A heavy silence filled the room.
The white walls of the lab were riddled with bullet holes from missed shots. The room itself was quite large, with enough space for the ten humanoid creatures to stay inside with plenty of personal space.
The room itself had only a wide white table that took most of the space in the middle.
Damien fumbled around with the assault rifle. He found a small switch and flicked it down.
The magazine ejected out. Damien held it upside down, but nothing came out. He frowned, before continuing to do the same with his pistol.
"I used all 30 bullets from my assault rifle. My pistol was not used and still has 15 bullets in it. What is the situation for you guys?"
Killian shrugged his shoulders and ejected the magazine for his shotgun.
"I got 8 shells for this bad boy."
He then waved around his sub-machine gun.
"This thing is empty though."
Zenos sighed. He ejected the magazine for his sniper rifle and caught it with his hand.
"1 bullet from a magazine that carries 5."
Zenos then flicked open his snub-nosed shotgun, to see two chambers.
"This gun only carries 2."
Adonis pulled out a desert eagle. After ejecting the magazine, he scoffed.
"7 bullets."
Damien's frown deepened.
"...It seems we will have to rely on our katanas."
Zenos furrowed his brows and walked back to the transport shuttle.
The door was closed. After Zenos stood at the door for a few moments he used one hand to push against it.
"We are undersupplied, how can Sigma expect us to complete this mission?"
Emmett chimed in.
"You are allocated resources! Whether or not you use these resources effectively is your own problem!"
It was true that most of the bullets did not hit their mark, especially in Adonis's case. However, the recoil of the guns, especially Adonis's light machine gun, were quite high.
As novices, their performance was already pretty good, though pretty good was not enough.
Adonis walked up to Zenos with a frown.
"Move aside."
Zenos stepped out of the way, while Adonis backed up a few steps.
With a grunt, he charged at the door with his shoulder ready to slam into the door.
He collided against the door with a loud thump. However, that was all. There was not even a scrape to prove Adonis's attempt at breaking the door existed.
Emmett happily spoke out.
"You will be extracted after you get the lab sample!"
Adonis clicked his tongue.
"This is bullshit."
Killian raised an eyebrow.
"Come on, we still stand a chance don't we? Let's go already."
Killian walked into the room and was not concerned that his steps were making squishing sounds over the corpses of strange creatures. The corpses were covered in dark red blood that slowly oozed from their bullet wounds.
The creatures were pale and a little wrinkly for the most part. They had no hair and practically no features.
It was as if the creatures were balloons that had lost some air.
Zenos walked forward, but paused to inspect the creatures further.
"What are these things?"
Adonis shrugged his shoulders.
"I remember they said monsters."
Zenos shook his head.
"Of course they are monsters. But what is their origin?"
Damien walked up to look at the bodies as well.
"Well, if you took away all the features of a human and made their skin all wrinkly..."
Killian clicked his tongue.
"Who the hell cares? We have to kill them, that's all we need to know."
He turned on his own flashlight and moved the slider up a third, lighting up whatever it pointed to.
Zenos shook his head.
"Assuming that the other rooms are anything like this one, our previous approach will just get us killed."
Killian waved his hand like he wanted to push away the air Zenos used to talk.
"Then how about we just don't assume? How many of these pale-skins can there be?"
There was a panel and gate to the left and right of the room. Killian arbitrarily walked towards the right gate and reached his hand out to activate it.
"Wait."
Damien was rubbing his chin with his index finger and thumb.
"Those creatures did not react until they were exposed to strong light. This means there is a chance. We can kill them all slowly by using a weak light to confirm their position and then slashing with the katana."
Killian retracted his hands and raised an eyebrow.
Adonis picked up his flashlight and lowered the slider to a third.
"Oh, so you are trying to say that my decision to use the flashlight was my fault?"
Damien sighed.
"We did not know the situation, the only situation where you take blame is if you wanted to."
Adonis snorted and crossed his arms but was otherwise silent.
Zenos clicked his tongue.
"I suppose that's the best plan we are going to get. Since you created the plan you should test it. That is only fair."
Damien nodded casually.
"Sure, now turn off your flashlights."
As Damien walked to the right gate, Killian and Adonis switched off their flashlights.
The room was dark, except for the faint green glow that appeared when Damien put his hand on the keypad.
The doors silently opened revealing a dark void.
Damien reached for his flashlight and turned it on. The setting was at its lowest, emitting a weak light.
The light itself could just barely let Damien see a blurry image of what was half a meter ahead of him.
He carefully took a step forward as he slowly drew out his katana.
Damien immediately paused his next step.
There was a pale-skin right in front of him that he only saw because it was spasming and made faint gurgling sounds. An ugly frown formed on his face.
Damien immediately diverted the light away and the pale-skin calmed down. He silently took a deep breath.
The katana in Damien's hand slowly raised, then flashed.
The sound of tearing flesh filled the air.
Damien slashed the pale-skin's head off.
The slash was not refined, making a loud sound after hitting a bone. Following that was the splat from the head falling down and smack from its body hitting the ground.
Dark red blood poured from the now dead pale-skin.
Although some sounds were stirred up, there were no cries from any other monsters.
Zenos raised an eyebrow after watching Damien's successful performance. He took out his flashlight and drew his katana.
After turning on the flashlight, he used the weak beam to scout the area.
Like Damien, he soon encountered a pale-skin that spasmed when the weak beam shone on it.
Zenos decisively turned off the flashlight and raised his katana.
He was able to slash the pale-skin's head off, but like Damien, unskillfully used the katana.
Nonetheless, it was successful.
Damien was slowly walking while Zenos took care of the pale-skin.
Damien suddenly diverted the beam of his flashlight. There were two pale-skins spasming and squirming once the light hit them.
Damien frowned then turned to Zenos, who had turned his flashlight back on.
Damien shone the light on his hand.
He made a hand gesture where he moved his fingers as if he wanted to pull Zenos to him. Then, he held up two fingers which turned into one finger that pointed down at his feet.
Zenos aimed the flashlight at his face and nodded.
Damien kept the flashlight at his feet while Zenos slowly approached.
Zenos kept the flashlight beam near the ground to make sure there were no monsters along the way.
Damien patiently waited for Zenos, even though there were two unsettling monsters making faint clicking sounds next to him.
When Zenos got there, he briefly flashed the light on the pale-skins to confirm their position. Damien slowly raised his katana with one hand while his other hand shone a weak light onto the katana.
Zenos understood that Damien picked one of the pale-skins and positioned himself to another one.
Damien put the katana back in the sheath and shone the flashlight on his empty palm.
He then pulled back his thumb.
After each second he would pull back a finger.
Once Damien was only holding up two fingers, he turned off the flashlight and pulled out the katana.
After a few seconds, two katanas swung at the same time, leaving two heads to splat on the floor.
Killian turned on his flashlight and followed the example, walking into the room.
He walked fairly deep into the room before he found an outline of a creature. Once the creature started to spasm, Killian diverted the beam of light.
Once the spasming stopped, Killian raised his katana with both hands.
He grunted, then swung.
But the head did not fall off.
While Killian was swinging down, the creature stood up.
Killian's katana ended up piercing the skin of the creature's back, but was stopped by the bone.
The creature roared and something pierced straight through Killian's stomach and out the other end.
Killian grit his teeth.
"Fuck."