was the ceiling of the top floor of Pyramid, and the room was full of bleachers and other forms of seats, with nobody in them. All around the room were monitors, each broadcasting the many different views from the various cameras inside of Pyramid. They walk around this dome in the center of this giant and empty room for a while, until they come across a giant metal door. The giant metal door had no sign on it, but was the only other thing in this room. As the team approached the metal door, it seemed to open on its own. However, through the doors, many security guards charge through and point their guns at the team. "We have eight escapees" the guard in the middle of this five man squad says. "Awaiting orders".

A small, inaudible chatter was heard over a headpiece the guards were wearing. After the chatting stopped, the guard in the middle nods his head, then all five of them loads their guns and start shooting at them. "Get down!" Ziya shouts as the team runs around the dome to take cover.

After running far enough around the giant dome that was Pyramid, they all stop and pull out guns of their own. "What's the plan?" Gerald asks.

"You guys keep them busy" Ziya says. "I'll run around and get them from behind. Do not let them know one of us is missing!". Ziya then loads her submachine gun and continues running around the other side of the dome.

Chris leaves his sniper rifle on his back and takes out his revolver. "You heard her!" He says. "Let's give 'em a hell of a time!". Chris leans around the corner and shoots a couple times at the guards. After Chris takes cover, Gerald does the same. The team kept switching, keeping the guards from moving too much, barely keeping them back. After a while of keeping them in place, Ziya had made it all the way around the dome and came up from behind them. The guards began to turn around as they heard her approaching, but it was too late. Ziya kept running up to them, firing at them with her SMG, taking out four of them. By the time four of them dropped, Ziya was close enough to grab a combat knife from the guard and slit his throat with it. The fifth guard fell, and Ziya kept his blade, then searched the corpses for ammo.

"They've all got assault rifles" Ziya says. "Take one. We need to move". Drake, Gerald, Gregory, Micheal, and Tyler each grab a rifle from the dead bodies. They run through the large metal doors, and find themselves in a large, laboratory-like building with several hallways and rooms all over.

"What is this place!?" Drake asks.

"No idea" Gerald says. "But something's not right. Those guards didn't have a badge or insignia on their uniforms. Either they're really really doing off-the-book work here, or these are guns for hire".

"They're definitely guns for hire" Chris says. "But this place looks too... official for people like that to be roaming around here. What is going on here?".

"Weren't we supposed to be outside!?" Judy asks.

"I've got a bad feeling about this..." Ziya says.