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<Going under the assumption this IS Unit_00, that means it is meant to adapt. What adaptive advantage is there to being that skinny and wiry?> Sarge started thinking of as many possibilities as he could think of. He was now in yet another life or death scenario. Unlike the last few times, however, there were fatalities that he personally noted. People had been gutted alive by this thing… or…

Sarge heard a very faint sound of the fire escape opening. Tap-tap-tap-tap.

<Whatever that thing is probably caused it. But what even was it? Why was it so slow? What caused a hesitation in its movement?> Sarge tried to calm his heartbeat. Going back down the hallway was no longer an option, and going forward wasn’t either. All he had on him was a flashlight. Maybe he could feign death after getting gutted by Unit_00? He wasn’t sure if he could actually survive a wound like that with his current weight, but it was still an option.

<I’ve been sitting here for a few minutes and it still has yet to notice me. Does Unit_00 not have a thermal detector on it? I feel the wall would be warmed by now.> Sarge gritted his teeth.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

Its eye. That must be where the core function of Unit_00 was. But, on top of that, it was possibly like Starfish. It scanned, saw, and processed information through that eye.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

Sarge had to bet, and hope, it didn’t have a thermal sensor on it… or at least it didn’t have one activated. Perhaps it had modular body parts that each could function differently. Maybe it sacrificed a thermal scanner for the EMP? But where was the EMP? What caused it? What part of Unit_00 did it come from? How did it protect itself if it was just this wireframe husk of a robot?

<Assumptions: This is Unit_00. It is a modular robot. It doesn’t have a thermal sensor activated. It has an EMP. It’s a wireframe….> Sarge thought back to the collector robot. Its arms were wiry like Unit_00’s… but its arms were just a bit thicker. Even then, the arms were very fast and hard to dodge. <So, Unit_00 is going for speed.>

Tap-tap-tap-tap. The noise was getting closer than it had ever been so far.

An idea came to Sarge’s mind. He knew he was running out of time, but this was his best bet of escaping now. He needed to make an action and hope for the best.

Sarge’s heart was now racing so fast that he couldn’t keep his ears from thumping. He clenched his flashlight and bit his tongue. Sarge felt his adrenaline fully kick in. His surroundings slowed down as he clicked his flashlight on.

Its light shown right into the path of Unit_00’s eye. It moved the spotlight toward Sarge and began to move closer. Sarge could hear faint scraping noises as it walked. It turned the corner. Sarge’s fear spiked. It was now or never.

Sarge jolted his flashlight up, aiming it directly at Unit_00’s eye. Almost acting like a human in its reaction, Unit_00 backed up and threw an arm up to shield itself. It possibly assumed it was about to be shot by a gun of some sort.

Sarge took this opportunity and dove between Unit_00’s legs. He curled himself into a somersault and rolled past the robot. When he felt his feet touch the ground again, he kicked himself into a standing position. At this moment, he had two options that came to mind. He could try knocking over Unit_00, like with what he and Xenon did, or he could try crashing into the door, hoping it would open. In both cases, he knew he had little time.

If Unit_00 was able to adapt, then it possibly got the information from the collector on the Under Drop Method Sarge and Xenon used previously…. Sarge decided to run through the door.

Sarge ran to the door, making sure he could see some sort of handle between his flurried movement and a flickering flashlight. To his relief, the door had a push bar. He crashed into it. The door flung open. He carried his momentum through the door but felt a sudden sharp pain in his foot as something pierced through it and snagged his leg in the doorway.

“No you DON’T!” Sarge roared. He felt a rush of power flow through him as he yanked his foot forward. The object kept trying to hold onto his foot but eventually became dislodged when he heard a metal grinding noise, followed by immense pain. The object that shot into him must have been a claw of some sort, meant to harpoon something and hold onto it.

Sarge tugged one last time, fully freeing himself from its grasp, but he tried to step on the foot and found it didn’t respond look it was supposed to, so he ended up landing hard on it and causing a spike of pain to fly up his leg. He yelped in surprise and fell to the ground. He managed to catch himself on the concrete floor and throw his momentum into a roll where he stopped in a sitting position.

He quickly looked down at his left foot. He could see a deep swathe of red soaking the top of his foot. Blood was trickling down a crease in the left side. He realized that, by tearing himself free, he actually tore his foot open.

Looking back, he could see a metallic cable-like grasper laying on the ground. It didn’t seem to be attached to anything and was leaking some sort of fluid from the end opposite the grasper. Was it a hydraulic system?

Now biting through the pain, Sarge quickly got to his feet. He pressed down lightly on his left foot. Immense pain shot through him, so he jumped forward to land on his right foot. He repeated the same process of lightly pressing down with his left foot, then hopping forward onto his right. No matter how much pain he was in right now, he still needed to escape.

He heard the door to the facility slam open. From directly inside he could hear a tap-tap-tap-tap. Seems whatever had been following him before had caught up to Unit_00. He didn’t know what this meant, but he couldn’t stop to look.

Sarge continued to hop forward, doing his best to keep his left foot resting just enough to repair itself. He’d never been hit in the foot before, so he didn’t know how long it would take to recover. But if he could just keep going, eventually, he’d be able to run semi-normally again.

“Come on…” Sarge gritted his teeth through the pain. He winced a few times, but managed to make it halfway through the courtyard. He could see dozens of destroyed robots and deceased humans laying around. He kept trying to look away from them, but no matter where he looked, he would see some form destruction to either a human or a robot…. It was horrifying. Sarge decided to squint his eyes and try and focus on only the ground in front of him.

“D-d-d-detective S-s-s-s-sergeant W-w-w-w-wolf.” Sarge could hear from behind him. He recognized the voice… only… it didn’t sound right.

“Wha-?” Sarge gasped. He swore the voice sounded like Borislov, but it was stuttering. He spun himself around mid hop to quickly see what just called his name. He froze.

Standing in the courtyard was a figure that looked… like Borislov. It even had his glasses and lab coat… but its left arm was limp… and it still had a gaping hole in its abdomen. Inside that hole was what appeared to be a glowing, blue eye.

“Unit_00…?” Sarge asked as he jumped backwards, but accidentally landed on his left foot. He was ready to experience a jolt of pain, but felt it was far less than it had been before. His foot was already repairing itself. That part was good…

Borislov opened his mouth. “I-i-i-i am am am y-y-y-your ffffffrieeeeeend,” the voice was replaced with a crackly-sounding recording for the next phrase, “Doctor Borislov.”

Sarge began to backpedal, now finding that his foot was able to function a bit better. He didn’t know how he was supposed to respond. “Why is there a glowing eye in your stomach?”

“I-i-i-i-i I am F-f-f-fine. Fine. Fiiiiine!” Borislov’s mouth seemed to have trouble formulating those words. “L-l-l-lets… geeeet a blooooooooood sample. Yyyeeees? Fooooor old-times sake… spooooooort?”

Old-time’s sake? Sport? Almost sounded like a 1950’s dad talking to their kid. Did Unit_00 get information from a nuclear family TV show?

“Why do you want my anomaly so much?!” Sarge yelled. He felt his left foot was now operating properly with almost no pain at all. He backpedaled faster but quickly looked over his shoulder to see if anything was in the way. So far, nothing was there.

“A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-anomaly.” The blue eye inside Borislov’s stomach zipped around for a moment. It began to slide out of Borislov’s body. The thin metal wires fell out after it. With each passing second, Borislov’s body became limp and, when Unit_00’s entire body had fully appeared from the hole, Borislov fell to the ground.

Sarge realized what Unit_00 had just done. It was trying to coax him into stopping by pretending to be someone. Its wiry arms weren’t just for speed, they were for acting as a bone structure for an unmoving body… a corpse.

But how did it get Borislov’s body? Sarge knew it was on Floor B6. Was it that thing that was tapping?

Sarge looked toward the entry way. He noticed something was beginning to emerge from the doorway.

Tap-tap-tap-tap. A set of, silver-colored, metallic tendrils speared themselves into the four corners of the entryway. Connecting all these tendrils was a weird, black box of some sort. It didn’t have an eye like Unit_00 had, but Sarge could vaguely see a trail of dripping red liquid from the center of the box. He was pretty sure that was blood but was unsure what the thing was even supposed to do.

Unit_00 began to reform itself into the humanoid shape from before. Sarge noticed that its left arm was actually missing. Was this the part Sarge yanked off at the doorway?

“A-a-a-a-a-a-anomaly.” It said. Its voice no longer sounded like Borislov. Rather, it sounded like Starfish. It began running toward Sarge. To Sarge’s dismay, it was fast. Faster than he could run, even if his foot wasn’t hurt. But he didn’t have any other options on what to do, so he turned around and bounded off the ground.

“WHY DO YOU WANT IT?!” Sarge repeated, hoping it would reply.

It didn’t. But he could hear the scratching of its feet begin to get closer.

Sarge had to think of something. He assumed he’d be within range of its right arm within mere moments.

“Uh… YOU DO REALIZE THAT KILLING ME WILL DESTROY THE ANOMALY, RIGHT?” Sarge belted out. He wasn’t sure if that was true, but he was grasping at straws.

Still no reply.

Sarge was getting closer to the front gate to the facility. It was currently toppled over. Two deactivated destroyers lay on top of the wreckage. The gap between them was easy enough for Sarge to get through.

“I FEEL IT’S BETTER IF WE TALK THINGS OUT! MAINFRAME LISTENED, WHY DIDN’T YOU?!” Sarge kicked off the ground with his right foot and soared through the air. He landed squarely on the hard-metal plate of the gate before continuing into a sprint.

Still no reply, but he could hear the scratching of metal against metal… and then the metal against metal started to sound more distant.

Doing like he’d done before, Sarge jumped and spun around mid air. He could see Unit_00’s legs scrabbling against the smoothed metal surface. It wasn’t getting any traction. It then looked up at Sarge as he continued to move away.

Not wanting to give it a chance to catch up, Sarge spun back around and continued to run. He didn’t know how far out he could go, but he knew he needed to try and keep moving, even if his body was screaming at him to stop. His body was still trying to fully recover his foot, so he was battling against both physical exhaustion and regeneration fatigue. He felt he was only staying conscious right now due to the racing heartbeat in his ear that acted as a rhythmic drum to help him keep running. So he did.

Sarge spent a lot of time rushing down the mountain. He slowed his pace to help his body recover a bit more. This also gave him a chance to try and turn his phone back on. When he pulled it out of his pocket, it still didn’t seem to light up. He tried restarting it, but it didn’t want to restart. As far as he knew, it was completely fried.

Sarge found he was going down a rather steep slope at this point. This caused his pace to become staggered. He was forced to slow down to a walk, but he knew that was a mistake. Now that his body had fully slowed down to a walk, his limbs were beginning to feel like rubber. But how far had he gotten away from the facility? Was it enough for him to be able to find shelter and not be found? He wouldn’t be able to survive out in the wild in his current state. Pretty soon, his regeneration fatigue would take full effect and his mental state would deteriorate drastically.

As far as he knew, he managed to get past the hard part – escaping from right under Unit_00. Now he just needed to find a way to cope and survive long enough to get help….

Sarge slowed to a stop. He put his phone back in his pocket. Who would be able to help? He literally just escaped from the highest-security facility in the entire city, and it was a massacre in there. The military didn’t seem to stand a chance against Unit_00’s onslaught. How did it make so many robots without a proper factory to produce them all? What had it been doing during the thirteen days he was in there?

That facility…. Sarge didn’t know any of the layout of it, or what it was even for, but Unit_00 now possibly had that entire place to itself. It was a garrison that was possibly hard to get into in the first place. If it was meant to create weapons, tanks, or anything the military might use, then Unit_00 could use it too. If it managed to get production up and running there, it may possibly become unstoppable.

“I…” Sarge placed a hand on his arm and tightened his grip. “I can’t let that happen.”

Sarge turned around and started to walk back up the mountain, but felt his legs give way. He dropped to his knees and cursed under his breath. “No! I can’t! I can’t let it happen! I need to stop it!” Sarge tried to shove his feet off the ground, but they wouldn’t budge. He was all out of juice.


“Please! Just get up!” Sarge slammed a fist onto his knee. It didn’t do anything. His muscles were too exhausted, and his mind was already starting to feel hazy.

He couldn’t tell if his mind was playing tricks on him again, but he heard a weird array of noises begin to surround him. He looked up and saw a fuzzy image of something climbing up the mountain toward him. It didn’t like anything like Unit_00, but it had a slight, greenish glow to it. He didn’t know how he saw the glow so vividly, but he recognized the color. It was Chomby. But how? Was he hallucinating?

He then heard the sound of sawing wood coming from up the mountain. He turned his head and could see an all-too-familiar blue glow coming from Unit_00. He had trouble describing what he saw, but it looked like the eyeball attached itself to that weird, tapping black box, and was currently floating down the mountain with the razor-sharp limbs spinning insanely fast and cutting down any trees that got in its way.

He heard a faint voice. What it said was almost indistinguishable from the cacophony of falling trees, but he swore he recognized the tone.

“get up…” the voice said, but it was more audible now. Sarge tried to push himself to his feet. His body was struggling against him.

“Sarge, get up!” The voice came in, now louder than the saw blades that were getting dangerously close. He Gritted his teeth and tried to get to his feet.

“GET DOWN!” Suddenly, Sarge felt his world come back to him as that last command was completely opposite of what was being said before.

Sarge knew he couldn’t get up, but he certainly could get down, so he did. He let his body go limp and felt his snout drop onto a bed of pine needles underneath him… and then he heard an almost-deafening roar of sound fly overhead like a sonic boom. His arms instinctively clapped around his ears to prevent them from getting damaged. He remembered he’d do this as a teenager whenever he was trying to sleep and a loud thunderstorm was going on directly overhead.

He heard someone call his name, but it was muffled behind his hands.

“Sarge!” He felt a pair of strong hands yank his own away from his ears. “Sarge! Come on! Get up! NOW!”

“I… can’t move.” Sarge whispered out.

“Fine!” Sarge felt two strong arms reach underneath him and hoist him up. He spat out a bunch of pine needles and opened his eyes. He could see a set of glowing, green pupils staring down at him. Two, large, 5-colored ears were pointing upward, and swiveling around periodically. Finally, he saw a set of glowing headphones with an all-too-familiar logo showing on each earmuff.

“Chomby?” Sarge tried to whimper out, but he inhaled a pine needle and began coughing rapidly. He looked up the mountain and saw that a bunch of dust, pine needles, and fallen trees scattered the area. There was no sign of Unit_00. Did it get blasted up the mountain?

“And Xenon,” Chomby said.

“He’s… wearing you?” sarge asked.

“Talk later. Let’s get you out of here.” Chomby scooped Sarge up and turned around. He started to run down the mountain.

“But! No! We can’t!” Sarge said, causing Chomby to stop.

“Why?” Chomby retorted. “You’re not dying, are you?”

“No, but everyone will die if we don’t stop Unit_00!” Sarge pointed up the mountain. “That thing that was chasing me. That’s Unit_00! We destroy that thing and it’s finally done!”

“How do you know that’s Unit_00?” Chomby asked.

“The logo above its eye. Also… it’s been adapting. It got into the facility.” Sarge’s eyes clouded with images of all the corpses he saw. Now that his adrenaline was wearing off, he started to feel sick to his stomach. “So… so many people… massacred. Unit_00 killed them all.”

“How much time we got, Xenon?” Chomby asked.

Sarge didn’t hear any reply.

“We’ve got an hour left. I’m not at full strength. Was that Unit_00? Did it really wipe out an entire military facility?”

Sarge nodded. “Yeah… it’s like a wireframe thingy. It…” Sarge remembered how it used Borislov’s body as a puppet. He couldn’t hold in anymore. He turned his head to the side and heaved on the ground for a few seconds. “S-sorry. It used Borislov’s body like a puppet. It tried to get me to come to it.”

Chomby recoiled. Sarge didn’t know if it was because of him throwing up or the mention of someone being used as a puppet.

“Barely got away. Foot damaged. Regeneration fatigue.” Sarge tapped his head. “Hard to think.”

Chomby was silent for a moment. “Xenon says that you’ve seen what Unit_00 can do. If it took out an entire army, do you really think we can stop it?”

Sarge thought on it. From everything he had seen, many robots had infiltrated the facility. Though Unit_00 probably controlled the robots, it wasn’t solely the reason for the massacre. It was the robots it created. It may be a fast, wireframe of an entity, but it was still just one thing: A robot. It was the progenitor of Unit_01 and Unit_02. Though it could adapt, it probably had limitations to it for being the technical ‘prototype’.

Sarge nodded. “Defeat it. Here and now.”

“Xenon says it would be better to run away-”

“No!” Sarge snapped. A bit of his brainfog dissipated. He jostled himself loose from Chomby’s grasp and dropped to the ground. He tried to stand up but found he needed to lean against Chomby. The soundbyte’s fur was soft. “That’s all I’ve been doing, Chomby! I’ve been running and seeing people die. All. Because. Of. Me. I can’t keep letting this happen!”

Chomby was silent for a moment. He then lifted a hand to his zipper and pulled it down. Within a second, Xenon came out.

“W-wait! Chomby!” Sarge’s eyes widened. He looked at Xenon. “I finally got to see him in real life! I didn’t even get to-”

“Later!” Xenon said, grabbing Sarge around his arms. “Now, you listen here, Sarge, your regeneration fatigue is affecting your logic! You’ve told me in the past to speak reasonably to you whenever this happens, so that’s what I’m gonna do!”

Sarge tried to wrestle himself away from Xenon, but he couldn’t muster the strength.

“You are in no shape to fight. You’ve got very little going for you right now aside from the fact that YOU and Chomby are both anomalies that Unit_00 wants. We need to regroup. We can figure something else out! It’s not the end of the world!”

Sarge felt like his feet could properly stand on the ground now, so he stood himself up straight. Xenon immediately released him, seeing he was starting to put up more of a fight.

“Yes, Xenon, it is!” Sarge tried to turn around. His leg was having difficulty moving, so he punched it. For some reason, it turned around. “I will NOT run away this time!”

“Be reasonable!” Xenon clenched his fists. “You’re stubborn, I know, but this is NOT a case for Detective Sergeant Wolf! This is a case for the literal war-hardened individuals! You, and I, are just people! We’re not special. We’re not going to save anyone!”

“Watch me!” Sarge snarled. “Detective Sergeant Wolf is on the case!” Sarge took a step forward. He saw a glint of something from up the mountain, but it disappeared too quickly for him to catch what it was. He thought he could hear the sound of metal piercing wood, but his mind was possibly playing tricks on him.

His belly hurt… possibly from throwing up. He didn’t know at this point, but he needed to keep going. So, he took another step, but felt something stop his movement forward. The pain in his belly increased drastically.

He looked over at Xenon. The alien’s eyes were wide. A hand was cupped to his snout. “Oh… no.”

Sarge felt the pain in his belly increase again. Confusedly, he looked down. His eyes widened in horror as he saw a long, metal wire dig deep into his abdomen. The other end of the wire seemed to go up the mountain into the darkness.

~~~~~

Chapter 15. Oddly enough, when I made the drawing for this, I wanted it to feel very unhinged. Hopefully I portrayed it? XD

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Sarge/Xenon/Chomby/Story/Art ©  pikminpedia Me