Ikusaki hissed and flinched when Mizusaki gave one more knot to the ripped piece of fabric circling his neck - an attempt to stop the blood flowing down from the cut made by the completely shattered and useless communication device previously strapped around his neck. “Fuck, Mizusaki…! Can’t you be a little bit gentler here!?”

“Stop whining, Ikusaki,” sighed Miue, his foot continuously tapping the floor as he kept guard at the entrance of the cell. Truth to be told, when he read in the report that the main targets were addressed as ‘super soldiers’ by the lab, he snorted at it. Genetic modifications were something common for decades now, ranging from fruits and animals to actual human beings… but creating something as monstrous as M1 (and possibly all the other test subjects) was simply beyond the bounds of possibility. What the fuck were the scientists thinking when they did these type of experiments!?

“Done!” announced Mizusaki, giving a quick slap to Ikusaki’s shoulder as he got up from his crouched down position. “I’m not the most skilled of ‘nurses’… nor the sexiest~ one, but that should do for now.”

Ikusaki picked up his rifle from the floor and also got up, moving his head around just the slightest to create a little bit of leverage between the ‘bandage’ and his neck. He needed to be as operational as his other two squad members even when slightly wounded. “Will the next one be exactly like this one?”

“How should I know?” said Miue, shrugging his shoulders while departing his back from the wall. The three-man group exited the cell and Miue immediately walked to the electronic panel, pressing one of its buttons. “Just to play safe, let’s seal this cell off and keep all those bombs far away from any of the targets.”

Mizusaki and Ikusaki nodded their heads in agreement and all three of them observed the second door motion back down and lock, soon followed by the first door. Loud clicks announced that the cell had been fully sealed once again.

With that imminent danger taken off from their minds, the soldier squad quickly finished searching for workers hiding in the floor -5. After that, they started walking down the stairs so they could finally finish their mission. The only difference was that now they were much more nervous and cautious over what kind of target they would find on the last floor.

“This one has bombs in his cell, just like M1 and M3, so he’s probably as dangerous as the two of them. M1’s cell also had two doors keeping him sealed off from the exterior so I guess if we find more than one metal door… we already know what to expect,” explained Miue as they stopped in front of the door in the service stairs that gave access to the very last floor of the building. The two younger soldiers nodded their heads in acknowledgement and gulped down their fears, summoning the courage that years of military training and experience had enabled them to have during crucial moments. “I’m opening the door on the count of 3. 3… 2… 1!”

Miue turned the knob… but the door didn’t open. He tilted his head slightly and tried turning it one more time but it continued to refuse to move even a single inch. He looked to the wall and found there an electronic panel like the ones they had found in the upper floors. The difference was that this one was completely black. The power cut had affected it too.

“Shit…” cursed Miue, running his fingers through his hair. He kept his gaze on the door for a few seconds and then motioned his hand to his holster, taking from it his handgun. He took aim to the knob and fired a couple of times, the loud bangs echoing through the mass of staircases. Then he put his handgun back in the holster and looked over to Ikusaki. “Kick it open.”

“Ah… yes, sir,” awkwardly answered Ikusaki, focusing his eyes on the door. He took a step backwards and then lifted one of his legs, sending a powerful kick to the area near the knob. The door was opened ajar, crashing loudly against the wall inside of the floor -6. Ikusaki lowered his leg once again and tapped his foot lightly on the floor, trying to sooth down the slight torpidity that his limb was feeling due to the strong impact.

They entered inside of the very last floor and looked around, Ikusaki closing the slightly damaged door after all of them were fully inside. This floor looked completely different from the two upper ones. For once, it was simply one single humongous room filled with nothing but some occasional pillars to sustain the upper floors. It didn’t have any other divisions in sight. It was similar to a big, dark and empty parking lot. However, the thing that they immediately noticed as soon as the door was open was the path drawn on the floor. It was illuminated by soft lamps embedded directly on it, two lines created parallel to one another.

“This door will be easier to find than the other two, that’s for sure,” mumbled Ikusaki as they started walking through the large area, following the illuminated path while cautiously surveying their surroundings. “But damn, this is creepy…”

“I have the feeling that the target being kept here is different from the ones on the upper floors,” suddenly said Mizusaki, searching around in the darkness with his eyes.

“Why do you think so, Mizusaki?” asked Miue, arching an eyebrow high on his forehead at that sudden and unexpected comment.

“Have you looked at this place? While the other floors are still used to perform ‘normal lab activities’, this one has been completely isolated from everything and everyone,” started explaining Mizusaki. “And taking into consideration the way that M1 and M2 talked about this target… it was like… I don’t really know how to explain it, but it seemed like they were talking about a person that meant the world to them. Which is weird, since from what I understood from the reports being sent to me from the main hall, they have never met one another up until today and only communicated through letters.”

“They went through the same shit together. It’s obvious they have bonded with each other in some kind of way because of that,” pointed out Miue, turning his head to the side as he tried to calculate how wide the room was through the echo of their voices. This floor seemed far bigger and wider than the ones above them.

“I’m not so sure about that…” interrupted Ikusaki, adjusting his hold to the rifle. “Ya know what was my first thought when I saw this floor? That this path was just like the ones we find on sacred grounds and that led to the shrines where the gods live. That sort of creepy shit.”

“You’re not going to say that not only super soldiers are kept here but also a god, right?” scoffed Mizusaki, arching slightly an eyebrow as he peered over to his squad mate.

“No but… My internal danger alarms have been ringing since I stepped in this floor,” confessed Ikusaki, tightening his grip on the rifle. “Much more than when that lunatic upstairs was trying to kill me off.”

“That sure is reassuring…” grumbled Miue while softly rolling his eyes around.

They continued to follow the path, minute after minute passing by but still no signs of the metal door. The soldiers grew more and more nervous at the sheer size of the last underground floor. After a good fifteen minutes of continuous walking, they reached the end of that side of the room, a large metal door sided by two lamps on the floor to signalize its width right in front of them. Those lamps only made the sight seem even more unnatural.

“There’s a panel over there,” noted Mizusaki, pointing to the right side of the door with his index finger. “But we don’t have the password for this door. Do you think that the target inside of this cell knows about it?”

“Maybe,” answered Miue, walking over to the panel. He opened the hatch covering the buttons and frowned at the sight. “Actually, there’s no need for that. It only has a lever, with positions signalized as ‘open’ and ‘close’. It’s currently on ‘close’ mode.”

“Aren’t they nice to facilitate our mission, then?” snickered Mizusaki, getting his rifle on loaded mode as he readied his body and mind to the imminent opening of the metal door.

“But isn’t that weird?” added Ikusaki, also taking a defensive stance beside Mizusaki. “M2 said they could leave whenever they wanted but never did because one of them couldn’t. I thought it was this one since he said they didn’t know the code to open his door. But his cell is the easiest one to open, out of all of them.”

“Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the door,” pointed out Miue as he grabbed the lever with his hand. He took a quick glance at his two subordinates and waited for them to give their acknowledgement to the opening of the door. “Maybe it’s because of the bombs keeping him in check.”

Ikusaki and Mizusaki exchanged a hesitant glance between themselves and then looked over to their second-in-command, nodding their heads in acknowledgement and providing with the final okay to open the metal door. Miue also gave a quick nod and pulled the lever down. Clicks and clanks immediately reached their ears.

“I hope there’s only one door… Please let it be only one door…” started mumbling Ikusaki, tightening his grip even more around the rifle. Once the door had slid half open, another one appeared from behind it. Ikusaki felt a cold sweat gathering on his forehead. Once the first door was fully open and the second one was halfway through, a third door came into view. “Fuck my life…”

“Someone sure doesn’t want whatever is inside of this thing to come out,” said Miue, joining the other two soldiers and pointing his rifle to the opening doors.

After a few minutes of hearing the clanks of metal latches being unlocked and five doors having been fully opened, they were greeted by another cloud of white, cold fog and an extremely dark room. The other two cells had been illuminated but this one had no signs of light whatsoever. They exchanged quick glances and started to walk in the cell’s direction, their senses hypersensitive to any movement or sound around them.

“M0? Can you hear us?” called Miue as he intently peered inside of the room to make heads or tails of its inside. It was so dark he could only see black in front of him. “We’re here to take you with us upstairs so you can meet with your friends.”

Silence was the answer.

“With the cold temperature of this room, it would be useless to use the night vision goggles since M0’s body temperature has to be affected by it,” said Mizusaki, taking from his vest’s pocket a flashlight and inserting it on the top side of his rifle. “Flashlights will work much better in this situation.”

“Right,” acknowledged Miue, both him and Ikusaki also positioning flashlights on their rifles. Once all of the flashlights were in place, they turned them on, partially illuminating the area in front of them. “What… the fuck…?”

“I thought the other cells were messed up but this one takes the cake…” mumbled Ikusaki, skirting his eyes around the extremely large room that was completely empty save for the thousands and thousands of titanium chains raining down from the ceiling.

“M0? Are you in there?” tried calling Mizusaki this time. They heard a sudden metallic sound of chains clanking against one another and all three of them pointed both their rifles and their flashlights in the sound’s direction. They saw a bunch of chains wobbling around but no signs of a living being. “Well, at least we know that someone’s inside…”

“And if he moves around, we will know his location when he touches the chains, too,” added Miue, moving his eyes to accompany the motions of the light of his flashlight through the room and search for the new location of the last target. “M0?”

“Who are you?” Suddenly, a soft voice resounded from inside of the cell.

“We’re here to take you out of this lab,” explained Miue, turning his rifle and flashlight to the place where the voice had seemingly come from. But that spot only had suspended chains. For some reason, he had the nagging feeling that he was being closely observed and analyzed by unknown eyes. It was sending the chills down his spine.

“Who are you?” asked once again the soft voice, this time from another location. There had been no rustling of chains in between the two questions.

“Like he said, we’re here to take you and your friends out of this lab,” also tried Ikusaki, all three of them entering further inside of the large room with the same slow and measured pace. “Can you show yourself to us?”

“Who are you?” asked a small male, who popped up right in front of Ikusaki all of a sudden, extremely close to the rifle that he was holding in his hands.

“WOAH!” yelped Ikusaki due to the scare that the sudden appearance of their final target had caused to him. When he saw a leg lunging in his face’s direction at lightning speed, he instinctively motioned his rifle up, grabbing the two ends of his weapon with both of his hands to block the blow.

As soon as the striking limb made contact with the rifle, the metal gun broke in two and Ikusaki was thrown to the ground with the monstrous strength that had been put on that axe kick. His body was readily pinned down to the floor by the small male. However, though he was quite small in size, his body seemed to weight as much as a car and all that weight was making it extremely hard for him to breathe as he remained sat down on top of his ribcage.

Shit, not again!!