The First: EVO Uprising (46 page)

With no warning they all powered up and laid down a salvo of firepower striking her from all directions. Some of the smaller Doozers hung from walls and ceiling structures unleashing their plasma rounds to bring her down.

Neither Abe nor Erica were surprised as the mystery woman tanked the murderous assault with very little discomfort. Having her fill of being pelted, her eerie yellow eyes blazed as she returned fire with powerful eyebeam blasts cutting down Doozers big and small.

“
Maxine,” Erica found her nerves again, “where is the rest of the team?”

“
Rosann is in the Hurt Locker suited up,” Maxine answered. “Oliver and Adrian were enroute to their rooms before the attack.”  

 “
Tell Rosann to get to the central command, send Jennifer enroute to back her up,” she commanded. “Send Angie to the guys and tell them to forget about suiting up and get there as well! Patch me into Dennison ASAP! Rogers put me down.”

“
What are you doing?” Rogers asked, setting her down.

“
You know who she came for.” She grabbed her earpiece putting it on. “She could be down there in less than a minute. We are currently outmatched in every way possible, and once she breaks those lunatics out, they will overrun us. We need to fall back to the central command.”

“
Massive energy buildup coming from the female EVO,” Maxine reported.

Rogers and Erica turned back to the screen to view the mysterious female still taking fire from the surviving Doozers power up her right fist.

“
All communications are officially down,” she grinned.

She slammed her fist into the ground unleashing a shockwave type energy discharge that swept through the entire underground facility shutting down everything electrical. The bigger Doozer’s collapsed while some of the smaller ones fell from their perches or the rafters they clung to crashing to the floor below. Maxine’s android form also collapsed hitting the floor with a hard thud as the power and lights went out in Erica’s lab. Red lights from the backup generator booted up within the lab and the base providing light and power to the facility.

 “
That was an EMP,” Abe swallowed.

“
And a powerful one.” Erica shivered with a nod. “Maxine and the girls along with the Doozers are all built with anti-EMP shielding to defend against such an attack. She’ll reboot in five minutes, the Doozers in ten, and the entire base within twenty. Until then, everything including communication, is down.”

“
Enough time for her to get down to Purgatory.” Abe gritted his teeth.

“
The security Doozers down there are still operational due to distance between them and the blast,” Erica informed him, “but they won’t be able to slow her down, much less stop her.”

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Just as Erica had predicted, the extremely powerful blonde dynamo extended her right hand focusing. Her veins glowed an orange red as a red electrical discharge poured from the pores in her skin, dancing around her hand, forming a baseball size ball of energy in her palm. As she unleashed it, it expanded to twice the size of a manhole cover in circumference burning through the floor all the way down to the Purgatory prison unit.  With no fear she walked right into the hole dropping a half mile down hitting the ground floor of the prison where she was met by two large and heavily armored Doozers with midnight blue and black color schemes opening fire on her. The powerful volleys from their shoulder cannons and four finger mitts where ten times more powerful than their counterparts upstairs as Lady Tech equipped them with a quadruple Ion core system. They were able to knock her backwards taking her off her feet. She rolled to her hand and one knee still brandishing the evil grin she wore upstairs.

She answered the security Doozers’ attack was another powerful eyebeam blast burning a huge gaping hole through one of them igniting the ion cells within it. The explosion tore through the hallway of prison sending shrapnel flying everywhere. Its brother standing behind it for back up, took the brunt of its detonation, displaying superficial damage. It opened fire standing as a last line of defense between her and the prisoners.

Employing superhuman speed she darted toward it. Now ready for it, she tanked its powerful shots slamming right into it. The Doozer fought to stop her forward motion by using its back legs to put on the breaks, but she proved to be far too powerful.

She continued to push the behemoth of a machine backwards. The back rear legs of the four it had gave out simultaneously as she drilled it into the steel wall at the end of the hallway crushing its upper torso on impact.  

Badly damaged, it attempted to follow through its prime directive to defend the prison by grabbing her. She tore it’s right arm off, followed by its head, taking the last bit of fight out of it. She tossed the arm but paused to examined the head.

“
New model.” She shook her head. “Same old junk.”

She casually chucked it to the floor as well. With her arms folded behind her, she strolled back to the occupied prison cells. Ghoul and Nachzehrer each lowered their head to her disapproving glare.

She shook her head with a motherly huff before tearing open each of the prison cells with one bare hand. The Ghoul was the first to exit, while Nachzehrer took a minute to come out fashioning her torn prison garb into a skimpy makeshift bikini top and bottom.

Their obvious leader did not wait for her, heading for the tank that held the Draugr. With a powerful energy blast from her hand she created a sizable hole in the tank shaking the facility. The thick gelatin liquid spilled out onto the floor bringing the floating cell crashing violently to the bottom of the tank. She used her eyebeams to cut through the dark metal fortified cell like it was a thick frozen cheese cake.

It was all the monster needed to smash through his prison. The burn marks on his body from her eyebeams healed as he now towered over her. Without hesitation he dropped to one knee bowing his head in servitude. She pat the top of his long brown mane skull and motioned for him to rise.

“
Back out the way you came, huh, boss?” Ghoul asked.

“
Do I look like the type to walk?” She glared at him.

She raised her hand forcing everyone, except for the Draugr, to run for cover.

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Up top at base level Abe carried Maxine’s android body following Erica to the central command. She placed her hand on the hand imprinting panel activating the manual override system in order to open the doors.  

“
You can put me down Sergeant,” a rebooted Maxine responded, “detecting Angie and Jennifer also affected by the EMP rebooting. Doozers will reboot on five minutes, all other systems in ten.”

“
Maxine, where the hell’s everyone else?” Rogers barked.

“
They’re all enroute here,” she responded. “They should be…”

She paused as her eyes went wide, which brought a sickening amount of dread to both Eric and Abe.  

“
Detecting a massive power buildup coming from the Purgatory prison,” Maxine informed.

“
Hit the deck!” Abe screamed.

He grabbed Erica, pulling her to the floor wrapping his arms around her to shield her just as an energy blast the width of a train with the force and heat on the level of the sun tore through the facility engulfing everything in its path. The blast was so powerful it cut a path back up to the surface ripping through the destroyed hanger.

It  also set off a chain reaction of explosions, bringing down solid rock and structures.

Rogers got to his feet and picked Erica up checking to see if she was all right. Maxine also knocked off her feet from the blast was up before them.

“
Maxine, any casualties?” Rogers yelled.

“
Negative,” she reported. “Everyone is still alive. Angie is with Adrian and Oliver, while Jennifer is with Rosann. Shall I…”

“
Stay your ass here, and watch Erica,” he commanded. “I’m going out to get them.”

A shaken Erica grabbed his arm before he left.

“
Come back with them,” she ordered.   

He nodded as he ran through the doors diving into the black smoke and fire that now filled the base.

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Rosann stumbled around in the middle of hell. Coughing and hacking from the suffocating smoke, she followed Jennifer leading her to the central command while trying to avoid four alarm blazes. The fire control system kicked in working overtime as it sprayed a form of foam in an attempt to kill the fires that had erupted about the base.

“
How much further?” she coughed.

“
We’re almost there,” Jennifer confirmed.

The dread that Erica and Rogers had before the blast passed onto Rosann as the sound of booming footsteps forced her to back up.

Out of the smoke, that could have killed an elephant, emerged the sadistic Draugr looking to kill something. And now the monster stood before her.

With full knowledge of what the monster was capable of, a terrified Rosann stood her ground despite her fear. Summoning up courage she ran her hand across her fossil bone bracer and transformed into a human hybrid version of a Kodiak bear matching the Draugr size for size.

She bellowed a roar brandishing her claws challenging him.

Jennifer also prepared to fight by Rosann’s side went into combat mode. Her back opened up allowing her to reach and pull out two hi-tech hilts made for samurai swords. Another section of her back opened up producing the blades which she attached the hilts drawing out two razor sharp swords. They both squared off flanking the monster ready to attack.

In an instant, Jennifer’s eyes went wide like Maxine’s before she defended an attacked against a dual metal pipe wielding Ghoul using them like escrima sticks, leaving Rosann to fight the Draugr alone.

The Draugr with a savage grin roared back and went on the attack going for Rosann first. She was able to evade him knowing that despite her increase in strength he was far more powerful than her and could tear her apart within his grasp.

She stuck to moving in and out of his swings swiping and clawing at him with her thick dagger like nails.

Her plans were thwarted as her razor sharp nails cracked and chipped again his super dense skin.

The android and EVO duo held their own again the Viking powerhouse and the speedster until Rosann was clipped by a powerful backhand sending her into a tailspin. She hit the floor hard, saved from any additional injury from her dense bear physiology. She slowly reverted back to her human form in her unconscious state.

Jennifer, seeing Rosann down, went to run to her side, but a faster moving Ghoul blocked her path laying into her with powerful strikes from the dark metal forged pipes he wielded forcing her to defend herself.

She ran defensive battle scenarios in nanoseconds calculating how to get past the murderous speedster to protect Rosann from the beast now standing over her. None of them had a survival rate over five percent for Rosann. Rosann’s survival rate became lower as Nachzehrer attempted to blindside Jennifer with her own pipe swinging for her skull.

Jennifer’s 360 degree vision and sensors helped her barely duck the head-removing swing only to take a chest full of pipe from a faster moving Ghoul. She tumble rolled backwards with the hit to avoid further damage and to get some distance between her and her attackers. Unfortunately, it also put additional distance between her and Rosann, dropping her survival rate to zero.

The Draugr, in his own world, prepared to stomp down Rosann’s skull like it was a grape. A powerful bluish-white electrical blast from Oliver’s electrical plasma form staggered him. Bellowing a battle cry he struck the Draugr with a powerful plasma ion blast burning a hole into his chest while propelling him several yards through a destroyed structure.

He did the same to Nachzehrer knocking her into the wreckage of the Tornado, while an armored Adrian ran to his sister’s side with Angie to check on her.

“
She has a severe concussion and a cracked collar bone.” Angie quickly scanned her. “We have to get her out of here now.”

Oliver wrapped up his one man mop up by showing Ghoul that the speed of lightning was always faster than sound. He charged and strafed at a rattled Ghoul witnessing his teams fall clobbering him with an energy charged right cross. He did not have time to scream from the electricity leaving fourth degree burns on the side of his face as the jolting hit fired him across the base into the obliterated mess hall.

“
Get to the central command,” he yelled at Adrian. “I’ll buy you some time!”

Another sliver of blessing came their way as the power came back on within the base. Relief came over Oliver as the Sergeant finally appeared with a rifle in tow finding them. It was quickly dashed away as he witnessed his oncoming death.

He saw her before he did. Charging out of the smoke she prepared to tear Abe apart in a matter of seconds. For a split second his plasma form turned from a bluish-white to a blinding deep blue.