Valerie followed Oswald’s assault.

His movement with the exoskeleton showed that he had practice of using one, though from what she can tell it was more intuitive than actually practicing it.

The facility was located somewhat in Libyan territory. A country that had suffered a lot of setbacks, but somewhat he regained normalcy, though there are traces of monstrosities like this happening everywhere. With the advent of cyber and bio ware that the world seems so eager to get their enhancements for the sake of it.

Not all were curious and those who had gotten theirs had enough income to cover the cost of maintenance, the monthly suppressants, boosters, that they had to take to maintain their implants.

Robert rushes inside, deploying charges, breaching inside, finding targets, and shooting them. Although she has her own targeting system, and was able to keep up.

Robert’s movements were practiced, and despite the numbers. She realized that none of the shots really missed. With his strong arm reinforced with the exoskeleton, the recoil of the rifle barely affected him.

Robert Oswald. With a dossier that was redacted all over. The only thing that allowed him in Viator was his connection to Noah Bowman, callsign Strato, and a living legend that everyone who had come so far would have heard.

Strato was someone who she looked up to.

An undying warrior that not even the rotting of his flesh could stop from serving mankind.

She reached this far after being called the youngest woman in the force to become a special operations operator. Although she had left the service, to serve under the interest of Wraith led by Noah Bowman.

She knew that the man that Strato would bring wouldn’t be lacking. Steady steps, with a virility that can be easily noticed. A professional demeanor, and the discipline that seems to have been refined.

She could tell that he was a merc.

A silent professional that does what he is told and gets paid for it. However, there was a cold fury in him that seemed to be triggered. Valerie had the chance to talk to Strato about him. He was mostly tight-lipped, but Strato’s voice said it all. The man got the respect of a living legend like Noah Bowman.

“I only worked in about two OPS with him. Never did talk much, but I can still remember it. When you want to fight monsters, you’d bring that guy. Hell, if that bastard wasn’t knocked by a fight that should have been hard to win. Maybe we’d have had more fights. Then again, I’m a fool that keeps on looking back. You can trust him to watch your back. Bastard has a loose screw, but he’ll fight hard.”

It was a remark that showed his trust to this man.

She could have ignored everyone else, but it was hard to ignore a living legend like Strato.

And now she understood why he recommended this man to become their Itinerant of Viator. His skills alone were worth whatever it was that Strato was paying him.

Robert flicked a magazine off his rifle and cleared the room.

“How far are we from the predicted center?”

“Not far.”

She shared the data map. Her rifle watching the sides.

“Drone swarms are tearing everyone outside. We’ll continue forward.”

Following his lead was like watching a predator tearing everyone apart.

Most of the security they encountered so far were well-equipped. But they were not outgunned.

Each bullet tearing their ill–bought equipment.

Robert breached a room and fired precise shots.

The way he shot was meant to kill immediately.

Most soldiers trained to hit the center of mass.

But he seemed to be trained to hit the neck and head.

They were dead and bleeding on the ground, unable to move.

The rest of the facility was sterilized and the further they went into this facility the longer it was to take down the security personnel whose synthetic skin seems to help in repelling the bullets.

Robert inserted another magazine.

“Got hostiles with kevlar implants. Try to hit them in the head.”

“Easy to say.”

Robert poked out of cover and fired two to three shots on the necks of the heavily armored security. Instead of taking cover, he charged in, disarmed the guard, and slammed the guard on the white walls with the servo-motors of his exoskeleton groaning at how he was using it.

“That was risky.”

Robert took cover, checked his ammunition, and signaled Valerie to take the other side of the wall. Throwing a flash in the room, Robert entered, and swung himself suddenly, avoiding a shot that shattered the tile floor.

Robert rolled to take cover and adjusted his helmet. He stopped Valerie from entering.

“Fifty CAL. Provide cover.”

Valerie counted from one to three inwardly and poured an entire magazine in the direction where the shot came from. Robert aimed, then took a crack shot somewhere.

“It’s clear.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure”

Valerie went in and looked at the direction where the .50 cal was shot. She wasn’t being shot at so she went in and followed Robert further in the interior where the laboratory should be.

Planting charges on the security door. Robert took a step back, went to cover, and detonated the charges, ripping a hole on the security door that looked like it had been blasted with a lava that melted a hole on it.

There were researchers inside that were cowering. Robert slammed the butt of his rifle, and then shouted at them.

“Every single one of you is going to gather in the corner of this room right now.”

With his commanding tone no one was able to refuse. They gathered on the corner with Robert’s rifle on them.

“I want all of you to strip all the things in your pocket and on your clothes. And don’t try anything unless you have enough caliber to even penetrate our shields.”

They stripped all they could and threw them in front.

“I need biometric access and any passcodes that you have. Keep them occupied will you?”

Valerie pointed her rifle at them while Robert checked the credentials on the floor. After spending a minute checking the credentials, he dragged one of the researchers to the biometric locks and had him open the locks.

Entering the credentials, accessing the database. Robert inserted a drive on one of the slots and ran an index search  and filtered out anything unrelated to what they were searching for.

While the search was going, Robert radioed control.

“This is Deadman, we have researchers here.”

“Deadman, you are free to neutralize them, over.”

“Copy that, control.”

Robert aimed his rifle at them and gunned them down in cold-blood. Valerie, who was taking aim at the researcher who got the biometric lock open, groaned slightly before putting a bullet on the forehead of the researcher.

“This is Valor to Control, researchers have been neutralized.”

“Be advised we are detecting reinforcements coming from Fortress to check on the situation.”

“Copy that Control, search is still ongoing.”

Robert looked at the search results, downloaded the incriminating evidence while clearing some records.

“Shouldn’t we gather all of them?”

“We are keeping what we can take. There’s a terabyte of data here that we might as well extract the servers if we want them all. Don’t have time to do that. And unless you want all the footage they did to these poor bastards.”

Valerie examined the footage and felt her stomach churn at the sight of test footage that examined the limits of what a human can do.

“What about their research?”

“I’m looking for it.”

Valerie kept her defenses while the filtered data was getting into the drive.

“This is Control, most of the research data has been expunged, the emails, a partition of the database, and other information are now being compressed. How solid are the drones right now?”

“This is Control to Deadman, the drones are currently deployed against the reinforcements coming from the Fortress. ETA five minutes.”

Robert checked his rounds while glancing at the terminal.

“Extraction point. We’ll be out by three.”

“Deadman, hostiles!”

Valerie took cover and started engaging the security that came to the city.

Robert stayed in the terminal while taking out all the explosive charges on him.

“We’ll be racing down that corridor. We’ll plant charges on the fusion core generator that they have and then nova this place. For now, try to light them up.”

Valerie bit her molars and hugged the wall, exchanging rounds after rounds on the security. Robert took a plug from his deck, slotted it, and then ran a quick hack on the defenses that weren’t activated and took control of the turrets that the drones disable.

“Take cover.”

The turrets popped out of the ceiling and emptied hundreds of rounds on the security. Robert lobbed a grenade on them and then popped out of cover, emptying a mag on the security forces.

Robert went back to cover, scanned the area, and then signaled to Valerie that it was clear.

Robert ran back to the terminal, took the drive he slotted, and slung his rifle on the side. Before leaving Robert tore one of the researcher’s thumb and then pocketed it

She followed Robert down the corridor until they got into this heavily secured area. Robert pressed the thumb on the biometric locks and threw the thumb away.

It was a fusion core. A dangerous core that could reduce this facility to literal ashes if triggered.

Valerie blocked his path.

“You know what you’re doing?”

Robert nodded, he rigged the explosive charges around the core, and then mechanically manipulated the terminal connecting the fusion core. It was a bit clumsy at first, but the longer he interacted with the terminal, the better he was at navigating it.

“You’re familiar?”

“Different OS, and the language is different.”

Valerie could at least recognize German.

After finishing his tampering with the fusion core, the fusion core’s containment started changing.

“Bypassed the security locks. This core’s about to spin so hard that it’ll melt everything. The core’s spin should trigger the explosive. We better go, Val.”

Robert turned and sprinted out of the room. With an invisible timer ticking, Robert, who led the charged, rammed through the doors like a charging bull seeing red, and mowed down the security forces who were behind a barrier.

There were a lot of security forces and there were even bipedal mechs armed with mounted gatlings and yet she could tell that Deadman felt like he was at home.

The amount of bullets passing by them.

The obscene use of electromagnetic shielding.

The precise shots and the way he empties his gun as if it was no concern if he runs out of ammunition made Valerie truly understand why Strato brought him in.

Although for this raid, their tactic was the overwhelming use of the swarm drones, and a direct assault.

She couldn’t evaluate his other skills in other operations, but seeing how this madman was rushing with such a calculated charge, made her somewhat glad that she wasn’t at the other side of the fight.

After breaking out of the facility, they made good use of their exoskeleton, to quickly get out of the range of the explosion.

“This is Deadman to Control, fusion detonation will be initiated at any moment.”

“Copy that, Deadman. DS will now retreat. Extraction AV is on position.”

Zipping under the radar undetected, Valerie slung her rifle on the side and caught the line thrown at them. Pulled into the back of the aerial drone, she strapped herself on the drone, and then took her helmet off, the sweat on her head drenching her.

Robert unlocked his helmet and placed it aside. His calm eyes met Valerie who was sweating from the operation.

“Do you always do this?”

Valerie had to ask.

“It’s not everyday you have a drone swarm with you. If they had a drone swarm as well, it would have been  a different affair. Well, it’s a good thing.”

“You don’t sound concerned if there was one.”

“I had days where I had to fight tech-bugs like this. Hard to neutralize them, but if you blind them they might as well be flies buzzing around, mind you, flies with rounds and also sorts of weapons.”

His tone betrayed no lies.

He speaks about it like it’s just another thing he needed to shoot or neutralize. It was hard to get her head around the idea.

She thought again that it was good to have a madman like him around.